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Home • About Us • Training • New Agents and New Intelligence Analysts Basic Field Training Course

New Agents and New Intelligence Analysts Basic Field Training Course

Basic Field Training Course for New Agents and New Intelligence Analysts

New Agents and New Intelligence Analysts
Basic Field Training Course

New Agent Trainees (NATs) and New Intelligence Analyst Trainees (NIATs) begin their training at the FBI Academy in the Basic Field Training Course (BFTC), which features an expansive integrated curriculum.

The BFTC was developed by the Training Division to meet the Bureau’s ambitious goal of training new agent and intelligence analyst candidates in a way that will prepare them for their collaborative work in the field. Previously, NATs and NIATs had completely separate training. The BFTC replaced these two distinctly separate programs with an integrated, collaborative course that uses a dedicated field office team approach mirroring the environment that agents and analysts will experience in their field assignments.

The first BFTC NAT class began on April 19th, 2015—exactly 20 years after the Oklahoma City bombing rocked our nation—and graduated on September 11, 2015—14 years after the 9/11 attacks which changed our nation’s landscape and the FBI’s mission. The first NIAT graduation was held in late 2015.

Director Comey at BFTC“On a basketball team, there are guards, there are forwards, there are centers. They have very different and important roles that only work if they are blended together as a team. Different roles, different responsibilities. But it only works if they blend together and don’t think, ‘I’m a guard, you’re a forward.’ Instead they think, ‘We’re on the same team. We gotta win this game.’ That’s how greatness is born on a basketball court. That’s how greatness is born in the FBI.”

 FBI Director James Comey at
the first BFTC graduation

The BFTC provides the building blocks to help agents and analysts accomplish our mission as a national security and law enforcement organization that uses, collects, and shares intelligence in everything we do.

While the BFTC integrates agent and analyst candidates where appropriate, the course also preserves the positive aspects, traditions, and specialized skills of each individual role. More information on the individual portions of NAT and NIAT training can be found below.

- New Agent Training
- New Intelligence Analyst Training