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Photograph by Frank Di Piazza
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The guard’s been briefed: The annual FBI Citizens’ Academy is about to begin. He checks driver’s licenses—a digital forensics expert for a local corporation, a retired IRS agent, U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan’s chief of staff… With each OK, he lowers the wedge of metal angled up from the ground and the driver glides forward, closed-circuit cameras documenting the arrival. An FBI staffer appears promptly to open two locked sets of doors and shepherd the guests upstairs.
It feels a little field-trippy: No visitor can roam this building unescorted, not even to visit the restroom. We follow public affairs specialist Rebecca Wu in single file, like we’re touring a plant—except what they make is safety, and when that fails, justice.
A handful of those chosen for this small, eight-week class already talk regularly with the FBI, because their work involves protecting people, money, computer systems, public utilities and transport, or intellectual property. Others have never been to 2222 Market Street before; they were nominated by an FBI employee or a past graduate. People introduce themselves, joking nervously that they love CSI or Criminal Minds and saying it’s an honor to be here.
Dennis Baker, special agent in charge of the St. Louis Division, tells us about new training in Quantico, Va.; about various databases and information centers in the FBI’s legendary acronym soup, and how LE (law enforcement) and SSAs (supervisory special agents) cooperate. We also hear, several times, a phrase that will recur repeatedly over the next eight weeks: “since 9/11.” In the new FBI, torrents of information flow in and out, and analysis takes precedence over everything else. International counterterrorism is today’s top priority—followed by domestic counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cybersecurity. More emphasis falls on prevention than on prosecution.
“No longer are we waiting around to make sure we have a case against someone,” Baker explains. “If we think that individual is going to harm Americans, we are going to disrupt them.”
The agency still does its share of crime busting, but in just 10 years, the “old FBI” priorities—investigating organized crime, bank robberies, kidnappings, and abductions inside the U.S.—have slid down the list. Some onlookers have even suggested changing “Federal Bureau of Investigation” to “Federal Bureau of Intelligence.”
Assistant special agent in charge Sean Cox sees no need. “The bureau has definitely changed,” he concedes. “The age of withholding information is gone. But we have always been an intelligence-driven law-enforcement agency. Collecting information is fundamental for any investigation, whether it’s criminal or national security.”
At the first class, in late March, SSA Zachary Lowe (who’s since been named one of the assistant special agents in charge of the Chicago Division) puts up a slide of an Osama bin Laden Fatwa against the U.S.
“This is a determined enemy,” he says, “and they mean to kill us.”
One month later, bin Laden will be dead. And the international counterterrorism squad that Lowe supervises will be scanning streams of data for signs of retribution.
Lowe recently spent four months in Iraq, leading efforts to find Americans missing in theater. In St. Louis, he says, “We’re constantly talking to international communities here about people who might be trying to infiltrate. Who are the people who are coming here to try to kill us? And because our enemy has found it’s very difficult to get terrorists into the U.S. and has moved to hit our allies in Europe instead, we’re looking more closely at homegrown extremists, too.”
They’re usually loners, operating solo, and they get their inspiration from the Internet—which makes finding, tracking, and stopping them incredibly difficult.
Lowe holds up a printout of al-Qaida’s online magazine, a classic recruitment tool. “They tell you how to do jihad, what to expect. In this issue, there’s a little section on AK-47 maintenance.” He frowns. “I strongly recommend you don’t leave here and look this up on the Internet.” He warns of viruses and “bad people contacting you.” Later, he mentions what might be the biggest reason of all: “We don’t want their traffic to go up.”
Lowe describes the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, adding that it now gives security clearance to partners in state and local law enforcement, so they’re not working in the dark. This is the new FBI, cheerfully forking over $5,000 to $10,000 per security clearance to make sure information, while carefully secured, is no longer jealously guarded. Embarrassed by the post-9/11 outing of their rivalries and impasses, federal agencies have found ways to talk. After the first year, when FBI agents were interviewing the
same terrorism suspects four and five times because the agency’s record-keeping was antiquated, a shared, continually updated database became the nerve center of every investigation.
SSA Dave Rapp fights the more familiar, domestic forms of terrorism, waged by extremists willing to use force, violence, or coercion to further their causes. His first example is St. Louis–born James von Brunn, who at age 89, after years of denying the Holocaust, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. and shot and killed a security guard. Next, Rapp shows a photograph of an unidentified man covered in tattooed numbers and symbols. “The number 14 stands for a 14-word phrase inspired by Mein Kampf: ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children,’” he says. “The number 88: H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 sometimes stands for ‘Heil Hitler.’”
A plastic surgeon in the class looks startled. “What do we do if we see this stuff?” he asks. “Because believe it or not, I see some of it on my patients.”
Rapp nods grimly. Under the First Amendment, the FBI has no legal authority to launch an investigation until there is evidence of a crime—even if it’s just in the planning stages—that is clearly intended to intimidate or coerce the government. “Hate, racism, and stupidity are not crimes,” he says, jerking a thumb toward the image behind him, of a man’s heavily tattooed chest and arms. “Legally, I’m not even allowed to keep information on somebody who looks like that guy,” he says. (The photo, however, was taken after the man was in federal custody; he did a bit more than exercise his right to free speech.)
“That’s why you see cases where the FBI has been selling explosives undercover,” Rapp continues. “And that’s why we need citizen reports about people doing something suspicious.”
This isn’t just a PR exercise; today’s FBI relies on citizens more than ever. Agents can’t possibly monitor every computer transmission, every suspicious act, every possible threat. Instead, they use public-private partnerships to extend their view. As Baker puts it, “Before, outreach was nice if you could do it. Now it’s part of our strategy.”
Rapp lists common forms of extremism: white supremacists, who can be religiously or politically motivated or both; American Islamic extremists, individuals in the U.S. already assimilated into this culture who identify as Muslims, become radicalized without foreign influence, and support or commit terrorist acts; black separatist extremists, many of whom believe, among other things, that all black prison inmates should be released; and abortion extremists, who are usually lone offenders but often claim their acts represent the “Army of God.”
Sovereign-citizen extremists want to be exempt from all taxes, registrations, and requirements of citizenship. “Sometimes you’ll have luck if you have a county officer go talk to them,” Rapp remarks—county being the highest level of government they respect. “They have their own law enforcement; some have even tried to serve warrants on judges. They also practice paper terrorism; they’ll file anything just to clog up the legal system.”
One level up, the anarchist extremists don’t believe in any hierarchical organization at all. “Those are the guys you see at the World Trade Organization meetings dressed head to toe in camouflage, breaking windows and throwing firebombs.” Militia extremists, also antigovernment, “like to play with guns and dress up in gear. They feel that at some point the government’s going to come after them, and they need to fight back.”
SSA Craig Byrkit—who was a chiropractor and a police officer before joining the bureau—oversees the local cybercrime squad. It covers terrorism, espionage, network computer intrusions, child exploitation, and hackers who simply want bragging rights. No matter how sophisticated your intrusion-detection system is, he warns, “People will still get in because of social engineering.” In other words, they research you, figure out who you are, and get you to let them in.
Byrkit rattles off a Dr. Seussian list of social-engineering tactics: phishing (especially whale phishing, which targets CEOs without technological savvy), smishing (SMS texting plus phishing, via cellphone), and vishing (targeting those using Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP: “There’s a problem with your account…”).
Some Nigerian scams fall under Internet fraud; they trick people into giving out sensitive information, such as passwords, to allow access to a secured computer network. “They like to go through London now, because everybody’s heard of Nigeria,” he remarks. “They will build a relationship with you for five years or more. I had one guy who was an attorney. He told them, ‘I don’t think this is legit,’ and they convinced him, and he gave them $100,000.”
Other cyberintrusions rely on curiosity instead of charm. Thumb drives are nonchalantly dropped in company parking lots, and “people plug ’em in to see what’s on there. Or somebody will email you something they know you’re looking for—maybe it says it’s from a conference you just attended.”
As soon as Byrkit finishes, acting SSA Dion Cantu strides into the classroom in a trench coat and dark glasses. He playfully shows photos of Maxwell Smart and James Bond. Then he gets serious.
“Look up 1985,” he urges. “The press dubbed it ‘The Year of the Spy.’” FBI arrests that year included the John Walker spy ring, with Walker, his son, and his brother arrested for passing classified material to what was then the Soviet Union; Jonathan Pollard, who passed secrets to Israel; and Sharon Scranage, a CIA clerk who passed secrets to Ghana.
Another CIA employee, Aldrich Ames, held the record for secret-selling until FBI agent Robert Hanssen was caught in 2001. Hanssen made about $1.2 million while he was, in his view, showing the FBI how it was failing. Ana Montes, a Cuba analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, got no money. “She didn’t approve of U.S. foreign policy at the time, so she gave away quite a bit of information.”
Cantu reads the definition of espionage aloud: “‘On behalf of a foreign power’—does it say ‘hostile foreign power’? No. Why not?”
Dave Glover, host of a talk-radio show on FM NewsTalk 97.1, looks up. “Because our friends spy on us?” he says dryly.
“Right.”
Glover asks whether there’s a profile of people vulnerable to approach.
“Years ago, there was,” Cantu says, referring to old taboos, like homosexuality, that were used for blackmail. “Today, often it’s just about money. And if they’re looking for a way to identify weaknesses, all they have to do is go to social networks—people pour their hearts out on those things. I don’t even tweet. My kids think I’m the most paranoid person in the world. I have shredded our trash since 1988. Because people throw away their life story.”
SSA Tim Feeney, a former military and intelligence officer, has a long list of subjects—public corruption, civil rights, human trafficking—but he starts with the Innocent Images National Initiative, showing us photos of an adorable blonde preteen posing coyly, sometimes shirtless, often with her legs open. These are the mildest of 30 images. We’re to find clues to her identity.
We look hard at the photos, tossing out every random observation we can think of. “Is there air conditioning?” “Anybody see the electrical outlet? Is it in the United States?” “Hey, the dog’s got a tag on!”—but none of the information’s visible.
In the end, Feeney has to tell us the single detail that broke the case. Once they saw the item—which they are not disclosing, lest other pedophiles take notes—FBI agents located the most likely manufacturer and drove there that night. The company president had staff searching old computer records and inventory, with no luck. Eight hours later, the weary agents were getting ready to leave when the president’s secretary said, “Let me see that picture.” The color in the photo was distorted, she realized, recognizing a custom order from five years earlier. She went to the file cabinets, rifled through, and found the order.
The agents flew to the location of the purchase and found a school within a 30-mile radius. When they entered the principal’s office, he asked, “What are you doing with a picture of Maria?”
Her father had been taking the photographs—for four years. “She continues to be victimized, because once those pictures are out there, they are never going to come off the Internet,” Feeney says. “But fortunately, we are able to go out and arrest more people, because she’s now a known victim.” (Unless law enforcement can identify a child pictured as a real person, sellers and buyers of pornographic images cannot be prosecuted.)
It’s a relief to switch to public corruption cases. Nationally, these are the FBI’s top criminal priority. Here, they come in a close second; because St. Louis has so much gang violence, it takes precedence.
But that doesn’t mean the region’s short on public corruption.
Vernon Wilson, former chief deputy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, was convicted the previous month of beating two inmates—striking them in the face and banging their heads into a concrete wall—and orchestrating the beating of two other inmates. (He used cigarettes to reward aggressive inmates for doing his bidding.)
“Joe Phillips, a former Velda City police officer, sexually assaulted a woman in the back of his squad car,” says Feeney. Then there was Leon Pullen, a police officer in Uplands Park. According to court documents, he would arrange to meet prostitutes, then show up in uniform or with his badge and sidearm and sexually assault and rob them.
Rage burns beneath Feeney’s steady, even voice, like a pilot light that never goes out. These aren’t just civil-rights violations; they’re “color of law” cases, with officers or guards acting in their official capacity and violating rights either sexually or with excessive force.
He’s less intense, but just as satisfied, when he shows the class the evidence that FBI agents obtained—rather neatly, in a way they don’t like to disclose—to convict former Missouri Rep. Talibdin El-Amin of soliciting and accepting a bribe. They scrutinize correctional facilities, economic-development projects, regulatory agencies, elections, and no-bid contracts. “With all the economic-stimulus money, we have to be very careful,” he notes. “There’s a lot of money coming in with very little oversight.”
PHOTO: SEAN COX, ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE OF THE ST. LOUIS DIVISION
At the third class, SSA Thomas Blades, a native St. Louisan, talks about the division’s top criminal priority: violent gangs. “The most common are neighborhood-based gangs; we have over 200 documented in St. Louis alone,” he says, throwing names—usually derived from a street or block—up on a screen. St. Louis’ Violent Gangs Safe Streets Task Force is one of the largest in the bureau, and it’s documented thousands of gang members. There are local imitations of the Bloods and the Crips, and other national gangs have been known to move in and set up “decks.”
One of the Citizens’ Academy students, a network analyst from Washington University, asks what kind of technology local gangs use and how savvy they are.
“If you search YouTube for St. Louis gangs, you’ll find a plethora; they like to show off,” Blades replies. Their crimes involve drugs, drive-by shootings, robbery, burglary, assault, homicide, and auto theft: “Biker gangs will drive by in a truck at night and actually pick up a Harley.” Gang tattoos’ colors are “great intel for us, especially in the prison,” Blades adds. “It helps the officials avoid mixing one gang with another. Same with bikers. For them, it’s a sign of strength that shows they belong. For us, it tells us who they belong to.
“The ‘Kill or be killed’ tattoo you’ll see? They do mean it,” he adds. “A lot of the younger gang members”—and they start as young as 9—“have zero fear, zero respect for law enforcement.” Years ago, the American Motorcyclist Association came out with the stat that 99 percent of bikers are law-abiding, and only 1 percent are outlaws. “They love that,” he says. “A lot will have a patch that says ‘1 percent’; they wear it like a badge of honor.”
As he clears away his PowerPoint, two special agents, Matt Giegling and Billy Cox, wheel in green khaki bags. They volunteer (with no extra pay) for the FBI SWAT team, training weekly and going out maybe once a month after high-risk subjects who they know are armed and dangerous.
Giegling and Cox dress two of the students, businessmen who sag under the weight of the tactical vest and belt, medical bag, sidearm, ceramic plates, and weapons. Cox, a trained sniper, hands over a long gun, “our primary weapon when we go through the door. It’s on a cord, so when you drop it, it just hangs there.”
Giegling says, “I typically don’t carry a long gun, because I’m a breacher. One of my jobs is to get the team in the door. The long gun would just get in the way.”
“We like the element of surprise: We’re going in, and we’re going to take control,” Cox says.
“Speed, surprise, violence of action,” Giegling agrees. “Some of these folks, they’ve been around the block before; they fortify their doors. We’ve got tools to defeat those doors, but the first thing we do is check the door—I mean, I don’t lock my storm door.
“Tactics change all the time,” he notes. “We learn from every situation.” They protect dignitaries, track through the woods, do “tubular” operations (think MetroLink) and CQB—close-quarters battles, in which they’re entering a house and clearing it room by room. Cox picks up a huge, heavy shield, and they demonstrate how they tuck close and move together behind it, with lanky Giegling, who used to be a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds, standing behind shorter Cox. “I can rest the barrel of my gun on his shoulder,” Giegling says, “because if he gets tired, he may put his gun away and use both hands to hold the shield.”
“So were you guys trained by the FBI, or did you have military training?” the student asks.
Giegling grins. “I was an accountant.”
After the break, another former ballplayer comes forward. SSA Dan Netemeyer played at McKendree University, then in the minor leagues with the Kansas City Royals. Now he supervises the St. Louis Division’s fight against violent and organized crime. “The terrorism stuff is sexy now,” he says. “We’re sort of old-school FBI—low priority, high importance.”
The ATM Solutions case was the past year’s biggest. According to court documents, four armed men robbed ATM Solutions. Then they realized that they needed to steal one of its vans, because the vehicle they’d arrived in wasn’t big enough to hold a haul of more than $6.6 million.
The next morning, John Wesley Jones placed more than $1 million of the stolen money in his black Dodge Charger, pulled out of his driveway, and almost ran into an unmarked police car. A chase ensued, Jones crashed and ran, and he got caught and arrested. Three months later, he and another inmate climbed out of their cell in Lincoln County Detention Center via an air-conditioning duct. Jones was rearrested several days later, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
In St. Louis, organized crime’s landscape changes like a slideshow, as one group fades and dissolves and the next comes up hard and bright. “Italian criminals came in from New Orleans after the Civil War,” Netemeyer says, describing the Irish gangs of the Kerry Patch and the Lebanese Mafia that rivaled the Italians and briefly made St. Louis the car-bombing capital of the world in the 1970s. “What are we looking at today? Eurasian organized crime is our biggest threat. Middle Eastern organized crime is what we call an emerging threat. A lot of these groups, more than anything, are taking capital away from our country, illegally raising money and sending it back to their countries.”
Closest to Netemeyer’s heart, though, are the kidnappings and abduction cases. In less than a year, the St. Louis Division has brought four children safely home. “There’s nothing we can do better,” he says, “than return a child to a mother’s arms.”
He tells us about July 5, 2010: “It’s 9:30 at night, I’m coaching my son’s double-header, and I get a report of a 4-year-old girl, Alisa Maier, they believe was abducted from her front yard in Louisiana, Mo.” Just three days earlier, the FBI had finalized a new child-abduction response plan—and nobody knew their roles yet. But there were agents who’d been part of the Michael Devlin kidnapping case, and Netemeyer sent them to Louisiana immediately.
“It’s a river town, it was a holiday weekend, out-of-town visitors were in town, and so was the carnival,” he recalls. In other words, they had drowning to worry about, crowds to fight, chaos, a lot of strangers, and a carnival to search. They did have a witness, though: Alisa’s 6-year-old brother, Blake. “He told us about a black car with a damaged hood and a white male with dark hair,” says Netemeyer. “And he was consistent. He was tired—all he wanted was his blankie and his sippy cup. But his story never changed.”
Based on Blake’s report, the man had grabbed Alisa, who’d been riding her tricycle in front of the house, and driven away. “We were given full access to set up a command center at the police department and city hall; we blew out their copy machine making missing-child flyers, and at 6 a.m., we held a briefing,” says Netemeyer. “We had 150 law-enforcement officers—highway patrol, water patrol, K-9s, auxiliary police…”
They canvassed the neighborhood and the carnival. They checked registered sex-offender lists. They put out alerts. Then a report came in: A child had been dropped off at a carwash in Fenton. “When we got her, her hair had been cut, and she was dressed like a little boy,” says Netemeyer. “The clothes were purchased at Walmart at 9:06 a.m. on July 6—so we got the man’s date of birth, because he bought cigarettes.” The suspect, Paul Smith, had a prior history of sodomizing a young boy—and in prison, he’d been a barber.
Alisa showed no evidence of sexual assault. When law enforcement reached Smith’s house, Netemeyer says, he was spray-painting his black car gray. “He ran around to the back of the car and shot himself.”
The next session is a weapons simulation that gets across, as no words could, the imperative of discipline, impulse control, and swift, considered reaction. We’re put through a succession of scenarios. In one, you see a guy trying to rob a gun store. In another, you’re in an empty school hallway, and you start hearing gunfire, then screams, and somebody comes running out of a classroom and gets shot by an unseen gunman within the classroom, and then some kids come out and the gunman follows, hides behind some lockers, and fires at you. In a third, a man is drunk and so belligerent that you expect him to pull a gun—which he does—but until he presents that weapon, you can’t fire a warning shot.
The technology makes its own points. In a fourth scenario, a man and a woman are arguing in an alley. As the student doing the simulation approaches, the man yells that this is between him and his girlfriend, no need for law enforcement. The student gets closer. The man draws a gun. The student fires, and when the scene replays, everyone sees the gunshot show up in bright red.
The bullet’s gone right through the woman’s heart.
On Saturday, students visit a range in Weldon Spring for real target practice with a variety of weapons. Victor Salguero, a weapons instructor himself, likes the “Chicago Typewriter”—a.k.a. the Tommy gun that Al Capone used. Caroline Battles, Carnahan’s chief of staff, likes the MP5 submachine gun; one of the computer analysts prefers the hyperaccuracy of the sniper rifle.
“Everybody was very professional, explaining the science and the logic,” British physicist Graham Fisher remarks afterward, sounding relieved. “I was afraid there’d be cowboys. Growing up in London, guns were completely foreign to me.” He did suffer an injury, however: “I pride myself on the fact that I’m a physicist and I completely understand recoil,” he says ruefully, pointing to a red mark on his forehead. “And of course, I forgot.”
In the next class, special agent Bill Dorsey talks about weapons of mass destruction—denying enemies access to the materials needed to build them, detecting and disrupting acquisition, preventing attacks, and if that fails, responding to them.
“The police or fire department calls us and says, ‘Hey, we have a pipe bomb’ or ‘some white powder,’ or maybe the public health department calls and says, ‘We’re seeing some strange, flu-like symptoms, and it’s not flu season,’” Dorsey says. “We’re responsible for tripwires—a protective warning process. The FBI has a role in a program designed to ‘sniff’ or filter the air in an effort to provide an early warning of an intentional biological release.”
When a threat comes in, experts from various agencies host a conference call to assess it. Does the suspect have the necessary raw materials, the production equipment, the ability to distribute? What’s that person’s history? Is the scenario plausible?
In St. Louis, there’s an incident roughly once a month, Dorsey says. “That figure includes ‘white powder’ letters, suspicious packages, threatening communications, et cetera.” Some incidents are hoaxes; others are legitimate but ultimately harmless, “like the one where the elderly woman had used a lot of white-out on a federal form before folding it, placing it in an envelope and mailing it,” Dorsey says. “Well, the white-out dried and cracked, and some fell off in the envelope. When the envelope was opened, an unidentified ‘white powder’ fell out.” FBI threat assessments help first responders know how to proceed, and they give advice on evidence collection, packaging, and transport, to protect the chain of custody.
A hand goes up: “Those sensors that filter the air, would we know what they look like?”
“No, you absolutely wouldn’t, and for very good reason.”
A woman mentions that her son is a university professor, and one of his students was not ready to take exams, so the student made a bomb. “They brought in the FBI,” she says. “So how much trouble is this kid in?”
An agent listening from the sidelines quips, “He’s in your son’s class? That’s an F right there.” Dorsey says dryly, “I suspect the F might be the least of his problems. That’s a federal crime.”
Next, Jim Appelbaum, a retired special agent, introduces a special guest, Dr. Steven Bander, who blew the whistle on Gambro Healthcare. Thanks to information from Bander, the company’s chief medical officer, there was a $350 million global settlement. The doctor received $56 million, and endowed the Bander Center for Medical Business Ethics at Saint Louis University and the Bander Business Ethics in Medical Research Funding Program at Washington University.
A special agent on the white-collar crime squad (who therefore does not want his name disclosed) steps up to give his overview, and a student promptly asks him about the latest news. He couldn’t comment—it was a pending case—but the U.S. attorney’s office had issued a release: On May 4, Martin Sigillito, a 62-year-old lawyer in Webster Groves, was indicted for a conspiracy to commit fraud. A bishop in the American Anglican Convocation, Sigillito and his two co-conspirators (they met in a continuing-ed program at Oxford University) allegedly stretched a Ponzi scheme over nearly a decade, netting more than $52 million from unwitting investors.
“No matter how elaborate the schemes,” Baker said in the release, “they all eventually collapse.”
In the last class, acting SSA Lee Morrison takes us into the taut world of hostage negotiations. He was in Afghanistan in 2008 as part of the FBI’s response when David Rohde, a New York Times reporter, was kidnapped.
Morrison teaches us how to move someone from an emotional, irrational state to a calmer, more reasonable one. “Almost everything we do in our everyday lives is negotiation,” he points out, “and it’s all about listening. You label emotions: ‘You sound angry.’ ‘You sound frustrated.’ You paraphrase, saying back what they’re telling you; you mirror and reflect; you sum up; you ask open-ended questions. Law enforcement has a hard time with those—they’re used to coming in and taking control, boom. But you don’t want to jump too quickly from rapport to problem solving. They don’t trust you yet.”
He keeps his voice low and smooth as he demonstrates. “Whether you inflect up or down can have a big effect,” he says. “And repeating back the last three to five words nearly always draws a response.”
A student’s hand goes up. “What do you do when the person refuses to talk?”
“You don’t go away.”
He talks about a negotiation he helped coach in Fairview Heights: “The guy had drums in the yard with wires around them, and he had a vest on. He was threatening to blow the whole block up, and his wife and child were inside the house. I got there at
11 p.m., and there were about 200 LE personnel there, three SWAT teams, four bomb teams, three firetrucks, and snipers on a roof.”
The snipers didn’t want to risk detonating a bomb. The nine-hour negotiation ended peacefully, and the man was arrested. Robots cleared the scene.
After the break—we’ve come to welcome the innocent relief of cookies and coffee, dividing one danger from the next—Matt Brummund, acting assistant special agent in charge at the time, breaks the class into teams of analysts and investigators to solve a kidnapping. Clues go up on the dry-erase board as the information flows in (about as smoothly as concrete through a straw). Everybody congregates around the “agent” leading the investigation, wanting the latest tips.
“In movies, it’s all about action,” Glover remarks, “but obviously it’s more about information management.”
“Exactly,” Brummund says. “The main thing about crisis management is getting the right information to the decision-makers and keeping calm. You fight the urge to race: Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
On graduation night, Baker stresses how important it is for the FBI to use the least-intrusive methods possible. “To keep the respect and confidence of the American people, the FBI must respect the limits of its constitutional power,” he says. “Because if you don’t have the respect and confidence of the American people, you are going to fail miserably.”
He describes the new climate of intelligence gathering, showing pictures of the rigged boxers worn by the “underwear bomber” and describing the tense surveillance of Najibullah Zazi, who drove through St. Louis on his way to try to bomb New York City. The homegrown terrorists, he says, “are the ones who keep me awake at night.” They’re tough to root out, and it’s hard to find legal ways to monitor them and stop them before they act.
“We are looking at a balance of protecting American lives and preserving rights,” Baker concludes. “And it’s a delicate balance.”
