Fred Burton, Author and Life Member of the Rescue Squad

Fred Burton is one of the world’s foremost experts on security, terrorists, and terrorists’ organizations. A life member of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad, Fred is a noted author who published his first book, Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent, about three years ago. The latest book, Chasing Shadow - A Special Agent’s Lifelong Hunt To Bring A Cold War Assassin To Justice, is a gripping story of the Cold War’s last great unsolved murder and his 35-year quest to solve it.

In July 1973, a gunman stepped out from behind a tree and fired five shots, point blank, into Josef Alon, a kind, unassuming Israeli Air Force pilot. Sixteen-year-old Fred Burton was deeply shocked by this crime that rocked his sleepy suburban neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland. Alon wasn’t just a pilot and family man - he was a high-ranking Israeli military official with intelligence ties. His assassin was never to be found. In 2007, Fred Burton - now a former State Department counterterrorism special agent - reopened the case. From swirling dogfights over Egypt and Hanoi to gun battles on the streets of Beirut, this action-packed history shows how power is used, misused, and sold to the most convenient bidder. Chasing Shadows spins a gripping tale of secret agents, double agents, terrorists, and heroes as Burton chases leads around the globe in an effort to solve this decades-old murder.

Fred Burton was deputy chief of the Counterterrorism Division of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and is currently vice president at Stratfor, known as the “Shadow CIA”. As noted above, Fred is the author of Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent and appears regularly on The Daily Show, Glenn Beck and Anderson Cooper 360, and on Fox, ABC and CBS radio. He currently resides in Austin, Texas.