WASHINGTON — The FBI's storied workforce is being dismantled and reassembled as Director Robert S. Mueller III tries to overhaul the hidebound agency.
The result is a culture war between old and new, and older agents are rebelling. Among the disaffected are hundreds of agents in field offices around the country who are suddenly facing forced transfers to FBI headquarters.
Many, including Michael Clark, are leaving.
For 23 years, Clark was a loyal FBI man, rising to supervise a squad of agents in Connecticut working corporate fraud and public corruption cases. He helped send a former governor to prison.
But then the FBI told him he had to move to Washington, and he found out his loyalty ran only so deep. Now a casualty of an agency that has become a construction zone, Clark is working for Otis Elevator Co.
The agents argue that the upheaval is counterproductive. They say they have spent years cultivating contacts and relationships with state and local officials, which are not easily replaced. Middle managers, such as squad leaders and desk supervisors, often form the institutional memory of the bureau's 56 field offices.
"Nobody is happy about it," said Clark, who recently left the bureau for the top security and investigative job at Otis. "You are going to lose a ton of experience."
FBI agents long have fled for greener pastures, propelled by a pension system that allows them to retire with full benefits at 50 and offers little incentive to stay longer. High corporate demand for their skills since the Sept. 11 attacks has further swelled the ranks of retirees.
Recently, they have included agents overseeing some of the bureau's highest-profile investigations, such as the CIA leak case and bribery investigations in Congress. Fat retention bonuses ordered up by Congress have failed to stem the flight.
Turnover among the agents in charge of FBI field offices is such that some fear those supervisors are losing stature among state and local law enforcement officials they often rely on. A study led by former Atty. Gen. Richard L. Thornburgh found that an agent in charge of an FBI field office has been in that position an average of about 15 months.
The high-profile departures mask an even broader problem that extends deep into supervisory ranks at FBI headquarters.
