Name: Jan Wilhelm, 45
Occupation: FBI agent
Background: Wilhelm was graduated from Florida Southern College with a major in English. He spent 2 1/2 years in the Army and one year in the private sector before joining the FBI. He is now the senior supervisory resident agent at the Rockford Resident Agency, a satellite office of the Chicago division. He has been married for 22 years and has a 19-year-old daughter.
Years in present position: 20
Danger and adventure didn`t figure into my decision to join this organization. The FBI is much different from the popular conception of it. It`s seldom as you see on television. There are occasional incidents, but having been in dozens of arrests, I have to say that very seldom is there a problem. People generally do the right thing. They surrender and go peacefully, and we treat them like respectable persons. It`s just routine. Still, we always assume that anyone is armed and dangerous.
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It`s the people in the bureau who make the bureau what it is and make it a fine place to work. It`s like a big family. These are very dedicated people. I found that in the business world people were working for a personal career, money, whatever. Here people don`t mind working 7 days a week or 24 hours a day because it`s for a purpose. That`s the thing that sets the bureau above an ordinary job.
Am I ever afraid? I`m thinking about doing things correctly and covering all the bases. I`m thinking, ”Is he at the back door? Is he at the front door?” I`m listening, and my senses are attuned to making the arrest. I`m concerned about what I`m doing. I wouldn`t say I`m afraid, but I`m very aware. I want to be aware of everything that`s going on to prevent any problems. Your concentration overrides your fear.
The FBI has a twofold training program. There`s a 15-week formal course at Quantico, Va., our training academy, which gives you the defensive tactics, firearms, legal training and investigative training. Then you`re assigned to a field office and get very specialized, on-the-job training. After that you`re on probation for a period of time to make sure that you`re performing up to the standards.
Also, we have in-service training at Quantico and other locations. And we have specially trained agents who come out and speak to the agents in a particular squad or office about some particular matter, such as legal affairs. The training never ceases. Besides this, we`re tested twice a year for physical fitness. You must qualify in all areas to remain on duty, and the standards are quite high.
There are more than 200 violations that come under FBI jurisdiction. These include a variety of white-collar-crime cases, extortion, bank robbery, hijacking, kidnaping, judicial corruption and foreign counter-intelligence, though most of that is handled in New York and Washington. One big
international case we worked on here was the Pizza Connection (organized crime) case a while back. In this case we conducted 40 raids in Europe and the United States, all at exactly the same time. I was on one of the raids, and it was a very satisfying case because we completely knocked out one entire Mafia family. It was probably the biggest law-enforcement group ever working together on one case.
I can`t think of anything I would rather do than FBI work. I suppose, as with anything else, we all become tired sometimes with the paperwork. But it`s a necessity. I think you get the most satisfaction on this job from the camaraderie with the other agents. Also, to take a case that people say you can`t break is a great challenge and very exciting. But most of what we do is routine work.
A recent incident in which I was shot started out as an ordinary day and a typical raid. Our office was getting legal instruction from one of our agents, and following the instruction, I went out to give a speech at a college. When I returned, I was told that two agents were out on the street investigating a report that a man who was charged with robbing a bank in Arkansas might possibly be in an apartment complex in Rockford and that there was a good chance that we could make an arrest that day.
So six of us went out to the apartment. We knew that the man`s wife and children were in the apartment with him, but we had a means by which we were able to evacuate the children. Unfortunately, the man would not allow the wife to leave under any circumstances. We knew the subject was armed with a .357 Magnum revolver. And he`d made comments that he`d use it.
So we covered the rear entrance and the front entrance, and we made entry. I stepped through the door, and there were four other agents at the front door with me. I announced, ”FBI,” gave the man`s name and said,
”You`re surrounded.” I heard nothing. I took a step, nothing. Another step, still nothing. Then, suddenly, from the left side, there was a tremendous noise, and I knew I`d been shot. It hit me in the face and just pushed me to one side.
Our problem was that we knew the wife was there so we had to be very, very careful about shooting. We did not want to shoot her. Just then the wife was pushed toward me, and I grabbed her over the shoulder and tried to pull her out of the apartment. At that point I was shot again, at least once, and then she was shot by her husband as I held her. I was then able to push her out the door, and I went out with her.
As soon as we were out the door, the other agents returned fire. The man then jumped through the rear window, head and shoulders first, right through the glass, and landed on the ground with his gun. He was trying to shoot one of our agents when he was shot by another agent.
My life was clearly saved by one agent who prevented me from going back into the apartment after I was shot and by another agent who stayed with me all the way to the hospital and made sure that I continued to talk and stay awake. The agent who shot the subject as he tried to shoot another agent in the back, saved that agent`s life. So I think the story is about all of us and illustrates how the agents work together to protect each other. The whole thing probably took less than a minute.
Most arrests are pretty simple. I`ve been in one other shooting and been hung on a car door at one time. But generally when a suspect is confronted with six armed agents and told to surrender, he`ll surrender. It`s the logical thing to do. People, basically, are good.
People are always interested in the ”10 Most Wanted” list. The basic criterion for the list may not always be the person who`s committed the worst crime. It might just be a feeling on our part that this type of exposure would help us catch this person. Or sometimes we might have a very violent person that we don`t put on the list because we don`t want them to have additional exposure; maybe we`re just about to make the apprehension or we`re zeroing in, and we don`t want to do anything to change the situation. So there are considerations for that. The purpose of the list is to ask citizens to get involved by calling us. It`s not for them to make the arrest. There`s nobody on that list who isn`t capable of doing anything. They`re all very dangerous. So we want citizens to call us if they see these people. And they do call us all the time, and these calls often lead to arrests.
The longest anyone has stayed on the list is 17 years. This man was finally caught. But a person might be removed if witnesses have died or something like that where he can no longer be brought to trial. The average time on the list is from 8 to 15 months before they`re picked up.
The list can also have more than 10 people on it if necessary. Alton Coleman, the rapist who was murdering little girls in the Midwest, was so violent that he was put on a special edition of the ”10 Most Wanted” list. So we had 11 at the time.
There`s really no such thing as a typical day on this job because no matter what you`re doing it could change at any time. When the FBI receives a call from a local law-enforcement agency that says a child has been abducted, we instantly respond. I was working in my garden when the Melissa Ackerman kidnapping case broke in the spring of 1985. Other agents were with their families. We dropped everything and we went, and we did not come back that night. The next day, even more agents came. That`s the way the big cases develop. We worked around the clock, seven days a week on that case. And nobody minded. That`s what an FBI agent is all about.