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Team on call for any crisis

March 28, 2004 1:06 am

When Elizabeth Smart was spirited away from her Salt Lake City bedroom, they responded.

When the USS Cole was attacked in a Yemeni port, they were quickly airborne.

And when sniper attacks terrorized the Washington region, they were in the air and on the ground in the hunt.

Whenever there's a major crisis--anywhere in the world--the FBI looks to North Stafford.

There, at locations both on and off the FBI Academy grounds, is a cadre of highly trained specialists known as the Critical Incident Response Group.

It's a crew of 300-plus men and women who thrive on crisis and keep "ready bags" at hand--packed with the essentials so they can pick up and go.

"We're expected to be on the cutting edge in crisis management in whatever skill it might be," said J. Stephen Tidwell, CIRG's newly appointed leader.

From tactical assaults to negotiations, from command posts to aerial surveillance, from crime analysis to criminal profiling, CIRG (pronounced "serg") is counted on to provide the expertise needed.

It's a group whose original mission was counterterrorism and which, as it prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary next month, is constantly honing its skills in anticipation of the next challenge.

For Tidwell, the special agent in charge, managing this group of ever-ready men and women is the best assignment possible.

"This," he said, "would be my dream job."

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III shifted the bureau's crime-fighting focus to counterterrorism.

But while CIRG made some adjustments after that directive, this segment of the FBI didn't need to make dramatic changes.

The first component of what would eventually become the Critical Incident Response Group was created in 1983.

The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team was established after a call from top Justice Department officials for a special counterterrorism unit somewhere in law enforcement. HRT was to be equipped for tactical response to any terrorist threat nationwide.

Today, HRT's response range has no borders, and it is part of the Tactical Support Branch--one of four components that make up CIRG.

CIRG was formally established in April 1994 in response to the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas, one year earlier.

FBI Director Louis B. Freeh, who took office five months after the siege, wanted a team to better handle incidents involving hostages and barricades.

At the same time, he wanted to address two other scenarios that demand a quick and effective response--child abductions and serial killings.

CIRG has evolved into an operation that now has four branches with distinct but complementary roles:

Operations Support

Tactical Support

National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime

Aviation and Surveillance Operations

The men and women in Operations Support are experts in negotiations, logistics and bringing "order out of chaos," according to branch chief Warren Bamford.

Bamford, who from 1989 to '93 served as a Hostage Rescue Team sniper, supervises the three units making up this branch: the Crisis Management Unit, Rapid Deployment/Logistics Unit and Crisis Negotiation Unit.

The October 2002 sniper case is a classic scenario for the Crisis Management and Rapid Deployment/Logistics units.

That deadly shooting spree started the evening of Oct. 2, with six people in suburban Maryland and Northwest Washington being killed in a 28-hour period. A total of 10 were killed and three more wounded before the snipers were caught.

When frightened residents flooded police phone lines with thousands upon thousands of tips, the management and logistics units responded.

The logistics unit is responsible for getting everything from cots to computers to bottled water to the scene of a crisis so investigators can do their jobs. Its best day is when it goes unnoticed because everything needed is in place.

After the logistics team got FBI computers up and running in Montgomery County, Md., the Crisis Management Unit set about trying to make sense of the overwhelming amount of data.

That unit specializes in running command posts and is the group that Bamford said brings focus to "the fog of battle."

As its name suggests, the Crisis Negotiation Unit is a team of negotiators ready to be dispatched anywhere Americans are taken hostage.

In January, for example, negotiators accompanied the Hostage Rescue Team to Arizona after inmates took two state prison guards hostage.

When not responding to incidents, the unit trains negotiators assigned to the FBI's 56 field offices and police in outside agencies. It also conducts research--analyzing hostage, barricade and suicide incidents nationwide.

For negotiators, life's akin to walking a tightrope. Their words--their mere inflection--can determine how a hostage situation ends.

"They are, oftentimes, the reason why someone lives or dies," Bamford said.

The year was 1972 and the Summer Olympics in Munich were nearing an end when eight Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic Village and took members of the Israeli team hostage.

Two Israeli athletes were soon dead; nine others would be before the siege was over.

That, according to Brenton L. Mosher, head of the Tactical Support Branch, was the impetus for the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, one of two parts of the Tactical Support Branch.

The other is the Operations Training Unit, which oversees training and handles details when HRT deploys.

HRT was formed in 1983 in advance of the next summer's Olympic Games in Los Angeles "so there would be a viable counterterrorism law enforcement team in the United States to prevent or disrupt terrorist situations," Mosher said.

Since then, HRT has been deployed more than 350 times. Despite the high-risk nature of its work, it has never lost a member during a mission.

The mind-set, Mosher said, is to "prepare for the unexpected" and to "flawlessly execute."

HRT is called when an American is taken hostage anywhere in the world or when there is a barricade situation, a high-risk arrest, a manhunt, or a threat of weapons of mass destruction.

HRT members arrested snipers Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad at a Maryland rest stop, and before that were active in the manhunt.

They used their tactical helicopter to carry Montgomery County, Md., police to various sites and to patrol during rush hour and when schools let out.

Members also helped develop the tactical-response plan, were on hand to help with searches, and aided state and local police when dragnets were set up toward the end of the investigation.

In the post-9/11 era, Mosher said, his people train hard and try to anticipate what's coming, but never get overconfident.

"We would be foolhardy to underestimate any enemy," he said.

A teenager is taken from her Salt Lake City bedroom. A string of women turn up dead in Baton Rouge, La. Pipe bombs with anti-government letters start arriving in Iowa and Illinois mailboxes.

In each case, the expertise of CIRG's profilers is called into play.

These are the people in the Behavioral Analysis Unit--the folks who meticulously study crime scenes and carefully review victim information to help catch criminals. They also review verbal and written threats in an attempt to predict the author's intentions.

The Behavioral Analysis Unit and the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program make up the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

Janice K. Fedarcyk, whose career has frequently focused on crimes involving children, in December became the first woman to run the center. She said it's a place where personnel are "passionate" about their work.

"This is a vocation--a life's work for many people," she said.

Profilers are assigned to one of three groups--focusing either on crimes against children, crimes against adults or threat assessments and counterterrorism.

ViCAP operates a nationwide database created primarily to track homicides and serve as a resource in helping police departments link related crimes. The unit also gathers data on unidentified bodies, missing persons and sex crimes.

Both BAU and ViCAP helped with the sniper investigation.

Three profilers worked throughout the rapid-paced investigation, offering insights based on analysis of the shootings and victim selection, according to Mark A. Hilts, one of the three profilers and now the supervisor of agents investigating crimes against adults.

The profilers also provided strategy on what to say publicly, analyzed messages left by the snipers and provided a suspect profile--though it was never publicly released.

ViCAP staff created a detailed timeline on the unfolding investigation and assembled a "territorial timeline" that traced the travels of Malvo and Muhammad--from their meeting in Antigua, across the United States and throughout the sniper shooting spree, according to ViCAP chief Arthur L. Grovner.

That information was used by the investigative task force to look into other crimes the pair might have committed.

ViCAP staffers prepare timelines as an investigative tool for every major case. They made one detailing the life of Richard Marc Evonitz--the man responsible for the deaths of three Spotsylvania County girls. They made another on the serial killings in Baton Rouge and they have an evolving one on the Interstate 270 shootings in and around Columbus, Ohio, that started last year.

The folks in BAU not only work cases, but also conduct ongoing research to increase their understanding of criminal behavior. On March 1, the unit released a workplace-violence report compiled by agent Eugene Rugala.

Last month, the unit assisted when 11-year-old Carlie Brucia was abducted in Sarasota, Fla., and when a family of three went missing in Mississippi.

"If there's a major serial murder or child abduction or major unusual-type case, chances are, we're involved in it," Hilts said.

The Aviation and Surveillance Operations Section is rarely in the public eye, and is content with that. But like the rest of CIRG, it offered its resources for the high-profile sniper investigation.

For a few weeks, Section Chief Edward Barrett said, he had agents in aircraft throughout the region almost around the clock.

He also had personnel in the Montgomery County command post to get planes into the air or to a specific location if there was a shooting or a suspect sighting.

As always, the aircraft were complemented by ground surveillance.

Prior to Mueller's 2001 mandate, Barrett's section focused its aerial surveillance on drug trafficking, organized crime and white-collar crime. Sometimes they helped look for missing people or hideouts.

"That has been refocused significantly since 9/11 to counterintelligence and counterterrorism," Barrett said.

His fleet includes about 120 aircraft nationwide--both multi- and single-engine planes, plus helicopters.

In addition to the aircraft assigned to each field office, Barrett has additional resources at an undisclosed Northern Virginia location for special missions.

Though the rest of CIRG has a four-hour window to get en route, Barrett's crew has a one- to two-hour response mandate. So he keeps people on duty, at the ready in case HRT or another FBI team needs immediate transport.

But the retired rear admiral admits that "sometimes it's hard to meet that window."

As the Critical Incident Response Group enters its second decade of service, this cutting-edge crew finds itself in a new era--one that its managers say they face with determination, not trepidation.

It's an era where they expect to increasingly be deployed overseas and increasingly be partnered with the military and the Department of Homeland Security--in addition to state and local law enforcement.

It's a time of increasing partnership with other federal agencies in events such as this summer's G8 Summit in Sea Island, Ga., and the two nominating conventions for the presidential campaign.

And it's a time when the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological attacks on U.S. soil broadens the scope of possible crises.

Though they recognize that their skills will be tested in the coming days and months and years, CIRG's managers are moving forward with focus, not fear.

They are continually honing their skills, striving to prepare for any possibility.

When Tidwell arrived for his dream job in January, he placed on his desk a hand-lettered sign someone made when he worked in Salt Lake City.

It's a saying he repeated often as a supervisor there.

And now, in his dream job as head of CIRG, the question is whether it's a sign of denial or an example of his own brand of optimism.

It reads: "Don't bring me no surprises."

To reach PAMELA GOULD: 540/657-9101 pgould@freelancestar.com