Highs and lows of an FBI agent

Edward J. Hanko, special agent in charge of the FBI's Philadelphia office, still smarts when he remembers a federal jury's rejection of the corruption case his agents had spent years building against six narcotics officers.

"That one hurt," he said, recalling the day in May when the verdict was read.

The case had been particularly hard-fought. Lawyers for the indicted officers had challenged the competence of Hanko's agents and accused them of ignoring justice for the sake of an indictment.

"I told them they had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of," Hanko recalled telling his crestfallen investigators. "We do the hard things. We may not get the end result that we want, but I'm willing to expend the resources to do the right thing."

Colleagues and friends say he has followed this mantra throughout his law enforcement career: A case's impact cannot always be seen from the courtroom.

Hanko, 55, retired last week after 29 years with the FBI. His impact can be measured in part by the list of targets the bureau has taken on since he was named to his Philadelphia post in March 2013.

Agents concluded an investigation exposing Philadelphia Traffic Court as a warren of patronage politics and corruption - a case that prompted state lawmakers to dismantle the court.

They tangled with union toughs responsible for years of arson and sabotage at construction sites, and helped send the longtime head of the powerful Ironworkers union, Joseph Dougherty, to prison.

They helped bring charges against a handful of terrorism suspects through close monitoring of social media.

And on Wednesday - just two days before Hanko was set to clear out his eighth-floor office at the William J. Green Federal Building - they unveiled what could become one of the most significant investigations of his tenure: a two-year probe that led to a sprawling racketeering indictment against U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.)

"Not bad for the son of a coal miner from Wilkes-Barre," Hanko said. "I couldn't be happier to end my career here, in the state that I was born."

Hanko leaves behind the eighth-largest FBI division in the country, one with more than 500 agents in Pennsylvania and New Jersey working as many as 3,000 investigations at any given time.

Hanko did not look far for his next stop. He is moving only a few blocks, to a job overseeing global security for food service supplier Aramark.

And on a recent morning, days before his last with the bureau, Hanko was in a reflective mood.

His replacement - William Sweeney Jr., who took over as special agent in charge on Monday - was making the rounds and introducing himself to investigators. Hanko's wife, Anne, who runs the administrative side of the Philadelphia office, was preparing for the transition.

There are things Hanko said he would miss about the job, such as being out in the field with his agents. But there are plenty of things he won't - such as his routine 4 a.m. wake-up calls or what he describes as the "information tsunami" coming across his constantly buzzing cellphone.

"When I started with the bureau, we were just chasing around bank robbers," he said. "Now, we're connected all the time and going after cybercriminals."

It wasn't a career he had initially imagined.

Hanko joined the Baltimore Police Department in the late 1970s as a means to finish his college degree. The force was offering new recruits tuition to the University of Baltimore.

He left for the FBI after several years as a beat cop and then a narcotics investigator in the city. And after nearly three decades with the bureau - including stints in Scranton; Newark, N.J.; Detroit; the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.; and Cincinnati - he found his way to Philadelphia.

A gregarious type with an open smile, Hanko quickly forged friendships wherever he went, colleagues said. Asked to describe his chief accomplishments in Philadelphia, those who worked closest with him routinely cite the relationships Hanko built with community leaders, the heads of other federal agencies, and local law enforcement.

"He's folksy," said U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger, whose more reserved public persona often stood in contrast to the affable Hanko. "Coming from a working-class background, rising through the ranks, it just gives you a different perspective. He understands what it is to walk a beat, and the dangers and risks that are out there every day."

Those relationships have paid off on several occasions - including the aid the FBI gave to Philadelphia police after a deadly Amtrak derailment in Port Richmond in May or during the multiagency effort that successfully rescued kidnap victim Carlesha Freeland-Gaither in Maryland last year.

"It's a tough town," he said. "People wouldn't think it would be like that here. But all the agencies playing nice with each other has been a real pleasure."

At any given moment, Hanko said, more than 25 Philadelphia police officers are working alongside FBI agents, assigned to task forces charged with rooting out terrorist threats or public corruption.

But no case tested those relationships more than the one brought against the Philadelphia narcotics officers.

After trailing a drug squad led by Officer Thomas Liciardello for years, federal prosecutors charged him and five colleagues in a 26-count racketeering indictment. They alleged that Liciardello and his crew ran their unit like street thugs, routinely beating up drug suspects, pocketing seized money, ignoring probable cause, and falsifying police documents to cover up their crimes.

Several Philadelphia police officers had participated in the investigation. But taking the case to trial, they knew they were in for a tough fight.

The case pit the word of the police officers against those of drug defendants. And faced with judging credibility, Hanko said, jurors are often more inclined to trust police over criminals.

As the case played out in the courtroom, the tension was palpable. FBI case agents accused some Police Department commanders of lying.

The officers shot back, questioning the agents' competence, after exposing mistakes like charging one officer for a crime he could not have committed. He was on vacation and out of the state at the time.

But despite losing the case in court, Hanko said, he learned long ago not to look for affirmation in a jury's verdict.

"If you get stressed out about these things," he said, "you'll have a long and stressful career."

Instead, he said, he has a different yardstick for measuring success - the effect an investigation had in the community.

Agents' probe of Traffic Court ended in the acquittal on corruption charges of the five judges who took their case to trial. But all save one were convicted of lying to authorities, and the case exposed such pervasive ticket-fixing that state lawmakers shut down the court.

The investigation of the Ironworkers union - which led to convictions for each of the 12 charged defendants - did more than put people in prison. It restored the faith of the city's business leaders that criminal activity in the building trades would not be tolerated, Hanko said.

Sometimes those results stretch only as far as a few city blocks.

Recalling a case that dismantled a neighborhood Camden drug gang, Hanko recalled agents' reactivating a hidden pole camera months after the case had been won in court.

Where once investigators had used the camera to spy on pushers peddling narcotics, this time the investigators spied children playing basketball on the streets.

"That's the impact," he said. "The impact isn't arresting people. When life becomes safer for a community, and parents feel they can go out and let their kids play without worrying - that's what we're after."

The next person to lead the FBI's regional office is a Philadelphia native with a Villanova University degree, and a background in public corruption and terrorism investigations.

William F. Sweeney Jr. was named special agent in charge of the bureau's Philadelphia division last this month. He began his new job Monday, replacing Edward J. Hanko, who retired after two years in the post and 29 with the bureau.

A 17-year veteran of the bureau, Sweeney started his career in 1998 in Newark, N.J., where he directed an investigation that led to the bribery conviction in 2002 of Robert C. Janiszewski, an influential state Democrat and Hudson County executive who wore a wire to bring down several former associates.

Before his reassignment to Philadelphia, Sweeney was named the special agent in charge of the FBI's counterterrorism unit in New York City.

Earlier this year, agents under his command arrested three mall kiosk workers in Brooklyn accused of plotting to join ISIS fighters in Syria - including one man believed to have run a cellphone repair and kitchenware stand in a Philadelphia mall.

Before joining the FBI, Sweeney served in the Navy aboard the guided missile cruiser Vella Gulf.

As head of the Philadelphia division, he will oversee more than 500 agents and a jurisdiction that includes 42 Pennsylvania counties and three in South Jersey.