Even as he tries to shake up Interpol, Noble is sensitive to being its first non-European leader. Fluent in German since childhood, he has become fluent in French and Spanish as well, and he recently began studying Arabic. "I want to show that respect for languages other than English is an important part of my philosophy," he says.
Last February, Noble wrote an internal memo outlining his vision for the years ahead. When he looked over the translation, though, he noticed that the French word "l'ambition" had been substituted for "vision," which wasn't what he meant. Three outside translators given the same memo produced three different interpretations, each with a different meaning. "It was an eye-opening experience," he says. "It showed that the risk of misunderstanding is so great."
Noble's parents also taught him the importance of hard work. His father used to wake up at 5 AM, toil in the Army motor pool all day, then run a janitorial business at night. He put his two sons through Catholic school, the sort of education that he had never had. "My father used to tell us, 'You're going to meet people who are better off than you. You can't change that,' " says Noble. " 'But you don't have to meet anybody who works harder than you.' "
Noble learned his lesson. At 26, after graduating from Stanford Law School, he clerked for legendary Federal Court of Appeals chief judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., who persuaded Noble to go into public service. At 27, he became an assistant U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, where he later prosecuted the largest public corruption case in the city's history. At 33, he joined the law-school faculty at New York University. At 36, he served as assistant secretary of the Treasury and eventually became the first undersecretary of enforcement. At 44, he became secretary general of Interpol. The trade-off, says Noble, was his personal life. He didn't marry until he was 44, after falling for his Spanish professor. The couple just had their first child, a boy.
When Noble returned to NYU in May to deliver the law-school commencement address, his friend John Sexton, the outgoing dean and incoming university president, introduced him as "Justice Ron Noble." One day, said Sexton, Noble will be on the Supreme Court. "You heard it here first," he says. And last year, after Louis Freeh resigned as FBI director, Noble was mentioned as a possible replacement.
The expectations are flattering, but Noble, who serves a five-year term as secretary general, maintains that he now has the job that he wanted all along. He lives at the office. Of course, that was true at his previous jobs too. But now it's really true: He has an apartment in the building, although he prefers not to say where (he also has two other residences, one of them in Lyon). "He works more than the rest of us," says Austad, the human-trafficking officer. "He's a man with a mission."
That mission is a long way from completion. Just as major credit-card companies allow customers to make purchases wherever they may be, Noble wants police officers, customs agents, and other crime fighters to have instant access to Interpol's criminal database whenever and wherever they stop a suspect. At the border. At the airport. Before it's too late. "You have a world that is operating across national and geographic boundaries," says Noble. "You've got to have cooperation within the law-enforcement community. You realize how important that is, but also how fragile."
Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Baltimore. Learn more about Interpol on the Web (www.interpol.int).
One of the most surprising things about Interpol is how underutilized it is -- particularly by American law-enforcement officers. Before being assigned to Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, Frank Spicka (pictured above), an 18-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service, had never consulted Interpol. He could have used its help while he was protecting two presidents and one ex-president and researching past assassination attempts, but he never thought to ask.
Today, Spicka, Interpol's assistant director of public safety and terrorism, is a total convert: "When I go back, I'll definitely spread the word." His experience isn't that unusual. Because the larger U.S. federal law-enforcement agencies have attachés posted in foreign countries, their agents often end up handling investigations.
"Interpol is visibly challenged," observes Mike Muth, who works in Washington at the U.S. National Central Bureau (NCB) for Interpol. As the state and local liaison, he markets Interpol to 18,800 federal, state, and local agencies and nearly 800,000 officers. Most don't know what Interpol does and how it could help. "When I call an agency and say the word 'Interpol,' they usually say, 'Who? What? Where?' " says Muth.
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