FBI and its legacy

Johnathan Corbett
On Monday November 8th, 2010 Thomas J Pickard came to St John’s and presented to the St John’s students the life of a FBI agent. He said that it is not an easy thing to get in to. Only 30 out of 3,000 applicants get accepted at a time. The hardest part about being a FBI agent is that they do not know that they will be transferred. They have to deal with it, inform their families that they will be moving and leave. In order to get into the FBI you must pass a physical fitness test, firearms test and take classes for this specialty. They have to train in Quantico, Virginia which is a marine headquarter and an Army base. He was selected for the job and worked at NYO headquarters which deals with bank robberies and fugitives. His first week on the job he had helped the police chase down a bank robber and in telling the robber “FBI freeze or die” he threw his shotgun and gave up. His first undercover mission was under ABSCAM which was an undercover construction worker site that had captured 5 or 6 congressmen who where taking 50,000 dollar bribes for approval of Arab citizens (illegal aliens). He then was promoted by 1998 he was the #2 man in the FBI, he worked on the 747 that disappeared off of the radar. They concluded that it was the engine that had exploded not terrorism that took down this plane. In 1992 he tracked down terrorist Ramzi Yousef, for the bombing of the 1992 World Trade Center. He said that Ramzi is the smartest man that he has ever come to know, he can speak 7 languages and was very exceptional with dealing with Sciences. He represented himself at court and had a 8 month trial until he was convicted. He also talked about how he had to travel to another country and pick up one of the terrorist that they had on their list. The country cooperated until the very end, when people came up with a machine gun and demanded the terrorist. Pickard wanted non of this so he babbled on until the next morning and they gave in, a couple of weeks later he had learned that the FBI agency had flyers coming in to rescue him and they had informed the people on the machine gun scaring them away. He had fun days with the FBI but he had called it quits in 2001. He now works at Bristol Myer Squibb, and has been employed there for 9 years.