FBI’s Director of Espionage Cases to Retire

James H. Geer, who has headed the FBI’s intelligence division during a four-year span in which some of the bureau’s most noted espionage cases were developed, is retiring, an FBI spokesman said Tuesday.

Geer, 50, is a 25-year bureau veteran, and his decision to end his FBI career “comes as no surprise,” said Milt Ahlerich, assistant FBI director for public affairs. FBI officials are required to retire by the age of 55, and many leave to launch second careers after reaching 50 as Geer is said to be doing.

Ahlerich dismissed as “preposterous” an intelligence analyst’s claim that Geer’s departure signals official displeasure over the FBI’s handling of the investigation of suspected Soviet spy Felix Bloch.

Bloch, former second-in-command at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, has been suspended from his State Department post and is under intense FBI investigation on suspicion of turning over secret material to a Soviet agent.

Ahlerich said Geer’s decision to leave was his alone, and that he is regarded in the agency as “an innovator whose accomplishments are second to none.”

The intelligence analyst, who would comment only anonymously, said Geer’s departure comes at a time of debate between the FBI and CIA over the role of counterintelligence and which agency is best handling the assignment.

The analyst said the Bloch case “fell between the cracks” of the FBI and CIA operations. But Ahlerich said Geer had a significant role in establishing closer ties and more effective cooperation between the two agencies.

Geer’s deputy assistant director, Gary Penrith, also is leaving the division to become head of the FBI’s Newark, N.J., field office.

No successors have been chosen, Ahlerich said.

Geer has headed the FBI’s intelligence division since 1985. The targets of successful counterintelligence investigations during the four-year period include an espionage ring headed by John Walker, former National Security Agency spy Ronald Pelton and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.