U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations

The United States Air Force (USAF) Office of Special Investigations (OSI) is the lead investigative agency for any crimes occurring in federal areas of jurisdiction which may have a direct impact on USAF personnel, property, or resources. The OSI will also assume responsibility or work closely with other investigative agencies in any incident which brings extra media attention to the USAF.

Special Agents of the OSI are made up from all classes of the USAF. This means that the OSI employs military enlisted, officer, reserve, and civilian Special Agents. Military Special Agents are those who joined the organization after being recruited from within the ranks of the military. The job is considered a special duty and many members may be required to extend their original service contracts or re-enlist prior to full acceptance by the agency. Civilian Special Agents are those who are not sworn military members.

Special Agents of the OSI do not wear a uniform and if they are military Special Agents they do not display their rank. This is to keep the agency free from incidences where military members may attempt to use their rank to pressure or bribe members of the OSI conducting investigations. When a Special Agent is working in a non-wartime environment, he or she will usually wear civilian clothes. Special Agents working in wartime environments may wear issued military camouflage if they are authorized to do so, but their rank will be replaced with the words "Special Agent" somewhere on their uniform.

Military classification (i.e. enlisted, officer, etc.) has no bearing on work related task group configuration. This means that enlisted members, officers, reservists, and civilians may all be assigned to work the same cases at the same locations. In some instances a civilian may even lead a group of military members or visa versa.

Military and Civilian Special Agents perform close to the same set of tasks on a day to day basis, but their authority differs slightly. Civilian Special Agents are fully credentialed federal criminal investigators who may arrest any person for criminal violations while military Special Agents may only apprehend military members because military Special Agents are governed by military law known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It would be a violation of various federal statutes to have a military member (even in civilian clothes) make an arrest of a civilian off the installation. To do this would send the image of the U.S. being a military state, which we are not. That is why a civilian is elected by the citizens to be the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.

In most cases, if OSI Special Agents have to travel off post, a civilian Special Agent or a member of the local civilian law enforcement community will follow along to properly arrest any civilians should the need arise.

The OSI has other unique duties besides just the investigation of crimes. The OSI is also works greatly in collecting and analyzing various sources of intelligence in order to determine threats to the USAF. One method of intelligence collection used by the OSI is called human intelligence (HUMINT) and it involves talking to local civilians living and working within a close radius of USAF resources and installations in an attempt to paint a picture of the local threat to those resources while also potentially uncovering threats on a much larger scale to the USAF as a whole.

The OSI is also responsible for detecting, deterring, and investigating internal and external espionage threats to the USAF. There are a lot of foreign countries who would love to exploit USAF technological and war-fighting secrets. The OSI makes sure that this doesn't happen.

Sources:

Inside AFOSI. Air Force Office of Special Investigations.