FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress on Tuesday that he doesn’t believe the bureau is systemically racist, and vowed to make more strides in diversifying its personnel and leadership.
While testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wray was asked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) whether he believed the FBI is a “systemically racist institution.”
“No, but having said that I do believe the FBI has to be more diverse and more inclusive than it is, and that we need to work a lot harder at that and we’re trying to work a lot harder at that,” Wray responded.
He also told Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) that he is “cautiously optimistic” about the FBI’s efforts to recruit and hire people of color to the bureau’s ranks, saying that each incoming class of special agents is increasingly diverse.
The FBI has been accused of using its broad law enforcement powers against minorities throughout its history, from investigating civil rights leaders in the mid-20th century to unjustly targeting Muslim Americans in the years following September 11, 2001.
Wray’s predecessor, James Comey, who was fired by former President Trump in 2017, had publicly acknowledged the FBI’s sordid history and encouraged its officials to study it.
In a 2016 speech, Comey said that he kept a copy of the 1963 memo signed by J. Edgar Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy authorizing indefinite FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.
“I keep it there in that spot to remind me of what we in the FBI are responsible for and what we as humans are capable of, and why it is vital that power be overseen, be constrained, be checked,” Comey said.