about the great power of wall street and so on. said to understand the incredible power and politically this book does a good job.

>> i am this story and of the international spy museum. and we're fortunate today to have with us the author debriefing mr. fred burton he is here to talk by his new book "chasing shadows" a special agent's lifelong hunt to bring down a cold war assassin to justice" he actually started his karan as a police officer in maryland but then joined the state department where he served for 14 years i believe in the diplomatic security service and ultimately became deputy chief of the counterterrorism division. he left the department in 1999 went to work for

another organization and perhaps some of you were here to hear his boss george friedman speaking minority published his memoirs with the confessions of counter terrorist agent and in that book describes working on the investigation into the death of the pakistani president and the struggle against hezbollah. but teach macquarie he is here to talk about his new book "chasing shadows" how he became enthralled and fascinated with the 1973 assassination military attache of the crime committed in bethesda maryland. interestingly enough, he had a job at a nearby gas

station and calculates he probably pumped gas for the colonel before his assassination. he had oppression nearly seven days and when he became involved and it recounts how he pursued him and i will let him tell the rest of the story but to say if you have cellphones are any devices, please turn them off and fred will talk about 35 for 40 minutes and we will take questions and answers at the end. [applause] >> if thank you for having me today the international spy museum i thank you for irked agreeing to launch my

book. my sister is here thank you for coming as well as my old boss from the state department and that is very kind of you to come out of retirement. it is good to see you. this case is the kind of case that i wish i could have spent a tremendous amount of time on back in the early 1980's as well as the 1990's when i was then an official position to do so but as many as you know, in that timeframe, we were just inundated with terrorist attacks all over the globe and there wasn't a lot of spare time for cold cases. and unfortunately when i first heart of looking at this case, a good number of

people with firsthand knowledge have literally passed on i am afraid. the search became extraordinarily difficult at times just to get first-person knowledge of information of colonel alon the victim of the terrorist attack but july 1973, and three months before the yom kippur war which was israel 9/11 the then in chevy chase merrill lynch the five shots were fired into the body of colonel josef alon. colonel alon was special. he was a hero with the state of israel, and a very decorated fighter pilots. but a military attache.

and was performing a very, very vital role at the time between not only the u.s. but many other countries with this hostile period of time. to think about this case is one that takes many of us back to a time where it is hard to fathom that we have no cellphones, a new internet, and the police which happen to be my old police department that responded to the scene, did not have the capability lowered means to investigate the international act of terrorism. as it is in this business come in the old boy network came of foreword to help. i made a call for information out to the montgomery county police association and was

literally swamped with requests for help by individuals the responded to the scene of the crime that night. also i was a volunteer with the bethesda chevy chase rescue squad and it actually responded to the scene of the murder that night and transported colonel alon to suburban hospital in bethesda. i was fortunate i was able to interview every one of the rescue squad members ever responded to the murder that night as well as the montgomery county police. i struck gold in many ways that's the original fbi case agent stan horns dean the surface to was an old civil-rights investigator investigator, transferred from birmingham to of very

quiet fbi office and thought he would be far removed from this type of incident. but stand, and the original fbi agent was able to fill and a lot of missing piece is early on surrounding how important colonel alon was. these are the kinds of things only the fbi at that time had access to. montgomery county police did not have access to sensitive information that the fbi had possession of. they formed a partnership with the cold case squad to get to the bottom of what happened. this probably not a politically correct statement we called ourselves the graybeards

dies trying to figure out to figure out what happened and put together the pieces of the puzzle i am truly honored and i don't know there is to gentlemen from the associated press that provided an extraordinary amount of help and as i mentioned in my book "chasing shadows" i would not want any one of them hunting me. i am sure they do wonderful work. thank you for coming. their diligence research in this case provided a critical piece of information that they are able to data mine out of the national archives from a cia briefing that occurred that pretty much put us on the right track and to be blood

told us who done it. without their help buy certain they would have not been successful. i also need to mention the josef alon family. an extraordinarily tragic event for them and as you can imagine if anybody lost a loved ones in a violent manner. i cannot say enough about their persistence. this is a quiet home where most of us grew up to have your name shattered with a killing of your father and then rushing down to watch your father died then the next day to be whisked away on air force 2 back home to israel under presidential order of president nixon and henry kissinger to fly the body and the family home. they have been unbelievably

diligent to get to the bottom of who killed their dad. i must say be were very successful to get "chasing shadows" published in israel and it is out last week and coincides with the film's there and from what i understand come it is doing quite well. i am very proud that the josef alon family has some closure. when you do these kinds of cases come from the business as you know, and my old boss knows come it you can only do the best that you can get meaning everybody looks for the absolute. very rarely do have the absolute. you have an operation common theme, 75%, but you may get

lucky at 90% but you never get 100%. at least based on the cases that i work. you know, who did it and why been never get one pager%. i am also optimistic with the media surrounding the book here and in the united states and israel and the united kingdom that's missing pieces our intelligence gaps are filled by anything that perhaps we messed. but at the end of the day i think the josef alon family can sleep soundly knowing that their father was gunned down in the act of political terrorism. he deserved a better. at that time there was not a lot of protection for resident foreign officials

in 1973. my organization was formed after tragedy of bombings that was investigated in the 1980's. if this case happen today, no doubt it would be rapidly solved but this is a time period, again before dna and anything that you see on "c.s.i." existed. i must say that i really an extraordinarily grateful to post individuals predominantly in beirut that one did no recognition for what they did to help me get to to some of the old radical palestinian quote-unquote paris that gravy a bid to pinpoint exactly what occurred and

who fault the trigger. at that point* i would like to open it up for any questions that anybody may have about "chasing shadows" or the investigation and turn it over to mark. >> is. >> without giving away the book but could you just tell us did this result in any

kind of prosecution in zero or simple justice for the man who was gunned down? >> mr. earnest, they give for that question and thank you for having me here today. it is kind of you. i think justice was served. . .

you've got the wrath of god squads, you've got chaos in the united states. i was amazed at how much domestic sub versesive activity was occurring in that period of time. i'm sure you know from your days at the cia, but as a teenager in bethesda, maryland, i had no idea. you hat the weather underground, the black panther party, the watergate chaos that was going on. the fbi black-bag jobs of palestinian offices across the country. you had the pow hostages coming

home from vietnam. it was a troubling time in america, and you can look back and sigh, why wasn't this solved then? the only fbi agent said, fred, we had so many lead that -- on so many different cases and we had zero able to really do a lot of any of them and do it well, and they certainly were not prepared to handle this kind of case. but i think for anybody that's a student of terrorism, the current events resonate today, what's going on in middle east, with the topic of the book in 1973, because there hasn't been lot of changes since that time period, and certainly israel is doing the best they can to protect themselves during this time period. >> can you tell us about his brown and -- background and why

he was, a., interesting, and, b., worth killing from the point of view of certain bad people? who was this man? >> the colonel as a child hoff the holocaust. his family had been killed by the nazis, and he had fled check slovakia to israel, and i think you look back over a man like that, and you think about just that, and as a starting point, and then you good from there, and he became a warrior. he became a pilot. and for those of you who know anything about the israeli air post, these are the elite, the cream of the crop, what we would view today as our delta our seem -- seal team folks and

colonel alon was very good at what he did. he was darned good pilot. he fought in numerous battles. you look back over the treasure trove of photographs the family so graciously turned of for me to look at, and his network was dianne, perez, rabin and these are folks he knew and hob knobbed with and that bothered me a bit because you would think that someone of that stature would have gotten a little more attention thon what any of us paid here within the u.s. government as well as the israeli government. you have to step back during that period of time and shortly after his murder, the yom kippur

war hopes and israel is caught offguard, huge intelligence failure on the part of the intelligence service, which has been studied and studied as the -- why that occurred. and you think about the cashties -- casualties of war, and when you had other intelligence officers asass senated around the globe by black september, and then you had the israel yes going around the world assassinating the black september members. so, i could see why our government had very few leads to pursue, and i can certainly understand why the israeli government had to very quickly batten down the hatches and deal with just the world events that were unfolding. he was a casualty or war. i told the family this on many

occasions in my countless telephone calls with them and visits. your father was killed in action. your father was war casualty, it wasn't the battle feel of the -- battlefield or the sinai or gaza, but he certainly was killed in the line of duty. >> did the israelys have someone assign the embassy in washington? >> steve, thank you for that question. everytime you ask me a question, i kind of get nervous. i digress back to you wanting to send me someplace bad. but -- [inaudible] >> thank you. to the best of my knowledge they did not. in fact, there was a series of killings that occurred surrounding israeli mossad that

prompted the israeli government-scent to -- subsequent to the killing of colonel alon, to implement a security program, and we all know, and you know better than i, after tea beirut disasters, the israelis reactively put fortha very aggressive program to not only protect the israeli diplomats and missions around the glob, but also el al. so, these series of killings prompted their government to take measures to secure their diplomats. in fact, after the murder of colonel alon in maryland, all the israeli diplomats in the washington, dc area were very quickly moved to high rise apartment buildings, and they moved all the diplomats out of private residences at the time.

another interesting point that i think you'll find fascinate, steve, with this case, is, again, you start think about in general, how do you find member in 1973 before the internet? and when you -- i know adam goldman, at ap, and i have chatted about this a lot. this is a time period when it's just not that easy to find people. wow have to do a lot of work, and then to actually surveil people, and to find the home where the victim lived, keep an eye on the house, and, again, the victim was a fighter pilot, alert, and you think about, well, why didn't he see any surveillance that snoops you and i both know there had to be surveillance that was underway in order for them to find the house and in order for them to lie in wait, and execute colonel

alon at -- on his front lawn that night in july of 1973. >> get another question. >> fred, again, not to take away from the book, could you just touch on why he in particular was killed? what was the moat tonight killing him? >> i struggle with that question, peter, because we have supposition. we don't have a quote-unquote smoking gun as to exactly why he was identified. i went back and looked at some of the statements made by iyad of black september, and looked at some of the comments he made concerning the israeli bombings of palestinian camps and i think that that's what put colonel alon on black september's screen, personally, because

you'll see this in the book -- we actually have an unbelievable eye witness statement to his reaction after colonel alon was killed, and in essence, i think it was retribution for the israeli bombings of palestinian camps, and i don't ever, ever underestimate the enemy and that's one thing that steve taught me. you think about this in context of three months before the yom kippur war and it was a brilliant disruption strategy on the part of the radical palestinians at the time. because if you're looking to carry out a war, you're going to want to cause a little bit of disruption of liaison and intelligence exchange, and who better to target than the military attach shay of the country that you're getting ready to invade.

do i have smoking gun evidence of that? i don't. but i think his target selection was brilliant. in fact, in looking through some of the historical documents we data-mined from the fbi's files, there was threat information that surfaced right before the killing of colonel alon, which indicated that radical palestinians were looking to assassinate the israeli ambassador the united states. and for those of us who have been in the intelligence business, sometimes you can only get 40% of the facts, but it looks like there was enough intelligence leaning forward to indicate a plot was in the works, but nobody could figure out exactly who the target was. but i think he was a brilliant target set. and i think that the terrorists probably did some surveillance of the israeli ambassador and

figure they were a harder target. >> laura, the lady here, and then the gentleman right in front. >> i was wondering, when he -- did he retire? working for the israeli government, any responsibility towards the israeli army? >> yes, he was, ma'am, the was the israeli military attache to the israeli embassy in washington, dc. >> -- imply that either egyptian military intellen were working with the palestinian radical wing in preparation for the yom kippur war, and they ever heard anything like that before. is that surmise on your part is

or is there evidence of a wider ranging involvement between the intelligence services of the two arab nations that launched the yom kippur war and the radical palestinians? >> could i not find any specific evidence to indicate there was a link, but if you go back and look at the intelligence failures surrounding the yom cup purr war, the enter afghanistan centers on an individual named ashroft, code-named the angel either egypt or arab's best spy, and curiously, he either fell to his death a few years ago in london, or was tossed off the balcony and it's, again, depending on who you want to believe. but he allegedly had been providing very granular intelligence to mossad on egypts

war plans to invade israel, and he is the subject of a high degree of controversy. i had a very interesting note in colonel alon's diary of a trip to london where this double agent operated out of that i could not directly link to, but i'm certainly though idea that colonel alon and he had met, but i have no specific evidence of that whatsoever. i do know this. that there's probably a high going of certainly that colonel alon would have had access to his intelligence just based upon his position as the military attache assigned here in washington, dced a that period of time. >> yes, sir. >> maybe you can talk about the backdrop to alon's murder and

the role of -- whether you felt that khalid was involved in this. >> adam, i acknowledged your help before, but and you randy did an extraordinary amount of work for this and i can't thank you enough. khalid al gentleman wary was arrested for the bombing of a plane in europe. we did an extradition/rendition back in the day to bring him to the united states, to supermax, to stand trial. he also was implicated in the car bomb attempt at golda meier in new york city, and the efforts to bomb an israeli bank. he had an incredible amount of

blood on his hand. he served his time, and adam and an ap did some work on him, and unfortunately or fortunately, however you look at it, he was let go, and i.c.e. did a report on his deportation, and his present-s whereabouts are unknown. there's no doubt any mind that he knew much more about this case than he ever admitted to. i also think it's highly probable he was involved to some degree in the target selection in washington. whether or not he was here the night that colonel alon was murdered, i have nothing to indicate that he was. i only wish that i could ask him a few questions, and i'm hoping that adam, you will fine him for us, and you and i can go talk to

him perhaps. >> so, in 1999, you leave the state department, and if i understand correctly -- your book has only been out for a few hours, i haven't finished it yet. it's only that time you really start to work on this case. can you talk about how it is that you not only became aware of but had occasion to actually start investigating this in your new life as vice president at strategyford? whats your story in connection with this case and how you came to be acquainted with it and how you started to pursue it. >> well, the case -- i had a tremendous amount of regret and guilt to be blunt, for not doing more in the 80s or the 90s when we could have, when a lot of these people were alive. we could have gotten to khalid al jawari at the supermax, we could have got -- got ton others

before they passed on of simple old age. i eluded to this case, and my last book, ghost, as one of those kinds of indications that just kind of stay with you. and there was a wonderful reporter at time, aaron cline, who reached out to the alop family, the girl -- alon family, the girls and put me in touch with them, along with, that same period of time, adam goldman and randy of a.p. we formed a collective task force, i would call it, to try to get the bottom of what happened. i think that a lot of these cases are solvable. it's just a matter or per -- persistence, and i think time helped. and i told this to the alon girls. i don't think the case would have been solved in 1973. we just weren't there forensic include. our government was too new to

this kind of threat on our soil. i don't think we would have had the capability of solving it then. i think the case also was so old that folks talked freely about it once we started tapping into the old radical palestinian group that are still alive. and many of them were proud of their accomplishments. regarding their fight against israel. so, sometimes you can take -- you can turn the tables on that and take advantage of those kinds of mens to get people to keep talking to you. so that simply what we did. i have no pride of ownership here. my name happens to be on the book with john bruining, a brilliant military historian. there's an aviation aspect to this that i had no grasp of planes other than spending a

long time riding in them, most of them cold flights over the atlantic but john brunning was extraordinarily helpful making sense of just how important colonel alon was. remember, for those of you who are students of espionage and terrorism, the israelis got their hands on a state-of-the-art soviet mig with a defector back in the day, that made its way to the united states, and went to groom lake, area 51, and colonel alon had actually done battle with the migs in your traditional red baron dogfights. so his knowledge of just how to fight in the air against the evil empire of the soviet union at the time, during the cold war, was critical, critical.

>> to what degree do you attribute your enable to -- inability to do more in the '80s and '90s to governmental bureaucracy and the structure of the u.s. government? >> all of the above. i think that if you look at the u.s. government during that time period, we were in many ways in the '8s still filling out index cards. we had no databases, at least we didn't everything was old-school hard files. you picked up the phone and called somebody or went out and visited them. you couldn't e-mail anybody. i think a lot of it was that. i also think that as adam and randy's work at a.p. uncovered at the national archives, i knew that the fbi had more information in their files but i also knew how the fbi operates

with their very siloed, fenced-off ways of doing business, and to understand this case you have to understand the fbi bureaucracy, in that stan oregon steen -- oren steen was assigned to the wheaton agency but reported to bolt -- baltimore, and ultimately reported to fbi headquarters, and nothing moved fastly. then with the new york connections of al jawari, the new york field office had their open files, and new york doesn't talk to baltimore. i'm not so sure they talk today but they certainly didn't talk to each other in 1973. so you had very isolated, siloed, compartments of information spread out throughout the fbi, and as well as at the cia, and i think that

there's probably -- like there always is -- much more classified data that exists in everybody's files that i never had access to. so, i trust there's a reason why that data is still being classified. >> further questions? >> i've got one final question for you, you talk about how you have some sense you think, who was behind this. do you have any sense of whether the trigger-pullers -- a., who they are, and, b., are they still alive or do you snow? >> i firmly belief that besides al-jawari who is on the lose, probably in the middle east, there is at least one other wheel man that fled the scene of the crime, that i don't know his

identity, and i talk about that in the book, but i'm fairly confident that the guy who pulled the trigger, we identified, and -- but, again, mark, i think you're back to our same issues that you and i both know, that we still suffer from a few intelligence gaps on this case, and i would love to know who that wheel man was. >> ladies and gentlemen, fred burton. thank you so much for coming. >> thank you. [applause] >> visit book tv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author in the search bar, and click search. you can also share anything you see on book tv.org easily by clicking share, and selecting the format. book tv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top, nonfiction books and authors.

book tv.org. >> we asked, what are you reading this summer? here's what you had to say.

>> noah webster at the age of 25 has this best seller, and he is very brash and always thinks he knows everything, and sometimes he really does, and in 1785, he decided what is wrong with america, and he was spot on. the problem, he says, is that under the articles of confederation, the federal government didn't have enough power. so he writes this pamphlet called, sketches of american policy. and when noah webster has an idea, he does something, and he taked it to mt. vernon and takes it to george washington. and washington was not a college guy. now, webster was a yale man. madison was a princeton man,

john adams, harvard. washington wasn't a conditional guy. very impressed by webster. he said that's a very interesting idea. and he is a great delegator, so he says, i'll give it to mr. maddison as soon as possible. he gives it to madson, and webster's pamphlet is instrumental in the drafting of the constitution. and in 1787, webster is at the constitutional convention -- these are moments involving into mover and shaker moments. in 1787, at the constitutional convention. as soon as washington arrives, the first thing he does is knock on webster's door. he is washington's policy -- he is not a delegate, he is there as a journalist, and the convention men realize his talents, and right after the convention they ask him to draft a pamphlet in support of the constitution. he does that, and historians have compared that pamphlet to the federalist papers papers any

have been more influential because webster's pamphlet was circulated throughout the entire country and was published right after the convention, as opposed to the federalist papers which was circulated mostly in new york. >> you can watch this and other programs online at book tv.org. >> what are you reading this summer? >> hi, what i'm reading this summer, number one, is the road to fatima gate. michael takes you on a wild hellish first-hand tour of the neighborhoods where the terror group hezbollah dwells in and around lebanon, from direct confrontations to members of hezbollah to being in the middle of the 2006 war between israel and hezbollah.

this is a thrill-ride book. can't put it down. he is a brave on the ground journalist. another book i've been dying to get to, will take up a lot of beach time, the legacy of islamic antisemitism by a friend of mine, dr. andrew bottom. and lastly, i'd love to dig into, power, faith, and fantasy, a history of american involvement in the middle east. very timely to say the least. >> now, a program from the book tv archives. in 2005, the widow of medgar if verse recounted the civil rights movement through the