Cold Zero
Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team
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4.5 • 47 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Only 200 people have ever been in Christopher Whitcomb's elite branch of the F.B.I. The Hostage Rescue Team is its most highly trained and specialized squadron -- equivalent to the Navy's Seals and the Army's Delta Force -- charged with terrorist capture, hostage situations, and other large-scale emergencies in the U.S. and around the world. Whitcomb is the first HRT member ever to write about his experience.
With breathtaking immediacy, Whitcomb describes the brutal training, the weapons and tactics, and the unbreakable camaraderie of the HRT. In short order, after joining HRT in 1991, Whitcomb was sent on missions to Ruby Ridge and Waco, and his frank assessment of those missions is must reading for anyone interested in modern law enforcement.
Only rarely does a writer this accomplished have a life this dramatic. Cold Zero is a book of rare action and emotion, and one that introduces a remarkable new writer to the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This close-up look at the FBI's most elite unit by a 15-year veteran including firsthand accounts of actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge is alternately funny, exciting and disturbing. With his liberal arts background and experience as a D.C. speechwriter, Whitcomb was an unusual candidate for special agent. Currently director of information management for the Bureau's Critical Incident Response Group, he recounts his 1980s epiphany, following a State of the Union address, that he wanted to help preserve American democracy; he chose the FBI as his medium. He details the tricky, competitive process of becoming an agent, and humorously recalls how, as a cocky, ambitious FNG ("fucking new guy"), he clashed with his conservative superiors, yet soon valued their expertise as he chased an assortment of fugitives, bank robbers and kidnappers from a rural Missouri field office. He details these cases and his own growing expertise, then depicts with gallows humor the "physical and emotional hell" of applying to join the Hostage Rescue Team's (HRT). He succeeded and became a sniper, and offers excellent insight into the science and mindset of this rarefied killing art. In skillful prose, Whitcomb upholds the FBI's party line. Alongside sharp observations of the rituals and absurdities of federal law enforcement, he fiercely espouses an unreconstructed "thin blue line" philosophy whereby he perceives figures such as David Koresh and Randy Weaver simply as evil men and incompletely addresses civic disillusionment with the Bureau following Waco, Ruby Ridge and the FBI crime lab scandals. Still, Whitcomb ably portrays conflicts between the agency's factions Washington bureaucrats, profilers and negotiators, and the gung-ho HRT during these major crises. This valuable book makes a compelling read for armchair G-men everywhere.
Customer Reviews
Awsome
Great book that shows you what it's like and takes to be in the FBI and HRT, along with great stories from his career