HOMELAND SECURITY - Terrorism Books

According to Esquire Magazine, “On the first day of school in 2004, a Chechen terrorist group struck the Russian town of Beslan. Targeting children, they took more than eleven hundred hostages. John Giduck is the author of Terror at Beslan: A Russian Tragedy with Lessons for America's Schools.

John Giduck has a Bachelor’s Degree from Penn State and a law degree from the University of Denver. He also earned a Master’s Degree in International Affairs, specializing in Russian studies, from the University of Colorado, which included completion of the Russian Culture and Language Program at St. Petersburg State University in Russia. He has traveled extensively throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union, training with Russia’s elite Special Forces units for more than 10 years; and, is a certified instructor in Russian Special Forces hand to hand combat.

John Giduck has trained state and federal law enforcement officers and agents, including DEA, FBI, US Marshal’s Service, and SWAT teams throughout the US. He has served as a consultant on various international and terrorism subjects, and as a Russian Organized Crime instructor, for numerous federal and state agencies. He currently devotes his professional time to the Archangel Group, providing anti-terrorism consulting and training to U.S. law enforcement, government and military, part of which includes John serving as a civilian contract U.S. Army Special Forces hand-to-hand combat and firearms instructor. As well, he holds several black belts, is a multiple inductee into international martial arts halls of fame, and is a former U.S. national weightlifting champion.

John Giduck is a lifetime member of the Special Operations Association, Rocky Mountain Tactical Team Association, Russian Special Forces Brotherhood of the Red Beret Association, and is a lifetime executive member of the British Professional Bodyguard Association. He is a graduate of the FBI Citizen’s Academy and holds the highest level expert certification in Homeland Security through the American College of Forensic Examiners International, and is a former member of the Executive Advisory Board of the American College of Homeland Security and Police Marksman magazine. He is a current member of the Advisory Board of the College of Disaster Medicine and Management of Philadelphia University. In addition to other published materials and articles on terrorism, Russian organized crime and close quarters tactics, finished his book, Terror at Beslan: A Russian Tragedy With Lessons for America’s Schools, in 2005. His second book, co-authored with Green Beret Sergeant Major John Anderson, entitled The Green Beret In You: Living With Total Commitment To Family, Career, Sports and Life, was published in late 2007.

As part of his work with Archangel, John Giduck is also a scuba, tactical diving and CQB instructor, and teaches terrorist-hostage negotiations, narco-terrorism, terrorism and global organized crime, and Russian organized crime courses. He is now working on his doctoral dissertation on the global expansion of radical Islam through King’s College of London.

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.”