Chapter One: Best Work In Law Enforcement
You are going to get a lot of just-the-facts-ma'am information in this book. You are also going to get a look at just what it's like to be a member of what I consider the finest investigative agency in the world. The information here comes from the Bureau itself and from the experts -- former FBI Special Agents.
This book differs from most career planning guides. This is about a passion that was my career for over 25 years and about what I consider to be the best work in law enforcement. Included are facts and solid advice to help you evaluate your edge as a competitive candidate for a career in the Federal Bureau of Investigvation, both in sworn positions and in the numerous professional positions tied to the FBI mission.
Even the most casual follower of current events is aware of the changes that have affected law enforcement since the September 11 attacks in 2001. The FBI now has an even more extraordinary presence overseas involving investigators, Evidence Response Teams, Bomb and Explosive Experts, and Forensic Scientists in both the physical and behavioral fields. Critical Incident Response Teams, Hostage Resuce and Swat Teams, Cyberspace Experts, and Language Specialists also make up the nuts and bolts of the FBI -- field investigators and analysts present only a glimpse at FBI opportunities. Just remember, the ever-changing mission, the fast pace, and the unbreakable camaraderie make the FBI a very gratifying career.
The Bureau has come a very long way since my Entered-on-Duty (EOD in Bureau-ese) in the late '60s. Then, the Bureau recruited only men for its Special Agent position, and it referred to other in-house professionals as "support staff." But the Bureau is a microcosm of society and has adjusted accordingly. The organization has made a large effort to change the composition of its workforce and to respect and recognize the contributions of all FBI personnel. In 1972, the Bureau began appointing women to agent positions, and they have been a vital presence ever since. Through the years, the Bureau has also changed with respect to technology and investigative response capability.
This book will give you insight into the extensive history behind the FBI. You will learn about the hierarcy within the organization, and read in detail about the myriad of task forces and programs the FBI takes part in every day. Each chapter is peppered with first-hand accounts of on-the-job experiences by former Special Agents.
You will then find out exactly what a career with the FBI entails, and precisely the types of candidates the Bureau looks for. We will walk together through the application process. By the time you have finished reading, I am sure you will have an idea whether or not a career with the FBI is right for you.
First-hand Accounts
Before we begin our adventure, I want you to read some of the first-hand stories from individuals I respect both personally and professionally. They are designed to assist you in honestly evaluating both the career and the application process. These people represent the heart and expertise of the FBI. Perhaps you will recognize yourself in their backgrounds and stories. Through their experiences, you will discover the range of opportunities available with the FBI and a "walk in my shoes" candor as presented in no other text. The FBI is clearly about making important contributions on a transnational stage. Many FBI colleagues have often said "where else can I get paid for doing this?"
I'm giving you their stories here for two reasons. First, you'll see a range of the career opportunities open to you as a Special Agent of the FBI. Second, I want you to get to know the men and women I interviewed, because they're the ones who are going to let you "walk in their shoes."
THE AUTHOR
Some of you might know my story already from reading Mindhunter. But for those of you who don't, here is the condensed version.
I grew up in Hempstead, Long Island. I never had any idea I'd become an FBI Agent; I didn't even know how to spell FBI. My big ambition was to be a veterinarian. For three summers while I was in high school, I went up to Ithaca, New York, and worked for the Cornell Extension Service. So while my buddies were out playing in the sun at Jones Beach, I was shoveling cow manure.
When it came time to apply for college, I sent off my scores and my grades to Cornell, and they wrote back a very nice letter thanking me for my interest and suggesting that maybe Cornell wasn't the right place for me. They said I might be better off at another fine academic institution: Montana State University.
So I packed up and headed out west to Montana, where the men are men and the sheep are nervous. I spent a few semesters there, diligently working on my extracurricular activities. When I bombed out of MSU, I went home to Long Island for a while, then joined the Air Force.
While I was in the Air Force, I finally started getting my act together. I did some volunteer work with mentally disabled kids, and found that to be tremendously rewarding. I was stationed in New Mexico then, and decided I'd get a degree in education. I started taking classes at Eastern New Mexico University, fondly referred to by its students and alumni as Enema U.
I'd met an FBI agent at the gym we both went to, and shortly after I got my degree, he suggested I apply to the Bureau. I still had no burning interest in law enforcement, but this guy seemed to be doing okay. He was making a nice salary, while I was scraping by and living in a basement apartment that was more like a glorified Roach Motel. So I applied, and I got in.
I fell in love with the work. After a few years in the Bureau, I ended up in the Behavioral Sciences unit, analyzing the "why" to develop ways of finding out the "who" behind the most brutal crimes. More and more, I kept thinking that we were missing something basic. We had all these ideas about criminal thinking, but they were really just speculation from the outside. I felt we needed to talk to the criminals themselves to get the real story. After all, they're the real experts.
Now, as you will read in Doug Rhoads's story, this was a time when the first thing a new agent was told was "Don't screw up." That fear of embarrassing the Bureau sometimes translated into a fear of trying anything new, so I had a hard time getting anyone to listen to me.
By 1978, I was giving classes with the Bureau's "road school" for police officers around the country. One day, a colleague and I were on the road in California. We had some time on our hands and I said, "Let's see if there's anyone we can talk to near here." There was: serial killer Ed Kemper.
Kemper was California's "Co-Ed Killer." Like most violent criminals, he'd had a troubled childhood. He never got along with his mother, who didn't like him because he looked like his father. His favorite game as a young child was to have his sister tie him up so he could pretend he was dying in a gas chamber. Later, he killed and mutilated the family's two cats. Finally, his mother sent him to live with his grandparents, who lived in northern California.
One day, when Ed was 14, he got irritated with his grandmother. He shot her and stabbed her over and over again with a kitchen knife. He figured his grandfather wouldn't be happy when he discovered what had happened, so Ed shot him too. Kemper told the cops, "I just wondered how it would feel to shoot Grandma." He was sent to a mental hospital, but released when he turned 21.
Kemper then went to live with his mother, who worked at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Not surprisingly, his relationship with her hadn't improved. The rage he felt toward her eventually was unleashed. Within two years, Kemper started killing again.
He quickly developed a simple but effective technique. He'd offer a ride to a young woman, kill her in the car, then take her home where he'd sexually assault the body and take photographs of it. Then he'd dump the body by the side of the road.
Kemper eventually killed six women, becoming bolder as he went along. As a condition of his release, he had to keep regular appointments with a state psychiatrist. He reported to one appointment with the head of a 15-year-old girl in the trunk of his car. That day, he was judged no longer a threat to society.
Finally, Kemper went for his real target. One Saturday night, he beat his mother to death with a hammer, decapitated the corpse and raped it. He cut out his mother's larynx and tossed it into the garbage disposal. But when he flipped the switch, the disposal threw the larynx back up at him. Kemper complained later, "Even after she was dead, she was still bitching at me. I couldn't get her to shut up."
The next morning, Kemper called a friend of his mother's and invited her over for lunch. When she arrived, he killed her and fled. Within days, he called police from the road and surrendered.
Kemper turned out to be the perfect guy to begin our interviews with. For one thing, he's very smart -- brilliant, really. And he has a lot of insight into himself and his crimes. I actually like Ed. Do I think this intelligent, sensitive man should be let out of prison, under any circumstances? Hell, no. He's dangerous, and he always will be.
Interviewing Kemper confirmed my theory: The criminals themselves had a lot to teach us. We continued our interviews and, with Ann Burgess, eventually wrote Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives. A few years later, we followed up with the Crime Classification Manual, which was the biggest portion of my thesis for my doctoral degree.
Eventually, profiling became accepted as a legitimate investigative technique, and even as a legal, valid way of linking violent crimes. By the time I retired from the Bureau in 1995, the profiling unit had contributed to the capture and prosecution of some of the nation's most dangerous criminals. And that's something I'll always be proud of.
Bruce Koenig
One of the finest forensics experts I ever worked with was Bruce Koenig. Whenever we had any kind of audio problem, we knew that if anything could be done, Bruce and his people would do it. The strength of the Bureau's forensics, engineering, and other technical support departments makes a huge difference to law enforcement agencies across the country and around the world.
I'm probably not the typical FBI agent. I never thought about being in the Bureau; I never played G-man when I was a kid. I got my undergraduate degrees in physics and math. While I was in school, I worked for the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, feeding rats. Incidentally, this time counted toward my federal pension when I retired -- not that I'd planned it that way; it's just a job that came up.
I graduated during the Vietnam War era and served in the army. I went in under the officer candidate school, but got in and said, "Well, I don't think this is going to be my direction, to be a military officer for life." So I didn't go to officer; I just became an enlisted man. I was transferred to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and assigned to clerk and photography duties. My wife always says they took a look at my physics degree, got as far as "P-H" and said, "Well, that must be photography."
When I was getting ready to leave the service, I started applying for jobs in the aerospace industry. Well, this was the late '60s, early '70s, when the space program was being cut back, and the aerospace industry just wasn't hiring. They were laying off guys with Ph.D.'s. Somebody I talked to said, "Oh yeah, the FBI's hiring. They want science degrees." Well, going to work for the FBI had never occurred to me. But if they were hiring, I figured why not. I applied and took a test and got in. This was in 1970.
I didn't come in thinking that the FBI would be my career. I thought I'd be in the Bureau for three years, aerospace would open up, and I'd go there. But once I got in, I changed my mind. I loved the job. I never thought about leaving until it was time for me to retire.
I didn't plan to end up in forensics. It was in the back of my mind I might be sent back to the lab. But once I got in the field, I really liked the field investigations. My first posting was in Atlanta, and then I went to Detroit.
I spent four years in the field, handling a lot of fugitive work and Selective Service violators -- this was when the draft was in effect. And in Detroit, I handled extremist matters that included the Ku Klux Klan and a violent faction of the Black Panther Party. We weren't interested in the groups' ideology, just the violent actions. I very much enjoyed getting in the car, being in the street, and doing good things.
After about three years in the field, I was getting pressure to move up and become a supervisor in Detroit. I realized I'd probably be behind a desk for the rest of my career, and I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to do. Then the engineering section, which was part of the FBI Laboratory at that time, offered me a supervisor's job in Washington, DC. I thought about it and said, "Well, I think I'd rather go be a supervisor in Washington than be a supervisor in Detroit."
That was when I got into doing tape recording work. I really enjoyed it. I started publishing papers in technical journals and really pushing the envelope of where we could go. And, lo and behold, I became the Bureau's tape expert. I didn't set out to do that, but the work was so fascinating that I kept exploring what could be done with this evolving science.
Early in my career, I worked on some tape analyzing the Kennedy assassination. I was in twelfth grade when President Kennedy was assassinated, so I obviously didn't investigate the original case. I had been in the engineering section four years in 1979 when a group known as the Stokes Committee released a report on the Kennedy assassination. They had analyzed some audiotape of the event, and came out and said there was a 95 percent or greater chance that there was a second shooter from the grassy knoll.
The Department of Justice asked the FBI to look at it, and the project was assigned to me. I went through what the Stokes Committee had found and wrote up my report, which was published by the Department of Justice. Basically, I couldn't say whether they were right or wrong, but that there was no scientific support for their conclusion based on their own studies.
Then the project went over to the National Academy of Sciences, and I worked with them. They were gracious enough to actually mention my name in their report, which rarely happens.
The Stokes Committee had isolated certain sounds on the tape and identified these as gunshots from a second shooter. We were able to show conclusively that the information area they were looking at actually occurred well after the shooting. The President's limousine was already out of Dealy Plaza on the way to the hospital. Whatever they were pointing out as these other shots had to be something else; the time just didn't add up.
I noticed that the Washington Post put the original story about the second shooter on the front page. But when the National Academy report came out, it was on the fifth page back. News showing a story was wrong doesn't sell papers. Every paper in the country did the same thing. I still run into people who talk about that second-shooter report; they never heard that it has been proven wrong.
There was one interesting sidelight to that case. Earlier, I'd worked on a shooting down in Greensboro, North Carolina, involving the Ku Klux Klan and the Socialist Workers Party. There had been a march, and the two groups were across the street from one another. Shooting broke out -- several of the Socialist Workers group were injured, and five or six were killed. The Klan was accused of opening fire on the SWP, who said that they had not fired back.
I did a big gunshot analysis, and I was able to show that both sides fired approximately the same amount of shots. I was able to take the echoes off the buildings and actually pinpoint, usually within two or three feet, where each shot originated. If you look at the videos, you rarely see anyone firing. Someone in one group would shoot, the cameras would swing over to that side of the street, and they'd stop firing. And then the other side would fire, so the cameras would swing back. You only saw a handful of people actually firing. But based on analysis of the audio, often you could match up the source of a gunshot and the shooter, based on the person's position in the crowd.
Anyway, when I was working on the Kennedy case, I noticed that one of the waveforms from that audio looked exactly like one of the waveforms from the Greensboro case. We put it in our report just to show that by itself, this kind of waveform analysis isn't very conclusive.
When I retired, I was the project manager of the audio-videotape division, which is fairly high up. But I was pretty good at getting the paperwork out of the way, so I was keeping the administrative tasks down to 30 or 40 percent of my time.
The rest I spent in the lab. I like doing things. Hands on. And when you're in management, if you try to push too hard, you can actually mess everything up. And so I avoided that step. If I hadn't retired, they probably would have made me a unit chief. I don't think there had been much doubt about that Rather than end my career pushing paper, I retired and opened up a consulting business. I still spend two or three days a week working at the Bureau. I still do most of their complex audio cases.
There's such a range of what you can do with tape. First, you can enhance it, make it more understandable. That's probably the easiest exam in the tape group, and the biggest bargain. When I left, I'd guess audio enhancement was about 60 or 70 percent of the work. Voice comparisons was an evolving field. It's not conclusive as a means of identification, but it's a systematic way of comparing voices.
I spent most of my career and I still spend most of my time now doing authentication -- determining whether or not a tape has been altered or not, whether or not it is original. Authentication is a complex area; it usually takes about five to ten years work in the field to start really being comfortable with it.
I also do some signal analysis. Signal analysis means looking at general wave nonvoice signals. The simplest thing would be deciphering touch-tones. You hear a series of touch-tone beeps on a recording and you figure out what the number is. The harder parts are things like gunshot analysis -- how many shots were fired, or whether they are gunshots.
I remember we worked on one case where a guy got hit over the head with a baseball bat. The sound of the impact was recorded on a 911 call, and a bat was found on the scene. We had to determine, by the sound, whether that bat could have been the weapon. And the bat matched.
That's one of the things I love about this work. You never know what's coming up next.
Phil Grivas
Phil is the kind of guy you always hope is going to run any organization. He's smart, he's hard-working, and most important, he never forgets what it was like to be one of the troops. Phil's now enjoying a well-deserved life of leisure with his wife.
I was born and raised in New York City. I attended local schools in Manhattan. And then at the age of 14, we moved to Queens, and I attended a local high school there. I graduated in January of 1963. And then from '63 to '64, I worked in a large office in Manhattan, in the mail room. In 1964, I joined the United States Army and served there for two years. I was discharged in the March of 1966. And then I was appointed to the New York City Police Department on August 1, 1966.
I'd planned on becoming a police officer ever since I was a very, very young fellow. I grew up without a father. My parents were divorced, and for a great deal of time it was just me, my mother, and my sister.
All through my childhood, the policeman on the corner, the neighborhood beat cop, always represented a kind of role model for me. A strong male figure. Everybody in the neighborhood always had a great deal of respect for him. So that's what I wanted to do when I grew up.
I was very methodical about it. In those days policemen were drafted just like anybody else was. So I knew the smart thing would be to get my military obligation out of the way before I went into the Police Academy. That's why I joined the Army.
Then while I was in the Army, I studied for the police exam and flew home to take it, about six months before I was discharged. I passed it, and so when I came out of the service, I just continued along with the rest of the process -- medical tests, physical tests, psychological exams, things of that nature.
I'd researched exactly what the requirements were. And I made sure that I had everything that was required.
At that point the FBI was something totally alien to me. I first really became exposed to the Bureau after I'd been with the police force about two years.
One day I was on patrol, and a woman came running out of an apartment building and said, "Somebody's breaking into the mailboxes."
So I said, "Okay, stay outside." I walked in with my partner, and sure enough, there was a junkie, trying to pry open the mailbox, to get Social Security checks, whatever. We grabbed him and brought him back to the station house.
Breaking into a mailbox, that's a federal offense. The Postal Inspector came, took the prisoner. I gave the Inspector a statement. Then I was subpoenaed to federal court, to testify against this man.
While I was in court, and waiting to be called, I struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to me, who happened to be an FBI agent. I don't know his name. I don't even remember what he looked like. But we talked for about a half hour. And I asked him a lot of questions about the FBI. And I was just so impressed by his answers, how he presented himself, how he presented the Bureau. I was really taken by it.
The next time I was downtown, I stopped off at the New York office of the FBI. And I'm at the reception desk, and I said, "My name's Philip Grivas, I'm a police officer, and I'd be interested in what the qualifications are to be an agent."
"Oh, sure, just have a seat."
An agent came out to meet me, and the first thing he said was, "What is your degree in?"
And I said, "Degree? I don't have a degree."
The guy looked at me like I fell off a truck. And he says, "Well, look. You have to have a minimum four-year college degree before you can even be considered for a position with the FBI. And then you need a couple years of investigative experience, and this and that."
I said, "Okay, thank you very much."
I went home, and I spoke to my wife about it, and started getting geared up for this new goal.
The next month I signed up for classes at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and graduated in three-and-a-half years, still working full time as a policeman. At one point, I took 50 credits in one year -- 21 credits in one semester, eight over the summer, and 21 again in the fall. It just seemed like every week that went by, I just got more and more drawn to this idea, becoming an FBI agent.
My wife was very supportive, and so were my friends. They all said, "Well, Phil, this is what you wanna do, good luck." But there was no guarantee that after I completed my degree, that I would even be granted an interview. Then there was the oral exam, the written exam, the background check. But I just had to give it a shot.
My wife had been working at a bank, and the last year I was in school she got tired of it, and was kind of undecided where she wanted to go. So I said, "Well, why don't you apply for the Bureau? Maybe they'll have some administrative assignment there."
She said, "Well, why not?" She applied, and she was accepted. She became a clerical employee in the New York office.
Now, she was kind of cute. More than kind of. And she still is. So they put her at the reception desk. The Assistant Director in Charge of the New York office, Mr. Malone, had his office on the same floor. Every so often, he'd be in the reception area, waiting for the elevator or something, and he'd just engage her in conversation.
One day he noticed she had a little miniature version of my shield on her sweater. Malone recognized it, and said, "Whose policeman's badge is that?"
She said, "Oh, that's my husband's. He's a policeman up in the Bronx. He's going to school now. He's interested in applying to the Bureau."
So he says to her, "He is? Well, when he's ready to graduate, you let me know."
As far as I'm concerned, this was like winning the Lotto.
When I was a couple of weeks away from graduating, Malone stopped by her desk again, and said, "Well, how's your husband doing?"
"Oh, he's doing very well. He graduates in a couple weeks."
"Really? Did he get his application in?"
"Yes, he did."
"Okay. Have him see me Monday morning."
She comes home, and she tells me this. My heart almost stopped.
I call up one of my close friends, and we sat down. I said, "Look. This guy's gonna ask me questions. I wanna be prepared. I want you to throw questions at me, anything you can think of that he might ask me. I don't want to sit there -- flat-footed, mouth open."
We took a long walk, for a couple of hours. And he would just shoot questions at me, quizzing me on everything from political science topics to my knowledge of current events. Law enforcement issues. Anything we could possibly think of that might come up.
And my friend says, "I've read that when they conclude an interview, they'll sometimes ask, 'Is there anything you'd like to say?' You should have something prepared for that."
So I went into the office, and I took the written examination that was issued at that time. And then I was escorted into Malone's office. Very prestigious-looking office. Huge desk, paneled walls. I was really taken by it. I was thinking, "Boy. I can't believe I got this far."
He asked me a bunch of questions about the police department, and this and that. And then he asked me, "Well, Philip. Is there anything you would like to say, before we conclude this interview?" And oh, I was really itching.
I looked at him, leaned forward, looked him in the eye, and said, "Sir, I really believe that if given the opportunity, I can make a positive contribution to the Bureau."
He leaned back, big smile. And then he said, "I believe you will, Philip. I believe you will."
I was sworn in on September 11th, 1972, and then I was transferred to St. Louis for my first office.
It was kind of a culture shock. A former New York City policeman -- I had to tone myself down a little bit. Not that I was overbearing -- never have been, I don't think. It's just that New York City, the Bronx, is a very different place from St. Louis, and the work of a policeman is very, very different from the work of an FBI agent.
When you're a cop, you're in uniform. Often you're patrolling in a high-crime neighborhood, and you're driving around, or you're walking around. You've got your eyes going all over the place. You're very aware of your surroundings. Anything can happen at any time. And when you're out there in uniform, you're it. And all eyes are on you. You're expected to respond immediately. As an FBI agent, you're more like a detective. You go to the scene after the crime has been committed. There isn't the same type of tenseness and stress associated with the job.
So in St. Louis, that was when I first found out I had to pull back a little bit. Relax a little bit. Just take things a little bit slower. Learn the administrative requirements, as well as the practical investigator procedures. It just took a little time, like when you start out in any job. I did have a big leg up, having the experience that I did, dealing with certain elements and handling myself on the street. That was a plus, a big plus.
We started out working in applicant matters and general criminal matters. I found myself being very attracted to fugitive cases, and I ended up working mostly fugitives while I was there. I was just better suited to going after those kinds of people, rather than people who were committing white-collar crimes -- bank fraud, embezzlement crimes, organized crime cases, loan sharking, things like that. Fugitives are individuals that commit felony violations, mostly violent crimes. They've been identified by the local authorities, and warrants have been issued, and they've fled the jurisdiction in order to avoid prosecution.
From the beginning, I've wanted to catch the bad guys. And these, to me, were the bad guys, and the people who were doing the most harm to people. I've always been more comfortable on the street, dealing with certain people, a certain element. There's the physicalness of it. When you're dealing with certain people, they respect strength. And they respect people that know how to act, and stand up.
I never did, nor will I ever, take anything away from the guys or the gals who handle surveillance work, or espionage work, or organized crime, or white-collar crime. Those crimes are out there and they need to be dealt with. But early on, I learned that I was drawn to the more active, more physical aspects of the job.
So I was in St. Louis for three and a half years. I was transferred back to New York in July of 1976. I stayed there for 20 years. Finished out my career there -- I retired in 1996.
When I first got back, I was assigned to the the Weathermen Fugitive Squad. The Weathermen were responsible for a lot of violent, criminal behavior during the Vietnam War era. They had a hand in a bombing at the University of Wisconsin in Madison -- the math building was bombed, and one person was killed.
So for a couple of months, I was on that squad, helping track some of these people who'd fled prosecution. And then I was assigned to the bank robbery squad. I worked the bank robberies for five years, and then transferred to the fugitive squad for about five or six years.
In 1987, I was promoted to supervisor, and I was made the special assistant to the Assistant Director in charge of the New York office. I remained in that capacity from 1987 to 1994. And then the last few years I was in the Bureau, I was the supervisor in charge of the Operations Center in the New York office.
I really enjoyed working fugitives and bank robberies. I got a great deal of professional and personal satisfaction out of that. But I think there's a natural progression in a lot of people's careers. You get to a particular point in time, you say, "You know what? I think it's time to do something else." That was when I was