Reviews – The Devil’s Darning Needle.

Hi-tech counter-terrorism thriller (Rating 5 of 5)
Cheryl C. Malandrinos

A unique and engaging hi-tech counter-terrorism thriller can be found in "The Devil's Darning Needle" by Ben Furman. Years ago, FBI undercover agent Frank Durazo infiltrated the terrorist organization known as FALN and helped to bring their leader Ojeda Sanchez to justice...but it cost him greatly. Now that Sanchez is out of prison, Frank believes the FALN is regrouping and planning an attack on world leaders gathered at the President's gravesite. Unconvinced by Duranzo's suggestion about Sanchez and already stretched for resources, Frank's superiors want real proof before they'll put manpower behind him. But time is running out. Duranzo's son, Luis, who's building top-secret micro-aerial vehicles for the U.S. Military is missing and the woman Frank has loved for years is in danger...and Sanchez and the FALN plot is connected to all of them. Can Frank stop Sanchez and the FALN in time without losing anyone he loves? "The Devil's Darning Needle" is an intense, engaging read from page one. Frank's history with Sanchez propels this story forward and keeps the reader turning pages. While I'm not usually a big fan of backstory taking up the beginning chapters of a novel, Furman's decision to set the scene for the attack that will unfold in present day is a smart one. The author's wealth of experience in counter-terrorism truly shines through and draws the reader right into a world of hi-tech weapons, the mind of a terrorist, and the work of the FBI. This novel also provides an interesting look into how politics impacts the work of the department. As a woman reading this book, I must admit that Furman handled the relationships in "The Devil's Darning Needle" very well. Not every author can portray personal relationships in such an action-packed novel, but Furman made it seem easy. Kudos go out to cover designer Frank Rivera. The picture of the Capitol Building in the background with a dragonfly whose transparent wings float into the title is stunning, as is the color selection. Readers who enjoy the work of Tom Clancy should definitely check out "The Devil's Darning Needle" (The Devil's Darning Needle)


Hi-Tech Thriller (Rating 5 of 5)
Rich DiSilvio

Very unique story. Despite it being fiction, it's clear that the author writes from a perspective of experience. Only a former FBI chief of counter-terrorism could write something this real and this terrifying. The technologies available to criminals these days exceed what most ordinary citizens could ever imagine. Mixed in with this evil plot is a tangled web of love and hate that keeps the reader nicely engaged. Highly recommended (The Devil's Darning Needle)

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Terrorists kill Jimmy Tag Along - Excerpt, The Devil's Darning Needle

A counterterrorism thriller by Ben R. Furman

The entrance to the Roosevelt Roads Navy Base was less than three blocks away and for the military and civilian personnel working there, the station was a convenient stopping place. El Gordo couldn’t afford to have his Coke machine out of commission long, so it was always quickly repaired. In about a week it would be ready for salting again. Easy money.

Johnny took a bag of rock salt from Frank, who had carried it from home and complained all the way. “You do the heavy lifting because you’re stronger. Quit complaining. I, Johnny el Grande, do all the hard work. Grab the sprayer I hid behind the big bush.”

Johnny screwed off the top, poured several handfuls of salt into the sprayer and carried it into the women’s bathroom. He turned on the hot water tap and waited. When the brackish water faded to tan, he filled the sprayer and stirred it. Satisfied, he screwed the plunger back in and pumped the air pressure as high as he could.

Jimmy signaled El Gordo was still under the pickup. Johnny stuck the sprayer nozzle into every opening, pumped the witch’s brew deep inside, and in short minutes the sick machine threw up its treasure. Johnny grinned and did his victory dance.

Frank scooped up the last of the coins and Johnny signaled Jimmy that it was time to go. The high pitched squeal of a cargo van’s tires ripped the air when it missed the turn at the intersection. It jumped the curb, smashed into the pumps, and spewed a fountain of gas in every direction. Five men in army fatigues with guns jumped from the back. El Gordo ran out of the service bay yelling and waving his lunch bucalaito menacingly in their direction. He was killed with one shot. Frank felt and heard the slap of a bullet as it passed his right ear. A meek groan came from behind. He turned. Jimmy had been shot in the head and crumpled slowly to the ground.

A second van screeched to a stop and the men leaped inside. Frank stood frozen, and then he saw the shooter who was only a few years older than he, pointing a rifle at his chest. In a rush of rage and defiance, Frank spit in his direction.

The barrel rose slowly and the teen, who had so calmly killed El Gordo and Jimmy, gave him a nod of acknowledgement and said, “You’ve got guts cabrito.” Then he pulled a lighted cigarette from his lips and motioned toward the woods behind the station. Frank ran toward the path with Johnny on his heels.

The driver of the van shouted, “Damn it, Ojeda, come on.”

As the van sped away, Frank took a quick glance as the flipped cigarette touched the widening pool of gasoline.

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The Devil’s Darning Needle -- Excerpt

The Obrero Gang

By Ben Furman

The Obrero Gang was Frank Durazo, Johnny Salinas and Jimmy Tag Along. The ten year olds had grown up on a nameless, carved-out street in Barrio Obrero on the outskirts of San Juan, and throughout the barrio it was well known that when one was sighted the other two would be right behind. It was time to hide the valuables.

Frank was the biggest and fastest, and he could more than hold his own with the older kids. He possessed the hand-eye coordination of a shell-game operator, and in moments of fancy, thought his athletic ability would be his ticket out of poverty. Perhaps a baseball scholarship. His grades could be better. He was bright enough, but he realized that he wasn’t the gifted student who could breeze through school effortlessly. But he was dogged in anything he decided to do, and through will and determination he got by.

Jimmy Tag Along’s mother had explained to them that Jimmy would always remain a “little boy.” They didn’t understand what she meant, but it really didn’t matter. In a sacred ceremony the boys had sealed their friendship by cutting their thumbs with a pocket knife and smashing their thumbs together. “Now we’re blood brothers,” Johnny said. They vowed to take care of each other come what may.

It was sweltering and nearing noon as the gang stepped from the wooded path that ended at El Gordo’s gas station. Their target was the soft drink machine that was pushed tightly against the side of the building next to the bathrooms. El Gordo was the only employee and whenever he was working on a car or eating, which was often, they would hit the machine. They found him wedged under an old pickup with a bucalaito in one hand and a wrench in the other. Good. It would take only a few minutes for them to score.

As they moved in the pent-up heat in the blacktop burned through the soles of their sandals, and each hopped from one foot to the other to reach the shade of the building.

Johnny liked the heat. As he told Frank too often, “It’s good for business. The hotter the more people drink, and that means more money in our pockets. Easy money!”

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Terrorism & Other than Mexican (OTM) Illegal Aliens

By Ben Furman, former FBI Counterterrorism Chief

Other than Mexican (OTM) is a strange term. What does it mean? Ninety percent of the illegal aliens who cross the U.S. southern border each year from Mexico are Mexicans. The rest that come from all parts of the world are labeled Other than Mexican illegals by our government.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that oversees Customs, Immigration and Border Patrol enforcement said in a recent oversight committee that tens of thousands of OTMs enter the U.S. illegally each year. They have no idea of the actual number. Their statistics for 2005 show that of the 98,000 illegal aliens detained by the U.S. Border Patrol from countries other than Mexico (OTMs) 70 percent (68,800) were immediately released into the interior of the U.S.

Why? Their home countries wouldn’t take them back and because we didn’t have a place to keep them, each was given a “ticket” and released after promising to return for his court date. Twelve percent returned in 2006, which left over 60,000 unaccounted for, and in some Texas Border Patrol sectors during this time the “no-show” rates were as high as 98 percent. Many of those released have serious prior felony criminal records. On October 18, 2005 the Border Patrol finally ended the “Catch & Release” program. Now the illegal aliens are supposed to be kept until the legality of their status is determined and then deported if they are here illegally. Sounds easy and logical until anti-illegal alien groups and attorneys get involved to prevent any deportation.

But here’s the core reason for my post. In 2005 DHS said 850 people from countries of “special interest” were apprehended crossing our southern border. In 2006 DHS reported between 2001 and 2005 that 45,000 OTMs from countries on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror (SST) or from countries that protected terrorist organizations and their members were released into America’s general public. This was done even though immigration officers could not confirm their identity. Remember, these are people that were caught, which represents only one out of ten that actually cross the border. That means that approximately 400,000 illegal aliens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, whose identities could not be verified and who could be working for terrorist groups, are freely moving about the country.

The FBI has testified numerous times that since it’s easy to enter the U.S. illegally without detection, terrorist groups believe that operationally there are no reasons to get visas, etc. to gain legal entry. Also, there’s an increase in the number of illegal aliens from countries with al Qaeda connections that are changing their identities to appear Hispanic by dropping their Islamic surnames. Posing as Hispanics they blend in with the mass of illegal aliens crossing the border. Again, DHS doesn’t have any idea how many potential terrorists have entered the country using this tactic.

Professional smugglers, called “coyotes” and MS-13, a notorious Salvadorian criminal gang that has infiltrated all of our lower 48 states, use their pipelines to smuggle Middle Eastern and Asian illegals into the U.S. for $10,000 to $20,000 per person with no questions asked. A coyote caught with his “cargo” recently admitted that none of the men he has transported over the past six years was looking for a job or to “help his family.”

Do the math. There are roughly 15 to 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. and ten percent of those are OTMs. Any percentage of the OTMs that are from hostile countries constitutes hundreds of thousands. It’s the barn door analogy with frightening, staggering safety implications. Unless we can devise a system for rooting out the hostiles who have infiltrated our country, we’re in for a grim day ahead. I shook my head in disbelief when I heard two members of the new administration’s transition team say granting amnesty to all illegal aliens will be a priority. And amnesty my friends, also includes the terrorists!

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Consequence Management -- WMD

By Ben Furman, former FBI Counterterrorism Chief

Foreign and domestic terrorists continue to poke and probe at our defenses with the sinister intent to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons (WMD) against us. If they are successful, can we respond to and manage the death and destruction that we’ll face in the aftermath?

Giant steps have been taken to coordinate and incorporate civilian and military assets into dedicated prevention and response forces, and fast paced efforts are ongoing. This post will be a quick introduction. The “how consequence management works” will be addressed in subsequent posts.

Is the terrorist threat real? Yes, though many conspiracy theorists think not and believe our “evil” government is behind it all, including blowing up the twin towers. Their brain cells are fried and as for the rest of us, our memories are short. Most Americans equate 9/11 as the beginning of the terrorist attacks on our soil. Not so. The 1993 bombing of the New York twin towers was the precursor. The subsequent investigation and trial testimony revealed the terrorists meant to topple one tower into the other and shroud both in a cascading cloud of cyanide gas. If the plan had worked tens of thousands of us would have been killed. It didn’t because the cyanide gas was destroyed in the heat of the explosion rather than vaporizing into a death cloud as the terrorists planned. And do you recall Ramzi Yousef, the man who built the bomb? Two years later Yousef was arrested for plotting to blow up 11 U.S. passenger planes to cause, as he boasted, “One spectacular day of terrorist rage.”

Besides wringing our hands worrying about an attack what are we doing? Actually we’re doing a number of things. Here’s one step. Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 39 was issued by President Clinton in 1995 to establish response and management guidelines for a WMD terrorist attack. The PDD divides threats into two categories: crisis response and consequence management. Since the issuance of the guidelines there have been a series of directives and laws that further define the response and management mission.

In a best case scenario, which never happens, here’s the way a crisis response works. The plot is uncovered, the terrorists that are preparing to set off a WMD are identified, and the operation is neutralized or “taken down.” The homeland response for responding to such crises falls under the purview of the FBI. Overseas the response is handled by the Department of State, Office of Counterterrorism.

Consequence management comes into play if terrorists successfully deploy a WMD. The PDD also details how the physical, socio-economic, and psychological effects of a chemical or biological attack should be addressed, to include the coordination of local, regional, national, and international assets before, during, and after an attack. These assets include the military working in concert with its domestic counterparts.

In reality there has to be joint planning and coordination between the crisis response and the consequence management folks long before there is an incident. There can’t be a rigid division between the two and there isn’t. Information sharing and real time communication are essential. I can say from personal experience that during a crisis, even a small one, there’s a lot of confusion and information that turns out not to be true. To minimize this all of the right pieces have to be connected before an attack occurs. During a crisis this Abbott and Costello routine can’t happen.

Abbott: Now let's see. We have on the bags - we have Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

Costello: Well then who's on first?

Abbott: Yes!

Costello: I mean the fellow's name!

Abbott: Who!

Are we totally prepared? Of course not, but force ready responders are being trained and deployed. Much more needs to be done but progress is being made. The situation is far from being all doom and gloom.

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The National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC)

In the aftermath of 9/11 the world heard the scathing indictment of the U.S. intelligence agencies charged with preventing terrorist attacks. The dots weren’t connected! Why? Because intelligence agencies that had bits and pieces of the attack information hadn’t provided it to their counterparts. There was a myriad of reasons for this, including protecting one’s turf, fear of critical information leaks to the press and the like, but the “stove pipe” analogy was the most troubling. “Stovepiping” was the practice of only sending information up the chain of command within an agency. The 9/11 Commission also called this reluctance to share the “Gorelick Wall.”

Jamie Gorelick was the U. S.Deputy Attorney General under the Clinton administration, who wrote the 1995 intelligence guideline memorandum for disseminating terrorist information between agencies. And even though there was back-and-forth finger pointing about the extent intelligence agencies were prohibited from sharing crucial information, her memorandum was widely cited as the legally restrictive lynch pin. The intelligence community thought a violation of the memorandum guidelines would lead to civil suits and felony criminal prosecutions by the Justice Department. The bottom line: Agents believed they could lose their homes, pensions, be fired and sent to prison. A very chilling cloud to work under, and it wasn’t a comforting sight to see Jamie Gorelick sitting on the 9/11 Commission panel overseeing the hearings.

But some good did come in the form of recommendations by the Commission. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was formed. Heard of it? Unless you’re part of the intelligence community most likely you haven’t, or if you did you’ve forgotten about it as you went about day-to-day tasks. After 9/11 a number of agencies known by their initials were mixed together to form alphabet soup organizations, such as the Office of Homeland Security. Of all the groups the NCTC was one that made sense to me.

The NCTC was established by President Bush in August 2004, to serve as the primary U.S. organization to integrate and analyze all intelligence pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism, and to construct strategic operational plans. The NCTC also houses the central knowledge bank on terrorism information, and it developed the architecture that allows agencies such as the FBI and CIA ready access to the millions of terrorist related documents contained in the database.

The NCTC is staffed by analysts from 16 agencies that are co-located with the CIA and FBI Watch Centers at the Liberty Crossing Center in Northern Virginia. There analysts from these agencies work side-by-side scouring foreign and domestic terrorism information from 30 networks or more in an effort to uncover and disrupt terrorist plots.

Is everything perfect? No, but we’re getting our act together. It isn’t by accident that we haven’t suffered a major terrorist attack on our home territory since 9/11, but for logistical reasons and to protect ongoing investigations, many positive results aren’t trumpeted in the New York Times or on the evening news. You can take it to the bank that because our intelligence agencies are working together around the clock there have been attacks prevented, plots uncovered, and terrorists captured or killed that we don’t know about, and quite frankly, don’t need to. Fighting terrorism is an ongoing battle. Now the terrorists don’t have an open field; they can’t act with impunity and they’re getting more than they’re giving.

I’ll have more to say about the NCTC in later postings.

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Black Hawk Press Counterterrorism Blog

Welcome to the counterterrorism blog of Black Hawk Press publisher and author Ben Furman!

This blog provides you with posts concerning the ongoing terrorist picture here and abroad, and what is being done to checkmate it. This is my background: I was an FBI agent for twenty-two years, during which I investigated bank robberies, kidnappings, extortions, organized crime, and terrorism. The rough-and-tumble world of counterterrorism proved to be my greatest but most rewarding challenge. As a counterterrorism chief I directed multi-agency task forces that combated chemical, biological and nuclear threats against the United States. Currently I am the CEO of the Rexus Corporation, a private security and investigation firm that does national and international work.

I also write thrillers that are based on my counterterrorism experience. The SWAT tactics, investigative techniques, cutting edge technology, the interplay between agencies, and the point - counterpoint between agents and terrorists gives you an insider’s look at the underbelly of a frightening world. The clock is ticking….

Please return often for my commentary and feel free to add your comments or ask questions. I'll give you my best answers. For more information, visit my main site at www.blackhawkpress.com or follow the "Home" link above.

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