One of 10 children growing up in Chicago, John Gillies fell in love with a book in fifth grade about the history of the FBI -- tales of bank robbers, mobsters and spies.
The last page especially grabbed him: The bureau was looking to hire accountants and lawyers as G-men. Right then, the 10-year-old saw his future and set his sights on accounting as his ticket.
Now, after 24 years as a special agent, Gillies has become the FBI's chief in South Florida, taking the reins last month of the bureau's Miami field office -- the fifth-largest in the country, stretching from Fort Pierce to Key West with 460 agents.
``I have a passion for corruption cases and protecting children, but we do have a lot of threats that we need to address,'' said Gillies, 50, who is married with two children.
Those other threats include terrorism, white-collar fraud, Internet child predators, violent crime and drug trafficking.
Gillies said he plans to ``make tweaks,'' not dramatic changes, to the overall operation.
His FBI career began in 1983, the year after he graduated with bachelor degrees in accounting and business administration from Illinois State University.
His uncle, a Catholic priest, happened to preside over a funeral service for two FBI agents killed in a plane crash. Afterward, the uncle put in a good word for his nephew -- and Gillies got his foot in the door.
Initially he worked as a financial analyst, then became a special agent in 1985. His first assignment: Albany, N.Y., investigating white-collar fraud.
His next stop: the FBI's New York City field office. He was tapped for counterintelligence work, which he can't discuss.
``At the end of theday, you weren't putting bad people in jail,'' hesaid, ``but you have an effect by protecting the security of the United States.''
Gillies yearned to return to investigations, so he transferred 3,000 miles away, to San Diego. There, he investigated the failure of Home Federal and other banks.
He then made his mark with a public corruption case that took down three state Superior Court judges who accepted $100,000 in bribes from a personal-injury lawyer in the mid-'90s. The lawyer was also convicted.
The case, which led to judicial reforms such as assigning cases on a rotational basis, fueled his zeal against corruption. ``It starts with dollar one,'' he said. ``People need to understand that the first time you take that first dollar, you've been bought.''
After that stint, Gillies traveled farther west -- to Honolulu -- where he entered management for the first time, as supervisor of a squad targeting corruption and other crimes. The squad nailed a crooked city councilman, liquor inspectors and an IRS agent, among others.
The post also took him to Hong Kong, the Philippines and other far-flung places.
To rise up management ranks, Gillies had to do a tour of duty at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 2002. He oversaw the bureau's Financial Institution Fraud unit for the entire country. That led to senior management jobs in Detroit and St. Louis, where he zeroed in on white-collar, violent and cyber crimes, along with terrorist funding and more corruption cases.
But Gillies, as the special agent in charge of the Miami field office, said he faces his biggest challenge yet: ``We have vast responsibilities -- not only here but also in Latin America.''
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