Federal case: Richard Garcia, the FBI's local bureau chief, leaves the agency after a career that included investigations of drug cartels and the Enron collapse.

NAMED 1 1/2 years ago as the first Latino chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Los Angeles field office, Richard Garcia suddenly announced his retirement last week. Garcia, who also has held top positions at the FBI in El Paso, Houston, Miami and Washington, has overseen the bureau's efforts to improve its counterterrorism capabilities, as well as the planned construction of a local headquarters building. The announcement was made on the same day that FBI Director Robert Mueller came under criticism from a House committee about the pace of reform at the agency after 9/11. Garcia plans to return to Houston where his wife has been living. That's not far from where he got his start in law enforcement with the Dallas Police Department.

Question: We have to ask. Is there any connection between your decision to retire and the criticism that the agency came under last week?

Answer: None. Mine is strictly family-related. Congress is always looking to re-tool the agencies in an effort to protect the citizens better. The FBI has made great strides in the changes.

Q: So why leave so suddenly?

A: The decision to retire was one I was thinking about for later this year or next year. But my son is going to Iraq in September and he's probably going to be stationed there for six months or more. When I was talking about retirement, he said he wasn't going to be there for my going away party. He said, "I'll be in Iraq." So I said, "OK."

Q: What are you going to do now?

A: I have 30 years in law enforcement this year and there are things I would like to do. I actually am looking at a couple of things at international companies and multimillion-dollar companies. Both are very good. Both are in the private sector.

Q: You leave unfinished business behind. What's at the top of that list for your successor?

A: That he continue to enhance the intelligence and information-sharing among agencies in the community. Each month or week that goes by, a new methodology and other types of things come up.

Q: What have you done so far to increase intelligence sharing? That was clearly a key issue that came out of the 9/11 commission.

A: We have a good intelligence center that is being put together, which will open by the end of summer.

Q: What do you mean by intelligence center?

A: It's where all agencies sit in a room dealing with everything intelligence-wise. It's for L.A. and for the region. This will bring everybody together (LAPD, Sheriff's Dept., etc.). It'll give us the ability to take it to that next step and give us a true heartbeat of the area, so when something happens we have in a short time period the ability to understand why it took place and who's involved.

Q: What else does the office need?

A: Everybody always needs additional resources. But we're not the only city that needs resources.

Q: The FBI is seeking additional powers in the revised Patriot Act that would not require a judge's approval for certain subpoenas. Does it need that too?

A: We need to do that. We've always had the administrative subpoena for drug investigations, where no court needs to approve it. It would not be difficult to establish the same procedures in terrorism cases. It's still reviewed by our legal staff and signed by the head of an agency, such as myself. It's not something that can be just initiated by a line agent on their own without any controls. Sometimes, that time you have to act on something is a short window.

Q: How has the nature of the job changed since 9/11?

A: I'm on the phone, in person and on e-mail a lot more than in the past. Now, on a weekly basis, I'm talking to these agencies. I have constant dialogue with the LAPD, Sheriff's Department and the joint terrorism task force. We are keeping a thumb or finger into everything going on, to ensure we have all the entities talking to each other.

Q: What's it been like on a day-to-day basis?

A: My hours are generally 5:30 a.m. and I go home at 7 p.m. I'm here on Saturdays and Sundays for a few hours, keeping track of significant cases that affect Los Angeles and handling specific meetings and briefings with agencies in law enforcement and others. I also do community outreach with multi-cultural groups, dealing with those of the Middle Eastern area in an effort to ensure we have that dialogue of communication between the community and the FBI.

Q: That's not quite like being on the streets. Did you miss being an agent?

A: Yes, I do miss being on the streets, but I live that through the agents now, giving them what they need to do their job and making recommendations on how to do their job easier.

Q: Agents investigating white-collar crimes were moved over to terrorism cases after the attacks. Have they returned since then?

A: We're (still) looking at the most significant cases. We don't have as many as in the past, but those agents are doing more complex and significant investigations.

Q: What do you mean by significant investigations?

A: More complex. I was in Houston when we did Enron. We have some good analysts, good financial analysts and other people who help the agents in these investigations.

Q: Why haven't we seen as many big corporate fraud cases prosecuted in Los Angeles as, say, New York?

A: (People) want to see the handcuffs. But you have to look at the industry of a particular city. In New York, you have Wall Street and the various major Fortune 500 corporate heads riving there or working out of corporate offices. We're still looking at cases (here) that deal with frauds in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Q: What is the status of the FBI's new headquarters building in Westwood?

A: We're at the point of getting an architectural design awarded and things like that. We're seeing if we're on the right course and thinking down the road 20 years or 25 years from now. We're looking at all the possible angles and opportunities. It may not be this property, it may be somewhere else. We're working with the city of Los Angeles on lands they have available, even in the downtown area. One of the key issues is the setbacks we set up for the property. We do those setbacks for security reasons. That's a lot harder downtown.

Q: Why did you decide to get into law enforcement?

A: My father's cousin was a police officer in San Antonio. When I was 12, he drove a squad car to the house and he let me turn on the lights. I was hooked. My brother is also an agent for the FBI in San Antonio. He's the smart one. He didn't go into management.

Q: You were in Miami during the height of the drug trade. What was that like?

A: We Started the task of drag intelligence, trying to find out who the players were. Everybody knew the main cartel members in Columbia and other places in South America, but nobody had the finite details about who were the transporters, who were the warehouse people, who were the boat captains, who were the pilots, who were the packagers, who were the money pickups and all that distribution part. It was me and a couple of agents who were tasked to find out the players.

Q: So how did you do it?

A: The best place we found a lot of our information was from the jails. One guy, George Jung, was arrested by the DEA for trying to bring in 300 kilos of cocaine on an airplane, so we sat with him and we found out he was the partner of Carlos Lehder, who was one of the many cartel heads. After they received reports from us, the DEA realized this guy could be a key witness in a trial and convinced George to testify against Carl Lehder. They later made a movie out of that, "Blow," with Johnny Depp.

INTERVIEW

Richard Garcia

Title: Assistant Director in Charge (chief of the Los Angeles office)

Agency: Federal Bureau of Investigation 

Born: San Antonio, 1953

Education: Bachelor's of science in law enforcement, Southwest Texas State University

Career Turning Point: Promotion to his first supervisory position in the Columbian/South American Drug Traffickers Unit at FBI headquarters

Most Admired People: Abe Flores, his father's cousin; Tim McNally, retired agent and former director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles office

Personal: Married, one son

Hobbies: Golf, fishing, biking, woodcarving