FBI Special Agent Kevin Coughlin gave a presentation at the Multipurpose Room in Kessel Student Center on Tue., April 14, discussing his experience in the FBI, and what it takes for a person to join.

The FBI is divided into branches, which have different squads under them. These include white-collar crimes, polar corruption, and Coughlin’s branch, the Violent Crime and Major Offenders branch.

This branch has drug squads, gang squads, crimes against children squads, and Coughlin’s perpetual squad, which can be assigned anything from those categories.

“The benefit of being on my squad is you never know what you’re going to get when you come to work. One week you could be working a bank robbery, the next a kidnapping case. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do a lot of cool stuff,” Coughlin said.

Coughlin started working for the FBI when he was 35, and has been working seven years. He had previous experience working for the government after being in the Marine Core for 18 years.

Some of the more notable cases that Coughlin has worked on include Somali pirates.

One case was the attack on S.S. Nicholas, where pirates mistook a Navy Ship for a Freight ship, tried to hijack it, and failed.

Another case was when pirates attacked the navy ship U.S.S. Ashland, resulting in the violent death of one of the pirates, and their ship being destroyed. Finally, he worked on the SV Quest case, where four Americans were murdered by pirates, and helped discover the criminals and got them sentences of life in prison.

Coughlin’s role in investigations is to interview and interrogate suspects.

Often times, when caught, the pirates would claim that they where just innocent fishermen, or refugees who the Navy mistook for enemies. In order to prove this wrong, the FBI would investigate too see if there actually was any fishing supplies on the ship, and link back pictures of pirates they caught, to pictures of the pirates on mother ships, taken by foreign powers, to confirm their identity.

Coughlin would also interview the “refugees” to find holes in their stories, like how long their voyage was, what was their purpose, and what was the size of their crew.

“These [pirates] aren’t going to know what everyone else is saying. The devil is in the details. You’re usually going to have things that are not going to add up,” Coughlin said.

Coughlin also spoke on how positions in the FBI are open to a wide range of fields of expertise, including technology, surveillance, all kinds of science, firearms, altitude and trajectory, language, and even sketch artists.

Becoming an FBI agent is a difficult process. The FBI application indicates there is a minimum requirement of three years of experience. However because of the amount of competition, an applicant could easily be competing against many people with much more experience then that. It also requires a medical exam to determine if a person is physically fit or not.

Despite the difficulties, there are entry-level positions in the FBI, for which an agent could apply for right out of college. These include intelligence analysis and surveillance.

Working in the FBI, even when going after the worst offenders, is often safer then working in normal law enforcement. Coughlin explained how the most dangerous thing a normal member of law enforcement can be is a traffic stop, because the offender could be anyone, and there is only one officer incase things go wrong. In the case of the FBI, the stop is completely planned, they know who they’re dealing with, and the suspect is so overwhelmed that they often times cannot even fight back.

“When we go to arrest someone we go with force. We go with 12 guys who come to your door, with guns and flash bangs, you see us coming at you, fast, hard, and with a lot of people. It doesn’t even cross your mind to try and fight,” Coughlin said

A person can only apply to the FBI two times before they are locked out from applying again. Because of this, Coughlin recommends that the person be comfortable in their current position in case they don’t get in.

“I caution you because you have time. You should go out and get a job that will help you get into the FBI, but also get a job that you’re still going to enjoy doing. So if you join the police force and you’re happy being a police officer, and you go into the FBI from there, great, but if you don’t get in, you’re still a cop,” Coughlin said.