It’s a strange time to be an FBI agent. The agency is investigating suspected Russian interference in the presidential campaign, the FBI director was fired, and the president has publicly attacked the bureau’s credibility.

None of that matters much, though, to John Brown. It can’t. As San Diego’s newest FBI special agent in charge, Brown knows that nothing can interfere with the mission of protecting the American public.

“I think this will pass,” Brown said. “You can’t drop the ball. You just have got to let it pass.”

Brown, an Army veteran who joined the FBI in 1999, comes to San Diego after working in Chicago, St. Louis, at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and most recently as a special agent in charge of counterintelligence and cyber crime in Los Angeles.


A few months after getting settled in his new role, he sat down with the Union-Tribune and talked about his background, the recent spotlight on the FBI, and the areas where the agency needs to grow to combat future threats.

Q: Have the White House’s public jabs at the FBI affected you personally? What about the morale of your agents?

A: At my all-hands I told everyone in February when I arrived, I said listen, I’m a professional. I’m not motivated or demotivated by the news. I’m committed to our craft, and that is protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution — that is our mission. So we have to keep our heads down and continue to do what we do because that’s what’s expected, and we can’t have any gaps or seams in that. I think most FBI employees see it that way. I think in the end it’s noise what’s happening, and it is sad. I think this will pass. Director (Christopher) Wray, we’ve met with him. He’s a really impressive man.He’s quiet, thoughtful, reflective. I think he’s what this organization needs right now and he’s intent on bringing us through this storm.

Q: How has the agency dealt with former FBI Director James Comey’s firing? It seems like he was very well regarded among agents.


A: When (J. Edgar) Hoover died we opened up the next day. You recognize (Comey) was an important member of this organization, but at the same time the organization is bigger than him and the mission is bigger than all of us. That’s what we have to keep our focus on.

Q: What did you do before you were an FBI agent?

A: I grew up in a small farm town in Illinois. Service came from my father who was a Vietnam veteran and a sheriff’s deputy until he retired and then he stayed in the security industry. So a sense of service and duty permeated our house, and after I finished college I went into the Army. I was an air defense officer and military intelligence officer.

Q: You started as a rookie agent in Chicago. What was your first big case?


A: I worked counter-intelligence. The squad I was on was always an agressive squad. The one case I had was an Iraqi Foreign Agents Registration Act case. (Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, an Arabic-language newspaper publisher in a Chicago suburb, was eventually found to have worked on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s regime and failed to register as a foreign agent.) It was a great case. It was kind of the first time we’d taken a counterintelligence case at that point in many, many years to fruition in Chicago to trial. I remember taking my case down to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I’m an aggressive young agent and I kind of did it on my own. I went to the duty assistant U.S. attorney and said ‘Hey I’ve got this case, what do you think?’ She said ‘Come with me’ and we walked straight down to (U.S. Attorney) Pat Fitzgerald’s office. My supervisor’s like, ‘What are you doing?!’

Q: You were also deployed to Iraq as an FBI agent yourself, right?

A: We were embedded with a military unit there and working hand in hand with them. They needed skilled interviewers and basically that’s what you did for 12 hours a day, every day. We’re looking for connections back at the homeland, so if there’s something, we’re going to be laser focused on that. At the same time there’s going to be interviews they just need your help with and you did them and you were better for it. From my standpoint it really helped me develop as an interviewer.

Q: You later moved to counterterrorism investigations. Any big cases?


A: I was involved with Operation Northern Exposure (American Ehsanul Sadequee, 19, and a Georgia Tech student were casing U.S. targets and communicating with terrorists around the world, finally traveling overseas to wage jihad themselves. The investigation ended with 40 arrests around the world by partner agencies and disrupted many terror plots.) I was involved in the FBI effort looking at online extremists’ use of the internet and working to build that effort. I was involved in the David Coleman Headley case (the American who scouted targets for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, and then the attacks against a Danish newspaper in Copenhagen.) I did the interview for that. It was a long, long — days — interview. Mumabi was India’s 9/11, from that standpoint for them it was a big case, as well. It was an honor to play a role in that case.

Q: Why did you move to cyber?

A: I came from a counterterrorism background, and if you watch the evolution of the FBI, after 9/11, counterterrorism was ‘Go get ‘em, we’re on the attack.’ At the same time cyber was just burgeoning, but they were like we need to figure this out. We need some aggressiveness, so I was brought up (to FBI Headquarters) for that mindset. It was eye-opening. I think I played a small part of building some of the edifices that still stand today, from Cyber Watch (24-hour command center for cyber intrusions), to in terms of how we look at cases — not looking at the IP addresses and data, but in terms of there are people behind the keyboard. I think you see that now we have a really aggressive cyber push in the FBI, and it has to be. I think we are still far away from what we need to be now as a USG.

Q: What concerns you most when it comes to the cyber crime threat?


A: My concern is awareness, understanding the threats out there, and that if you’re part of an enterprise, you are part of that chain. And if you’re the weak link then they’re going to get in. Ninety percent of cyber attacks start with a spearfishing email.

Q: What do you see as the FBI’s priorities in San Diego?

A: The No. 1 priority is homegrown violent extremism, that’s a close fight that’s always going to be a priority. And with the border here so close, that’s always a concern. We’re actually trying to build more FBI personnel at the border working with CBP (Customs and Border Protection). I think that just shows the partnership here amongst all of us.

Q: Where does the FBI go from here?


A: We’re doing a great a job on the criminal side, with our task forces. We’re being innovative. That’s the close fight. The counterterrorism, the gangs, the drugs. But then it’s the long fight that gives me real concern as an organization. On the cyber side it’s showing our workforce is prepared. It’s not just a cyber agent having to look at logs, look at data. It’s going to eventaully have to be all the agents that are doing that, all the professional staff. We have to get comfortable in that sphere.

At the same time on the counterintelligence side, you look at the foreign intelligence activity that’s occuring in this country, particularly the theft of trade secrets, proprietary information, our technology in the San Diego area, our military, we’ve got over 300 defense contractors in San Diego, then we have the border close by. I think the long game is we’ve got to be laser focused on that. Sometimes it’s hard to explain that to folks, because they don’t see it. But we’ll see it in 50 years when their jets are faster than ours, and we’re not winning those fights. That’s my bigger concern. I’m going to continue to push that message to my folks.


kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis