FBI Director William S. Sessions and top aides met Friday with black agents from around the country to try to head off a possible lawsuit charging the bureau with racial discrimination, an FBI spokesman said.
The meetings are unprecedented in recent bureau history, which has been marked by complaints of discrimination by both blacks and Hispanics. They come at the end of a week in which bureau officials said 11 FBI supervisors and agents face possible disciplinary action in a long-running racial harassment case that was settled with a black agent last August.Thomas Jones, FBI chief spokesman, said 200 of the bureau's 474 black agents attended a morning session with FBI Deputy Director Floyd Clarke at an undisclosed, Washington-area location outside headquarters.
Sessions and Clarke had a closed meeting at headquarters later with a smaller delegation of black agents and their lawyers.
Attorneys for the black agents did not immediately comment on the meetings.