Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI [Hardcover]

Candice Delong (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2001

Candice DeLong has been called a real-life Clarice Starling and a female Donnie Brasco. She has been on the front lines of some of the FBIs most gripping and memorable cases, including being chosen as one of the three agents to carry out the manhunt for the Unabomber in Lincoln, Montana. She has tailed terrorists, gone undercover as a gangsters moll, and posed as the madam for a call-girl ring. Now for the first time she reveals the dangers and rewards of being a woman on the front lines of the worlds most powerful law enforcement agency. She traces the unusual career path that led her to crime fighting, and recounts the incredible obstacles she faced as a woman and as a fledgling agent. She takes readers step by step through the profiling process and shows how she helped solve a number of incredible cases. The story of her role as a lead investigator on the notorious Tylenol Murderer case is particularly compelling. Finally, she gives the true, insiders story behind the investigation that led to the arrest of the Unabomberincluding information that the media cant or wont reveal. A remarkable portrait of courage and grace under fire, Special Agent offers a missing chapter to the annals of law enforcement and a dramatic and often funny portrait of an extraordinary woman who has dedicated her heart and soul to the crusade against crime.Candice DeLongs Top Cases: 1. TYMURS-(Bureau acronym for Tylenol Murders)8 victims, 1982. 2. F.A.L.N. Terrorist Organization, 198184. 3. Melissa Ackerman kidnap/rape/murder, 1986Serial child killer Brian Dugan (Illinois). Brian Dugan was the most prolific serial killer Illinois had ever encountered. 4. The Burlington Rapist (Illinois serial rapist), 1984. 5. The Lecherous Landlord was the first and most significant Discrimination in Housing case in the history of the Chicago FBI. 6. Undercover work on UNABOM, including an afternoon with Ted Kaczynski on his arrest day, April 3, 1996.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Readers may well find themselves looking nervously over their shoulders after finishing this memoir by Candice DeLong, who met a lot of Hannibal Lecter's soul mates during her 20 years as an FBI agent. An early practitioner of profiling, the analysis of crime data for what it reveals about the perpetrator, DeLong handled such ugly cases that she and her partner at one point were known as "the Gruesome Twosome." Her arrests included child molesters, rapists, and serial killers; among the book's useful features are her tips on what to do if you or your child is attacked. (Yell "Fire!" rather than "Help!" she advises; it attracts more attention.) Not that human nature's darker side was a surprise to DeLong, who came to the FBI from a job as head nurse in a maximum security psychiatric ward, where a violent paranoid schizophrenic crooned at her, "You better pray I never get out of these [restraints]. I could cut your head off. Or do you want me to tear your heart out?" The frank, conversational text ably captures the forceful personality of a female pioneer. The bureau had only been accepting women for eight years when DeLong joined in 1980, and her training at Quantico included brutal harassment by instructors determined to "wash out" any female applicant. Yet she had the toughness to survive and the good sense to know when to ignore her male colleagues' barbed jokes and when to kid them right back. Ultimately, she made friends and got ahead. As well as chronicling a stream of fascinating (and often deeply disturbing) high-profile cases such as the Unabomber, DeLong's narrative portrays a changing FBI, now valuing the special perspective contributed by female and African American agents it once scorned. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

DeLong offers a lively account of a single mother's 20 years in America's most conservative federal law enforcement agency. She was a registered nurse, seasoned by work in locked psychiatric wards, when a romance with a veteran agent led her to apply to the FBI. Her initiation in 1980 at the Quantico training academy was a grueling process of "flush[ing] out the weak," at a time when the old guard and even many younger agents remained openly hostile to the notion of female agents. DeLong shrewdly addresses such gender issues, depicting how the first women agents forced a sea change to a more integrated FBI. She reminisces acidly about institutional sexism ("Somehow fathers who placed themselves in physical jeopardy were deemed valiant... while mothers were considered irresponsible"), and her work tracking sexual predators has left her highly aware of "the evil that men do." DeLong initially performed research and telephone work, notably on the 1982 Tylenol murders, and won the loyalty and friendship of forward-thinking male peers. She at last moved on to undercover work on major cases including long-term surveillance of a terrorist bombing cell, the Chicago-based FALN (members' sentences were recently commuted by President Clinton) and the Unabomber and provides gripping accounts of these events. She also became an early proponent of "profiling" a technique scorned early on by many cops until its worth was proved and it was made famous by agent John Douglas (Mindhunter, etc.). Primarily a personal memoir, with DeLong contemplating her transformations as a woman and mother, this is a valuable look at the procedures and rituals of a notoriously cloistered organization. DeLong also brings to her reminiscences a lightness and humor rarely associated with the "Feebies." (May)Forecast: A 10-city author tour and national radio satellite touro should capitalize on a national fascination with crime and the FBI.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1ST edition (April 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786867078
• ISBN-13: 978-0786867073
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #171,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Led Three Lives, April 13, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI (Hardcover)

This is the most inspiring book I have read about a woman's career since I became familiar with Ms. Jane Goodall's books about her pioneering work in Africa with chimpanzees.

Many people will see Ms. Candice ("don't call me Candy") De Long as a real-life Clarice Starling (the FBI agent in Hannibal). I think she is more impressive than that. This fascinating book recounts her three lives as a psychiatric nurse who worked with violent patients and did home health care for poor people, an FBI special agent (specializing in profiling of repeated, sexually violent offenders) from 1980 through 2000, and as a divorced mother raising a son alone. Each side of her life is equally impressive, and she is the kind of person we all should admire. She has always done her duty, and we are all the better for that. While many pioneering women in "men's" professions often were given "token" roles, Ms. De Long wanted and went to where the action was. During her career, she rescued a child from a pedophile abductor, captured a terrorist who had murdered three men, and caught a Class A fugitive. She was also present and part of many famous investigations. Her memoir will give you a much better idea about crime and how the FBI and DEA combat it. The book also contains many lessons for how women and children can avoid becoming crime victims.

When J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, there were no women field agents. By 1980, around 4 percent of the agents were women. At her retirement in 2000, this had risen to 15 percent. Ms. De Long sacrificed a lot to become an agent. She had to leave her young son for 16 weeks for the initial training. She missed a lot of evenings and weekends with him to do surveillance. The training included a lot of harrassment (female and general). For example, she was made to fire a shotgun so often in one day that she developed a permanent injury that kept her from being able to use that shoulder for firing a shotgun again. Another time, she had to box a large man who knocked her out cold. Her starting salary was half what she had made as a nurse. She could accept that. "I wanted to lead a heroic life." She certainly did succeed in that objective. She took the men on at their own game, and was proud of being called one of the "b_____s with badges." Her signature was the fedora she always wore at the Bureau.

Some of the famous cases she worked on included the Tylenol tampering, being part of the surveillance team on the Unabomber leading up to the arrest of Ted Kaczynski, and the brothel closings in Chicago.

She correctly says relatively little about her personal life. But some of the anecdotes will keep you laughing for days. When she was asked to be a hot dog mother in her son's third grade class, the children noticed that she was packing. She got a lot more respect after that, and was invited back to talk about her work. Another time, she accidentally noticed a surveillance suspect while driving around and tailed her. The team had lost the suspect. Only well into the chase did she realize that her son was in the back seat. She kept him safe while her eye was peeled on the suspect.

The profiling work will intrigue you. You will learn about all of the different kinds of creeps who victimize women and children. It was amazing how well the profiles predicted who the guilty party was. Using the profiles allowed the FBI and local police to find the suspects much faster than would otherwise have occurred. Since these are repeat offenders, lives were saved and injuries were avoided as a result. Part of the worst of this was that many times the women could have been saved if someone had called the police. "If you are ever assaulted, never count on help."

The stories of the harrassment she endured from insecure males in the FBI will amaze you. She indicates that conditions improved over time. One of the most ridiculous examples was when she was sent to the home of an informant to babysit his child while the bust went down. She put up with this only because the safety of an innocent child was involved.

I was even more impressed by her work as a psychiatric nurse. Shooting tranquilizers into writhing, distrubed patients being held down by 7 orderlies was probably more dangerous than any of the arrests she did for the FBI. There she had a gun and usually lots of backup.

Her courage was most impressive. When she arrested the terrorist, she kept waiting for her partner to put the cuffs on while she had the drop on the suspect. Eventually, she looked around and realized that her partner was sheepishly waiting in the car calling for back-up. In her haste to make the bust, she didn't take time to put on her bullet-proof vest. Fortunately, the error did not lead to harm, but she took a grave risk in the process. She was astonished to find that the terrorist was more frightened of her than she was of him.

Money problems eventually caused to need to moonlight as a nurse. The moonlighting stories are very entertaining. At first, she kept bumping into agents while she was working the wards. To avoid this, she started doing home nursing in the poorest neighborhoods. This dual career eventually led to her needing to retire in the middle of administrative hearings about whether she was being unprofessional in her moonlighting. Someone should have cut her more slack.

I was impressed by her courage, her idealism, her persistence, and her commitment to doing the right thing. I hope that all young women (and their parents) who are thinking about taking on a dangerous career will read this book. You will be very inspired.

My hat's off to you, Ms. De Long! You're way more than a five star person.

Ms. De Long and Ms. Petrini have done a fine job of writing about this fascinating life, and you will enjoy what they have to say.

After you finish reading this book, I suggest that you rethink your ideas about what women and men can and cannot do. This book once again proves that anyone can do anything, if they want to badly enough.

Live up to your potential to serve others!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening plus...., September 21, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI (Hardcover)

Read this along with the memoir, Seductive Poison and found both quite eye opening. Although the two women authors, DeLong and Layton of Seducitve Poison were on opposite sides of the barrel, so to speak, both tell a riveting story of life on the inside of an all-consuming organization. DeLong on the side of the law and Layton running from it, then back into its cradle.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lock your doors, pull down the shades, August 9, 2001

By 

Cville Dad (Catonsville, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI (Hardcover)

I'm even MORE paranoid than I was before now that I've finished Candice DeLong's book. Her tales of the cases she's been involved with are truly intriguing and often chilling. However, if you're looking for an inside scoop on the FBI, you certainly won't find it here. DeLong doesn't offer any suprising revelations about the hardships of being a woman in this blue-suit environment, nor does she give her reader any critical analysis of the inner workings of the FBI. But, it is a very entertaining (if unsettling) read. At the end of the book, DeLong offers some tips on lessening your chances of becoming a crime victim, but the overall message of the book seems to be a rather doomed one: crime happens, and it happens to people like you and me for no real reason at all.