Jim Kallstrom

Former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom, left, stands with Gov. Pataki at the announcement of his antiterror appointment.(AP Photo)

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Jim Kallstrom was furious. He lost 20 good friends, including John P. O’Neill, the World Trade Center’s director of security.

"There was a nagging part of my body and heart that wanted to do something," he told the New York Times. And when New York Governor George Pataki, with a little bit of arm-twisting, asked the retired 28-year veteran of the FBI to head the newly created Office of Public Safety, Jim Kallstrom didn’t hesitate: he re-upped. And MBNA, the credit-card giant in Wilmington, Delaware, where he is a senior vice president, kept him on salary, loaning him to New York as a public service gesture.

For Jim Kallstrom, who had retired in 1997 as assistant director of the FBI’s high-profile New York bureau, taking on this new responsibility as New York State’s anti-terrorism "czar" puts him back on the front lines. It is a situation in which he has thrived many times before.

Mud and Blood

James K. Kallstrom was born in 1943 in Millbury, Massachusetts, the son of a big-band trumpet player/car sales clerk and a nurse. He worked his way through the University of Massachusetts. After graduating in 1966, he joined the Marine Corps. As a platoon commander in Vietnam, Captain Kallstrom saw some of the hardest fighting of the war in I Corps near the DMZ.

"It was just hell," he said in an interview with the New York Times. But even worse than being shelled by the NVA and "living like a rat in a hole" was the reception he and other returning veterans received when they got back to The World.

"You’re trash, you’re scum, it tests your emotions," he said. "It makes you a different person. A more serious person."

A management major in college, Kallstrom had intended to pursue a career in business. A chance encounter with an FBI agent over a beer in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, helped alter his goals. He interviewed for a job as a special agent. In 1970, he was appointed one.

Targeting the Mafiosi

For 24 of the ensuing 28 years, Kallstrom was assigned to the bureau’s showcase office in New York City. His targets involved combating espionage, terrorism, organized crime, white-collar crime, illegal drugs. As he moved up the ladder of responsibility, he honed his public persona. He become a well-known face in the news when he headed the investigation of the demise of TWA Flight 800, which exploded in mid-air after taking off from Kennedy International Airport in 1996, claiming the lives of 230 people from seven countries.

"Considering the international climate," told several hundred management students at the Isenberg School of Management at his alma mater, UMASS, "the plane’s disappearance from radar at 18,000 feet, and reports of a huge fireball in the sky, we thought there was certainly a chance of terrorism."

His theory was never born out.

His work - the combined efforts of his 2,250-person FBI bailiwick, including 1,250 agents - also put away mobsters. Many mobsters.

When he came to New York, "the city was the organized crime capital of the world. The Mob controlled the construction industries and garbage collection. The Mob picked up garbage on time. But they burned it and dumped all sorts of pollutants into our rivers and streams.

"They also controlled the produce markets. A few pennies went to them every time you bought a head of lettuce. It took us over a decade to maximize the RICO statute (which gave law-enforcement authorities expanded wire-tapping and other search-and-seizure powers to combat organized crime). But by the 1980s, we had indicted all the heads of New York’s crime families. Today they’re a street gang compared to what they used to be."

A Different Challenge

Now that he’s back in the danger zone, Jim Kallstrom will have to use all of his organizational and management skills to coordinate and focus the myriad security apparatuses of dozens of state agencies.

"We have entered a new era in law enforcement," he told 300 state and local law enforcement officials in October, shortly after his appointment. "The key to success in this new war is to energize the talent in the men and women that are already serving us statewide, and to open up the lines of communication among federal, state, and local government, to ensure that a uniformed officer in Syracuse is as aware of what he needs to be looking for as he goes about his business on the job as an FBI agent based in Buffalo would be."

In many ways, Jim Kallstrom is back on the DMZ. His new job will tax all of his management, investigative, and public relations abilities. But his background, his expertise - he is regarded as one of the top experts on electronic surveillance, encryption, and high-tech investigative techniques - and his rhetorical skills will serve him well, just as he will serve the citizens of New York.