Age: 102.
Appearance: Untrustworthy.
That can't be right. Not only are they the US's most glamorous crime fighters, but every agent is quite literally special. It says so on their ID cards. That just means they work for the government. Even the US postal service has special agents.
All right then: The Silence of the Lambs. Come again?
You don't get more reliable than Clarice Starling. If I was ever abducted in a parking lot, then thrown down a hole by a nutter who wanted to turn me into leather, that's the kind of woman I'd want searching for me. It's just a movie.
And Twin Peaks! I'd trust Dale Cooper with my life. And that was just a TV series. They weren't even based on true stories.
Go on, then, drag us back to reality. Why are we pretending to be interested in the FBI? Because 22 of its finest have been caught cheating in exams. Another 180 or so may have misbehaved, but investigators couldn't prove it.
Dishonesty and incompetence. If they haven't already got a motto, perhaps that should be it. I think they'd rather stick with Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.
So what sort of exams do special agents take? How to recognise a damn fine cup of coffee? Just a TV series, remember. Thousands of them were being tested to see whether they understood the rules on surveillance. It should have taken an hour and a half, but 200 sailed through in less than 20 minutes.
Answers on their arms? Cribsheets in the toilets? Nothing so low-tech. Some of them used computers to look up the answers.
Have the cheats been sacked? Probably not, though you'd need to speak bureaucrat to be sure. FBI director Robert Mueller will only say that "personnel actions were taken".
J Edgar Hoover must be turning in his grave. Which reminds me . . . No, it wasn't him who invented the vacuum cleaner.
Do say: "We've found the guilty men and women."
Don't say: "It's us."
