July 27, 2015

Scott L. Cruse Named Special Agent in Charge of Oklahoma City Division

Director James B. Comey has named Scott L. Cruse special agent in charge of the FBI’s Oklahoma City Division. He most recently served as legal attaché (legat) in London as part of the FBI’s International Operations Division (IOD).

Mr. Cruse began his career as a special agent with the FBI in 1987. He was first assigned to the Butte Division, which was later consolidated in to the Salt Lake City Division, where he investigated violent crime on all of Montana’s Indian reservations. In 1998, Mr. Cruse transferred to the Seattle Division, Olympia Resident Agency, where he conducted investigations into a broad range of criminal matters, including domestic terrorism, violent crime, white-collar crime, and public corruption.

In 2000, Mr. Cruse was promoted to a supervisory position in the Criminal Investigative Division’s Indian Country Unit at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In this role, he developed a core training curriculum to better prepare special agents for specialized assignments in Indian Country, where they would be regularly called upon to conduct investigations into serious personal crimes such as homicide and child sexual abuse.

Mr. Cruse returned to the field in 2003 and served as the supervisory senior resident agent over the Western Montana Squad within the Salt Lake City Division. He managed six resident agencies located in Western Montana that were responsible for the investigation of all terrorism and criminal matters for the region. During his tenure, Mr. Cruse established the first Joint Terrorism Task Force for the state of Montana. Two years later, he served in Iraq as the deputy on-scene commander over the Baghdad Operations Center.

Mr. Cruse was selected to serve as the legat for Canberra, Australia in 2007. In this role, he served as the FBI’s senior liaison representative to Australia, New Zealand, and 19 island nations located throughout the South Pacific. As the legat in Canberra, Scott had a number of achievements that strengthened the FBI’s relationship with Australia, including the integration of FBI personnel to the Australian Foreign Police’s High Tech Crime Center, where they worked jointly with the FBI on a number of highly successful online child exploitation investigations that affected both countries.

In 2009, Mr. Cruse returned to the Salt Lake City Division, where he served as the assistant special agent in charge with territorial responsibility over Idaho and Montana and program responsibility over domestic terrorism, violent crime, weapons of mass destruction, and critical incident response. Mr. Cruse was assigned to the Terrorist Screening Center within the National Security Branch, where he served as the deputy director for Operations from 2011 to 2013.

Prior to joining the FBI, Mr. Cruse served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.