Michael F. Paul Named Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis Field Office
Director Christopher Wray has named Michael F. Paul as the special agent in charge of the Minneapolis Field Office. Mr. Paul recently served as a section chief in the Counterterrorism Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington and was the acting SAC in Minneapolis.
Mr. Paul joined the FBI as an Honors intern in 1994 and was later hired as a management and program analyst for the Criminal Justice Information Services Division. In 1999, he was selected to be a special agent and assigned to the Detroit Field Office to work healthcare fraud, drug diversion, and environmental crimes. He worked counterterrorism cases for several years beginning in 2001, and served on Detroit’s SWAT Team, Hazardous Materials Response Team, and as an operational medic.
In 2005, Mr. Paul was promoted to supervisory special agent in the Counterterrorism Division and was detailed to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, where he coordinated investigations and intelligence-sharing about sensitive international weapons of mass destruction threats. In 2006 he served as a senior detailee and unit chief under the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, overseeing FBI personnel detailed to the CIA, National Counterterrorism Threat Center, and the National Security Agency.
Mr. Paul was named the chief of the WMDD’s executive staff in 2008. He was selected as a Joint Terrorism Task Force field supervisor for the Cleveland Field Office in 2009, where he served until 2013. He was then named an assistant special agent in charge in the Norfolk Field Office in Virginia, leading the office’s counterintelligence, counterterrorism, intelligence, and crisis management programs.
In 2015, Mr. Paul was promoted to chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section at Headquarters. He also led the National JTTF and served as co-chair of the Department of Justice’s Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee. In 2018, Mr. Paul transferred within the Counterterrorism Division to serve as chief of the Technology and Data Innovation Section. He was asked to serve as the acting SAC in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020.
Mr. Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also earned advanced degrees from West Virginia University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
