Joseph Demarest
The FBI has launched an internal investigation into a top official at the bureau’s largest office, Fox News has learned.
Since January the FBI has been looking into a relationship between Joseph Demarest, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York field office, and a lower-level FBI employee, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The investigation centers not on the relationship itself but on issues raised after the relationship began, the source said. The issues being investigated do not include any allegations of abuse or threats, according to the source.
The investigation was first reported by two Web sites that focus on law enforcement matters, MainJustice.com and TickleTheWire.com.
Asked about the investigation, a spokesman for the FBI’s New York field office told Fox News he couldn’t comment.
“We do not comment on personnel issues,” Supervisory Special Agent Rich Kolko said.
Demarest has been temporarily reassigned to FBI headquarters in Washington.
According to MainJustice.com, Demarest and the lower-level employee, described as “involved in intelligence,” offered different accounts of their relationship.
Demarest was married as of October 2006, but he is no longer married.
He took the top spot with the New York field office in December 2008, after a 20-year career with the FBI and then a short stint in the private sector.
“Joe Demarest has a strong national security and criminal investigative background with deep roots in New York,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said in a statement after appointing Demarest to become Assistant Director in Charge.
Following the 9/11 attacks, Demarest was selected as one of two FBI officials to lead a multi-agency investigation into the attacks, managing more than 400 federal, state and local investigators as they investigated thousands of leads each day, according to an FBI press release in December 2008.
Demarest then served in several terrorism-related positions at FBI headquarters and the New York field office, before leaving in early 2008 to become head of international security at Goldman Sachs. His time there lasted only a matter of months.
Under Demarest’s leadership, the FBI’s New York field office has dealt with several high-profile terrorism cases, including the arrest of 25-year-old Najibullah Zazi, the Colorado airport shuttle bus driver who recently pleaded guilty to planning a bomb attack on the New York City subway system.