By Steve Neavling
Kurt Ronnow has been named special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division at the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
Before the appointment, Ronnow served as a deputy assistant director of the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division in Washington, D.C.
Ronnow joined the FBI as a special agent in 2002 and was assigned to the Salem Resident Agency, a satellite of the Portland Field Office in Oregon.
In 2012, Mr. Ronnow served as an assistant legal attaché in Islamabad. He also worked out of the FBI’s office in Karachi, Pakistan.
After returning to the U.S. in 2014, he became a supervisory special agent in the Counterterrorism Division at FBI headquarters and served as the program manager of the Philadelphia Field Office’s international terrorism program.
Ronnow also helped establish the Syria-Iraq Task Force to disrupt extremists who wanted to travel to the area.
In 2014, Ronnow became the first FBI senior advisor to the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command Central in Doha, Qatar.
In 2015, Ronnow became the first chief of the Extraterritorial Hostage Unit at FBI headquarters and then served as a senior leader in the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell.
In 2017, Ronnow was a field supervisor at the Tacoma Resident Agency under the Seattle Field Office.
In 2018, he became assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office’s intelligence branch.
Ronnow was promoted in 2020 to section chief of the Surveillance and Aviation Section in the Critical Incident Response Group at headquarters.
A year later, he was named deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division at headquarters.
Before joining the bureau, Ronnow was an attorney. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and business administration from George Fox College and a law degree from Willamette University, both of which are in Oregon.
