Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent by Fred BurtonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Burton began his career in law enforcement as a police officer in Montgomery County, Maryland and later worked for the U.S. Secret Service. From 1985 to 1999, years of focus here, he was a special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). He eventually became the deputy chief of the DSS counterterrorism division.
While with the DSS, Burton recalls here Terry Waite and Iran-Contra unfolding early in his SS career. (Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury's special humanitarian envoy, was kidnapped and held captive for nearly five years in Beirut because his humanitarian hostage-negotiation missions were covertly and disastrously entangled with the secret Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages dealings orchestrated by U.S. National Security aide Oliver North.) He also recounts working in Pakistan on the mangos and nerve gas killing of Ziaulhaq as part of the 1988 Pakistan Air Force C-130B crash. He was involved in the arrest of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 which closes out this memoir.
In the epilogue Burton joins Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based geopolitical forecasting and analysis company, in 2004.
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