(WXYZ) — In December, the FBI announced that Timothy Waters would be the new Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit field office.
Beginning Thursday on 7 Action News at 6 a.m., Simon Shaykhet will talk with Waters about the threats Michigan is facing, domestic terrorism and much more
Waters has spent the past two decades in the FBI after joining in 2000, where he started in Detroit working on white collar crime.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, he was transitioned over to the counterterrorism unit, and was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006.
He moved up through the ranks of the FBI and was back in Detroit in 2007 to lead a joint terrorism task force in Detroit. They worked on several cases, including the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an airplane in Detroit in 2009.
In 2010, he became the legal attaché in Islamabad, Pakistan, and returned to Detroit in 2011 on another joint terrorism task force focusing on al Qaeda and people inspired by the terror group.
He was promoted once again in 2014 to assistant special agent in charge for administrative matters, and then reassigned in 2016 as assistant special agent in charge of Detroit's National Security Branch, focusing on cyberterrorism and weapons of mass destruction in Michigan.
In 2019, Waters headed to FBI headquarters to serve as director of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, and in 2020, he was named the deputy assistant director.
Then, in December 2020, he was back in the Motor City as the new special agent in charge.
Before his time in the FBI, he served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army, and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He later got a Master's Degree from the University of Michigan-Dearborn
"I've lived here, pretty much on and off, for the last 20 years. This is a place that I know and care about deeply," he said to 7 Action News. "I believe Detroit and really Michigan at large is a place where people work hard. That’s what I’m going to bring to this job."
