# what exactly is an FBI "special agent?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 22, 2011, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349 "2011-04-22T13:23:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2011, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349/21 "2011-04-23T07:52:41Z")
I think that, given the nature and standards of the **Federal** BI, it’s only fair to characterize those agents as “Special” Agents. I’d have a lot easier time getting on the local PD than working for the FBI…not just security clearance, either. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2011, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349/22 "2011-04-23T08:08:47Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > To the second part of the question. I once spend a day fishing with a person high up in a local police department. He had nothing but bad things to say about the FBI. He said that FBI should stand for Famous But Incompentent. His complaint was that they wanted all of the credit for anything they helped with, despite knowing very little about actual crime. He said that they had lots of money to pay informants and they only reason they ever solved a crime was if outbid everyone else for an informant. He told a possibly apocryphal story about the FBI and another agency working together on a case, the other agency doing most of the work and then when it came to make an arrest ditching the other agency’s men at a McDonalds on the way to the arrest. He generally felt that if the FBI showed up they would act arrogantly and not contribute anything. Robert Ressler, the author and pioneer profiler (He was among the first, he didn’t profile the Donner Party or anything) said much the same thing about them, including that they solve their cases “more through snitching than sleuthing.” ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349/23 "2011-04-23T23:06:09Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > I’d have a lot easier time getting on the local PD than working for the FBI…not just security clearance, either. Qualifications aside, the FBI gets 70,000 applications per year and only hire a few hundred so getting in is an achievement on it’s own. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349/24 "2011-04-24T00:53:28Z")
> [@Washoe](#): > > Tangential question: when I was a kid I was always told that you have to have a JD degree to be an FBI agent. But looking at the qualifications on the Bureau’s web page (linked to in another recently started thread on the subject), it says that the only educational requisite is graduation from an accredited four-year university. Is what I was told wrong, or did it change somewhere along the line? Many years ago, I read that in a memoir I had found in a Reader’s Digest collection of books (can’t recall what it was though). Anyway, the author mentioned having a couple of daughters who both wound up marrying FBI agents, and that one of the qualifications was that they be lawyers (qualifications to be an FBI agent, not to marry her daughters). ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349/25 "2011-04-24T02:02:15Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > Robert Ressler, the author and pioneer profiler (He was among the first, he didn’t profile the Donner Party or anything) said much the same thing about them, including that they solve their cases “more through snitching than sleuthing.” Yeah, but isn’t _most_ crime solved more from snitching than from sleuthing? ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349/26 "2011-04-24T21:16:19Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > [fanboy]Hardly. Both were promising young agents that were shunted into a career dead end. Mulder because he was crazy but had enough support in high places that he couldn’t be fired – so the FBI gave him his basement office and just enough resources to keep him busy. Scully was there at first to keep Mulder from going too far off the deep end, and it really destroyed any chance of promotions. It came up several times in the earlier seasons, where people who knew Scully repeatedly said things like “why do you stay there? you could have a great career if you were in a respectable position.”[/fanboy] But it was easy to get the feeling that they were highly positioned, the way they kept charging into AD Skinner’s office every other show, always with some bone to pick. ---
**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349/27 "2011-04-24T21:25:58Z")
Anybody working for the government is an agent of the government, special agents are government law enforcement, hence the “special”. The Forest Service has special agents. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-is-an-fbi-special-agent/579349.md?page=1)