ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, August 7, 1996              TAG: 9608070051
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
DATELINE: MANASSAS 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

FBI RETIREES ADVISERS FOR TV SHOW

Hollywood called, but the mysterious group of retired FBI agents didn't answer. At least not at first.

``They wouldn't return my phone calls for two months,'' said Chris Carter, creator and producer of the new Fox network television show, ``Millenium.''

But Carter was persistent, and now the Academy Group of Prince William County has signed on as a consultant for the series.

``Millenium'' is about a network of former FBI behavioral specialists, so who better than the Academy Group's nine behavior and criminal experts to offer advice?

Most members of the firm worked for the FBI's behavioral science unit, depicted in ``The Silence of the Lambs.'' They spent their time in the FBI getting into the minds of all sorts of psychopaths.

``If you want to find out about Bigfoot, you can go out and talk to people who've seen Bigfoot, or you can go out and measure footprints, or you can corral a whole bunch of'' Bigfoots, said Academy Group partner Richard Ault. ``We went out and talked to criminals.''

Ault and his colleagues have used their collective decades of experience, including investigations of the Tylenol poisonings and the Unabomber case, to work with a fascinating array of clients.

Now the group's expertise is proving invaluable to Carter, whose FBI consultants for the Fox series ``The X-Files'' put him in touch with the Academy Group.

The Academy Group has accepted a monthly retainer and promised to be available 24 hours a day to make story suggestions, judge whether dialogue and plots are realistic and suggest angles the show's lead character might pursue. The firm would not disclose how much it is being paid.

``Nothing they actually do has figured into the show yet,'' Carter said. ``But I hope to sit down with them and ask them what they would do in this situation; what would be their next step?''

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