An FBI agent assigned to the Seattle field office in 2005 has sued the agency because she was “not respected as a leader by her subordinates.” The agent in question has a history of making complaints:

In a lawsuit that partially cleared a key hurdle Thursday, Special Agent-in-Charge Laura M. Laughlin, 55, complained that she has been denied at least 10 promotions since she took over the FBI’s Seattle field office in early 2005. She also asserts that she has been pressured since 2007 to retire from the high-profile position and has been denied requests for more staff.

“As a combined effect of all these matters, she is not respected as a leader by her subordinates and management chain in the way that (special agents-in-charge) normally are,” attorneys David Wachtel and Eliza Dermody wrote in a legal brief.

Laughlin first complained of FBI behavior in 1997, when she filed an internal discrimination complaint against a supervisor. That complaint was subsequently settled.

Not only were her subordinates male, but white, too:

Shortly after arriving in Seattle, Laughlin said in a legal filing, she found “multiple instances of race and sex discrimination and insubordination directed at a supervisory-special agent in her division by two white, male special agents.” Laughlin further claimed the two white agents “had the support of a close associate” of FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Laughlin says she reassigned the two white agents. Shortly thereafter, in June 2006, she says the FBI “severely damaged” her reputation when it took the “unprecedented step” of transferring a major homicide investigation to another field office. The investigation in question was into the 2001 killing of federal prosecutor Thomas Wales in his Seattle home. The case remains unsolved.

Traditionally, those in positions of authority and power would know better than to blame their troubles on underlings, but in this upside-down world even the President can be called a victim of “discrimination.”

I wonder whether it will get to the point where companies owned by women will be allowed to sue male workers for discrimination if they do not perform well. Obviously, female leadership is unimpeachable, so it must be the fault of saboteurs and wreckers…