
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 4, 1993                   TAG: 9312040152
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FBI TOLD TO STOP DISCRIMINATION

The FBI is being ordered by Attorney General Janet Reno to discard a policy making it difficult for homosexuals to be hired. The bureau now will forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Until 1979, the FBI had banned homosexuals and since then its policy was that homosexual behavior made it "significantly more difficult to be hired."

Reno issued a statement Thursday prohibiting all kinds of discrimination throughout the Justice Department.

While that order was a restatement of existing policy for most of the department, the language forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation produced a major change for the FBI, spokesman Carl Stern said.

The bureau issued its own statement Friday:

"The FBI, like the attorney general, is committed to ensuring that applicants and employees are judged on the merits of their qualifications."

Most agents were taking the change in stride, said one FBI agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I don't believe it's perceived as being revolutionary or shocking."

Reno's statement came as a federal class action case brought by former FBI agent Frank Buttino, 48, began in San Francisco.

Buttino is a decorated 20-year FBI veteran who was fired in 1990. His supervisors in San Diego received an anonymous note in 1988 saying he was gay. Buttino denied it at first, explaining later that he knew he would be fired if he told the truth. After he acknowledged his homosexuality several weeks later, he lost his security clearance and then his job.

The FBI says he was fired because he lied, not because he is homosexual, and it was not clear if the new policy would affect the case.

Earlier in Buttino's case, which is a class action suit, U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong questioned "the rationality of a policy that punishes gay employees for being less than candid about their homosexuality, when it is undisputed that until at least very recently ... the FBI would clearly have purged any employee for being candid about his homosexuality."

by CNB