Citizen Crime Watch Blog

Bernazzani retires
by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
Friday May 09, 2008, 8:13 PM

Jim Bernazzani, the tough-talking face of the FBI in Louisiana, retired from the bureau Friday, two weeks after he was ordered back to the agency’s Washington headquarters for publicly flirting with a run for mayor of New Orleans.

Bernazzani’s decision to stay in New Orleans — and end a 24-year career with the FBI rather than return to Washington — does not signal a continuing interest in running for mayor, however.

“I will not run for political office,” he said Friday afternoon. “Absolutely not.”

Two weeks ago, the FBI announced it had removed Bernazzani from his post as special agent in charge of the New Orleans office and offered him a transfer to Washington. The ouster came swiftly in response to Bernazzani’s two television interviews several days earlier, in which he said he was considering a run for mayor.

The federal Hatch Act prohibits certain federal officials, including FBI agents, from campaigning for office. While it wasn’t clear that Bernazzani had violated the act, the flirtation with politics by a man who supervises investigations of corrupt public officials created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

[more]

FBI chief loses post in N.O.
Talk of mayor’s race leads to transfer
The Times-Picayune
Saturday, April 26, 2008
By Brendan McCarthy

James Bernazzani, the head of New Orleans’ FBI office, a silver-maned, tough-talking, Harvard-educated, larger-than-life crimefighter sent to squash public corruption in a jurisdiction notorious for it, was reassigned to the agency’s national headquarters Friday after he publicly flirted with a run for mayor.

The abrupt transfer marks the end of Bernazzani’s three-year tenure in New Orleans, a tumultuous period during which he carved out a prominent niche as the face and voice of a very public war on corruption.

[more]