Steve Neavling

All new FBI agents and analysts must visit the monument for the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., new FBI Director James Comey said Monday, Reuters reports.

The idea, he said, is to remind people of the African American struggles for equality.

For similar reasons, new agents and analysts also are required to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Both monuments are in Washington D.C.

“It will serve as a different kind of lesson – one more personal to the bureau – of the dangers of becoming untethered to oversight and accountability,” Comey said.

President Barack Obama and FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce, center, applaud FBI Director James Comey, left, during his installation ceremony at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama officially welcomed James Comey to his new post as FBI director during a ceremony Monday at the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

The president applauded what he called Comey’s judgment and commitment, according to a White House blog.

“Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity: That’s your motto,” the President told the men and women of the FBI.  “And today, we’re here to welcome a remarkable new leader for this remarkable institution, one who lives those principles out every single day: Mr. Jim Comey.”

Obama said Comey was the best choice to head the FBI.

“It’s just about impossible to find a matter of justice he has not tackled, and it’s hard to imagine somebody who is not more uniquely qualified to lead a bureau that covers all of it — traditional threats like violent and organized crime to the constantly changing threats like terrorism and cyber-security,” he said.

Steve Neavling

The FBI is doing a better job handling confidential informants after a scathing report in 2006 criticized the agency’s dealings with sources, McLatchy reports.

Since the initial report, “the FBI has made substantial changes in its management of confidential human sources.”

Concerns were first raised in 2006 when it was discovered that confidential informant Katrina Leung had a longtime affair with her FBI handler.

Steve Neavling

The Washington Times is planning to sue the federal government after armed Homeland Security agents raided the home of a reporter and seized her notes, the newspaper reports.

Reporter Audrey Hudson is an award-winning reporter who has exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Air Marshals Service.

She said agents seized her private notes and records that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Included in the notes are identities of her sources, the Times reported.

The Times plans to file a lawsuit, saying the federal government violated Hudson’s constitutional rights.

“While we appreciate law enforcement’s right to investigate legitimate concerns, there is no reason for agents to use an unrelated gun case to seize the First Amendment protected materials of a reporter,” Times Editor John Solomon said. “This violates the very premise of a free press, and it raises additional concerns when one of the seizing agencies was a frequent target of the reporter’s work.

Steve Neavling

FBI Director James Comey warned that he may have to furlough 600 employees if Congress doesn’t restore the bureau’s budget, the Houston Press reports.

Comey also said he’d be forced to cut 3,500 jobs.

The result could be disastrous, he said, because the bureau will have a more difficult time handling investigations.

The sequestration also is preventing the FBI from hiring anyone new.

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