If true, it is not clear to me what a member of Congress is doing in law enforcement. (Or was Kennedy sworn in as a federal marshall too?)
If true, it is not clear to me what a member of Congress is doing in law enforcement. (Or was Kennedy sworn in as a federal marshall too?)
Federal agents and former agents [and sometimes their informents or *lower-case *a* agents] are frequently hired, usually on a short-term or contract basis, for congressional inquires and investigations. They're sometimes removed from their agency payroll and placed directly on the budget of the investigating committee or project, as with the special prosecutor investigations thatresulted in Clinton's impeachment, or sometimes on a per diem basis.
The practice goes back at least as far as that of Bobby Kennedy's *Get Hoffa* squad, with some of the federal agents participating in that operation later finding themselves in supervisory positions under later Attorney General Robert Kennedy. And even the committees other than the usual ones employing the practice, [judiciary, intelligence and operations] have requirements for background investigations on new and replacement aides and staffers.
I don't know right offhand which committees Teddy Kennedy was on then, but he's now on the ranking member on *Health, Education, Labor & Pensions*, the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, the Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Seapower and serves on the Joint Economic Committee, any or all of which could reasonably be expected to be employiong federal cops as staff investigators.
-archy-/-