HOMELAND SECURITY ONLINE - Criminal Justice Online

Terry D. Turchie is a former Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI. His leadership was the driving force behind he capture of the two most elusive and solitary domestic terrorists in U.S. History. Between 994 and 1998, he directed the UNABOM Federal Task Force (UTF) that finally caught and convicted Theodore Kaczynski for an 18 years long string of terrorist bombings. After being promoted to inspector in 1998, Terry D. Turchie was immediately tapped by FBI Director Louis Freeh to direct the Southeast Bomb Task Force in the hunt for Eric Robert Rudolph. In 1999, he was called to Washington DC to be the Deputy Assistant Director in the new Counterterrorism Division of the FBI. Terry Turchie is a recipient of the FBI Director’s Award as well as the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished service.

Dr. Kathleen M. Puckett spent 23 years as an FBI Special Agent, where she was primarily involved in investigating and analyzing foreign counterintelligence and domestic and international terrorism cases. She was a founding member of the FBI National Security Division’s Behavioral Analysis Program (BAP) and provided ongoing behavioral consultation to numerous high profile counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations nationwide. Between 1994 and 1998, she was the primary behavioral expert during the UNABOM investigation. Later, in 1998, she assisted FBI inspector Terry Turchie in the investigation of Eric Randolph in North Carolina. For her work that same year, she received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service. In 2001, Dr. Kathleen Puckett conducted a multi-jurisdictional risk assessment study of lone domestic terrorists for the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI.

Dr. Kathleen Puckett and Terry Turchie are the co-authors of Hunting the American Terrorist: The FBI's War on Homegrown Terror and Homeland Insecurity: How Washington Politicians Have Made America Less Safe.

According to the book description of Hunting the American Terrorist: The FBI's War on Homegrown Terror, “the bombs were perfect. The metal he'd so painstakingly cast glimmered in the dim light of the cabin. The hickory wood on the flipper switch was smooth and well shaped. The chemical compound had been perfected, and the target selected. All that remained was to wrap them in heavy paper and add the addresses and the stamps. After a hiatus of over six years from his deadly mission, he was ready to remind them all of them, all the unconscious drones in the technological nightmare the country had become that he was still here, still dangerous, still watching them. And so worked the dark mind of the most elusive man in the history of the FBI. For sixteen years he stayed ahead of them. The old techniques in the Bureau just didn't work any more, at least for this kind of mind. It was time to change the rules and time to find the right type of people to change them. The book written by the people who changed the rules on the run takes you on the chase for the dark minds of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber and Eric Rudolph. Dr. Puckett, the clinical psychologist who played such a vital role in the capture of those men also peers into the mind of Timothy McVeigh to provide an analysis to better understand the mindset of the domestic terrorist. This title will be available July 14th.”

According to the book description of Homeland Insecurity: How Washington Politicians Have Made America Less Safe, “Many of the same people who inhabited the political jungles of Washington, D.C. during Watergate are still in power today. In their constant jockeying for political power and influence on public opinion, they foster the same ill will and distrust of the FBI they have for 30 years. Their political persecution has not improved the FBI's performance or insured that Americans are safer today within our borders than we were before the attacks of 9/11. In fact, current partisan political control of the FBI, as well as the public hammering of the Bureau by politicians using the media to broadcast their agendas, has resulted in a disheartening and dangerous paralysis of operations in the Field. In an effort to gratify the White House and Congress, the Bureau has rushed to implement ill-advised and hasty changes in its own structure and the way it does its work.

In Homeland Insecurity, authors Terry D. Turchie and Kathleen M. Puckett name politicians from both parties who are responsible for undermining the ability of the FBI to protect Americans from both domestic and international terrorism. They warn readers that purely partisan assaults on the FBI, if unchecked, will destroy the last impartial defender of United States law and the rights of individual citizens in the current terror war.”