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A Former Teacher Returns to Lead FBI’s NYC Office
Diego Rodriguez was teaching Spanish at a middle school in Queens when the bureau recruited him 25 years ago
By REBECCA DAVIS O’BRIEN WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 6, 2015 7:22 p.m. ET
When the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to recruit Diego Rodriguez 25 years ago, he demurred. He was newly married, teaching Spanish at a middle school in Flushing, Queens, and was a few credits shy of a master's degree in education.
But at a family friend’s urging, he took the test.
In January, Mr. Rodriguez took over as assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, making him the top official at the bureau’s largest branch, with about 2,500 employees covering the five boroughs and eight adjacent counties in New York.
In the past month, the office has seen the arrest of a Long Island doctor on drug-distribution charges, the sentencing of a Queens district leader who tried to flout an FBI investigation and the arrests of three Brooklyn men accused of conspiring to aid Islamic State in Syria.
But Mr. Rodriguez still thinks of teaching as the highest calling.
“I loved teaching,” Mr. Rodriguez said, sitting in his corner office at FBI’s Manhattan headquarters.
He liked providing structure, he liked that students listened and he loved watching them thrive.
“It was the most rewarding career. It has helped inform everything I do,” he said.
Today, counterterrorism is at the top of the FBI’s priorities, Mr. Rodriguez said. As last week’s arrests in Brooklyn show, a major concern is the allure and online recruitment efforts of foreign extremist groups, which the FBI and other agencies are combating with extensive resources and tactics that some civil liberties groups have called unjust.
Mr. Rodriguez said the agency goes “where the evidence takes us.”
Also on Mr. Rodriguez’s to-do list: public-corruption probes, securities fraud investigations and drug busts, working closely alongside the U.S. attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Mr. Rodriguez was born in a small town in Colombia, several hours south of Bogotá. When he was 9 months old, his parents moved with him and his two older brothers to an apartment in Queens.
In 1990, Mr. Rodriguez joined the New York field office, where he investigated Latin American and Mexican drug-trafficking and money-laundering organizations. He moved on to Puerto Rico, Miami, FBI headquarters in Washington and mostly recently Dallas. Everywhere he moved, his wife and four daughters went with him.
In Florida, after Sept. 11, 2001, he watched the bureau pivot from drug investigations to counterterrorism. In Washington, he helped reshape the bureau’s intelligence-gathering apparatus.
“He worked the very early stages of the FBI’s transformation from being an evidence-based investigative agency that prepared violations of federal law for prosecution into being an intelligence-led national security service,” said John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York Police Department.
Mr. Miller admires Mr. Rodriguez for another reason: “He’s a New York guy with a New York story and a passion.”
As the head of New York’s criminal division from 2010 to 2012, Mr. Rodriguez led FBI financial investigations into Galleon Group and SAC Capital and oversaw the arrests of more than 100 alleged members of the Cosa Nostra crime-family network.
For the past two years, Mr. Rodriguez led the FBI’s Dallas field office. Kevin Kolbye, who was Mr. Rodriguez’s deputy in Dallas and is now assistant chief of the Arlington, Texas, police department, said Mr. Rodriguez had credibility as an investigator and respect as a leader.
“He is a person that spent a lot of time building cases and putting cases together,” Mr. Kolbye said.
Mr. Kolbye recalled Mr. Rodriguez’s offer to assist local investigators after the 2013 murders of a Kaufman, Texas, assistant district attorney, the district attorney and his wife. In December, a former justice of the peace was convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection.
Mr. Kolbye said at one point, more than 100 FBI agents and employees were working around the clock on the investigation, along with local law-enforcement officials.
Smaller police departments sometimes bristle at federal intervention, but Mr. Rodriguez said he enjoys working with local law enforcement.
In 2013, an attorney who represented drug cartels was assassinated in Southlake, Texas; the FBI eventually arrested three Mexican citizens who they said had stalked the lawyer for two years.
A small bronze statue of a police officer stands on a side table in Mr. Rodriguez’s office.
The gift from the Southlake police department reads: “With deepest gratitude for your friendship and support.”
That collaborative instinct could prove vital with the NYPD, whose sometimes strained relationship with federal investigators became particularly bitter following reports in 2013 that the NYPD had been spying on Muslim leaders.
Mr. Rodriguez has worked closely with the NYPD, including during the first tenure of Commissioner William Bratton , whom Mr. Rodriguez called “top-notch, a class act.”
“It is great to have Diego Rodriguez back home in New York,” Mr. Bratton said.
Mr. Miller, the NYPD counterterrorism chief, acknowledged tensions between the two agencies over the past 10 years.
“For the most part, those problems are gone,” he said.
At Georgetown University last month, FBI Director James Comey spoke about the deep-seated mistrust between police and minority communities and perceived racial biases in policing. Mr. Rodriguez said he is sensitive to this tension.
“It is so important to us to demystify the FBI, to make us more approachable to law enforcement and in the private sector,” Mr. Rodriguez said, adding that he wants to go out and meet with local leaders.
If he has time, he may even visit a school.
Write to Rebecca Davis O’Brien at Rebecca.OBrien@wsj.com
Diego Rodriguez was teaching Spanish at a middle school in Queens when the bureau recruited him 25 years ago
By REBECCA DAVIS O’BRIEN WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 6, 2015 7:22 p.m. ET
When the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to recruit Diego Rodriguez 25 years ago, he demurred. He was newly married, teaching Spanish at a middle school in Flushing, Queens, and was a few credits shy of a master's degree in education.
But at a family friend’s urging, he took the test.
In January, Mr. Rodriguez took over as assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, making him the top official at the bureau’s largest branch, with about 2,500 employees covering the five boroughs and eight adjacent counties in New York.
In the past month, the office has seen the arrest of a Long Island doctor on drug-distribution charges, the sentencing of a Queens district leader who tried to flout an FBI investigation and the arrests of three Brooklyn men accused of conspiring to aid Islamic State in Syria.
But Mr. Rodriguez still thinks of teaching as the highest calling.
“I loved teaching,” Mr. Rodriguez said, sitting in his corner office at FBI’s Manhattan headquarters.
He liked providing structure, he liked that students listened and he loved watching them thrive.
“It was the most rewarding career. It has helped inform everything I do,” he said.
Today, counterterrorism is at the top of the FBI’s priorities, Mr. Rodriguez said. As last week’s arrests in Brooklyn show, a major concern is the allure and online recruitment efforts of foreign extremist groups, which the FBI and other agencies are combating with extensive resources and tactics that some civil liberties groups have called unjust.
Mr. Rodriguez said the agency goes “where the evidence takes us.”
Also on Mr. Rodriguez’s to-do list: public-corruption probes, securities fraud investigations and drug busts, working closely alongside the U.S. attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Mr. Rodriguez was born in a small town in Colombia, several hours south of Bogotá. When he was 9 months old, his parents moved with him and his two older brothers to an apartment in Queens.
In 1990, Mr. Rodriguez joined the New York field office, where he investigated Latin American and Mexican drug-trafficking and money-laundering organizations. He moved on to Puerto Rico, Miami, FBI headquarters in Washington and mostly recently Dallas. Everywhere he moved, his wife and four daughters went with him.
In Florida, after Sept. 11, 2001, he watched the bureau pivot from drug investigations to counterterrorism. In Washington, he helped reshape the bureau’s intelligence-gathering apparatus.
“He worked the very early stages of the FBI’s transformation from being an evidence-based investigative agency that prepared violations of federal law for prosecution into being an intelligence-led national security service,” said John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York Police Department.
Mr. Miller admires Mr. Rodriguez for another reason: “He’s a New York guy with a New York story and a passion.”
As the head of New York’s criminal division from 2010 to 2012, Mr. Rodriguez led FBI financial investigations into Galleon Group and SAC Capital and oversaw the arrests of more than 100 alleged members of the Cosa Nostra crime-family network.
For the past two years, Mr. Rodriguez led the FBI’s Dallas field office. Kevin Kolbye, who was Mr. Rodriguez’s deputy in Dallas and is now assistant chief of the Arlington, Texas, police department, said Mr. Rodriguez had credibility as an investigator and respect as a leader.
“He is a person that spent a lot of time building cases and putting cases together,” Mr. Kolbye said.
Mr. Kolbye recalled Mr. Rodriguez’s offer to assist local investigators after the 2013 murders of a Kaufman, Texas, assistant district attorney, the district attorney and his wife. In December, a former justice of the peace was convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection.
Mr. Kolbye said at one point, more than 100 FBI agents and employees were working around the clock on the investigation, along with local law-enforcement officials.
Smaller police departments sometimes bristle at federal intervention, but Mr. Rodriguez said he enjoys working with local law enforcement.
In 2013, an attorney who represented drug cartels was assassinated in Southlake, Texas; the FBI eventually arrested three Mexican citizens who they said had stalked the lawyer for two years.
A small bronze statue of a police officer stands on a side table in Mr. Rodriguez’s office.
The gift from the Southlake police department reads: “With deepest gratitude for your friendship and support.”
That collaborative instinct could prove vital with the NYPD, whose sometimes strained relationship with federal investigators became particularly bitter following reports in 2013 that the NYPD had been spying on Muslim leaders.
Mr. Rodriguez has worked closely with the NYPD, including during the first tenure of Commissioner William Bratton , whom Mr. Rodriguez called “top-notch, a class act.”
“It is great to have Diego Rodriguez back home in New York,” Mr. Bratton said.
Mr. Miller, the NYPD counterterrorism chief, acknowledged tensions between the two agencies over the past 10 years.
“For the most part, those problems are gone,” he said.
At Georgetown University last month, FBI Director James Comey spoke about the deep-seated mistrust between police and minority communities and perceived racial biases in policing. Mr. Rodriguez said he is sensitive to this tension.
“It is so important to us to demystify the FBI, to make us more approachable to law enforcement and in the private sector,” Mr. Rodriguez said, adding that he wants to go out and meet with local leaders.
If he has time, he may even visit a school.
Write to Rebecca Davis O’Brien at Rebecca.OBrien@wsj.com