The FBI Academy, located in Quantico, Virginia. Credit: FBI/Public Domain
Based on documents the media outlet obtained, The Intercept has published an article that says an FBI official urged AAFS to cancel a conference presentation titled “Taking on the FBI.”
According to the documents, Ted Hunt, a senior policy adviser to the FBI crime lab, argued that AAFS should excise certain references to the FBI from two workshops scheduled for the organization’s annual conference, to be held later this month in Baltimore. One of the apparently offensive presentations was titled, “Taking on the FBI.”
In an email memo addressed to the AAFS Board of Directors, the chair of the conference workshops wrote that Hunt also complained about one of the workshop presenters, a former DNA analyst turned defense expert named Tiffany Roy who regularly challenges the work of front-line DNA practitioners working in government labs across the country, including at the FBI. According to the memo, Hunt told AAFS representatives, including its board president, that the agency was upset that Roy would be given any platform at the conference.
If the AAFS failed to take action, sources told The Intercept, Hunt told the Academy brass that the FBI, whose forensics leaders and front-line practitioners regularly attend the gathering, would boycott the organization’s famed annual meeting.
Hunt did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the FBI said that the agency “did not make any threats nor consequences” and that it “did not seek to censure any speaker nor have them deplatformed.”
Read the rest of the extensive article on The Intercept