L.A.’s top FBI agent arrives by way of Iraq and Las Vegas

As Steve Martinez settled into his role last week as the top FBI agent in Los Angeles, any trepidation he felt about taking charge of one of the bureau’s busiest and most demanding field offices was tempered by an experience he had seven years ago in a “field office” of another kind.

That experience began with an intriguing telephone message from an official at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., who asked that Martinez call him back on a “secure” line.

At the time, the U.S. was gearing up for its war in Iraq in the spring of 2003. The official asked Martinez if he wanted to lead the FBI’s counter-terrorism and counterintelligence efforts when troops took control of Baghdad.

It’s a big decision, the caller cautioned. He’d just told Martinez to sleep on it when Martinez blurted out that he accepted the assignment.

Ten days later he was on the ground in Qatar in the United Arab Emirates, a staging ground for allied forces and personnel waiting to move into Iraq. Martinez’s mission, which was a national security secret at the time, was to “obtain and exploit” Iraqi intelligence left behind during the invasion, he said.

He was in charge of two teams of agents, one made up of tactical experts from the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, the other composed of street agents, intelligence analysts and computer forensic specialists.

The job was like no other Martinez had experienced in his then 16 years with the FBI. For one thing, there were periodic missile alerts that prompted him to don a full body chemical weapons suit at a moment’s notice.

During his three-month deployment in the region, he wore several hats, including those of bus driver, firefighter and overall fixer. At one point, he found himself wandering the streets, pockets stuffed with cash, competing with reporters to buy cellphones during the ramp up to the invasion.

About two weeks after Baghdad fell, Martinez and his agents rolled into the city with a military convoy. They set up shop in a guest house on one of Saddam Hussein’s palatial properties near the airport.

“The place was totally looted,” Martinez recalled during an interview in his 11th-floor office in the Federal Building in Westwood. “The windows were broken. There were no fixtures. The rats and mice had kind of taken over.”

Although Martinez had put out of his share of metaphorical fires as a veteran FBI supervisor, in Iraq they were real. U.S. warplanes taking off from the nearby airport would dispense chaff -- hot metal debris used to guard against surface-to-air missiles attacks. When the metal fell to the ground, it often started fires that Martinez and his agents would scramble to put out.

The overall experience, Martinez recalled, “gives you some perspective when you come back that most things aren’t such a big deal.”

While in Iraq, Martinez and his agents recovered documents from numerous Iraqi intelligence sites.

Their information has led to 11 criminal prosecutions of people in the U.S. illegally as Iraqi intelligence agents, officials said.

After his return from Iraq, Martinez was promoted and transferred to headquarters. In 2006, he was named special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office.

His recent appointment to head the L.A. office was accompanied by a promotion to assistant director of the FBI, a title given to the heads of the L.A., New York and Washington, D.C., field offices.

In the interview, Martinez said his top priorities in Los Angeles would be in keeping with those set by bureau policy in Washington, which places anti-terrorism at the top of the agenda for agents nationwide.

He said he intended to build on recently increased cooperation with local law enforcement, particularly the Los Angeles Police Department, and to reach out to leaders from various community groups throughout Southern California.

“We’ve learned in the FBI that we can’t do the job alone,” he said.

scott.glover@latimes.com