Pedro Toledo - Career With The FBI

Career With The FBI

In 1968, Toledo was accepted into the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Toledo has said "I had finished the career in engineering but there are a lot of lawyers in my family, and I believed that I could indirectly enter the field of law." As part of the FBI, he was assigned as an agent to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he worked until November 1969. That year, he was transferred to Miami, Florida.

In 1971, Toledo was moved to Puerto Rico, where he began legal studies at the Interamerican University Law School. After three years, Toledo graduated with a Juris Doctor. During his time with the FBI, Toledo also worked as legal adviser. He also attended the Bureau's technology and polygraph schools, as well as hostage negotiator's school. He eventually joined a specialized national team of negotiators called the Critical Incident Negotiation Team.

Toledo was the main negotiator in 1987 during the Atlanta Prison Riots. The riots were caused by a group of Cuban inmates who refused to be repatriated to Cuba after the Mariel boatlift. The negotiation process took two weeks, and nearly collapsed when U.S. supervisors withdrew Toledo’s team to reestablish negotiations in English with a translator. Toledo said about the incident "Six hours after they did that there was a near riot. Inmates broke the phone used for negotiations and demanded that we, the Latinos, be called back," Toledo remembered. "They had to do it. Once we were back, the inmates, in a show of good will, immediately freed some hostages."

In 1991, Toledo also participated in negotiations during riots at the federal prison in Talladega, Alabama. During the riots, over nine hostages were taken by 121 Cuban detainees. The Cubans, who had arrived in the U.S. during the boatlift, were trying to avoid deportation, and refused to negotiate. Toledo was asked to buy time so that SWAT teams could effectively prepare for a raid.