BOB GARFIELD:
Celebrity can be a mixed blessing, especially if you’re among the 489-some alumni of the group known as the FBI’s Most Wanted. Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it is reinvigorating the Most Wanted program. No longer just a wanted poster at the post office, the list is now a multimedia dragnet with billboards, a revamped website, email alerts and television partners.

John Miller is FBI assistant director of public affairs. John, welcome to the show.
JOHN MILLER:
Good to be here, Bob.
BOB GARFIELD:
Now, you only have to look at cable TV or America’s Most Wanted on broadcast TV to see that the public has an apparently insatiable thirst for pulp nonfiction. Is there any evidence, though, that, you know, emailing the alerts of the latest member of the FBI’s Most Wanted is actually going to help the FBI locate fugitives?
JOHN MILLER:
Well, it certainly does. And we don't guess this. We know this. You take the billboard program. This is a partnership we went into with the Clear Channel Company where they agreed to use billboards in 20 cities. They have a Philadelphia police officer murdered, and within minutes they were able to have that electronic billboard up with the suspect’s name and picture. And they captured him, by the way.

But also, take the case of Warren Jeffs. Now, Warren Jeffs was the cult leader who was charged with sexual abuse of children. He fled from Utah. It was a Nevada state trooper in Las Vegas who caught him.

Had he not been on the Ten Most Wanted list, had that picture not been widely disseminated, when they did the car stop they wouldn't have really recognized him, and that facilitated that capture.
BOB GARFIELD:
The list began under the, I think, [LAUGHING] 9,000-year tenure of J. Edgar Hoover. But, you know, even back in 1950, Hoover was ambivalent. He was afraid that it would backfire by glorifying criminals, much in the way, you know, Baby Face Nelson was glorified for his bold bank robberies back in the '30s. Is that still an issue at the FBI?
JOHN MILLER:
It’s certainly something that we thought about from the beginning. I mean, if you look at the origins of this, it was J. Edgar Hoover playing cards with a group of people, among whom was the editor of United Press. And he had a story idea, which is let's pick out the 10 toughest gangsters that you’re looking to find and do a story on them. That’s probably the kind of image that those gangsters would have liked to have cast.

And there was some reluctance at doing it, but the editor pressed for it and the FBI delivered. They put them out. And the United Press story, which went out on the wire, actually ran in many, many newspapers, and many of them put it on the front page with the photographs. People started to call in, and they wiped out the first 10 on the list very quickly.

At that point, the light bulb went on, and it said, if we're going to balance between glorifying them and catching them, the numbers sell the story. I mean, there have been almost 500 people on it since March 14th, 1950, when it was launched, and all but 40 of them have been captured, and many of those as a result of the publicity that came from being a Ten Most Wanted.
BOB GARFIELD:
I guess every police agency in the world, when it publicizes a crime, risks getting lots and lots and lots of really bad tips that it squanders resources following up. It’s easy to see how you can catch bad guys doing this, but it’s also easy to see how the proliferation of Most Wanted images will cause just a tidal wave of bad information.
JOHN MILLER:
It’s a part of reality. But why will you assign a squad of a couple of dozen or even a couple of hundred investigators when you can assign the peeled eyes of a nation of 300 million people? And that is what we try to do.

Through the Office of Public Affairs we have a special unit called the Investigative Publicity Unit, and their job is to flip around the dial at night. You’ve got Greta Van Susteren, you've got Nancy Grace - you’ve got any number of these shows that are crime obsessed – and we can channel that power in such a way that it'll bring leads forth.
[BEGIN CLIP]
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
NANCY GRACE:
Breaking news tonight. A gorgeous young Marine vanishes into thin air, Camp Lejeune. The burned remains of 20-year-old Maria Lauterbach and her unborn child found in the backyard of suspect Co-Marine Corporal Cesar Laurean.
[END CLIP]
JOHN MILLER:
Look at the Laurean case. Here’s a guy who allegedly committed a murder, went on the run, quickly moved from the South into Texas, possibly into Mexico. We were able to blanket those regions – in fact, the nation – but target those regions with publicity and try and leverage that, and got a lot of very good leads.
BOB GARFIELD:
So let's get back to the new ways of proliferating the Ten Most Wanted. I guess one risk would be so much inundation with this kind of message that instead of being more vigilant as citizens for bad guys in our midst that it all just becomes a sort of white noise, and we wind up sort of paying no attention at all. Is that just a figment of my imagination?
JOHN MILLER:
I think it is, and I think it is because – not because you have a vivid imagination – but because it’s limited to 10, is a unique device. When we put somebody on the Ten Most Wanted, in almost every case it means they're going to get caught because that elevates them to a status that brings into play a $100,000 reward, but it brings into play most of an episode of America’s Most Wanted, which is viewed by millions. It puts them out there at the front of the FBI’s website.

It tells people that this is different. And, frankly, it’s almost giving celebrity status, but the payoff is almost every time we confer that status it results in them getting locked up.
BOB GARFIELD:
One last question. The Ten Most Wanted is probably, you know, right up there with Coca-Cola in being one of the most recognizable brands in the world, certainly in the United States. Are you considering any other exploitation of the Wanted List? I don't know, are you going to be selling coffee mugs at the FBI’s souvenir shop [LAUGHS] or in any other way going to exploit this and actually make a buck on it?
JOHN MILLER:
We won't be having the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted stadium. I don't think we're looking to make a buck on it. We're looking to spend money on it, and that’s why we pay out that $100,000 reward at minimum, although, as you know, some people on the Ten Most Wanted list have $25 million rewards. The people who profit from the Ten Most Wanted lists are the people who call in the tips and collect the money.

How do you get on the Ten Most Wanted list? The criteria is level of dangerousness, if you will, to the public, and the estimate of how much publicity will help a capture. And if you meet those two criteria and you’re involved in a serious enough incident, you’re going to end up on the Ten Most Wanted list. And if you end up on the Ten Most Wanted list, there’s a 90-percent chance that that’s going to cause you to get caught.
BOB GARFIELD:
Hey, I got an idea. We can increase your success by 10 percent. Ready?
JOHN MILLER:
I'm ready.
BOB GARFIELD:
The FBI’s Eleven Most Wanted.
JOHN MILLER:
You know, it’s happened. We have had Eleven Most Wanted. We have had specials added to the Ten Most Wanted. After the World Trade Center bombing in New York City, when Ramsey Ahmed Yousef was identified as the mastermind behind the bombing, there was no open spot on the Ten Most Wanted list. So he was one of a handful over the last 50 years that was added as a special.
BOB GARFIELD:
All right. John, nice to talk to you again. Thanks very much.
JOHN MILLER:
Thanks for having me and thanks for bringing up the program.
BOB GARFIELD:
John Miller is the assistant director of public affairs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.