The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

ondary, peripheral or irrelevant” to U.S. security. For example, the emer- gence of obnoxious, left-wing, pop- ulist regimes in Latin America is peripheral in Carpenter’s book; and which faction rules Burma (Myan- mar), Liberia or Georgia is irrelevant to him. Even so, he makes the case for thoughtful, experienced and inform- ed engagement in international affairs, with force as only a last, infre- quent resort. Yet we know that no analytical framework such as the one he suggests can stand up to the free- for-all fighting among politicians, eth- nic groups, business interests, egos, think-tanks and ideologues — the process that produces American for- eign policy. One is led to wonder what U.S. diplomacy would be like if a “foreign-policy elite” actually did run things. If you think that U.S. diplomacy is in good shape, this book should be an eye-opener. And if you think that it can stand improvement, this book ought to be in your toolbox. Charles Schmitz, a Foreign Service officer from 1964 to 1989, is a former AFSA vice president for State and for retirees. He is the author of Changing the Ways We Do Business in Inter- national Relations (United States Institute of Peace, 1997). Walking the Beat Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent Fred Burton, Random House, 2008, $26, hardcover, 288 pages. R EVIEWED BY D AVID C ASAVIS “The world needs more cops,” Fred Burton observes in Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent. He sticks with that theme throughout this book about life in the counterterrorism branch of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, covering the period from 1985, when the Montgomery County police officer joined DS, through 1998. Ghost — a reference to the famil- iar term for a spy, ‘spook’ — reminds us of the humble origins of the State Department’s efforts to thwart terror- ism. Burton, along with another recruit, joined a single outgoing offi- cer as the office’s entire initial staff. They operated out of a tiny office with stacks of paperwork and file folders atop paint-flecked industrial filing cabinets. It was as though “a high school football team set up shop in the basement of the National Archives,” he recalls. Burton spares no details about what he terms the “dark world” of terrorism, describing the carefully preserved ear of a suicide bomber and taking us through the 1984 kid- napping, torture and murder of William Buckley in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro , the 1986 Berlin nightclub bombing, and the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie. Burton explains clearly the bureau- cratic interplay within DS, between that bureau and the rest of the depart- ment, and between his office and his counterparts in other agencies. At the same time, the book’s action is cine- matic, full of vignettes like one of the DS agent who palmed a detonator in Togo, secreting it out of Africa. That quick action made it possible for Washington to finger the culprits of the Lockerbie bombing. Pakistan is the scene for two of the book’s most memorable chapters: Burton’s investigation of the 1988 assassination of Pakistan’s President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel; and the pursuit and 1995 arrest of Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After years of dead ends and missed chances, credit for the capture of a truly dangerous terrorist should go to many Department of State personnel (on all levels). Instead, it will come as no surprise to many in the Foreign Service that the FBI took credit for Yousef’s capture, while others who put everything on the line to make that possible didn’t get so much as a letter of commendation. As he ponders today’s threat matrix, Burton sees too many bureau- cratic restrictions, too many manuals to follow and too many bosses to keep happy. He is also concerned over the lack of coordination between agen- cies. Most disturbing of all is his Cassandra-like warning that events like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 will hap- pen again. But that flows full circle into the book’s theme: The world needs more cops. David Casavis works for the Depart- ment of Homeland Security and teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is writing a book about the 1971 murder of Foreign Service staff officer Donald Leahy in Equatorial Guinea. N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 87 B O O K S Burton spares no details about what he terms the “dark world” of terrorism.