As a young child, Adam Krob dreamt of becoming a CIA or FBI agent. And as often happens with children, those dreams drifted into the back of his mind as he went through high school and college and found other successful career interests.
Then, on April 19, 1995, just as Krob was getting ready to graduate from the University of Oklahoma, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City and detonated a bomb that killed 168 people and destroyed one-third of the building. It remains the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history—and it happened in Krob’s backyard.
What Krob remembers from that time more than 30 years ago was his anger about the tragedy and the image of agents wearing FBI vests as they escorted Timothy McVeigh after his arrest and during his trial. Krob’s long-buried thoughts of FBI work resurfaced, but it was not until he had personal experiences with two additional major terrorist events—Columbine and 9/11—that he found his way to a career in the FBI.
Now, he has arrived at JEWISHcolorado as the new Secure Community Network (SCN) Regional Security Advisor with extensive FBI leadership experience in international counterterrorism, domestic terrorism, child exploitation, and crisis/event management. He brings with him a clear vision of his purpose in this new position.
“I see this SCN position as an opportunity to build relationships, to be a liaison between local law enforcement and the Jewish community,” Krob says. “I also want to make an impact on the community where I live, to make this place safe and secure so that people can live their lives without being scared.”
Seeking a fulfilling career
Krob graduated from U. of Oklahoma with a business degree that focused on management information systems and finance. He headed straight to Colorado for a job as software engineer and technology consultant—and perhaps more important to him at the time, the chance to head to the mountains every weekend in the winter.
“I love to ski,” he says with a laugh. “It was not uncommon for me to join a church youth group just to go on their ski trips.”
On April 20, 1999, Krob was working at the EchoStar building in Littleton when he got word of a shooting at Columbine High School. The disconnect between what was happening at Columbine and what he was doing in that moment hit him hard.
“I realized that something extremely significant was happening just up the road from me, and here I was helping people change their TV channel line-up,” he says. “It was a great job in a great industry, but it just wasn’t fulfilling.”
In hindsight, Krob says, he now sees that having lived in Oklahoma City during the bombing, having watched the McVeigh trial in Colorado, and now being in such close proximity to Columbine pushed him “in the direction of some sort of government service.”
The tipping point came on September 11, 2001. Krob woke up after a birthday trip to San Diego, ready to board a plane home to Colorado and, instead, watched the World Trade Center Towers fall in New York. He decided that day to submit his application to the FBI. He had just turned 28 years old.
In January 2002, he passed the Phase I FBI Test, but it would be two years before the FBI called him. While he continued to pursue a career with tech start-ups, his FBI application, written on paper in a pre-electronic era, had been lost in a dusty corner of the office for nearly two years. When a new applicant coordinator found it and called him, it took Krob just 15 minutes to consult with his wife and call the FBI back to sign on.
Krob’s FBI career took him from Kansas City to the Washington, D.C. field office, to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and finally to the Denver field office. On April 30, he retired after 21 years. He will join JEWISHcolorado on June 15.
Bringing his experience to SCN
Krob spent a significant amount of his FBI career working in counterterrorism, first in the FBI Washington, D.C. field office and then at FBI headquarters in D.C.
“We were doing things with technology to affect counterterrorism that had not been done before,” he says. “In tandem with that, we were collaborating closely with multiple foreign partners to disrupt terrorism plots in multiple countries.”
During his career, Krob engaged with 17 foreign intelligence services across 10 countries, operating in major cities including Tel Aviv, London, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Madrid. In Israel, he collaborated with Mossad and Shin Bet. He also worked with U.S. intelligence to impact active terrorist organizations in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
“Aside from the importance of the mission and the impact we had, what I loved was the collaborative nature of the work,” he says. “It comes down to individual relationships because you are dealing with life and death high impact matters that require sensitivities and trust.”
Krob also has experience working in domestic terrorism. In the Washington, D.C. field office in 2007, he spearheaded the development of a technology platform that used undercover strategies to target domestic terrorists—including white supremacists—in much the same way that the FBI was already investigating international terrorists.
In a third area of focus during his FBI career, Krob worked on child sex exploitation as far back as 2004 in Kansas City where he championed an innovative undercover operation in virtual environments to target the distribution of child sexual abuse material, an initiative that was later adapted to support national security efforts in online spaces. Near the end of his FBI career in the Denver field office, he stepped back from counterterrorism to return to work in crimes against children.
“It’s work that is very near and dear to my heart, and it makes an impact in the community where I live,” he says. “It is hugely rewarding.”
Augmenting security at JEWISHcolorado
In his role as Crisis Management Coordinator for the Denver FBI Field Office, Krob responded to the Boulder firebombing attack on June 1, 2025. The FBI worked with local partners, supporting victims and working to advance the investigation rapidly.
Long before the events in Boulder, Krob knew about the Secure Community Network when, representing the FBI, he worked with Regional Security Director Phil Niedringhaus at the Jewish National Fund-USA Global Conference for Israel 2023 which took place in Denver just weeks after October 7th. At that time, Krob was not actively looking for a post-retirement position, but when he became eligible for FBI retirement, Krob already had connections with Secure Community Network.
To Krob, the primary threats that the Jewish community faces are familiar from his counterterrorism work. He believes that because of the rise in antisemitism in recent years and because of the war in Iran, the rise of hard right extremist ideology is greater than ever.
“They are bad actors, organized or individual, who can leverage technology and resources to do harm,” he says. “And that is easier than ever to do today.”
In his new role with SCN, he will bring his experience, expertise, and passion to augment the deeply experienced SCN team at Jco, continuing the commitment to ensure that people should be able to live and worship however they want without fear of being persecuted or threatened.
“I still have a lot of fuel in the tank,” he says. “I want to continue a meaningful path both in my career and in my life.”