By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
WASHINGTON — Joseph L. Perritte, a retired FBI agent who ended his 30-plus year career as crypto systems unit chief of the electronics section of the FBI Laboratory, died late last month in Bethesda, Md., of prostrate cancer at age 88, the Washington Post reported.
Perritte, a resident of Silver Spring, Md, started in FBI in 1942 as a student fingerprint classifier and later went on to the FBI Laboratory, where he was assigned to the radio engineering section, the Post’s Pat Sullivan wrote.
He entered the Navy in 1944, “serving as a top-secret communications officer at the headquarters of the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,” the Post reported. “He later was an electronics officer at the Joint Communications Activity on Guam.
After his discharge, he became a special agent in 1946 and worked primarily in communications intelligence and security, the Post reported. He retired in 1976.
