SAC Boetig

An expert on cyber threats will serve as Special Agent in Charge of the FBI office in Buffalo, reports Buffalo News.

Brian P. Boetig, former director of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, was named Tuesday as the new head of the Buffalo office.

Boetig’s career with the FBI began in 1998. He worked as an instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and as an FBI Counterterrorism Division Liaison Officer to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, Buffalo News wrote.

Before joining the FBI, Boetig served as a police officer in Auburn, Alabama.

Boetig replaced Christopher Piehota, who departed in April to take the position of director of the Terrorist Screening Center in Washington D.C.

Steve Neavling

Buffalo Police feel duped after hiring an officer who was accused of overseeing a major marijuana grow operation and  had worked as an FBI informant before his hire, the Buffalo News reports.

Jorge Melendez became an FBI informant in New York after a wire tap caught him talking to drug dealers, police told the Buffalo News. That was before he was hired by the police force.

“He was working as a confidential informant for the FBI in New York City shortly before he joined the Buffalo Police Department several years ago,” a police official familiar with the marijuana operation said Monday, according to the paper.

The police department fired Melendez earlier this month after he was arrested by the feds for overseeing a major pot growing operation in South Buffalo. The paper reported that he often drove up to the operation in a patrol car on duty and in uniform.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda said his department is examining its screening process for new officers.

Melendez, 41, is on house arrest at his apartment as part of a $250,000 bond.

Shoshanna Utchenik

FBI Special Agent Harold Haberfeld is being honored for his service, nearly 70 years after his plane crashed in a WWII mission in northern Africa, reports Fox News. The FBI Buffalo office dedicated its main conference room to Haberfeld in an outdoor ceremony Thursday.

However Haberfeld’s ill-fated mission was so top-secret that his home bureau in Buffalo isn’t entirely sure what it was.

It has been surmised that Haberfeld and Percy “Sam” Foxworth, the assistant director of the FBI’s special intelligence services branch, were sent to interview the French-born American citizen living in Algiers. Charles Bedaux, a 57-year-old millionaire industrialist who admitted close friendships with Nazi party leaders, later killed himself. According to Fox, the agents’ plane apparently went down from mechanical problems and it took 5 years to recover any remains, which were laid to rest in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri.

Hoover wrote afterward, “… Special Agent Haberfeld had an outstanding record in the service. His excellent background and superior abilities were assurance of a splendid future in the Bureau.”

Buffalo agents are requesting that FBI headquarters declassify the details of the mission, but they didn’t wait for a response to dedicate a memorial in Haberfeld’s honor.

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