The FBI was not pleased. There were mentions of the agency in documents connected to an upcoming forensics conference that it deemed disparaging. So in the weeks before President Donald Trump took office and issued an executive order barring censorship by federal government employees, the FBI set out to do just that.
In mid-December, according to documents obtained by The Intercept, Ted Hunt, a senior policy adviser to the FBI crime lab, approached the president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences — the nation’s premiere umbrella organization for scientists, academics, and attorneys practicing, researching, and litigating forensic science issues — with complaints and a demand.
According to the documents, Hunt argued that the 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.
The FBI’s latest tantrum over forensic criticism proves the lab coat mafia still runs the show. When your crime lab’s reputation hinges on silencing whistleblowers, you’re not protecting justice - you’re guarding a Potemkin village of pseudoscience.
The Academy folded faster than a rookie cop’s morals during an overtime scam. Their boardroom capitulation reeks of institutional capture, transforming peer review into a loyalty oath ceremony. Forensic “science” remains law enforcement’s obedient lapdog, biting anyone questioning the chain of command.
Tiffany Roy’s ordeal exposes the rot: truth becomes collateral damage in the FBI’s credibility wars. Real science thrives on dissent, not secret police backchannels to conference organizers. Every redacted presentation title is another fingerprint on the corpse of academic freedom.
We’re watching peer-reviewed cowardice masquerading as professional decorum. Congeniality? That’s what you demand at a garden party, not when lives hang on error-prone analysis. The Academy’s mission statement should include “providing plausible deniability for federal forensic failures.”
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