After 27 years in law enforcement, including more than two decades with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Brian Maloney has joined Security Community Network (SCN) as a Regional Security Advisor based at JEWISHcolorado. He joins SCN Regional Director Phil Niedringhaus and SCN Regional Security Advisor Kevin Farrington. Recently, he talked with JEWISHcolorado about the journey that has brought him to this new position as JEWISHcolorado’s third security advisor.
You retired from the FBI in 2021 after more than 22 years. What drew you to join the FBI initially?
I was in my teens in the mid-1980s when I saw the movie “Manhunter.” It’s a Michael Mann film about an FBI agent pursuing a serial killer, and I decided on the spot that I wanted to be an FBI agent and catch serial killers. Fast forward 25 years, and I have only worked peripherally on a handful of serial cases, so I never did what I dreamed of as a teen. That said, I have been able to do work that I didn’t even know existed when I started my career with the FBI in 1999.
It’s one thing to dream about working in the FBI, and another thing to make it happen. How did you make it a reality?
I was born in Wisconsin, but I grew up in Denver. I went to J.K. Mullen High School and continued my education at a Jesuit institution, Creighton University, where I majored in Chemistry. I remember meeting with an FBI recruiter at Creighton before I graduated, and he told me I wasn’t old enough to be a Special Agent at the FBI—you have to be 23—so I decided to use the extra time to earn a master’s degree in Forensic Science with a concentration in Criminalistics at the University of New Haven.
Television shows like “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” have made people more familiar with the field of Forensic Science, but was this a relatively new area of study when you started your master’s degree in 1993?
Yes, this was before the OJ Simpson trial in 1995 and the hit TV show “CSI” debuted in 2000. If you said you were studying forensics, people thought you were talking about a speech and debate team. You had to explain that Forensic Science was the application of the scientific method to matters of law. Biologists, chemists, physicists, and other scientists apply their base discipline to crime scenes and physical evidence. Now we know what that means, but in those days, it was a little-known niche discipline.
After graduate school, what did you do with your degree in this relatively new field?
I started my career in the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. This was the mid-90s and Southern California was a hotbed of clandestine methamphetamine labs. With my background in chemistry, there were multiple layers to the job. You had to collect and analyze evidence for the presence of controlled substances. I testified in local, state, and federal court many times. But first and foremost, you had to safely dismantle a clandestine methamphetamine lab, and these labs were not exactly OSHA approved.
I hate to make another television reference, but this does sound like “Breaking Bad.”
I watched a few episodes of that series, but there were too many realities in it. Yes, there was some Hollywood stuff, but some parts were spot on.
After California, you headed to Chicago.
I was hired by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to be a Forensic Chemist, doing similar work to what I was doing in California, except in Chicago, there were more seizures of bulk amounts of other drugs—sometimes hundreds of kilos of cocaine, marijuana, and almost any other drug you can name. Another difference stemmed from sentencing guidelines in the federal system that required a slightly different analysis.
In 1999, the teenage dream of joining the FBI finally became a reality for you.
Yes, I switched from being a DEA Chemist in a lab to being an FBI Special Agent. At the time, my wife really did not want me to join the FBI because she was afraid I would never be home. We talked it through and eventually, her concerns were assuaged. I told her then that if it ever became too stressful and all-consuming, I would quit because our marriage would be more important than anything to me. We have been married 28 years now.
Your work for the FBI meant relocating around the country multiple times and serving in a variety of different roles. Is there any job that you did within the FBI that you especially miss?
We made four moves—to Los Angeles, Kansas City, Chicago, and finally to Denver. Some of those moves were based on undercover work I was doing. I do miss the time I spent in Denver serving as a Special Agent Bomb Technician. That role brought me back to the days of working in clandestine drug labs. Synthesizing illicit drugs is functionally similar to making explosives from household chemicals. The chemicals are different but there are many similarities.
The vast majority of my work as a bomb technician was training state, local, and federal law enforcement personnel in the U.S. and overseas. A device can be designed to kill just one person or many people. Its purpose and how it is made is limited only by the bombmaker’s imagination, knowledge, and skill. I liked thinking about what commonly available materials a bombmaker was using, where they were getting them, and how to render devices safe. As a bomb technician, you were always solving problems. The FBI has a presence in a lot of countries where we help the host country in their analysis of bomb-making equipment and adjudication of the bombmaker. If you can put one bombmaker behind bars overseas, they won’t be able to train other people and they will not be able to attack the United States or our allies. If you stop one bombmaker, you solve a lot of problems.
Any other aspect of your work in the FBI that you will remember because of the impact you made?
We started a counterintelligence task force in Denver, and we worked with just about every agency in the U.S. Intelligence Community. I started on the squad as a Special Agent and then became the squad supervisor and, in that role, seeing the impact we had on our foreign adversaries was fantastic. Operations we initiated throughout the U.S. are still running and still producing fruit today.
I understand that some of your work took you overseas, including to Israel.
I collaborated extensively on a number of counterintelligence matters with the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) for several years. They were doing all sorts of operations against a number of hostile state actors in the region. That is their reality. Through our collaborative relationship, we were able to mitigate a number of significant counterintelligence threats.
After retiring from the FBI, you have spent the past nearly three years working for Motorola as a Sales Account Executive and Department of Defense Account Manager for six states. What prompted you to leave that position and join SCN and JEWISHcolorado?
I loved working for Motorola. It’s a great company with wonderful and talented people. Normally, you don’t leave that kind of position. But you do when you need purpose.
I missed having a mission. I missed being able to have an effect for good, making the country better and safer.
I heard about the position at SCN. I already knew Robert [Grant], Phil [Niedringhaus] and Kevin [Farrington]. The rest is history.
What do you see as your new mission at JEWISHcolorado?
I am Roman Catholic. I believe the powers that want to attack the Jewish community will not stop there. They will also come after Christians. They won’t stop with the eradication of Israel. I would argue that it is the nature of evil to try to destroy the best in humans. If I can do something to stop that, then I will have fulfilled my mission.