There is also significant coursework in operational case management duties. How to conduct an investigation, how to navigate through the mountains of forms and stacks of paperwork, and knowledge of the approvals and authorizations that agents must have for each investigative techniques is taught. This is covered through the sharing of real-life examples taught by FBI agent instructors. The real-life content and examples proved to be interesting and made the expected administrative steps palatable. Of course, this side of being an FBI agent is never depicted in film or books, since it would be mind-numbing to audiences and readers.
Unfortunately, the FBI also forces agents to take what I consider ridiculous coursework that reminded me of the corporate world that I was so happy to leave. We endured a computer based training class that everyone in my class concluded was a complete waste of time. The class was supposed to teach agents how to think. Clearly, FBI agents do not just show up at the FBI Academy without knowing how to think. At least the NATs were given an opportunity to formally provide feedback on the course; my hope is that a slew of negative comments will change the curriculum to remove this course and instead spend time on other issues, such as national security and terrorism.
Other areas of academic training that I did not feel were adequately covered are cyber-crime and white collar crime. In today’s environment, there should be instruction specific to mortgage fraud, internet scams, and corporate fraud. Unfortunately, these topics are largely ignored. While much of the training for agents is on-the-job, emphasis on the country’s greatest criminal and security threats should be made up front during an agent’s stay at the FBI Academy.
Despite a few shortcomings, overall the FBI Academy's academic training is thorough and in my opinion does an adequate job of preparing agents to be effective on day one when they arrive in their first field office.
CHAPTER 13
Orders Night
What field office will an agent be assigned to upon graduation from the FBI Academy? Unless an agent is from New York or Los Angeles, he or she will not be returning to the field office that he or she applied through. That meant that San Antonio and the satellite offices, including Austin, were off limits to me. So where did I want to go? Where did I think I could go? All agents would discover their location fate about six weeks into the FBI training program in a ceremony called “orders night.”
One of the first tasks assigned to agents is the ranking of their field office location preferences, which would be a factor in the FBI’s determining of each agent’s first office of assignment. There are fifty-six FBI field offices, all which had to be ranked from 1 to 56. Depending on the needs of the Bureau, agents are assigned to an office that attempts to take into account their wishes, but with absolutely no guarantees.
Within the FBI there are abundant rumors and speculation regarding the best way to approach the mysterious orders assignment process. Some classmates simply ranked the field offices in their order of preference as they were asked to do; they took the process at face value. But the majority of us pored over any and all reports and statistics we could get our hands on to make an intelligent and strategic ranking decision. And of course we all tried to take into account the reputation and other factors of the field offices. This was no easy task since we were all new to the FBI.
The first realization when ranking the offices was that although there are fifty-six field offices, there are hundreds of satellite offices, called Resident Agencies (or RAs), that are considered to be part of those field offices. The impact of this is more dramatic in more sparsely populated geographic areas. For example, the Dallas office has ten satellite offices, ranging in locations across north and east Texas, from Tyler to Lubbock. So if an agent is assigned to the Dallas office, he or she might head to work every day with an exciting view of the Dallas skyline, and be looking forward to heading to a Cowboys game on the weekend. Alternatively, an agent could be assigned to the Dallas office, but to the Lubbock RA. Lubbock is a fine city, but unless an agent is used to wide open spaces and minimal nightlife, he or she could be in for a big culture shock. Agents have to keep in mind the impact of this on family. This is one of the many sacrifices that FBI agents make that people take for granted. This is the reality of being an FBI agent.
By looking at historical trends and current staff excesses and shortfalls, one could predict the field offices that people would be sent to. For example, New York had a reputation of having high staffing needs, largely because living expenses are significant (despite a cost of living adjustment). So in a new class of agents, one could speculate that a couple of agents would be pulled to go to New York, even if New York was not ranked at the top of the list by any agents.The remedy for this was to rank undesirable field offices at the bottom of the list, even if there were other locations that would be preferable. I ranked New York last. I would rather have gone to New York than many other locations, but I knew if my ranking of New York was lower than others, I would not have to go. In summary, I felt the best strategy was to try to identify the field offices that would need people, and rank those accordingly.
I utilized the same strategy to get where I wanted to go. Ideally I would have loved to head to the Dallas field office, which is close to friends and family. But at that time they had a full staff level, and that the odds were nobody would be going to Dallas from my class. I ranked it towards the top but reserved the top spot for a city that I thought that the FBI realistically would be sending agents to. After much deliberation and consultation with Jennifer, we chose San Diego as number one.
Even getting assigned to the San Diego field office was something of a long shot. I did not put any other offices in the top ten that I thought anyone would have a realistic chance of going to. And San Diego was risky because there were two RA's for San Diego, which mean that living in San Diego was far from guaranteed. There was North County, which is between San Diego and Los Angeles. The waiting list to transfer to North County was significant within the San Diego office, due to the coastal location and desirable surroundings. And then there was the El Centro office. El Centro became famous in the 1970s when a gunman entered the FBI office and shot and killed two agents. The office is small, with about a dozen agents. The territory they cover includes most of the southern California border, from the Colorado River to the edge of San Diego County. El Centro agents work mostly drug and alien smuggling case, which I knew would be a gritty, dirty, and dangerous business. El Centro is hot and dusty, and the type of city that, if a person is passing through, he or she should would probably avoid stopping unless there was a fuel or bathroom emergency.
After waiting for six weeks, orders night finally arrived. The tradition is for all agents to be handed an envelope in which they state the office they have ranked as their top location preference, followed by the they have been assigned to go to. The city is noted with a pin on a map, showing geographically where all class members will be headed upon graduation.
My roommate Justin had taken the advice of the group that explained how to rank the cities. Their recommendation was that if an agent wanted to go to a specific geographic area, then rank all of the offices in that area at the top of the list. For example, if an agent wanted to head to southern California, he or she should rank Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Sacramento, and San Francisco at the top of the list. However, agents really needed to ask themselves if they really could be happy living in any of those cities. For example, San Francisco is vastly different than Los Angeles, both geographically and culturally. If an agent put both cities on his or her list, he or she would have to be sure he or she would be happy in either location.
Justin wanted to stay in the Midwest. He was from Chicago and had played wide receiver at Michigan State University. His friends and family primarily resided in the Great Lakes region. He ranked his list based on that. Number fourteen on his list was Buffa
lo, New York. Previous classes were typically getting their top ten picks. Occasionally someone would be awarded a pick in their thirties, but that seemed to be unlikely.
The orders ceremony began. Students and teachers, including our firearms instructors who suddenly transformed into ordinary, personable people, crowded into a small room with great anticipation. Pizza was doled out, although appetites were almost nonexistent; all agents were deep in thought (and prayer) about where they might wind up. The envelopes arrived, and the ceremony began.
As agents opened their envelopes and announced their assignments, the trend of getting assigned to favorable locations looked good. All agents were getting their top ten picks. Several people got their number one picks. Justin's turn came up. Facing the class, he opened his envelope. His face turned a ghostly white, and he announced “Buffalo” as his office of assignment. He trudged back to our table and was genuinely depressed.
Many agents ranked San Diego towards the top of their list, but only two of us had San Diego as number one. The other person was one of the female agents, a tiny but physically and emotionally powerful woman named Stacy. She was the smallest agent in the class, and clearly was at a disadvantage when wrestling with men twice her size in our DT classes. But she gained a great deal of respect because she was tough and never quit, and on top of that was one of the smartest and most likeable students. I knew that she had San Diego as number one, so if she did not get San Diego, I most definitely would not. After opening her enveloped, with an unsure smile she announced “Los Angeles” as her office of assignment. San Diego seemed off the table for me.
Finally it was my turn. I was extremely nervous, but in an excited way. My future was at stake. My home. My life. As I opened the envelope in front of my audience, I could hardly believe my good fortune. Printed on the sheet was “San Diego.” I announced San Diego, everyone clapped, and I settled back in my chair with an extreme sense of relief. I figured I just needed to just endure my remaining time at Quantico, and then could spend my career in sunny San Diego, enjoying life as an FBI agent during the week, with fun on the beach on the weekends.
In the following weeks, my assignment was conveyed to the San Diego office. The San Diego office reached back out to my supervisor with my first squad assignment. I was assigned to a VCMO, pronounced “Vic-Mo,” squad, which stands for Violent Crimes and Major Offenders. With my years of computer and white collar business experience, I was shocked at my assignment. I had a sinking feeling, knowing that that type of work would not be a good fit for my personality or my family life. But the FBI clearly states that all agents are assigned based on “the needs of the Bureau.” I could not understand the logic of my assignment, but I was not in a position to argue. My feeling of elation had turned to dread. With a risk-averse personality, the uncertainty of a violent crime squad assignment loomed over me like a dark cloud.
CHAPTER 14
Hogan’s Alley
Simulations of the wide variety of duties that FBI agents execute were conducted through training exercises at the famous Hogan’s Alley complex at the FBI Academy. Various activities including surveillance, arrests, and searches were performed. These exercises often resulted in bruises and painful situations, but also provided some of the best stories and funniest memories. A screw-up at Hogan’s Alley would be remembered for the duration of our stay at the Academy. And the real life scenarios that were presented still ring in my head to this day. Situational awareness is key to safety, whether arresting someone or buying gas at a convenience store. The skills honed at Hogan’s Alley were the most critical with regards to an FBI agent’s safety.
One memorable occasion in Hogan’s Alley was a day when the class was using live paintball guns, which were modified Glocks; these were not the guns that shoot the large “bubble gum” paintballs used by the public for recreation. The overall objective for the class was to clear out a building filled with armed subjects. Paid actors played the parts of subjects, and they clearly enjoyed inflicting pain on the New Agent Trainees.
My group of several agents entered the building, which was dark and required use of flashlights. There were hidden compartments quite similar to what a person would see in a haunted house. I was shot on two occasions, with one leaving a permanent minor cosmetic blemish to the skin on my back. The agent in charge of the training exercise doubled over with laughter at my reaction to being shot, and went on to tell a story about my “Academy Award winning performance to getting shot” to future classes. It was all in good fun, and despite some physical pain, this experience was enjoyable and resulted in extremely valuable knowledge for agents. To this day I approach dimly lit stairways and corners with caution, and still can crack a smile at the fun that I had in Hogan’s Alley.
Other training scenarios involved people who were suicidal. Still others involved driving up on police officer shootings. Other scenarios had agents being carjacked unexpectedly. In Hogan’s Alley agents never knew what would happen, and anything and everything did. The FBI did a great job of showing agents everything that can go wrong, and helped us prepare for all types of situations.
The final exercise in Hogan’s Alley involved wrapping up a fictitious case that pieced together details from previous classroom exercises. The class was able to arrest our classroom “bad guy” subject, Billy Ray Hankins, who we also jokingly referred to as Billy Ray Cyrus. From wiring up cooperating witnesses, to surveillance, to searches, to arrests, to bank robberies, to vehicle stops, Hogan’s Alley was truly a learning environment and playground for law enforcement. This final arrest scenario showed the class how all of the pieces fit together and was a satisfying conclusion to an effective chapter of training for new agents.
CHAPTER 15
Graduation
One of the things that I came to appreciate during my stay at the FBI Academy was the visibility and accessibility of senior management, including the head of the FBI. The FBI director, Robert Mueller, made several appearances and visited my class and others while I was at the Academy. Remember, this is the guy who had a daily meeting with the President of United States, and ultimately was responsible for all criminal and terrorist investigations in the United States. He was an extremely busy man, but he made time for us. When visiting our classroom, he asked how things were going for us. He also stopped by the cafeteria a couple of times and visited with students. And most importantly to me, he attended my graduation day, he addressed the class and audience, and he personally handed each agent his or her credentials. He took time to chat and pose with all families for pictures. I viewed this as a demonstration of true leadership. I have a great deal of respect for Mueller, and I feel that he brought a level of integrity and change to the FBI that was painful internally and criticized externally, but was the best anybody could have possibly done in that role, especially considering he assumed the helm of the FBI one week before 9/11.
Other agency officials in general were accessible and seemed to really care about the students. Administrators, instructors, staff, and the agent faculty were always available to students to help them with their problems. Our counselors for the class, including Supervisory Special Agent Mary Ebert, and Special Agent Tom Elfman, were two of the finest agents in the Bureau and dedicated eighteen weeks (and weekends) of time, effort, and energy to producing a successful batch of students. They were excellent role models, and they lead by example. They showed the class that they were willing to sacrifice their personal lives for the sake of the class. Similar behind-the-scenes efforts are commonplace in the FBI.
After eighteen long weeks, graduation day finally arrived. Jennifer met me the weekend before graduation, and we booked a hotel for her to stay in near Quantico until I graduated. I received special permission from my FBI counselors to stay off the grounds of the FBI Academy so that I could be with my new wife. My counselors may never know how much that
gesture meant to me. In a sense, I felt that I graduated the week before when I was finally free to live outside of that FBI dorm. My roommate and suitemates were great, but none of us enjoyed living in a dorm situation. The stark contrast of living with my wife, even in a small hotel room, was absolute heaven.
My family flew to Washington, DC, and drove to Quantico to watch my graduation. My mother, brother, niece, nephew, and in-laws were in attendance. In a large auditorium setting, families were shown a video that summarized the experience and activities at the FBI Academy. While watching that video, I felt vastly relieved to be at the end of the training and not at the beginning. Then the time came for the agents to walk onto the stage to receive their credentials. One by one, agents strolled across the stage as their names were called. Each agent paused in the middle of the stage to shake hands with Director Mueller, a picture was taken, and then each agent exited the stage. On the surface it appeared similar to most college graduations, but the feeling I had was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. I thought that when I graduated as an industrial engineer from Texas A&M University, that would be my greatest lifetime accomplishment. But graduating from the FBI Academy and receiving my credentials from FBI Director Mueller surpassed that many times over. That day will always rank at the top of my list of favorite lifetime memories; I became the person that I thought I had always wanted to be. I did have a deep sadness that my father, Kenneth Sellers, was not able to witness this event, because I know he would have been amazed and proud. But I also knew that he was quite proud of me in my former pre-FBI life, and that was enough for me.
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