Cold Zero; Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team

[8],420, [2] pages. Includes Author's Note, Prologue, and Acknowledgments. Some page discoloration noted. Review comment sticker on the front of the DJ. Christopher Whitcomb is an American author and former member of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. He also appeared as an "expert" on the NBC game show Identity. Whitcomb spent 15 years with the FBI, and worked on many high-profile cases. These included the Waco Siege, LA Riots, and Ruby Ridge. His final assignment with the FBI consisted of working with the Critical Incident Response Group. Whitcomb began his FBI career in 1987, as a Special Agent in the Kansas City Field Office, where he distinguished himself as an assaulter and sniper, winning the FBI's Medal of Bravery for exceptional courage in the line of duty. He has participated in nearly every high-profile federal investigation over the past 10 years, including the L.A. riots, shootings at Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidian standoff, the World Trade Center and Olympic bombings, the Montana Militia standoff, overseas fugitive apprehensions, dignitary protection details, witness protection, investigation into the war crimes in Kosovo and the Cole bombing in Yemen. In 1997, Whitcomb was promoted to supervisor and became an interview/interrogation instructor at the FBI academy in Quantico. He created the NACBOMB: Integrated Case Scenario, a 16-week curriculum that serves as the basis for all FBI new agent training. He has instructed hundreds of different local, state, federal, and foreign law enforcement agents/officers, including UNSCOM weapons inspectors in Iraq. Prior to joining the FBI, Whitcomb worked two years as speechwriter and press secretary to U.S. Representative Silvio O. Conte (R-MA), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. He is a former reporter and feature writer. Cold Zero is a blistering first-person account of life inside the FBI and its elite Hostage Rescue Team. Of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. law enforcement officers, only 200 have ever been in Christopher Whitcomb's highly trained and specialized branch of the FBI. Equivalent to the Navy's SEALs and the Army's Delta Force, the Hostage Rescue Team is charged with terrorist capture, hostage release, and other emergencies in the United States and around the world. Whitcomb is the first HRT member ever to write about his experience. After joining the HRT in 1991, Whitcomb was sent on missions to Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Kosovo. Derived from a Kirkus review: A cocky yet intelligent account of the making and actions of an FBI Hostage Rescue Team operator, by one of their own. After a painful amount of training, the Hostage Rescue Team, like firefighters and spies, sit through long periods of tedium, interrupted by furious, adrenaline-charged activity. Special Agent Whitcomb very neatly blends his tough guy patter with unexpected and pleasing wordplay: "Even at 2:07 a.m., the air feels rheumy against my skin." He explains how he got involved in the FBI in the first place; his extensive academy training; a whole lot of technical information on the tools of his trade; his first years on the job; and his preparation to join the Hostage Rescue Team as a sniper. This is all impressive stuff, but the meat of the story comes in the blow-by-blow narratives of his more high-profile missions. These include the unpleasantness up on Ruby Ridge in Idaho, busts of drug gangs, and a journey into the killing grounds of Kosovo. Most dreadfully, he was also part of the disaster in Waco. Whitcomb is not your standard-issue killing machine; he has feelings and he is not afraid to speak them. The gassing and deaths of children at the Branch Davidian compound tear him to pieces, but as he notes, it took the FBI apart as well. He believes that a better organization can rise in its stead, that "we could heal," and so he keeps at the job, understanding that he can do good in the shadow of the past. Whitcomb is just the kind of guy who could restore a bit of faith in th.…