FOR NEW YORK'S F.B.I. OFFICE, A CAREER CRIME FIGHTER

NEW YORK -- Now that Lewis Dennis Schiliro, the new head of the FBI's New
York office, works in a tastefully appointed office with an expansive view
of the midtown skyline, it might be easy to overlook the fact that his
career began, quite literally, in the dumps.

But each year, as winter sets in, Schiliro is surrounded by chilling
reminders of his first undercover assignment, an investigation of mob
influence in the New York City trash-hauling industry known as Operation
Gemini. Using the code name Louie DeVita, he spent seven months emptying
trash cans, much of it during the brutal winter of 1977, waiting for
Gambino family members to threaten and extort him.

"Back then, hanging off a garbage truck in the snow and cold, I never
thought I'd stay at the FBI more than a few years, certainly not long
enough to head the office," Schiliro, 48, said on Thursday. "Beyond that,
it was too cold to think much."

On Thursday, his decision to stick around looked like a smart move, as the
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis Freeh, formally
appointed Schiliro to run the bureau's New York office. Coincidentally, his
appointment came a day after he was basking in the limelight of announcing
the indictment of John Gotti Jr., who is accused of running the Gambino
family now that his father is in prison.

"This job is like having a front-row seat on Broadway," Schiliro said on
Thursday. "You see the whole criminal culture in all its various forms, and
you meet the John Gottis and Sammy Gravano and Jimmy Burke from the
Lufthansa crew. These are characters who you wouldn't believe if you didn't
see them yourself."

Since his role in the trash-hauling inquiry, Schiliro has been involved in
some of the most celebrated New York mob cases of the past generation: the
Pizza Connection case, the Lufthansa robbery, and the prosecution of John
Gotti Sr.

Although the organized-crime prosecutions will continue, the decline of La
Cosa Nostra and the rise of a new wave of drug organizations from Russia
and South America is expected to prompt Schiliro to widen the FBI's focus
in New York during the coming year.

Already, nearly 200 of the New York office's 1,100 agents work with the
city police on four separate anti-drug task forces. Schiliro said those
anti-drug strategies had been so effective in aiding the city's drop in
crime that he might add additional manpower.

On the other end of the spectrum, Schiliro said he would also focus on a
growing number of white-collar crimes, specifically stock market fraud.
Last year, FBI agents actually controlled a stock exchange seat in an
effort to investigate illegal securities transactions, and Schiliro said
that in his new role, he would keep close watch on the growing number of
penny-stock fraud cases and health care swindles.

Schiliro, a third-generation Italian-American who was born and raised in
Queens County, takes control of the New York office during a period of
relative stability. His affable successor, James Kallstrom, who was the
assistant director of the FBI in charge of the New York office, led the
agency as it won high-profile convictions, including that of Ramzi Ahmed
Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, and the
exhaustive -- though ultimately unsuccessful -- search for a criminal cause
in the crash of TWA Flight 800.

Kallstrom was widely credited with restoring the local FBI office's
reputation after several highly publicized embarrassments during the early
1990s. Although FBI officials arrested most of the major figures in the
1993 Trade Center bombing, they had also been criticized for ignoring
warnings about an imminent attack in the weeks before the explosion.

Schiliro, who is married and has three children, said he hopes to build on
Kallstrom's successes and to continue his campaign to push Congress and
software companies to allow law enforcement officials greater ability to
monitor encrypted computer communications.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company