Customer Reviews

Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent

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Ghost is a memoir by one of the founding agents of the Counterterrorism Division of the Diplomatic Security Service, part of the U.S. Department of State. Author Fred Burton reveals the sinister realities of the global counterterrorism game in a very serious, readable, unpretentious way. The book is devoid of the ego-tripping and grandstanding that a lot of these memoirs suffer from (i.e. books like "Jawbreaker" etc.).

Burton gives you the point of view of a working professional field agent, dedicated and patriotic, doing work that Hollywood thinks is like Jack Bauer but really resembles that of an unusually committed and hard-core local cop or criminal investigator. Burton puts the lie to the idea that effective work against Al Qaeda et al. is anything other than good police work. If you think the military should be the first line of defense against AQ et al., read Burton for the fuller picture. To beat the terrorists, we need guys like Fred Burton too.

The book had a lot of things that were new to me, including:

* the theory that the airplane crash that killed Pakistani President Zia was a KGB hit -- the Soviet Union's "farewell kiss" to the mujahadin as the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in defeat. Burton was the lead investigator on that case.

* how scary-close the world was to nuclear war after the Zia hit. Burton says that Pakistan, fearing Zia's death might be the first phase of an attack by India, put its recently deployed nuclear forces on high alert. The Indians did the same, and for a few days it was very touch and go, the worst international nuclear tension since the Cuban crisis.

* the real story of how Ramzi Yousef, the first World Trade Center bomber and Al Qaeda's first master of terror, was taken down. Burton played a key role in this first battle with Osama Bin Laden's true believers, directing Pakistani and U.S. agents on the ground.

* new, inside stuff on the Beirut hostage crisis, including the search for hostages William Buckley, David Jacobson, and Father Martin Jenco. (You really get the sense that Burton still weeps for them. You feel his frustration, and his rage.)

* how terrorists have occasionally been turned into effective double agents, used as spies in the battle with Hezbollah and other radical Muslim groups.

* how counter-surveillance programs employed by the DSS successfully uncovered terror attacks or assassination attempts before they actually took place. These programs, which Burton advocates today, saved many lives since the mid-nineties.

* Burton is rather funny in discussing how the State Department's details protecting international dignitaries often put Burton in the position of protecting foreign leaders suspected of mafia ties, terrorism, and other criminal activity.

All in all, Ghost gives a fresh, unusual perspective by a man who was in the trenches for a very long time and deserves our gratitude. The book is worth reading for its insights into the tradecraft of the working "terror cop."

Very readable, in its best parts a lot like a spy novel.

This will be a riveting story for those who are interested in counter terrorism and DSS, but also maybe be somewhat annoying to those who are well read on the subject or who have personal experience with the intelligence or counter terrorism communities.

It is a fun and interesting read. I don't think Burton exaggerates his involvement; he is pretty straight forward about it. However, his experiences are nonetheless sometimes accompanied by over-the-top commentary. I suspect this makes the ride more enjoyable for those who are new to the subject matter or are merely seeking entertainment, but I'm afraid it will invoke quite a few eye rolls and "oh come ons" by others.

Instead of merely discussing the generally unnecessary (though nonetheless advisable)precautions taken to avoid tails, Burton paints dramatic portraits of imminent danger which ultimately lead to...nothing. It isn't the result (nothing) that I found frustrating, but rather the overly dramatic portrayal of relatively routine occurrences. I have little doubt that at many points in his career he was truly and justifiably frightened, but every recounted story does not warrant a paragraph about how he may never see his family again. Further, his constant referral to himself as a "spook" involved in the perilous "dark world" is destined to annoy some readers.

I would certainly recommend the read. However, I think he missed some of his audience on this one.

This exciting well written memoir by Fred Burton, former Deputy Chief of the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), the Department of State's counterterrorism (CT) division, is among other things, a detailed look back at all the glaring warning signs and signals America was given years before the catastrophe of 9/11. The author had been a Maryland cop. "He protected his community, loved law enforcement, but wanted something more." He applied for federal service and the DSS whom he had never heard of offered him a job. So in 1986 he entered "THE-DARK-WORLD", "THE-BLACK-WORLD"... he became a "SPOOK". His entire life was turned upside down. His normal jogging routes had to be constantly changed as he started carrying paranoia with him along with his sweatshirt. His route to work involved a constantly changing labyrinth of right turns, left turns, double and triple u-turns. His wife was told there would never be any discussions about his workday, and he was trained to understand that sometimes, without a warning, he wouldn't be home for weeks at a time without his wife knowing he was leaving or where he had gone.

Fred was one of the earliest members of organized counter terrorism (CT) and his early work involved researching almost every terrorist act in modern recorded history including Beirut 1 and 2. He was told to study top secret documents in the "buried bodies" files to see if he could find any patterns or anything that had been missed. From there Fred was thrown to the wolves and had to learn on the job. He started flying all around the world on a moment's notice, wherever there was a blown up plane, or assassination, or hostage situation. Security was always the top priority, and orders were never questioned. "FRED'S BOSS ONCE TOLD HIM TO GO THE WHITE HOUSE AND DELIVER A BRIEFING. HE ASKED TO WHOM AND HIS RESPONSE WAS, "YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW THAT. THEY'LL BE WAITING." "I DID IT AND DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE WHOM I WAS TALKING TO THE ENTIRE TIME I WAS AT 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE." Another time Fred was parking his car in the garage when his phone rings. He answers it. It's his boss. "Fred?" "Yes?" Be at Andrews at 2100 hours for a trip. Pack for a week, maybe two. "Okay. Where am I going? "You don't need to know that yet." CLICK.

The reader is "dragged" down memory lane through the rubble of destroyed humanity as the author leads you in an effective real-time horrid lesson of modern terrorism. One of the most chilling mental realizations occur after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, when Fred finds out that the FBI had an informant who penetrated the mosque responsible two years earlier. He had worn a wire and attended planning sessions and meetings with Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman the blind Egyptian cleric. Fred convinces his contacts to let him see the transcripts of what this informant recorded. "He is floored!" Part of the transcripts detailed a planned assassination of Egyptian President Mubarak. They had an entire detailed plan to overcome the American government agents that were assigned to protect the President of Egypt. The terrorists knew every move of the American security detail, and their plan probably would have worked. The terrorists had become expertly familiar with every move the American security personnel made... IT WAS FRED'S SECURITY DETAIL! "AS I READ THE TRANSCRIPTS, I REALIZE THAT I HAD BEEN ON SOME OF THE DETAILS THEY'D BEEN WATCHING. THE REVELATION DRAINS THE COLOR FROM MY FACE. WE NEVER EVEN CAUGHT A WHIFF OF THIS SOPHISTICATED SURVEILLANCE OPERATION."

This memoir is an educational-historical book on America's battle against terrorism that leads you from the author's first days that entailed nothing but studying files of "dead-bodies", all the way through his personal growth, which results in him openly disagreeing with a Pakistani Colonel, who says the plane that crashed killing his countries President was downed by a missile. When you're done with your "SPOOK'S" tour through "THE-DARK-WORLD", you will truly feel enlightened!

This is a fun little book, but it's not much of a "confession" as billed. Burton was a DSS agent with an interesting career, but he was not a big player. Most of his involvement was at a low-level, conducting debriefings, meeting a few informants, and reading lots of cables. He does not document personal involvement in ANY top takedowns, no intelligence "coups" nor any real excitement. In spite of describing his countersurveillance training, his need to wear "tied shoes" to be able to fight, and running through his home neigborhoods watching for tails, he never really makes the bigtime. He does have some decent tips on countersurveillance and terrorist planning and execution cycle, and some interesting inside tidbits, but this is no true "ghost."

I got on the library hold list early for the book Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent by Fred Burton. From the standpoint of a "been there, done that" memoir, it's a good read. You get a feel for how difficult it is to fight terrorism on a global basis. But the book loses a bit when it comes to style and storyline. It seems to be building up to something that never quite happens.

Contents:
Part 1 - Rookie Year: The Buried Bodies; Down the Rabbit Hole; Night Train; The Dark World's Redheaded Stepchildren; Chasing Shadows; No Space Between Black and White; The Mad Dog of the Middle East; Two Hits for El Dorado Canyon; Human Poker Chips; One More Gold Star; The Gray Hell of Wait and Hope; The Stench of Good Intentions; Shipwreck; The Beer Hall Encounter
Part 2 - The Veteran: Little Italy; Mice; Threat Matrix; The Bronze Star Assassin; PAK-1 Down; Night Flight; In Country; Pakistani Two-Step; One Hour to Nowheresville; The Buffet at the End of the World; Puzzle Pieces; The Perfect Murder; Autumn Leaves; Two-Minute Free Fall
Part 3 - War Weary: Street Dance; The Colonel's Revelations; Watching the Watchers; The World's Most-Wanted Man; Deadly Equation; Money Changes Everything; Finale In Pakistan; Lillybrook
Epilogue - Brotherhood of the Badge; Author's Note; Acknowledgments

Burton's story begins in 1986 when he was assigned to the Diplomatic Security Service's (DSS) small Counter-Terrorism Division. It was made up of a whopping three people, two of whom were brand new, and all the work was manual and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. Imagine everything being paper files, tons of filing cabinets, and all the growing institutional knowledge of terrorism in certain areas being all in the head of one or two people. Burton was quickly crowned the Middle East "expert" and as such became deeply involved in terrorist activities in Beirut, Iran, Iraq, India, and Pakistan, just to name a few. As major terror figures like Abu Nidal and Ramzi Yusef carried out their plans, Burton and his small (but growing) team tried to anticipate, warn, prevent, and ultimately capture (or kill) these criminals. His front-row perspective on these events makes you realize that luck and chance plays a much bigger role than you'd like to believe or admit. It really is a wonder that more events like the first World Trade Center bombing don't happen...

While I found the material interesting, I struggled with the style and pacing of his story. 90% of all the action takes place in the mid-80's with the kidnappings and air bombings. Any one of those incidents could be a full book in itself, so by necessity he can't go as deep as you might like. He's writing in as "as it happens" style, so there are times you feel as if you already know the outcome of the story since the major players may have already been caught/jailed/killed. Part 3 jumps to the mid-90's and gets a bit more personal as to what the job has cost him, but the gap doesn't necessarily bring you further along in the DSS story. And for all intents and purposes, it end in 1994. Nothing much on why he left, why he joined a private security firm, and so on. For a book written in 2008 and for a topic very much in the forefront of today's headlines, the 15 year gap from then to now just screams to be addressed somehow. Maybe it's all classified or he's forbidden from writing about later events, but how do you not even touch on 9/11 and the full impact it had on his agency or his private firm?

I would still recommend this as a good read if only to understand the battle that goes on in The Dark World. Just don't expect to come away with a full up-to-the-minute analysis of where we are today.

I usually re-sell my books after reading once but this I'm hanging onto so as to re-read over the winter, though it may leave you a little depressed due to government attitudes, but not the authors' & reminds us to truly Thank people doing these tough, clandestine jobs, jobs most of us cannot do.

Fred Burton: Straight laced American
First off fantastic book with great insight into the job for the state department. Pretty much just history and nothing post 9/11 but keeping that in your mind while you read it allows you to understand just how much we missed and why.

Fred Burton the author and star of this work is a straight laced American. He is nothing like the rouge 007's of the world and that makes him great in my book. He was not a field agent so that makes it difficult to compare but if you line him up next to Robert Baer, former CIA- Counter Terrorism, you will see they are very different. Burton is a give it all, work is life, patriot and the United States needs more men like him. All and all great book and if you are looking for a true to life James Bond thriller you have come to the wrong place.

NOTE**
Robert Baer is a great American and a Patriot he has served his country well and with distinction. His novel(s) and works of non-fiction are fantastic and somewhat on the lines of a James Bond novel, so if that is what you are looking for, there you go, Enjoy I know I did.

Having subscribed to STRATFOR for years, I was familiar with and respected Fred Burton's analyses and writings. He should stick to reports and analyses. I was expecting more from this book than he delivered. While the detailed description of the mundane daily chores of a government counter-terrorism office were mildly interesting, at times it seemed he was milking a few stories for more pages than they deserved. Perhaps this was as much the editor's shortcoming as the author's. It would have been nice - and I was expecting - to read something cogent about how the daily work in the "Dark World" by dedicated civil servants such as Burton fits into the bigger picture of national security policy making. If that's what you hope to read about, Ghost will disappoint you.

If there is anything important to know about the world today, it's background on the Middle East and what has happened there, from its origins until the present. Watching folks ranging from the man on the street to high level politicians, it's evident that they have not often read their history on this subject. We need to know as much as we possibly can about recent history, too - without the wisdom of history, we just keep making the same mistakes. And nothing replaces live experience. So this book is not only fascinating in the usual respect, but something more. It is an important book. It tells us things from the perspective of a person on the ground gaining knowledge, trying to piece together meanings, to figure out what is going on, relating to us things that happened that we heard about but really did not understand.

And that's exactly where we stand ourselves - we are part of this world, faced with the need to know, to understand what's going on, and with never enough real life information to help us be truly knowledgeable. We are responsible for choices we make, for effects that "we the people" have on policy through elections, through actions, through our dialogue with others, through the way what we know affects those around us.

All the flashy spy movies are fun, the thrillers carry us away, but in the end, such escape and misinformation are all too often pretty much junk food - it tastes good at the time but in the end we remain empty. Ghost is a book that doesn't just entertain, but informs and intrigues. If it isn't the exact perspective as other books on the subject, that's all to the good. Human experience is not going to be the same. That's part of the point. Because each perspective has the opportunity to contribute specific knowledge to build up a larger picture. Ghost presents a straight-forward and clarifying picture of a set of events that are a part of a critical history of our struggles in the Middle East, and an opportunity to gain new understanding about this crucial area of the world. And recent history tells us we must learn more, and soon.

Fred Burton's book, Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent, is an exciting, disturbing, and frightening book. Difficult to put down, Ghost takes the reader through the modest beginnings of the DSS and the USA's effort at countering the increasing terrorism directed against us.

Burton was in the eye of the storm and the reader feels the stress and strain of responsibility as it weighs him and his fellow agents down and prevents him from sleeping. The story transports the reader from our nation's capital to the middle east and around the globe.

Aside from being an interesting story, Ghost provides a realistic picture of the adversaries faced by the west in general and the US specifically. The book was both gripping and frightening, and I highly recommend it.