The FBI lacks a high-profile head of its key New York office, says Newsday columnist Leonard Levitt. There is no replacement yet for former agent in charge Pasquale D’Amuro, who retired a month ago to join the firm of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Levitt reports low morale in what is considered the bureau’s flagship office, with 1,100 agents and one-tenth of the bureau’s entire staff. Law enforcement sources say that New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has taken credit for FBI accomplishments.
Says a former top New York police official who worked closely with the bureau: “They do a horrible job of promoting themselves. This is a very public office, and if they don’t have a guy able to put on a public face, it is not going to work. They need a guy who likes to be on stage, a guy with a big ego who loves himself enough to get in the papers and on television. The fatter his head, the better prestige for the bureau. They need to take a play out of Kelly’s book.” Levitt says that after Jim Fox and Jim Kallstrom headed the FBI’s New York office, “a series of faceless bureaucrats” served as agent in charge, each for only two years and “all of them lacking the ego to bask in the media limelight.”
Link: http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-nyplaz064247476may06,0,3380081.column