John Perren, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Division at headquarters, is moving up. He’s been named to the post, Assistant Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
Perren, a former D.C. cop who joined the FBI in 1987, will replace Dr. Vahid Majidi, who plans to retire in May. Majidi had come to FBI from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where he served as the Chemistry Division Leader.
Earlier in his career, Perren was supervisor of the Washington Field Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and then assistant special agent in charge.
In 2005, he spent a half year in Iraq as the FBI’s on-scene commander before returning home to headquarters to become section chief of the Weapons of Mass Destruction/Domestic Terrorism Operations Section.
In 2007, he was named special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Branch at the Washington Field Office. He has twice filled in as acting head of the field office.
The FBI established the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Directorate post about 5 1/2 years ago “to centralize and coordinate all WMD-related investigative activities, intelligence analysis capabilities, and technical expertise from across the Bureau.”
