Word: interpolating
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...through financial necessity and intense discussions with officials across the world, Noble has developed in just four years an ever-expanding array of databases that are among the world's most efficient policing tools. That is a dizzying contrast to the methods of the 1990s, when Interpol's "red notices" - its alerts for wanted fugitives - were sent by regular mail, arriving in some police stations and border posts weeks later. To be sure, there were some famous red-notice successes, including the capture of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal) in 1994 and the American...
...Interpol is demanding more attention and getting it, thanks to a dramatic shift in its scope engineered by Interpol secretary-general Ronald K. Noble. The former Under Secretary for Enforcement at the U.S. Treasury - where he oversaw the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - Noble arrived in Lyons in 2000 as the first non-European ever to head Interpol. His appointment through a vote by all member countries came after fierce lobbying by both Noble and U.S. officials, who were keen to end Europe's grip on Interpol's leadership. Noble came with one driving mission...
...from his brother in New Hampshire. "He said: 'Ronnie, did you see what happened in New York?'" Noble recalls. He hadn't. He turned on CNN just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center. "That's when we knew the world had changed for Interpol," he says. "We went 24/7 that day." Noble immediately instituted round-the-clock monitoring of news and e-mails from a command and coordination center two floors below his office - a sharp break from Interpol's previous working hours. That room is now the center of Interpol's nervous system...
...Despite that global scope, Interpol's headquarters - with its sky-lit atrium, potted plants and sweeping views of the Rhône River - still has the air of a mid-sized company rather than a law-enforcement organization. Most of the few hundred people in the building are on first-name terms. The organization squeezes by on a budget of about $65 million a year from member countries' donations - approximately the same amount that the New York Police Department spends in an average week. Interpol's staff in Lyons joke bitterly that the organization costs little more than David Beckham...
...Noble, the meager funding is not just a practical limitation, but a distressing sign of how Western governments undervalue Interpol. "Neither the U.S. nor any other country realizes that this is a billion-dollar-a-year problem, not a $50-million-a-year problem," he says. "They don't understand that Interpol is cost-effective." Noble spends weeks every year at police conferences and government hearings, pressing the point that Interpol's worldwide reach makes it uniquely positioned to collate data on everything from stolen motor-vehicle licenses and lost passports to fingerprints and DNA samples. Yet there is still...