predecessor successor birth_place president imagesize birth_date order term_start image article_title term_end name
louis freeh -lrb- director -rrb- robert mueller -lrb- director -rrb- woodside , new york , u.s. george w. bush 150px 06 january 1950 acting director of the federal bureau of investigation june 25 , 2001 pickard-lg . jpg thomas j. pickard
 september 4 , 2001 thomas j. pickard
thomas j. pickard

thomas j. pickard -lrb- born january 6 , 1950 -rrb- was an acting director of the federal bureau of investigation for 71 days in the summer of 2001 following the tenure of director louis freeh .
he was replaced one week before the terrorist attacks on the world trade center towers and the pentagon .
born in woodside , queens , new york .
he graduated from saint francis college in brooklyn with a bba in accounting , and subsequently received his mba in taxation from st. john 's university in jamaica , queens .
he is a certified public accountant , licensed by the state of new york .
pickard began his career as a special agent of the fbi on january 13 , 1975 , and after a period of training , he was initially assigned to the new york city field office .
in april 1979 , pickard was transferred to the washington , d.c. , field office , where he worked in an undercover capacity on the case code-named `` abscam . ''
in july 1980 , pickard was promoted to fbi headquarters , serving in the inspection and criminal investigative divisions .
in october 1984 , pickard reported to the new york city field office as a supervisor in the white-collar crime section and later was appointed to be the assistant special agent in charge for all white-collar crime investigations and violent crime matters in new york .
in 1989 , pickard was selected for the fbi 's senior executive service and was transferred to fbi headquarters , where he oversaw the fbi 's finance operations and subsequently its personnel operations .
in 1993 , pickard was transferred to the new york city office once again , to serve as the special agent in charge of the national security division , supervising such matters as the trials of the 1993 world trade center bombing defendants , the trial of omar abdel-rahman and his co-conspirators , the manila air conviction of ramzi yousef and his associates , and the july 1996 , twa flight 800 explosion .
on september 10 , 1996 , fbi director louis freeh named pickard to the position of assistant director in charge of the washington field office .
during his tenure there , pickard supervised such matters as the investigation and arrest of fbi special agent earl pitts for espionage and the capture of convicted cia killer mir amir kansi .
on february 2 , 1998 , pickard assumed the position of assistant director of the fbi 's criminal investigative division at fbi headquarters .
on november 1 , 1999 , pickard was appointed deputy director , the number two position at the fbi .
on june 25 , 2001 , pickard was appointed acting director of the fbi by attorney general john ashcroft .
among the career challenges fbi agent john p. o'neill faced during the late 1990s and the early 2000s , as 9/11 approached , were o'neill 's own personality and the fbi 's bureaucracy , and pickard in particular has been implicated as an opponent of o'neill .
among other disruptions of o'neill 's career was a leak to `` the new york times '' ; in the pbs `` frontline '' documentary `` the man who knew . ''
o'neill 's significant other said o'neill suspected pickard might have leaked information to the `` times '' , but when confronted pickard assured o'neill that he had not .
the `` times '' story was seen as a final signal by o'neill that he should leave the fbi , and o'neill died weeks later in the september 11 , 2001 attacks on the world trade center , where he had taken a position as chief of security .
