U.S. Special Operators Conduct Two Major Raids On Terrorists In Africa

Foxnews.com offers a piece on two U.S. Special Operations missions in Africa.

US forces have conducted two separate raids in Africa -- one on the Al Shabaab militant group in Somalia linked to last month’s Kenya mall attack that killed more than 60 people, and the other to capture a Libyan Al Qaeda leader wanted for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, Fox News can confirm.

In Somalia, the strike on Al Shabaab was carried out in the early hours before morning prayers in the seaside town of Barawe.

A resident said by telephone that heavy gunfire woke up residents before dawn prayers. The raid was carried out by US Navy SEALs, who came ashore and killed at least one individual at a villa where multiple high level Al Shabaab high level targets were supposed to be located. 

The targets were specifically wanted in connection with the Kenyan Mall attack that left dozens dead. The leader of Al Shabaab, Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, also known as Ahmed Godane, had claimed responsibility for the shopping mall attack in Nairobi.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/10/05/us-forces-conduct-2-major-terror-raids/

Note: The above U.S. Navy photo shows Navy Seals in training.

A Look Back At Thriller Writer Tom Clancy

Michael Walsh at National Review looks back at Tom Clancy.

It’s probably incorrect to call Tom Clancy, who died on Tuesday at the age of 66, the father of the modern political thriller. That honor should rightly go first to Ian Fleming, about whose James Bond novels little more need be said. Not only did Fleming create the most dashing British hero since Sherlock Holmes, he was also a pulp craftsman of no small literary gifts: “The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning,” runs the opening line of the first Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), a beginning worthy of Melville.

Next comes Frederick Forsyth, whose 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal remains the gold standard for clandestine-world fiction, a gripping tale that has the reader rooting for a cold-blooded assassin, motivated solely by money, to put a bullet through the head of the father of modern France, Charles de Gaulle. Forsyth’s command of history and tradecraft gave the novel its realistic feel, and his inversion of the moral universe immediately distinguished the book from the competition. It would not be until the publication 13 years later of Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October that another work of spy fiction would have such an impact.

That book, you’ll recall, told the story of a rogue Soviet naval officer who hijacks his own submarine and precipitates an international incident. With the world on the brink of World War III, it’s left to the hero, CIA analyst Jack Ryan, to save the day by divining and then acting upon his educated guess that Captain Ramius is defecting, not attacking. But it wasn’t the story itself that rocketed Red October to the top of the best-seller lists. Clancy had never published fiction before — the novel had been rejected by the major publishing houses and was issued by the U.S. Naval Institute Press — but an astute editor saw the possibilities in his command of technology wedded to his narrative gifts. Red October wasn’t just fiction; it was really happening.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360430/tom-clancy-rip-michael-walsh#! 

Espionage In Fact And Fiction: William Boyd On Ian Fleming, John Le Carre And Kim Philby

William Boyd, who has written the latest James Bond continuation novel, Solo, wrote three interesting pieces for the British newspaper the Guardian.

Two of the pieces were on spy thriller writers Ian Fleming and John le Carre and the third piece was on the notorious British spy and traitor Kim Philby.

You can read Boyd's take on Ian Fleming via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/19/ian-flemings-commandos-nicholas-rankin-review

And you can read Boyd's take on John le Carre via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/sep/16/tinker-tailor-a-z-william-boyd

And you can read Boyd's take on Kim Philby via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/sep/23/featuresreviews.guardianreview31      

Video Interview: William Boyd On Bond

The James Bond web page MI6 offers a video interview with William Boyd, the author of a new continuation novel featuring Ian Fleming's iconic character James Bond.

In this first of a three part video, author William Boyd talks about reading Ian Fleming's novels in his youth and how he has delved deep in to the life of James Bond in order to pen the continuation novel 'Solo'.

He also comments that as a continuation author he is writing his own novel within the framework, rather than a pastiche of Ian Fleming's style - a stinging put down of exactly how Sebastian Faulks approached his top selling but poorly reviewed 'Devil May Care'.
 You can watch the first video via the below link:

http://www.mi6-hq.com/news/index.php?itemid=11087

And you can watch parts two and three of the video interview with William Boyd via the below link:

http://www.mi6-hq.com/news/index.php?itemid=11096&t=mi6&s=news  

And you can read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of Sebastian Faulks' Devil May Care via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of_31.html

Car Chase From White House To Capitol Ends With Suspect Dead

Foxnews.com reports on the woman who used her car to ram a security barrier and then led the police on a chase.

A chaotic car chase that began when a woman tried to ram a security barrier near the White House ended with the suspect being fatally shot near the U.S. Capitol, in an incident that put the Hill temporarily on lockdown and caused what one witness described as "mass panic." 

Police confirmed late Thursday that the suspect was killed, after being struck by officers' gunfire. 

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said officers acted "heroically." She said two officers were injured -- one from the U.S. Capitol Police, the other from Secret Service -- but "both will be okay." 

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, also told Fox News that the woman originally tried to run down a Secret Service agent near the White House.

Though McCaul claimed the agent then fired on her, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said no shots were fired at the White House. 

According to U.S. Capitol Police, its officer was injured in a related car crash. 

The chase and subsequent stand-off near the Capitol went down as lawmakers were debating under the dome about the partial government shutdown. Officials said it appears the incident had "no nexus to terrorism."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/03/us-capitol-in-lockdown-reports-shots-fired/

With 'The Kill List,' Thriller Writer Frederick Forsyth Is On New Hunt For An Assassin

Billy Cheung at Reuters.com offers a Q & A with British thriller writer Frederick Forsyth.

Oct 3 (Reuters) - More than 40 years after the release of his international best-selling espionage novel "The Day of the Jackal," British author Frederick Forsyth has published another thriller that also focuses on a manhunt for an assassin.

"The Kill List" draws upon Forsyth's research into some of the latest advances in counterterrorism to track down a fictional Muslim terrorist called The Preacher, who somewhat resembles Anwar al-Awlaki, the real-life al Qaeda militant who died in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

Like "The Day of the Jackal" and three other Forsyth novels, the film rights for "The Kill List" have already been sold.

Forsyth, 75, spoke to Reuters about the research behind the book and literary transformations to the big screen.

You can read the rest of the interview via the below link:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/10/03/books-authors-forsyth-idINL2N0GX0GL20131003

You can also read my column on Frederick Forsyth via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/09/on-crime-thrillers-frederick-forsyth.html

The Real Reason Ian Fleming Wrote 'Casino Royale,' The First James Bond Thriller

Andrew Lycett, the author of good biograhy of Ian Fleming, offers a piece on huffingtonpost.com on why Fleming wrote the first James Bond thriller.

Ian Fleming's mind was a jumble of conflicting thoughts and emotions when he sat down to his first draft of Casino Royale in Jamaica in February 1952.

He liked to joke that he finally got round to writing his first James Bond novel because he needed something to take his mind off his impending marriage to Ann, the striking dark-haired aristocratic woman with whom he had an on-off affair for over a decade, and who had recently divorced her second husband, Lord Rothermere, owner of the powerful Daily Mail newspaper.

But this was a typical Fleming flim-flam. He had been talking for several years about his desire to write the 'spy novel to end all spy novels'. But his attention had simply drifted in other directions.

After hostilities ended, he had been recruited as Foreign Manager of another London-based newspaper, the Sunday Times, a job that required him to build up a network of foreign correspondents, not so different from the agents with whom he liaised when he was the influential war-time Personal Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey.

In that earlier job, he had been Godfrey's gate-keeper in Room 39 of the Admiralty. He dealt directly with MI6 and the other secret services on behalf of his boss. He saw agents going to and returning from the field. He played a major role in liaising on intelligence matters with President Roosevelt's special enjoy, Colonel "Wild" Bill Donovan, whom he visited in Washington in the summer of 1941 and helped draw up guidelines for the combined US intelligence agency which would later become the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and then the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). One of his memos detailing the ideal American agent seems in retrospect to anticipate the qualities of James Bond. Donovan later presented him with a .38 Colt Police Positive revolver inscribed "For Special Services."

Fleming was essentially a bureaucrat during the war. But, being an imaginative man (he had written poetry in his youth), he could not help thinking about a more active role as a secret agent.

Before James Bond could make his first appearance at Royale Les Eaux in Casino Royale, however, Fleming had to get his own life in order. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-lycett/ian-fleming-book_b_4024547.html

You can also read my column on Ian Fleming and James Bond via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html