Named Acting Director of the FBI in May 2017, Andrew McCabe spent a total of 21 years at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, combating organized crime as well as the growing terrorism and cybersecurity threat landscape. A lawyer by training, McCabe joined the FBI in 1996 and was assigned to the New York Field Office. In one of his first major assignments, he built a detailed case against Russian mobsters and effectively helped to take the crime group down. McCabe subsequently held management positions in increasingly-prominent roles until 2016, when he was appointed Deputy Director, where he oversaw all FBI domestic and international investigative and intelligence activities. Other career milestones for McCabe include helping secure the arrest of Ahmed Abu Khattala, one of the suspects in the 2012 Benghazi attack, and being part of the team that investigated the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Among his awards and professional honors, McCabe received the FBI Director's Award for his work in 2008; and in 2014, he was awarded the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service. McCabe, who left the FBI in March 2018, is currently a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, where he is teaching courses on national security and related topics.
After graduating from The Bolles School, a boarding school and preparatory school in Florida, McCabe enrolled at Duke University in 1986. As a freshman, he joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and took a wide range of courses, eventually making his way to art history and political science. "I was drawn to stories of real people—people in pursuit of love, advantage, power, salvation," McCabe said in a recent interview. In 1990, McCabe earned his bachelor of arts from Duke.
In 2019, McCabe finally made a much-needed return to his old stomping grounds in Durham, North Carolina. The former FBI Deputy Director packed Page Auditorium with members of the Duke community wanting to hear McCabe talk on different topics covered in his newly released book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. The public event included an interview with Peter Feaver, director of American Grand Strategy and professor of political science and public policy at Duke. "Few civil servants have been closer to the center of the storm of our era than Andrew McCabe,” Feaver said. “This is an extraordinary opportunity to hear firsthand from someone who has played a pivotal role in the events that continue to dominate the news to this day.”