FBI Terror Expert Sees Job Evolve

Approach Turning More Long-Term, New D.C. Chief Says

As an FBI supervisor, John Perren spent weeks in the wreckage of the Pentagon after Sept. 11, 2001. Yet what haunts him is the attack that didn't happen.

"The second airplane meant for D.C. did not get here," says Perren, the new counterterrorism chief of the FBI's Washington field office.

That hijacked jet, which authorities say was apparently bound for the White House or the U.S. Capitol, crashed in Pennsylvania. Perren says he believes that al-Qaeda will return to Washington, just as the group came back and attacked the World Trade Center eight years after a botched bombing there.

"They had a target," he says. "They will keep going after it."

To head the FBI's counterterrorism division for the nation's capital is to treat every day as an orange alert. The office has nearly 900 open investigations involving a variety of groups, from al-Qaeda to the Animal Liberation Front. Most of the cases are in the District and Northern Virginia, but the office also investigates crimes against Americans in the Middle East, South Asia and other parts of the world.

Perren, 54, comes to the job with two decades of experience pursuing some of the biggest terrorist plots in U.S. history. And yet he acknowledges that this is a new era for the FBI's second-biggest counterterrorism office, where he succeeds Mike Heimbach, now at headquarters. The bureau is trying to blend a crime-busting past with a more intelligence-driven, long-term approach. "The focus isn't response" to attacks, says Perren. "It's investigation, prevention and disruption."

In a crisp white shirt and dark suit, Perren looks very much the traditional G-man. He grew up in Detroit, the son of immigrants from war-ravaged Malta who adored the United States. In fifth grade, Perren wrote to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, declaring his ambition to join the bureau. "I always wanted to be in law enforcement," he says.

At 19, Perren became a clerk at FBI headquarters. But he needed education and experience to advance. He spent 14 years with D.C. police, studying at American University at night, before returning to the FBI. His first assignment, in 1987, was on the FBI's joint terrorism task force in Newark.

Over the next decade, Perren's team ricocheted from one high-threat case to another. It investigated the slaying of extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, the first World Trade Center attack and a plot to blow up New York's tunnels.

It was the start of a new era of terrorism, although few recognized it at the time. The Justice Department and FBI did "excellent work" investigating the 1993 World Trade Center attack, according to the 9/11 Commission. However, it noted, their approach was to solve individual terrorism cases. It "was not designed to ask if the events might be harbingers of worse to come."

Today, Perren's squads work with dozens of intelligence analysts, reflecting the FBI's effort to transform itself into an agency that prevents attacks.

"You're not just going after prosecutions," he says. "You're looking at this incident, this group, where it fits into the bigger picture."