Ex-FBI agents pool experience to keep fighting the 'Dark Side'

          Call any of the investigators at Schaumburg-based quest International Consultants "private eyes," and you'll invite a scowl. To them (all former FBI agents) the label smacks of snapping pictures of cheating spouses, or the ethically challenged practice of companies using private eyes to dig up dirt on a competitor. That's how computer software giant Oracle got in trouble recently when its practice of using private investigators to spy on rival Microsoft was revealed. That's not Quest's game. Not with its history, the investigators say, Not with its background of always being on the "good-guy" side. Though retired from government work, Quest's founders -- Joe Griffin, Bob Scigalski, Jack O'Rourke and Leone Flosi -- believe that wearing the FBI moniker is like having it tattooed on your soul. It's why, even in retirement, they say they still use their government-given skills to catch the bad guy. "Anything else would not only reflect badly on us, but would reflect badly on the FBI as well," Flosi said. "And that's what we tell people - we're former FBI agents."

         In 1970, on his second day as an FBI agent in New York City, then, a 24-year-old Scigalski saw a corpse lying in front of a bank that had been robbed. He was assigned to catch a thief, but seeing the body he knew he had to find a killer. "How do I say it -- it was exciting, and it was scary," said Scigalski, now 54 and a Deer Park resident. "When I saw the robber had killed someone, I didn't want to go home. I wanted to make sure this guy didn't get to kill someone else." By 1 a.m. the next day, the killer-robber was caught, and if Scigalski had any doubts about the career choice he'd made, they evaporated, he recalled. More than two decades later in 1996, after a quarter-century of chasing down Chicago mobsters, profiling serial killers, tracking federal fugitives and negotiating with hostage-takers, Scigalski retired. At 51, he said, he wanted to ensure a more secure life for his 5-year-old at home. But leaving the life most only experience by watching a movie or reading a book wasn't easy, he said. "Some (agents) get very upset when they have to leave the bureau," he said. "I wasn't much different. In my heart and my brain, I'm an FBI agent." So he teamed up with Flosi, Griffin and O'Rourke -- all friends --knowing that working as a private investigator, he'd be holding on to a little of the life he was leaving behind.

         Griffin, 61, is a Lake Zurich resident and Quest's CEO. His reasons for starting Quest are none too different from Scigalski's - - letting go of the life, he said, wasn't easy. He retired from the FBI 12 years ago after a career that began in Little Rock, 1957. His first boss was Roy K. Moore, the inspiration for the Gene Hackman character in the civil rights/FBI movie "Mississippi Burning." While in the South, Griffin solved many civil rights crimes, including racial bombings in Alabama. Over the years, he rose in the ranks to lead the bureau's Cleveland office, where his investigations netted convictions against about 40 Mafia members. After retiring, Griffin took a job as head of security for a Chicago manufacturing firm. One of his main duties: escorting people who'd been fired out of the building. "I just didn't like it," the FBI Medal of Honor winner said. "I was confined to a desk. It wasn't what I was used to." So he quit and got back to what he knew best - investigating He merged his talents with the others after landing a private contract to help eradicate mob influence from the Laborers International Union of North America, which had been under investigation by the Justice Department.

         Flosi, 59, lives in Naperville now, but as an agent, he called Rome home when he was the FBI's legal adviser to Italy's law enforcement community - a role that allowed him to investigate terrorists and the Mafia. He's also headed the FBI's Chicago Organized Crime Task Force. And while in the Kansas City office, he helped topple a Mafia operation that skimmed profits from Las Vegas casinos. The Robert DeNiro movie "Casino" is based on that operation.

         La Grange resident O'Rourke, 62, also boasts 30 years of battling with the mob. He helped bring hit man Harry Aleman to justice in the mid-1970s - a case that made the cover of Time magazine. Quest's ex-FBI agent roster has grown in the four years since it was formed. The most recent addition is the longtime spokesman for the FBI's Chicago office - Darien resident Bob Long. He'd been with the bureau 27 years before retiring in 1999. The skill he offers Quest? After working with the news media for 15 years, Long, 59, chuckles that he'd gotten quite adept at interviewing people, getting them to talk.