Paul Abbate, formerly assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, has been named executive assistant director of the bureau’s criminal, cyber, response and services branch.Abbate will assume his new role by late January and will be succeeded by Andrew Vale at the Washington field office, the bureau said Wednesday.
He will oversee cyber and criminal investigations, incident response, victim assitace and international operations in his new post.
Abbate joined FBI in 1996 as a special agent and became part of the New York field office to serve as a SWAT team member.
He was appointed as a supervisory special agent in the Iraq unit under the FBI’s counterterrorism division in 2003 and became a senior FBI liaison officer to the Defense Department and the bureau’s personnel responsible for counterterrorism operations when he was deployed to Iraq in 2005.
His previous roles at the bureau include assistant section chief of the counterterrorism division, assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism efforts in the Los Angeles field office, FBI’s on-scene commander in Libya and special agent in charge of the Detroit division.
