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Race Against Evil: The Secret Missions of the Interpol Agent Who Tracked the World's Most Sinister Criminals ? A Real-life Drama

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Race Against Evil is a fascinating, highly readable and weighty addition to the relatively small number of worthwhile books about Interpol. It is a remarkable achievement that any student of the intelligence community should read.

Often regarded as a mystery, Interpol (the world association of national police forces for mutual assistance in the fight against international crimes and criminal conspiracies) is analysed and exposed in this book by a retired officer of the organisation, and its inner workings scrutinized. Untold tales of undercover work, conspiracies and outstanding bravery constitute Bannon's personal account, in which he avoids more than a brief description of Interpol in the 1930s and the murky years when it fell into the hands of the Gestapo, focusing instead on its renaissance in the 1980s.

Interpol is one of the world's most elusive organisations. Its operations remain veiled from scrutiny and to write about Interpol risks harassment and prosecution, as former members and current commentators know to their cost. Like Britain's most celebrated spymaster, William Stephenson (known by the telegraphic address, Intrepid, used for the British Security Coordination (BSC) office he ran in New York), David Bannon has been taking flak for his autobiography, Race Against Evil. But the life of the professional spy is by nature one of secret accomplishment and shadowy triumph. Trying to shine a light into this world, especially twenty years on, is a daunting exercise. If it accomplishes nothing else, it should serve to remind us of the dark world faced by such individuals.

Like so many Interpol agents, Bannon contributed silently, exercising his skills behind the scenes. The nature of the business is that he and his colleagues went largely unsung. It's part of the mythology. Efforts to emerge from the shadows naturally engender scepticism. Large, reliable news services have validated many of the facts presented in the book. Only one source - a small weekly (circ. 9,000) in the southern United States - questioned Bannon's intelligence adventures, doing so without interviews, research or qualified reportage and therefore it is irrelevant to an educated discussion of the verifiable facts presented in the book.

There is little question that Bannon has an honourable record and that he served Interpol admirably. His publications in Asian affairs and many translations - he read history at Seoul National University - are easy for any competent researcher to confirm. The larger question relates to the substance of his clandestine career. In this, the enigmatic nature of Interpol has pretty well doomed Bannon from the start. The fact that Interpol is still shrouded in public contradictions and official secrecy makes for a challenging research environment. To this day, many of the people from Bannon's Interpol circle cling tenaciously to their code of secrecy. It is very difficult to pry information from them.

Of great interest are Bannon's personal details of French-born master spy Jacques H. Defferre, to whom Interpol gave the code name Archie, who died this year at age 67 in Marseilles, France. Protean in his exploits, Defferre served as a commissioner in Interpol. During the Vietnam War, Jacques Defferre set up Interpol's spy operations in Asia and coordinated the exchange of intelligence between France and South Korea. In this capacity, he also served as a trusted and confidential intermediary between South Korea's President Park Chunghee and Interpol. Defferre's influence extended to helping shape Interpol intelligence and special operations capabilities, namely the investigative branch Rosetta and its enforcement arm, Archangel, both assigned to investigate international child traffic. Among the operations undertaken by Defferre as head of the Rosetta Division at his La Verpillere based operation was assassination of slavers. Accounts of his division's successes helped inspire awareness of the child sex trade at international conferences. A full accounting of Defferre's service has proven elusive: a reflection of the trade of intelligence and the personality of those with a vocation for it. I suspect Defferre was amused by all the controversy surrounding him. That he seems to have taken many of his secrets safely to the grave is the spy's ultimate achievement.

Epitomised in the public imagination by James Bond, Interpol's svelte and glamorous image has been peeled away by Bannon's searching revelations to reveal a less savoury truth. Here is the story of Interpol's recruitment of former criminals during the 1980s; campaigns against child sex rings in Europe and Asia; Operation Archangel; and many other little-known operations. The dealings of the Belgian Beast Marc Dutroux, the Wonderland Club, and North Korean labour camps, among others, are also fully explained, as are the many tensions that have existed and to some extent still exist between Interpol and its sister intelligence organisations especially in contentious areas such as Thailand and South Korea.

It is impossible, under the laws presently shielding Interpol, to write about its daily activities. But Interpol has a history, and this book reveals a great deal. Here for the first time is an operational history of Interpol's activities and attitudes. Bannon's is a searching story of the characters and situations in which the games have been played, and of twenty years of international political intriguing, spying and thuggery - all in the name of intelligence.

By Geoffrey Ries, a former intelligence officer.

Race Against Evil is David Bannon's unforgettable account of how be became part of the mysterious underworld that is child slavery--the first and only account by an Interpol agent--and it is as amazing and intriguing as the flamboyant, deadly, terrifying world it portrays. Bannon's inclusion of excerpts from actual Interpol documents bring the events of this tale chillingly to life. He narrates this thrilling account of his own experiences as an undercover Interpol agent who successfully infiltrated the dangerous world of child slavery. During an eighteen-year period, but particularly for about five years in the 1980s, Bannon adopted flexible personae to "buy in" to child trafficking networks. Though it reads like a thriller, this work also provides listeners with much concrete information about Interpol intelligence and financial operations, as well as the grotesque world of child sex slavery.

Bannon's descriptions of sex slavery rings are shocking, but since his book's publication, the problem has garnered international attention. Delegates to the U.N. General Assembly heard U.S. President George W. Bush condemn the international trade in sex slaves on Sept. 23, 2003. The State Department estimates that at least 800,000 women, children and men are sold across borders each year, Bush said, some "as young as five, who fall victim to the sex trade. This commerce in human life generates billions of dollars each year." Bannon's exposure of the existence of rings in the borders of the U.S. has elicited criticism, but the president didn't gloss over the facts. "This problem has appeared in my own country," Bush said, "and we are working to stop it." Bannon is not the only one to label child sex slavery as evil. President Bush condemned the "special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable." He said, "We must show new energy in fighting back an old evil," adding, "The trade in human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time."

To understand the terrible human cost of this evil commerce in children, Bannon's Race Against Evil is essential for public libraries with crime collections.

Major Bannon's book is a nail-biting thriller and a revealing expose of the inner workings of Interpol. More importantly, it is a literate revelation of a man's painful role in fighting international crime in the only way he knew.

Bannon has carefully crafted a story that is legitimate in every detail and is told in an exciting style that keeps the pages turning. Not since John le Carre and John D. MacDonald has there been such a literate anti-hero and not since Truman Capote and Ann Rule has non-fiction been so well told. It's easy to miss that Bannon is a great storyteller because his art never once inhibits the book, which flies along at such a riveting pace that it will leave the reader breathless at such unsung heroism and heartsick at the cruelty of life.

Bannon's relationships are detailed with tact and honest candor. He uses well-known cliches as a method to quickly involve us in characters; then he subverts these stereotypes to reveal the depth of the real people he met. Bannon's literate craftsmanship allows us to experience his first impression; then we discover with him that that cliches, like first impressions, are only sketches of the deeper person within. This is particularly true of his boss, Commissioner Defferre, who is revealed as a complex man burdened with a mission and a relationship with the author that is heartfelt and complicated. Bannon shares much of the dark, caustic humor shared by his colleagues in moments of stress or rest. What may seem like a corny joke to the reader is actually revealed as darkly clever and refreshingly honest when understood in the context of the horrors surrounding the people in the book. The shallow and less witty who fancy themselves literate and require that every pun has three meanings will never comprehend the lives of these great men and women whose honesty and humor kept them sane in the face of such tragedy.

Descriptions and dialogue do much more than simply propel the thrilling action of Major Bannon's life. The book is filled with the sights and sounds of the places he worked. There are so many cultural and artistic bits of information woven into the story that it's easy to miss them. Korean poetry, American television, Belgian comic books, performance art, folk tales, and fascinating descriptions of what it felt like to eat and walk in these wonderfully different places. When we travel with him to a country or city, whether a castle or temple, park or graveyard, Major Bannon crafts in the history of the place and it's importance not only to the story but also to the people who lived there.

It is the people that make this book so unforgettable. Bannon's greatest gift is the way he blends dialogue into the action. We have a real sense of what it was like to be with these interesting people and to feel, as they so often did, the comfortingly human need to say unrelated absurdities or acidic truths at the most inappropriate times. They were faced with the unthinkable and, through Bannon's descriptions and recreation of dialogue, we understand the truth of evil and the overwhelming power of goodness in the hearts of men and women who fight it.

David Race Bannon: The spy who never was

David Race Bannon, who claims to have worked for Interpol as a hit man, was arrested for criminal impersonation - after for years possibly serving as an expert witness in courts and on news channels

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
by Robert Duncan

Call him the spy who never came in from the cold - or better yet, the spy who never was.

David Race Bannon, 42, of Charlotte, North Carolina, claims to have worked for Interpol as a hit man, was arrested Friday, Jan. 27, in Boulder, Colo. for criminal impersonation. Various websites (including a cached version of his website) claim that Bannon has served as an expert witness in U.S. federal appellate court, and appeared on the Discovery Channel, Fox News Channel, A&E, The History Channel, TechTV and National Public Radio.

Jefferson County district attorney spokesman Carl Blesch said in a statement that Bannon didn't resist his arrest Friday at a Boulder restaurant. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Bannon was in Colorado "meeting with a group that was sponsoring his planned appearance today in Boulder." That same article said CBI agents described Bannon as "'dumbfounded' when he was taken into custody." Bannon is scheduled for his first district court appearance on Feb. 2. Bond was set at $5,000. Bannon is the author of "Race Against Evil -- The Secret Missions of the Interpol Agent Who Tracked the World's Most Sinister Criminals.''

A press statement for Bannon's "Race Against Evil" book, claims that "at age 18, the American youth is recruited by Interpol after he is caught in a deadly riot in South Korea. Over the next 15 years, Bannon is trained to work in the darkest regions of humanity, to deny societal inhibitors against killing and embrace the agency's role as deliverer of grim justice to evildoers beyond the reach of the law. His missions take him from investigating the bombing of KAL 858 and infiltrating prisons in Korea to the disappearance of London's most notorious child pornographer and searching out terrorists and criminals in the United States."

It appears even Bannon's name is in question.

"The former David Wayne Dilley changed his name to Bannon in Spokane, Washington, in 1990, choosing the name because of the character Race Bannon in the classic Hanna-Barbera adventure cartoon 'Jonny Quest,'" according to the Mainichi Daily News. Despite the similarity between Bannon's name and that of a cartoon character from Johnny Quest - specifically the trusty friend of Dr. Quest is called Race Bannon - his book has received support from some fringe groups. "I wish more people would bring this tragic occurance to light. As a mother and a youth leader, I had no idea how much of this was going on in the world. I knew about child abduction and child abuse and have tryed educating parents and teens about safety," reads one reviewer, while another at the same website wrote "This is a fascinating, hair-raising, sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic account of the brave men and women who went behind the lines in child sex slavery rings." Both those reviewers were anonymous.

But as far back as 2004 Interpol has been saying that Bannon's history is fiction.

Working in collaboration with the U.S. National Central Bureau of Interpol, the Interpol General Secretariat (Lyon, France), and other Interpol member countries, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said Bannon's credentials are bogus and his efforts to profit from the deception to be illegal. He is charged with criminal impersonation, computer crime and attempted theft. "Interpol's General Secretariat in Lyon has no record of David Race Bannon having been employed and no knowledge of individuals mentioned in Mr. Bannon's book. Interpol exists to facilitate the exchange of information between the world's law enforcement agencies and to provide analysis of criminal data and other services. Accordingly, the claims in Mr. Bannon's book can only be seen as deceptive and irresponsible fantasy,'' the Interpol General Secretariat said in a 2004 statement.

Using his alleged background as an Interpol agent and expert in human trafficking, Bannon is compensated for speaking engagements and subject-matter training courses. The Colorado Department of Public Safety confirmed that Bannon had solicited fees in excess of $3,000 for a two-day training course on human trafficking. It is reported that the affidavit also calls into question Bannon's doctorate from a Korean university.

As well as being an alternative radio personality, one website claims that Bannon holds a "Doctorate degree in Asian History form Seoul National University, a Master's degree in Computer Science, and he is fluent in Korean and Japanese. He has published several books on political and military history of the region, as well as a martial arts encyclopedia and computer text books. Bannon has appeared on the Discovery Channel, A & E, and The History Channel. He has also spoken on International security at world conferences from Berlin to Tokyo to Washington."

There has been no explanation regarding how Bannon could have fooled people, including possibly members of Interpol - if they were indeed members of the organization. In April 2003 the Kungfu magazine interviewed Bannon along with somebody identified as Interpol Commissioner Jacques Defferre, and who was said at that time to be Bannon's retired superior at Interpol. That interview was said to have been granted so the two ex-spies could explain "their motives for working in Archangel (the operation Bannon names in his book). Sitting in a coffee shop in Charlotte, NC, the two plainly described how the underground kiddie porn industry is used to fund terrorist cells, and of the vast international networks of kidnappers and pornographers who continue to earn 'billions of dollars' working above the law."

Other websites, including an Amazon reviewer who says he is an former intelligence officer and goes by the name of Geoffrey Ries claims, that Jacques Defferre was a French-born spy, to whom Interpol gave the code name Archie, "who died this year (2003) at age 67 in Marseilles, France. Protean in his exploits, Defferre served as a commissioner in Interpol. During the Vietnam War, Jacques Defferre set up Interpol's spy operations in Asia and coordinated the exchange of intelligence between France and South Korea."

(...)

I am a retired DEA Field Division SAC. After I heard David Bannon on the radio, I met him at a booksigning. Despite all his training to appear innocuous, I immediately recognized from his posture, the way he scanned the room with his eyes but not his whole body, his bearing, that Bannon had spent a lot of time with criminals -- in prison, undercover for Interpol, and chasing child slavers for an Interpol department called Archangel. Bannon was also abstemious, devoted to his daughter, and a conservative college professor whose many legitimate conferences and publications camouflaged his other work. Bannon's account of this complex, compartmentalized life is a rich stew of anthropological detail, confusion, and shame. It was only after Bannon quit Interpol and a national magazine published his story, around his daughter's twelfth birthday, that the author revealed the reasons for his long disappearances and scarred body: he had been an assassin, rumored to be responsible for more than a hundred killings. This heartsick memoir charts Bannon's attempt to come to terms with his past.

Bannon's detractors are unqualified to judge him. They have not met him and know nothing of international criminal traffic. Even I am not educated about the inner workings of Interpol, but I have spent enough years undercover with the DEA to judge the man. I looked into his eyes and saw the man beneath the charming exterior. He knows things that only someone on the inside can possibly know, and he expresses emotions that only those of us who have seen evil face-to-face can possibly understand. I believe him.

Grim tales of crime and punishment told in moving first person. In his literary foray into the dark territory of violent sex crime, Bannon invites readers behind the scenes of Interpol. But this is hardly another dark organization expose redux. The stories are fresh, and the depictions are not as grisly as those of other true crime books. The crimes and their perpetrators are no less monstrous, however, in chronicles that are as compelling as they are disturbing. From the media-popular assassination teams to a remorseless leader of a child slavery ring, to an overwhelming sense of remorse and moral confession, this title captures the best and worst of humanity. More importantly, in a genre where the reader is commonly a voyeur, Bannon goes to great lengths to avoid revictimizing survivors of violent crime and relatives of those whose lives have been lost. Over and over, Bannon renders sincere, indelible portraits of victims and their families, both before and in the aftermath of these crimes, exploring the labyrinth of disbelief, bottomless grief, rage and, sometimes, the strength they have mustered to endure the everyday. Their emotional turbulence is both stunning and provocative. At once gallant and crusading, Bannon has provided a tempered and clearly written work.

Bannon has good reason to hate criminals who prey on the young: he watched them kill his fiance during a firefight. Here, Bannon profiles his own journey from missionary to assassin and details several incidents where his work helped put an end to the careers of "these beasts," child molesters and murderers. Not all his subjects are sexual deviants, however, for Bannon, who frankly recalls counter-terrorist assignments, seemingly would reserve a circle of hell for anyone who harms innocents. Fans of true-crime writing will find it of interest. Photos of Bannon in uniform and key individuals are provided, as well as an appendix with testimonials from colleagues.

My partner and me, we met Bannon in 1998 with that Wonderland business. We figured we'd read the book. It was good and meaty. Bannon tells it pretty straight. I don't know about my stomach being all that big like he says in Chapter 23, but we figured maybe we had seen it all until that kid. These guys, they take kids right off the street, okay? So Bannon calls it evil and maybe he's right. We knew he wasn't no translator and he sure as hell wasn't no cop but when he took down that room we thought maybe some kind of CIA or something. Didn't surprise us when we read about the Interpol thing. Some reviewer says this book is implausible, like he knows what we see everyday on the job? Bannon was down here in the crud with us in 98 so give him credit.

This entire book, which is supposedly "non-fiction" is a fabrication by David Wayne Dilley.

Before reading this book, one should read the following investigation, http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=30325 , which outlines in great details the claims made by mister "Bannon". The article shows, with the exhaustive investigation and research of more than a dozen individuals, how all the claims made by mister Bannon are completely false and were merely created in order to write this book. Interpol has denied having any record of him working for them, and he has recently been indicted in Colorado for theft in relation to this book and seminars that he has taught concerning child pornography in Law Enforcement.

The article is free to the public and the author does not have any monetary connection to the book or the investigation.

"Race Against Evil" was recommended to me by a close friend, "Dr. Hyung-Jin Lee," a colleague of many years who had worked with me on some of the cases in Dr. Bannon's text. My friend has now retired to the life of a university professor, but we chuckled quietly in our cups while we read of all the cases from the past and toasted our colleagues of all the years.

To this day, I have never met Dr. Bannon and after reading this text, who can say if he will ever return to South Korea? I knew of him the way you know of others in a given career, with bits of gossip and reports that bear reference to him.
Some of the criminals in "Race Against Evil" text were notorious. I was fascinated to learn of the final fate of Chong and Eunmi, the former a case that has long remained open but unsolved, and the latter an infamous incident that even now brings to heart the terrible cost of the division between South and North Korea. Over the years, my friend "Dr. Hyung-Jin Lee" has spoken of Dr. Bannon with apprehension and love, anger and devotion, in the way that only two brothers can possibly feel.

As I read "Race Against Evil," I came to an understanding of the personal life of my good friend, "Dr. Hyung-Jin Lee," and I also grew to appreciate the great love for South Korea that Dr. Bannon expresses in his book. The text is filled with a sadness that the author eloquently describes of the Korean feeling of han, that terrible sense of injustice and misery that grips our national conciousness.

Please read this text of a lonely journey as a boy grew to the full flower of his manhood and embraced his own humanity and also a whole culture that he served with a heart so tender that I read the last page with open tears. In these pages you will learn not only of a humble and courageous man but also the struggles of the Korean people as seen from the eyes of all of us who try to defend the innocent in our land.

This is a dense yet tightly paced thriller that reads like a top-notch crime novel and has more angles than a dodecahedron. Bannon's cast seems to have been recruited from the dank, smoke-filled and, invariably, black-and-white alleyways and bars more commonly conjured by Philip Marlowe or Raymond Chandler. Yet this is not make-believe, but horribly, vividly and even nauseatingly real. It is a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying read. Bannon's writing demonstrates his backbreaking research and is spiced with just enough emotion and personality to avoid the banal tone of a travelogue memoir but not go over the top into a morality play. He salts his narrative with bare facts and internal questions that rarely have answers. I hope that Bannon sells the film rights to this book to a foreign director. I don't know if an American could capture the sense of 'film noir' that the story demands. Bannon has done a fantastic job of bringing the details and motivations behind Interpol officers and the criminals they hunt to light. Far more than an autobiographical recounting of events, the author sheds valuable insight on the meaning of faith, good and evil within a daily barrage of violence. He skillfully weaves the facts of crimes and investigations with the disturbing details of the child slavers' narcissistic, sociopathic personality traits. The reader is taken inside Interpol and made to understand how his boss captivated an entire department and came to believe he was above the laws of man. A captivating story from beginning to end that forces us to look inside and to question those in whom we place our faith and trust. A page-turning true crime story that should come with a disclaimer: Read only on a weekend when you don't have early morning plans.