THREAD: A short thread for nerds on federal nomenclature, with all the headlines about officers and agents send to Portland. DHS is actually sending both! And they mean slightly different things in different agencies. Follow along to sound like you know what you're talking about:

1) The FBI, for example, has "agents"—who are actually technically "special agents," a federal term of art that means they have an "1811" designation authority-wise and are allowed to make arrests and conduct investigations. They're allowed, basically, to be detectives.

2) CBP has both "officers" (its Office of Field Operations, the blue uniforms at airports/borders) and "agents" (the Border Patrol), but its agents aren't "special," they're just agents—known as "1801s" in federal parlance, allowed to befederal street cops, not investigators.

3) ICE? They're mostly "special agents," except ICE/ERO also has deportation "officers," who are 1801s. Secret Service, ATF, DEA — all "special agents." Park Police? Officers. Marshals? Deputies—but they're technically 1811 special agents.

4) Confused yet?! Even more confounding: The CIA has "officers" and it's nails-on-the-chalkboard to agency folks to hear people refer to its staff as "CIA agents," because in CIA context "agents" refers only to "assets," people it recruits as spies, not its own employees.