FBI Intelligence Unit Gets New Leader
Moving with unusual speed to fill a vacancy in the agency’s intelligence division, FBI Director William S. Sessions has decided to name Wayne R. Gilbert to head the unit responsible for U.S. counterintelligence efforts, government sources said Friday.
Gilbert, 52, is currently in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia field office. He takes over the bureau’s intelligence division at a time of great change in the challenge that spies present to national security.
FBI sources said that Gilbert, who would fill the vacancy created by the death of Thomas E. DuHadway, has done little foreign counterintelligence work during his 26 years with the agency but that he has extensive managerial experience, having headed the FBI’s Pittsburgh office before taking over the larger Philadelphia office in January, 1989.
From 1982 to 1986, Gilbert served as deputy assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.
The appointment is expected to be approved by Acting Atty. Gen. William Barr, who became acquainted with Gilbert in August, when the FBI investigated and successfully defused a tense hostage situation at a prison in Talladega, Ala. Gilbert was one of three FBI field commanders sent to help direct federal efforts against the jailed Cuban exiles who took 11 hostages there.
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