If I said, I’m driving next to a truck, you would say, OK, you’re driving next to a truck. Not so, he counters: "I’m driving down the road right now in a car. He concedes that one reviewer charged him with being "obsessed" with brands. Most are psychological." In Black, Whitcomb exhibits a fine eye for detail, right down to specifying the brand names of furniture and apparel. There are many techniques used, and not all of them are physical torture. "I can tell you, because I taught interrogation at the FBI academy for two years, that we have techniques we use on paper, and there are techniques people use that are not written on paper. Sometimes the host government gives approval, and sometimes it does not." Given Whitcomb’s background in undercover work, BookPage wondered if he was surprised at the brutal interrogation techniques recently exposed in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Hostage Rescue Team is given responsibility for a lot of that work outside the United States. Most people don’t know that the FBI has more offices outside the United States than they do inside. "The idea that the FBI works inside the country, and the CIA works outside, is a myth. They try to create in training some of the stresses you’d encounter in real life." Although the HRT is a division of the FBI, Whitcomb says that it’s not at all like the face of the agency that the public generally sees. And there are helicopters and diving and things that very easily could kill you. It’s all live fire, with regular ammunition. All the training you do can be extremely dangerous. You have to be absolutely at the top of your game. The pressure Waller feels, Whitcomb says, is the kind he dealt with: "It is an extremely demanding job, day in and day out. A former FBI agent and a frequent television commentator on terrorist issues, Whitcomb admits that he based his characters on his own experiences. Senator Elizabeth Beechum, who opposes Mitchell’s scheme and Sirad Malneaux, a regal, mysterious beauty who’s willing to swap sex for secrets.Īs befits the increasingly busy author, Whitcomb spoke to BookPage by cell phone (presumably an unencrypted one) as he drove to yet another appointment. In Black, Christopher Whitcomb’s gripping first novel, Waller is drawn into a lethal chess game that involves ruthless American CEO Jordan Mitchell, whose new encrypted cell phones threaten to enable terrorists to communicate undetected U.S. Despite his nagging misgivings, though, he is devoted to his job. Without any advance notice to his wife and children, he is routinely spirited away to dangerous assignments around the globe. As a new member of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), he is sent on killing missions by officials he doesn’t know to work with people he’s never met to achieve political goals he sometimes views as shadowy or downright unfathomable. Going back into the cold: Novel draws on author’s FBI tenure Jeremy Waller plies his trade against a backdrop of moral ambiguities.
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