FBI's counterterrorism chief retiring
WASHINGTON -- The FBI's top counterterrorism official announced his retirement yesterday after three months on the job, marking the latest in a wave of departures from the senior ranks of the FBI since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Larry Mefford, a 24-year FBI veteran who became executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence in July, will leave at the end of the month to take a top security job for a large casino firm in Las Vegas, FBI officials said.
Mefford is the third person in the past 18 months to hold that position, which FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III created to oversee terrorism and intelligence investigations. All the senior posts at the FBI have turned over at least once since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The steady stream of departures has left the bureau "extremely thin in the experience department," one FBI official acknowledged yesterday. The bureau has struggled to hold on to personnel amid grueling hours, intensive congressional scrutiny, and a dramatic effort to remake the FBI into an agency focused on preventing terrorism.
"These are just high-burnout jobs," said Robert Blitzer, a former FBI counterterrorism official who has worked with Mefford and others who have left in recent months.
One FBI official said that Mefford, 53, left in part because of family ties in Nevada and because of the lucrative offer to be a top security official at the company controlled by casino magnate Steve Wynn. Mefford declined to comment through the FBI press office. Mefford joined the FBI in 1979 and worked at field offices in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Diego, and San Francisco before coming to FBI headquarters to work on issues involving weapons of mass destruction and to oversee establishment of a new cybercrime division.
