Le Sheriff

By Bruce Crumley

Jean-Louis Bruguiere started fighting the war on terrorism before most of us knew it had begun. In 1989, when an airliner suspiciously exploded over Africa, the French magistrate visited the scene and eventually pinned the bombing on the Libyans. He found Carlos the Jackal in 1994 and had the terrorist arrested while Carlos was sedated and waiting for an operation on his scrotum. Bruguiere helped foil Islamic radicals' plans to attack the World Cup in 1998 and Strasbourg cathedral in 2000. In the weeks after Sept. 11, while his counterparts in the U.S. and Germany were learning to pronounce al-Qaeda, Bruguiere busted one of the largest Qaeda networks in Europe (more than 20 were arrested). "It's probably not going too far to say he invented the specialty of cracking Islamist terror networks," says a French judge.

But the tools of his success have generated considerable controversy. Bruguiere can issue search warrants and wiretaps on a mere hunch, and not all his hunches are right. In 1999 a French court rebuked him by acquitting dozens of suspects in one of his terrorist investigations. Critics say Bruguiere, who constantly puffs on a pipe and has a fondness for the media, is a dictatorial egotist. They derisively call him le sheriff. But his contributions to the war on terrorism shouldn't be dismissed because of his personality; unlike other countries in Europe, France isn't a terrorist haven. Says a former colleague: "Whatever attention Bruguiere may get now has to be measured against the days, weeks and months he went unnoticed in the desert."

--By Bruce Crumley