By Nancy Savage, executive director, Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI
Reprinted from the Grapevine Magazine, January/February 2024

The FBI has, once again, graciously extended an invitation to the Society to
have chapter chairs attend a new agents graduation ceremony of the Basic Field Training Course (BFTC) at the FBI Academy in January of this year. Supervisory Special Agents Amylynn Errera, Rich Kolko (ret.), and Jason Pack, as well as Brandon Clark spent the day with the chairs after they were greeted personally by Training Division Assistant Director Jacqueline Maguire, who joined them on the bus for a short visit.

The event mirrored the last several graduations that our chapter chairs had the privilege to attend with an impressive graduation ceremony for the 124 new agents, wherein Director Wray presented them individually with their credentials. There were seven new agents who were presented their credentials by active and retired FBI family members, including spouses, parents, and grandparents. AD Maguire specifically honored the society chairs for being in attendance. The graduation was followed by lunch in the cafeteria (we dined in the Board Room area) and then spent almost an hour with Director Wray in the Lincoln Room.

Meeting with Director Wray in the Lincoln Room

Director Wray met with the group of chapter chairs and provided the following information:

• The number of applicants for the special agent position remains strong. When Director Wray visits field offices, the cases that they choose to highlight due to their complexity and impact often have young, highly skilled case agents.
• The Director commented that the FBI has excellent relationships with state and local law enforcement. He noted that FBI task forces have grown in number and size. Despite law enforcement having staffing problems almost universally, the FBI task forces have maintained their local and state task force officers as the other departments want to continue their partnerships with the FBI. The FBI has approximately 6,000 task force officers at the present time.
• The Director acknowledged that the FBI is on the receiving end of political fallout from Congress at times. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is presenting challenges with the FBI focusing both on strengthening defenses against AI-based attacks and adapting AI to positive applications for the Bureau.
• One of the chairs asked the Director about the seeming disparity between investigations related to the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol and those in the wake of the George Floyd riots. Wray noted there were hundreds of investigations opened around the country post-George Floyd riots. Some important differences are that January 6 all happened in one day and in one place, whereas the activity related to George Floyd occurred over months in multiple places. The January 6 crimes were all federal, as opposed to many of the criminal acts around the country related to the George Floyd riots, which were state and local crimes. The FBI did work to support these investigations as much as possible. The press coverage of January 6 defendants has been much greater as well, making those cases much more visible. He noted, again, that the FBI does not make prosecutorial decisions, in either state or federal cases.
• One of the chairs asked about any particular increase in threats after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The Director noted that the FBI is sharing intelligence information closely with Israel. There is a wider array and increased number of threats since the attack with 60% of religious threats being anti-Semitic in nature. The special agents in charge are staying engaged with the rabbis in their areas.
• One of the chairs asked for further information that the FBI might have on church security, which was provided separately to the chairs afterwards.

FBI Academy Tour

The group met with members of the Firearms Training Unit and the Defensive Tactics Unit (where they were provided a demonstration of the new defensive tactics being taught to the New Agents and to law enforcement officers throughout the country as requested.) The chairs had a chance to feel out the new point- and-shoot hand guns with laser sights. They were joined by Executive Assistant Director (EAD) Tim Dunham during the defensive tactics
briefing before heading off to tour the updated Hogan’s Alley.

Chris Kelly of the Practical Applications Unit provided the Chairs with a tour of Hogan’s Alley. The tour included the newly remodeled area of the Biograph Theatre, which has been updated to include the Pulse Nightclub, a movie theatre similar to the layout in Aurora, Colorado, a
café, and a medical office waiting room. The building that housed the Biograph now has additional venues for students to review their actions on video directly after their training exercise. The tour also included the Bank of Hogan, as well as a number of practical
application rooms.

Meeting with Training Division AD Jacqueline Maguire

AD Maguire and members of her executive management team met with the society representatives in the Training Division conference room, where she answered questions. She noted that they are in the process of adding a training section at the academy for the staff operations specialists (SOSs), who are assigned to the investigative squads in the field to assist the agents in case support such as phone record analysis, preparation of subpoenas, preparation of spreadsheets, and similar investigative support functions. The SOSs are provided six weeks of training at the academy including legal training. This position is often considered a stepping stone to the special agent position.

AD Maguire explained that they take all the new agents and analysts to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and to the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York City as part of the orientation. The four sessions of approximately 50 new agents start together at the academy and graduate together. Some of the agent training is done in conjunction with both intelligence analysts and SOSs.

Based on a question from one of the chapter chairs, AD Maguire indicated that the FBI Academy will still be the headquarters for the Training Division, but more of the advanced training will be done in Huntsville, Alabama. The group members heartily thanked
the Training Division staff for the entire day and their efforts to provide such a rewarding experience.

“Once the dust started to settle, there were needs popping up that didn’t fit into any one box, per se,” Beagan said. “I saw a gap, and I volunteered to be the full-time FBI liaison to the mayor’s office, working side-by-side with our local, state, federal and private sector partners. Working to deconflict issues impacting local businesses, restaurants, hotels, sanitation, the Federal Reserve. And that coordination became critical.”

After 9/11, so many high-profile events in the city were more heightened because of the risk of a terrorist attack, the United Nations’ General Assembly meeting among them. Beagan’s boss told her to attend a planning meeting at the UN and represent the FBI. She became the special events coordinator for the NYO’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a role she loved.

Beagan found her next assignment in the NYO’s Press Office. Her SSA was aware that Beagan knew writers and producers and encouraged her to help them understand the FBI and “get us involved in New York productions that touch the Bureau,” she said.

Women have been making a difference in the FBI for more than a century, Director Wray said in his introductory remarks.

In the FBI’s early days, women served as radio and switchboard operators to keep the FBI connected. They maintained records to ensure crucial case information was accessible at a moment’s notice. Women broke through into the Bureau’s science professions and handled forensics and other evidence and worked with early information technology efforts, including processing electronic fingerprints. Women served in all these fields and many others before they were finally accepted into the special agent ranks in 1972.

“Each new field they entered represented obstacles they had overcome and accomplishments they achieved despite barriers that should not have existed in the first place,” Director Wray said. “In short, the story of women in the FBI is one of skill, perseverance and a noble dedication to service. And today, that story continues with leadership because we now benefit from more women leaders than ever before.”

Director Wray is committed to continuing to push for diversity and inclusion initiatives across the organization, including more and better professional development programs.

“And I’m going to continue to do all I can to expand leadership opportunities through the enterprise because as far as we have come these 115 years, we need to keep removing barriers and ensuring that women have a seat at the table, whether that table is in a courtroom, a forensic lab, a cyber off-site, etc. And if we do it in the right way, we won’t have to wait another 115 years for gender disparities in the FBI to be considered history.”

Family lore includes the tale of how Joseph met Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the San Francisco field office. The SAC knew Director J. Edgar Hoover wasn’t a fan of Kennedy’s.

“So he found the highest-ranking Irish Catholic to give Kennedy the tour of the office. And that’s how we ended up with this photo of my grandfather talking to Bobby Kennedy,” Bryan said. Joseph retired from the Bureau in 1975.

Son Neil joined in 1976 and worked in the Portland, Boston, Honolulu and San Francisco divisions before retiring in 2001 to pursue opportunities in the private sector. Before he retired, Neil asked if badge 1120 could be held for nephew Kelly who was in the agent hiring process. In 2014, Neil returned to the FBI as a contractor in Honolulu.

Looking for Meaning

One day in the late 1990s, Kelly called Bryan to tell him he was considering the agent path and to ask what Bryan thought about it. Bryan encouraged Kelly to apply. The brothers were working in the private sector, at a Big Four accounting firm and a management consulting business. They liked their jobs but sought more meaning in their careers.

Kelly started at the FBI Academy in January 2002 as part of class 02-02, the second new agents class after the 9/11 attacks.

Firearms were new to him, and range time included a contract instructor whom Kelly characterized as “the ex-Marine that screamed in your ear while you’re trying to shoot, which isn’t helpful.” About six weeks into training, concepts like trigger control clicked; Kelly finished third in his class in firearms.

Upon graduation, he was assigned to the Erie RA in Pennsylvania as his first office, a fortuitous assignment to a smaller city. “I got the excitement of working in the violent crime world and probably the investigative experience or complexity working in the fraud and public corruption and white-collar world,” he said.

Kelly worked closely with detectives in several jurisdictions as they collaborated on casework.

A memory from Erie is the Collar Bomb case from 2003, when pizza delivery man Brian Wells robbed a bank while wearing a time bomb around his neck. Kelly was among the law enforcement responders near Wells, about 25 yards away, waiting for the bomb squad to arrive. Then the bomb’s timer went off, killing Wells instantly. Kelly recalled pieces of metal pinwheeling over his head.

After Erie, Kelly went to FBIHQ, to the Economic Crimes Unit. In a nice twist, Bryan — who had followed his brother’s lead and become an FBI agent himself in 2002 — was in the unit, too, but on a detail to the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We didn’t sit next to each other every day because I don’t think anyone could tolerate two brothers sitting next to each other,” Bryan said.

Could the brothers Smith ever have a podcast like the Kelces’ or the Mannings’?

“Once you hear both of us laugh, you’ll realize that nobody wants us on a podcast laughing,” Bryan joked.

The brothers swapped badges before Kelly left FBIHQ for his next job as the SSRA in Tacoma from 2012-17. The badge is a family heirloom, and Bryan deserved to carry it as well, Kelly said.

An international opportunity arose for Kelly in Canberra, Australia, for a 60-day TDY and next he served as the counterterrorism assistant legal attaché from 2018-21. He and others from the Legat traveled to New Zealand in March 2019 along with FBI Los Angeles’s extraterritorial squad to assist partners with the Christchurch mosque shootings investigation.

Back stateside, Kelly led a CT squad in Seattle for a year and became ASAC over the criminal program in 2022.

His family’s FBI legacy is a “privilege and a responsibility all in one,” he said. “I feel like having this be such a big thing in my family that I’ve been entrusted to something. I want to be responsible and perform well.”

Upholding Standards

Bryan remembers his grandfather Joseph as funny and engaging, someone who was active in his parish and coached kids’ basketball. “We admired the fact that there’s a right way to do things, and that he had respect for the country and respect for the Bureau. I remember they had a bar at the house with an FBI seal behind it.”

Bryan was part of class 02-20 and spent the first nine years of his FBI career in the Cleveland Division. Then came a position in the Economic Crimes Unit as a detailee to the SEC for 18 months, and next Bryan moved to the Cyber Division to start a cybercrime financial team. He was a unit chief in the money laundering unit in CID from 2014-15 and then returned to Cleveland to lead a cyber criminal squad before being promoted to an ASAC of the White-Collar Cyber branch.

His last role was in the Cyber Division as the Cyber Criminal Operations section chief. In a way, his career came full circle from his private sector days of consulting on IT issues in the late 1990s. Back then, cybersecurity was an afterthought. “That was across the board in every single industry, and now, we’re paying the price for that,” he said.

What about the next generation of Smiths? Bryan and his wife have five children; a daughter who’s studying information technology at Syracuse University is a potential future candidate, and he thinks his two high school-aged sons may be interested. Kelly’s three kids are younger.

“Our hope with our family is that we can see this into the next generation, and maybe there’ll be a female agent who then gets to take the badge,” Bryan said.

Retiring and Returning

As a kid, Neil was an avid viewer of “The F.B.I.” weekly TV series with Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and the show made an impression. Of course, Inspector Lewis Erskine always solved crimes in each hourlong episode and never did paperwork.

Neil studied accounting and worked in the field for a couple of years before beginning at Quantico in 1976. When Neil asked his dad why he didn’t stick around to see his son become an agent, his dad quipped, “Any outfit that was letting you in, I was getting out of.”

Twenty-two of his 35 classmates were assigned to the New York Office, and Neil and badge 1120 went to Portland, Oregon, where Neil benefited from having excellent training agents who mentored him.

When he transferred to Boston two years later, Neil adjusted to the “culture shock of working with people who were very direct, trying to figure out if they liked you or didn’t like you.” But he added, “once they are your friends, they’re your friends forever.”

He recalled studying maps of Boston, learning how to navigate the 300-year-old neighborhoods and to run informants and work long-term white-collar cases. Back then, the body recorders were the size of paperbacks. While in Boston, Neil met a young first assistant attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, Bob Mueller. Their paths would cross again.

After 13 years in Boston, Neil moved in 1990 to the Honolulu Field Office and eventually became a supervisor. As his three sons approached high school, the family moved to San Francisco and settled in Burlingame, a homecoming.

By this time, Mueller was the U.S. Attorney in Northern California. “Bob knew my background,” Neil said, and their rapport helped his squad’s cases get attention in the office.

Soon after 9/11, Neil was eligible to retire; two former agents recruited him to work for Charles Schwab, and that job led to additional opportunities in the financial services sector and global travel. The first year he left the FBI was hard because Neil missed the “meaning of the work.”

By 2014, Neil’s wife was ready for a change of scenery, and they returned to Hawaii and he retired, full stop. He lasted about a month. “I had friends, two classmates who were doing the forfeiture work,” he recalled. The flexibility of being an FBI contractor appealed to him.

The Bureau he returned to was different from the agency he’d left. Gone were the days of looking through serials and closed files. “The technology available to FBI investigations today and the support investigations receive from FBI personnel such as analysts, forensic accountants, computer analysts and others during the course of an investigation has advanced FBI cases. It results in continued successful convictions of the most complex crimes of today and makes us all proud as former employees.”

Neil retired as a contractor on Sept. 1, 2023. Looking back, “I’m so proud of my career. I’m so proud of my family’s attachment to the FBI,” he said. He still recruits for the FBI when he meets someone who’s sharp. “I still want them to join the best organization.”