The FBI Loses A Key Player

Deputy FBI director Tom Pickard, 50, who has been overseeing the agency's investigation into both the September 11th terrorism attacks and the widening circle of anthrax cases, is resigning at the end of November. Pickard, a 27-year bureau veteran who supervised the prosecution of the World Trade Center bombers as well as the terrorism cases against the "blind sheik" Abdel Rahman, the East Africa embassy bombers and the perpetrators of the attack on the USS Cole in Aden, has been the FBI's chief operating officer since late 1999, when then-FBI director Louis Freeh made him his right hand man.

Current FBI director Robert Mueller, who came on the job right after Labor Day, signaled his intentions to keep Pickard on by naming him the "case agent" — the top investigator — on the so-called PENTTBOM investigation.

Since September 11, Pickard has joined Mueller every morning at dawn as the director prepares to brief Attorney General John Ashcroft and President Bush. For the rest of the day and into the evening, Pickard presides over the FBI's Special Investigations and Operations Center, the crisis command center staffed by representatives of the bureau and 32 other federal agencies.

Angular, amiable and seldom at a loss for a quip, Pickard, a blunt Queens native, recently joked to colleagues that life reminded him of "Groundhog Day," the Bill Murray farce about a man doomed to repeat the same 24 hours over and over again. "The briefings begin at 5:55 a.m. By 9 a.m. I'm brain dead, and we're just starting," he told one friend.

Pickard is the second senior FBI official to announce his departure since Mueller arrived. Neil Gallagher, assistant FBI director in charge of the national security division, handed in his retirement papers last month. It is not clear who will replace either man. In fact, bureau sources say Mueller is considering radical changes in the FBI's top-tier management structure, replacing the deputy with three or more senior executives. The move is designed to alleviate the burn-out problem that has plagued Pickard and his immediate predecessors.

As FBI insiders put it, the bureau has a "thin bench" problem — and some fear the lack of seasoned mid-level supervisors will hamper the bureau's performance during the current crisis. With retirements on the rise, the bureau's average experience level has declined into the single digits.