A book and TV show shed light on the career of a retired FBI agent who never fired his weapon, but mastered interviewing.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published January 9, 2004
VALRICO - The men and women who make their livings ferreting out spies and terrorists don't all live in exotic European capitals or undercover in Middle Eastern deserts. They're not all based in Washington, D.C., either.
In fact, some of the FBI's best counterterrorism and counterespionage agents are right here in the Tampa area.
For 10 years, Joe Navarro was one of them.
Navarro, who retired in June after a quarter-century with the FBI, spent the last decade of his career at the bureau's office on Zack Street. He worked with the National Security Division, mostly creating behavioral profiles of spies and international terrorists.
He worked on just about every terrorism or espionage case, proven or alleged, that made the papers in the past 10 years - Sept. 11, Oklahoma City, the Pinellas teen who flew a plane into a Tampa bank building, Sami Al-Arian, Robert Hansen.
The sensitive nature of Navarro's work meant he didn't get a lot of attention during his years with the FBI. But a new book and a television program promise to make him much more well-known in 2004.
Navarro and fellow FBI agent John Schafer co-authored a book, Advanced Interviewing Techniques, that hit bookstands this week. It's already been featured on Amazon.com and has drawn a lot of interest from the book-buying public.
"This is the first time the FBI has ever authorized FBI agents to write a book," Navarro said. "It's about interviewing, not interrogation. The people who are interested in it are criminology students and practitioners, law enforcement officers, lawyers and military personnel. Even human resources people and journalists."
Navarro said he and Schafer realized that there was an almost complete lack of quality information about the craft of conducting an interview, even though it's an essential skill in any investigative work.
"If I have any criticism of the FBI, it's that we don't spend as much time learning interviewing techniques as we do in firearms training," he said. "In 25 years with the bureau, I never used my weapon once. But I used interviewing techniques every day."
FBI agents get some instruction on interviewing. These days much of it comes from Navarro. He teaches classes in nonverbal communication at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va. The book probably won't make Navarro a household name. But Spy Catcher, a show that's in the works for Court TV, could make him the next John Walsh.
"This is kind of extraordinary," he said. "Earlier this year, I got a call from Court TV in New York. And I don't have cable so I had never heard of Court TV. But somehow they had heard of me."
Court TV producers asked Navarro whether he would host a show that featured dramatizations of real-life spy cases. Navarro taped a pilot episode in New York that Court TV is now marketing to potential sponsors.
"What we hope to do with the show is to highlight those cases that don't get a lot of attention, but that have a lot to do with the security of our country," Navarro said.
Some major terrorism cases over the years have generated very little public attention, Navarro said. In the early 1980s, for example, a Puerto Rican nationalist group called the Macheteros was the leading source of terrorism in the United States. They blew up seven military jets and killed 11 members of the U.S. Navy in Puerto Rico, in the largest attack on an American military base since Pearl Harbor.
"It barely got mentioned in the press," he said. "This is the kind of thing I want to get across to the public, that this has been going on and it has been closer than anyone thought."
Although he retired from the FBI, Navarro hasn't slowed down. In August, he and partner Ron Dunagan formed a company called LegalVision. The business works with lawyers to help make their trial witnesses more effective. He also teaches criminology classes at the University of Tampa and Saint Leo University in addition to his work at the FBI Academy.
He could have stayed in the bureau for another seven years, he said. But part of the reason he had joined the FBI was to repay a debt.
"My family fled Cuba after Fidel and came to America," he said. "I wanted to do something for this country and I didn't think I was cut out for the military, so to me this was the least I could do."
LEAST FAVORITE CHILDHOOD MEMORY: The Bay of Pigs Invasion, 6 miles from his home. "I remember the aircraft and the cannons. From that day on, our town, the town that I lived in, was totally blacked out at night. It was very scary."
COLLEGE: Brigham Young University, which he attended on a football scholarship.
WHY HE DIDN'T PLAY FOOTBALL: Just before college, he chased an armed robber in Miami. The robber stabbed him, and the injuries ended his football career. Brigham Young University honored the scholarship anyway.
WHY HE DIDN'T MIND: "I thought studies were more important. Football was just a way for me to go to college."
PRIZED POSSESSION: A letter from President Richard Nixon citing his heroism in foiling that robbery.
FAVORITE BOOK: The History of Herodotus, written by Herodotus in 440 B.C. He's read all nine volumes six times.
