Downsizing the FBI Way

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As corporate America continues to shed workers, the FBI is receiving more and more calls from jittery executives anxious about the possibility of disgruntled former employees returning to offices with semiautomatics blazing. Requests for advice have increased "drastically" in the past two years, says Clinton R. Van Zandt, who studies mass murderers and other violent types for the FBI Academy's Investigative Support Unit, made famous by the film The Silence of the Lambs. Many inquiries are provoked by worries about specific employees, typically a depressed, explosively angry individual who is drinking heavily, ostentatiously collecting guns, or threatening corporate officials -- or all three. The FBI suggests this management technique: send the problem person for counseling. If someone must be let go, be sure the firing is done with sensitivity (never sack by letter, agents warn). Above all, provide retraining and job-placement help. "These are desperate people who feel they've reached the end of their rope," says Van Zandt. "We ought to give them a few more feet."