Richard deslauriers biography

BGen Richard DesLauriers enlisted as a Sapper Apprentice in Completing his Basic Sapper Training as part of the two year program at RCSME, Sapper DesLauriers was posted to 2 Fd Sqn, Gagetown, After this tour he returned to Chilliwack to 3 Fd Sqn where he remained until his promotion to Sergeant in He was then selected as a member of the International Commission for Control and Supervision in Vietnam and returned to 3 Fd Sqn after this assignment.

Warrant Officer DesLauriers was posted to 5e RGC Valcartier in and immediately deployed to Bromont, QC, as part of the 5e RGC security forces for the Olympic Games. He served as 2IC of security forces for the equestrian events and was heavily involved in EOD operations. On completion of this task he returned to Valcartier as the 2 Troop WO and then Unit Training NCO Upon promotion to MWO in he became the RHQ Sergeant-Major until when he accepted his commission. Promoted to Captain, he moved to CFSME as the Chief Standards Officer. In he became the commander of the Mine Warfare and Demolitions Section and 24 EOD Unit and became a tactics instructor two years later.

In Captain DesLauriers was appointed DCO of 22 Field Squadron, where he served until his promotion to Major in at which time he was transferred to theCombat Training Centre as the Senior Engineer Tactics Instructor. In August Major DesLauriers took command of 45 Field Squadron in Sydney, NS, becoming the first Regular Force CO of a, Engineer Militia unit since the Second World War. During this period he also served in Turkey with the Allied Mobile Force (Land). In he moved to 1 Canadian Division Engineer Group Headquarters at CFB Kingston as G2 (Int) and subsequently as G3 (Ops).

Maj Deslaurier’s tour in Kingston was followed by a posting to 4 CER in as the DCO and participated in the CF’s first six-month tour in the former Yugoslavia. On the unit’s return to Germany, he held command of 4 CER u

On Friday, July 9, , FBI special agent Richard DesLauriers disembarked from a chartered Vision Airlines jet on the tarmac of Vienna’s Schwechat International Airport, accompanied by 10 Russian sleeper agents and their families. Nearby, four Russian prisoners got off a plane that had just landed from Moscow. The two groups headed toward each other under the baking Central European summer sun for a rare and unusually large exchange of captured spies. It was the culmination of what a former senior Justice Department official calls “one of the most complicated and impressive counterintelligence operations” in recent U.S. history.

Less than three years later, DesLauriers is facing a very different challenge. As special agent in charge of the FBI office in Boston, DesLauriers, 53, is running the Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into the Boston Marathon attacks, the first successful terrorist bombings on U.S. soil since 9/ The bombing is a different kind of case from the one DesLauriers spent his career investigating: a year veteran of counterintelligence, he made his bones running operations against foreign spies, not tracking down and busting terrorists. For DesLauriers and the FBI, the Boston Marathon bombing is a high-visibility test.

Former and current colleagues at the FBI and Justice Department say DesLauriers and the FBI are up to the task, and they say the roll-up and exchange of the Russian spies, dubbed Operation Ghost Stories, shows it. After 9/11 the FBI was criticized for failing to coordinate with other agencies and for being stuck in a Cold War–era mind-set. In the roll-up of Ghost Stories the FBI pulled off a politically and diplomatically delicate operation that involved coordination with multiple intelligence agencies, U.S. attorney&#;s offices and local field agents. “Rick is the real deal,” says David Kris, former assistant attorney general for National Security during the Russian roll-up, “He’s very, very good, extremely methodical and or

Authorities have yet to name any suspects in the pair of bombings that killed three people and injured more than at the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon. But having Richard DesLauriers, special agent-in-charge of the FBI's Boston field office, at the helm means whoever is behind the attack is up against someone with decades of experience in espionage, violent crime, and other security issues.

On Tuesday, DesLauriers vowed at a news conference, "We will go to the ends of the earth to find the suspects responsible for this despicable crime."

Leading the Boston Marathon bombing investigation may be one of the most tragic cases that DesLauriers' has handled. But the year FBI veteran is no stranger to manhunts; not long ago he helped apprehend long-wanted gangster James "Whitey" Bulger.

DesLauriers has been with the FBI since ; his first assignment was working on cases related to violent crime and fugitives in the bureau's Birmingham, Ala., division. Before joining the FBI, he graduated magna cum laude from Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., in , and got his law degree from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., He's a Massachusetts native. 

Current FBI agents declined to comment about DesLauriers. But retired special agent Rick Hahn said DesLauriers must have proven himself exceptionally capable to have achieved his position in Boston.

"Boston is considered to be a preferred assignment," he said. "There's a lot of dynamics there in Boston that don't exist in places like Little Rock, Arkansas, example. A lot of government contracts, a lot of espionage, as well as their fair share of bread-and-butter type criminal activity."

DesLauriers spent to in the FBI's New York division working on counterintelligence matters, and then was promoted to supervisory special agent within the Eurasian Section of the National Security Branch at FBI Headquarters in