'Just Don't Quit'

"Listen to me, Pat," Michael said. "You took the prints simply because your son needs more money. I understand that. I'm a father and I would do almost everything for my kids, I really would."

The technique is called "rationalization" and expresses sympathy with the suspect. But Michael got the confession by bluffing with a blank videotape that he says captured Pat in the act.

That's a risky move, Zisi said. If there were a video machine in the room, the suspect could have called Michael's bluff.

Michael's partner, Elvis, takes his turn at this exercise with a different scenario. Though affable and charming, he struggles to get a confession.

His suspect was "Shannon French," a woman suspected of blowing up a housing development with the Earth Liberation Front, an eco-terrorist group. French said she has a license plate that says "GovSux," and mocked Elvis and the FBI. She is angry that the government allowed the development, endangering wildlife on the land.

Elvis told her that her friend is cooperating with the FBI. "What did that lying bitch say?" French snapped back.

In response, Elvis tried "rationalization," telling her he used to be an environmental engineer. "It kills me to see this development going on," he said.

But French was not buying it. "You're a sellout," she said.

Back and forth they went, French not giving an inch. Elvis looked rattled.

Finally, he tried "minimization," or as an instructor explained, the "Hey, you blew up a lab -- you didn't crash a plane into the World Trade Center" strategy.

"I know you're not a terrorist," Elvis said. "We talked to your friend and she told us you were there. But I know you didn't want to hurt anyone. Tell me your side of the story."

French finally confessed. She broke out of character, laughed heartily and told Elvis he did a good job.

But Elvis walked out of the room, his face ashen. "That felt really uncomfortable," he said. "I'm not used to people being hostile towards me. I don't know if I would be cut out for this."

Teaching the Past

The same week, the trainees get their most realistic taste of FBI law enforcement work at the make-believe town called Hogan's Alley, named after an unsavory place in an old comic strip. The two-intersection town has a seedy bar and billiards hall, a deli, the All-Med Pharmacy, a post office and a 30-room motel, the Dogwood Inn. The bank here is probably the most-robbed bank in America.

The movie house is called the Biograph and is a replica of the Chicago theater where FBI agents gunned down John Dillinger in 1934. The last movie Dillinger saw, "Manhattan Melodrama" with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy, is on the marquee. Hollywood set designers helped build Hogan's Alley in 1987.

Here, trainees practice the skills they are taught in the classroom, confronting actors who jump out of the woods and shoot at them with paintball guns. The trainees used Hogan's Alley to investigate a complicated criminal case they have worked on since October. The subject is "Billy Ray Hankins," leader of the American Revolutionary Movement, a fictional right-wing domestic terrorist group.

FBI officials argue that the skills learned in investigating a criminal case will help agents in the terrorism fight. "Terrorism doesn't come in the front door in a neat package with a bow tied on top that says, 'I'm a terrorism case,' " said Supervisory Special Agent Karen E. Gardner, chief of investigative training at Quantico. "It could start out as white-collar crime, -- fraud, untaxed cigarettes."

Still, they acknowledge that a set designer's idea of a small American town might not be the best place to train for the bureau's new role. "Hogan's Alley was built years ago when the FBI's primary mission was criminal investigative work," said Keith Slotter, the academy's deputy assistant director for training. "It served us well for the bank robbery scenario. But it does not serve us quite as well for today's work involving counterterrorism investigations and counterintelligence."

The trainees conducted surveillance, developed informants, consulted with a "prosecutor," checked criminal records, taped phone conversations, went "dumpster diving," collected forensic evidence, served search warrants and learned how to obtain and run a wiretap. They also made an arrest, then testified in the case under intense grilling in an all-day moot court.

The arrest began in Room 118 of the Dogwood Inn, as several trainees, equipped with radios and wearing blue raid jackets, stared at a closed-circuit television screen. They watched a burly man (filmed by tiny cameras hidden in the room next door) selling "hot" M-16 rifles to an undercover trainee wearing a tiny microphone.

When their undercover classmate exchanged $3,200 with the man, the agents in Room 118 jump into action.

"Okay, let's go! Execute!" said Michelle, the former Manhattan lawyer, acting as the agent in charge and showing impressive command presence. All the trainees, clutching guns loaded with blanks, burst through the door of Room 117.

"FBI! Hands up!" they yelled.

But while Michelle handcuffed the suspect, an instructor sneaked into the adjoining surveillance room and stole the videotape the agents had used to record the undercover buy. A trainee failed to stay behind and protect the evidence -- the kind of mistake that could blow a case in court.

But the exercise has proved to be a shining moment for Michelle, who has emerged as one of the stars in the class, both academically and in the field. Her friends back home have nicknamed her "Clarice" after the special agent-trainee played by Jodie Foster in "The Silence of the Lambs," which was set at Quantico.

Under Fire

During week 17, with the end in sight, the trainees lined up to take their final firearms exam at the outdoor range. Each had to fire a handgun from four positions at four distances, 150 shots in all. To pass, each trainee had to put at least 120 shots in the target.

When he finished, Jason, a 25 year-old Army lieutenant, had a sinking feeling. There were not as many bullet holes in the in the target as he had hoped. A somber instructor carried over his scored target. Jason had failed by one shot. Tears filled his eyes. He knew what that meant: He would not graduate with his class.

Growing up in small-town Kentucky, Jason was familiar with guns and cut from the traditional mold of an ideal FBI agent. He won a Bronze Star in combat in Iraq. He was the top scorer in the final physical fitness test. He peppered his language with "Yes, Sirs" and "Yes, Ma'ams" and described himself as a Type A personality.

Jason was immediately placed with a new class and given special instruction. If he failed the next firearms qualification test, he would be out. (He passed a month later.)

For his former classmates, there was one more firearms exercise -- FATS -- a firearms training simulation. In a darkened room, with classmates sitting behind, each trainee was called forward to face a movie screen with a video simulating a potential crime unfolding. The trainee had to decide whether to shoot. Act too quickly and an innocent person could be killed. Hesitate and it could be the trainee.

It was Elvis's turn. He had worked as hard as anyone in the class, waking at 5 a.m. to work out and lifting weights at lunchtime. He was also one of the class's most outgoing and popular trainees. His nickname was "The King."

On the video, his partner knocked at an apartment door looking for a fugitive's girlfriend. But the suspect himself opened the door. Elvis's partner pulled his gun. Lunging, the suspect took away the gun and the two men rolled on the ground, fighting for it.

Elvis, the chemical engineer who had never fired a gun before Quantico, leapt onto a table. His heart racing, he shot at the suspect, who was still on the ground tussling with his partner. The suspect's girlfriend suddenly appeared at the door. Elvis yelled for her to stay back. It happened so fast that it was hard to see where the bullets landed.

The lights came on. The instructor felt Elvis's pulse, to comic effect. Then the instructor became serious. "Did you shoot your partner?" he asked.

Elvis's face fell. "I don't think so," he said.

When the computer simulation was rerun in slow motion to track each bullet, it was clear: Elvis had missed his partner and killed the criminal with a shot to the head. His classmates cheered.

Crossing Over

On the morning of Feb. 17, parents, grandparents, spouses and children streamed into the huge FBI auditorium. It was graduation. Class 06-01 lined up for a photograph with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who swore its members in as special agents.

"We are on the front lines for America," he told them. "Will you develop the source that provides the intelligence we need to disrupt a terrorist plot? We must continue to change because the terrorists certainly will."

The class members down the long glass-enclosed corridors for the last time. They crossed the grassy quad, past the granite twin towers and the piece of United Airlines Flight 93. They headed toward the gun vault, where their firearms instructor was waiting for them.

Eighteen weeks earlier, he had gone into the vault to get something to show the class: the burned Glock 22 that an agent had carried into the World Trade Center. Now, he handed each of them something of their own. A brand-new Glock 22 handgun.