Terrorists Strike Fast... Interpol has to Move Faster... Ron Noble is on the Case

Low Profile, High Impact
"How easy was it for you to get in here to see me?" Ron Noble asks. He's sitting in a black leather chair in a huge corner office on the top floor of Interpol headquarters in Lyon. The view is stunning; the winding Rhone River is on one side, the lush Parc de la Tete d'Or is on the other.

He knows what you'll say, but he likes to hear it anyway. There's no sign outside the concrete-and-glass monolith. There's a high green iron fence and an unmarked gate. "Right," says Noble. "You think, 'Do I wait for instructions? Do they know I'm here?' "

Eventually, a voice addresses you through a speaker. The heavy gate opens slowly, like a tank in reluctant retreat. You enter a small security building, where the guards study you from behind bulletproof glass. Then you slide your passport through a metal tray and step into a slender glass tube to be scanned for weapons. The door, adorned with the Interpol insignia -- a sword, scales, and a globe -- closes behind you. This is Noble's favorite part: "The tube gives us the ability to isolate someone."

You're trapped for a moment -- a rather long moment -- before the door in front opens. Then you wait for an escort to walk you the remaining 40 yards to the main building. You can't go anywhere without an escort. The doors and the elevator won't operate without an ID badge. That's how easy it is to see the secretary general of Interpol. "Psychologically, the experience is anything but a warm welcome," says Noble. "You know that you're entering a place where security is the priority."

In a way, though, the experience is welcome, because it lives up to Interpol's considerable mystique. In the late 1950s, the organization inspired not one but two TV shows in Britain. On Man from Interpol, agent Anthony Smith solved the cases of a diamond-smuggling pigeon in England and a truckload of gold cigarette lighters stolen from France. He worked undercover to bust a human-trafficking ring in Europe. Think ABC's Alias, in black and white, without Jennifer Garner.

Today, Noble is the man from Interpol. He doesn't sport a trench coat or wield a gun or sip a shaken-not-stirred martini. In his dark suit and white-cuffed shirt, he looks more like a corporate lawyer than the world's top cop. Only the shiny cuff links with the Interpol seal give him away.

The mementos in his office not only trace an illustrious career path that included being the chief law-enforcement officer at the Treasury, where he oversaw 35,000 federal employees, including agents at the Secret Service, Customs, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. They also allude to a dangerous, unpredictable world. There's an embroidered tribute to the four ATF officers killed at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993. There's a fist-sized chunk of rubble from the Oklahoma City bombing in recognition of the eight Treasury agents who lost their lives there.

In the year and a half since he became secretary general, Noble has visited more than 45 countries. He lobbies for more resources and explains what Interpol does. Although the name is well known, the organization is routinely misunderstood, even among police officers. (See "Interpol's Image Problem," page 103.) It is a unique player in law enforcement, a voluntary global club that dates back to 1923, when Vienna's chief of police convinced counterparts in 20 countries to share crime tips and expertise. Part of the misperception today stems from the cloak-and-dagger intrigue so prevalent in pop culture's version of international police work. "People have the impression that we have secret agents who travel around arresting fugitives," says Noble.

In truth, Interpol's officers work behind the scenes, mainly with computers, performing low-profile but vital police work: relaying messages, sending out notices about suspects, mining Interpol's vast database for clues. Think of it as the back-office of international law enforcement. "That's what police work is about: painstaking investigation," says Noble.

Law-enforcement officers in the field make the actual arrests -- and the headlines. Interpol staffers seem content to play a supporting role rather than the lead, working through each country's NCB. The NCB is a local cop's point of contact with Interpol. "We don't own the case, so we don't own the story," explains Adamson at the U.S. NCB. When Interpol's involvement in an investigation is brief -- exchanging a few messages with a foreign country, for example -- its staff might not even hear the outcome. "We'll recognize a case in the paper and know that we had a piece of it," says Adamson.

When Interpol does get mentioned in a story, it's often no more than a single line: In June, Swedish and French Interpol agents helped track down Ira Einhorn, the so-called hippie killer convicted in absentia for murdering his girlfriend in Philadelphia in 1977. Or: Interpol intelligence helped apprehend reputed Colombian drug kingpin Justo Pastor Perafan as he strolled through a Venezuelan shopping mall.