David Race Bannon, Ph.D.
Agent for Interpol comes clean on his career as an assassin.
Tue May 25, 2004 02:24
64.140.158.21


Agent for Interpol comes clean on his career as an assassin.
by Jason Putman


Last January, Bannon published his memoir, RACE AGAINST EVIL: THE SECRET MISSIONS OF THE INTERPOL AGENT WHO TRACKED THE WORLD'S MOST SINISTER CRIMINALS2, telling of years with the international police's elite assassination team, Archangel. Part vigilante squad, part international police force, Archangel broke dozens of international laws, directed by a government agency that denied their existence.
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=499


Kungfu Secret Agent

Agent for Interpol comes clean on his career as an assassin.
by Jason Putman

THAILAND, 1991 - The white man slides behind a North Korean, steel edge of a black Ka-Bar fighting knife glittering as it plunges into the terrorist's neck, then rips out, severing the vocal chords and jugular. Visibly limping from an informant's vicious knee kick earlier in the day, the man and his South Korean partner step inside the two remaining guards' AK rifles and deliver quick, efficient blows to kill the North Koreans. They are wrapped in Kevlar, the Korean carries a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 .45 ACP pistol; his companion a Beretta 92FS 9mm. Communicating with signals developed over years of training, they throw back the flaps of a heavy truck to reveal its precious cargo: 17 children intended for sale in Bangkok's sex district, profits to fund another North Korean terrorist cell.

An hour later, a plane crewed by Interpol agents takes off and drones toward Chinhae, South Korea, where the children will be delivered to the coastal city's naval base, then identified and returned to their families - if they have any.

The team will spend only a few hours in Chinhae, then clean up and separate. It is the group's third mission together, but they have worked solo and in pairs across the globe for eleven years. Combined, these clandestine operatives have saved over 300 children and killed hundreds of slavers, pornographers and terrorists. South Korean secret service agent Lee Hyung-jin reports in Chinhae; his limping companion, David Bannon, will return with the team to their headquarters outside Lyon, France.1

Last January, Bannon published his memoir, RACE AGAINST EVIL: THE SECRET MISSIONS OF THE INTERPOL AGENT WHO TRACKED THE WORLD'S MOST SINISTER CRIMINALS2, telling of years with the international police's elite assassination team, Archangel. Part vigilante squad, part international police force, Archangel broke dozens of international laws, directed by a government agency that denied their existence.

Coming Clean
On a hillside in rural Japan, Bannon was in a vicious fight with a rice farmer.3 The baseball bat Bannon had been using as a weapon broke in half during the struggle, but he managed to take the blunt end and ram it into his opponent's throat, bringing him to the ground. The farmer had nearly killed him. "This guy's qi was unbelievable," Bannon says. "I figure maybe Hung Gar." Bannon survived, but only just. "His arm techniques reflected lots of hours with the wooden dummy and he had that low, stable balance point that's so common to Hung Gar stylists. Impossibly fast, this guy, and he didn't telegraph at all. If my partner hadn't done a lot of damage first, I'd be dead."

Over the past 20 years, Bannon's work for Interpol, the notoriously shadowy international police organization, has taken him across the world, prowling sex parlors, undercover with smugglers and terrorists. As a "cleaner" for a secret Interpol sub-directorate called "Archangel," it was his job to hunt down and assassinate those who kidnapped, trafficked and exploited children for use in the global sex trade. Bannon excelled at his vocation, but no matter how the ends justified the means, he was burdened by an almost unimaginable psychic weight-mixed feelings of guilt, bloodlust, despair, pride and even fear.

In April 2003, Bannon, along with his retired superior at Interpol, Commissioner Jacques Defferre, agreed to a rare interview to explain to Kungfu about their motives for working in Archangel. Sitting in a coffee shop in Charlotte, NC, the two plainly described how the underground kiddie porn industry is used to fund terrorist cells, and of the vast international networks of kidnappers and pornographers who continue to earn "billions of dollars" working above the law.

Archangel
Defferre had been hunting child sex slavers for Interpol since 1978.9 His team was created under Interpol's loosely worded charter, "To establish and develop all institutions likely to contribute effectively to the prevention and suppression of ordinary law crimes”10 to stem the flow of 900,000 child sex slaves smuggled across international borders each year,11 including nearly 10% of the missing kids from the United States.12

"These producers, the ones who buy and sell the children, do it through coercion or kidnapping; then use torture and drugs to force obedience," Bannon says wearily. "We've witnessed parents selling their infants directly at the doors of the brothels in countries where child prostitution is legal." He cites Thailand and Pakistan. "The resulting pornography could earn billions in profits from an initial investment of about $30-to-50K per child."13 Defferre convinced his superiors that Interpol should match slavers and terrorists for wiliness, adaptability and ruthlessness.14 Archangel's mission: Identify child sex slavers and eliminate them.15

At the elite training facility in La Verpillere, exhaustive psychological and physical examinations gauged the suitability of candidates to work as assassins, 16 known as cleaners. "We trained in firearms, close quarter combat, demolitions, the usual," Bannon says. "We were given fake cover identities, known as 'legends.'17 The cleaners had to fit in anywhere."18

After mastering the fundamentals, the fledgling assassins traveled alone and in small groups for supervised exercises outside the compound. They learned the basics of surveillance and the art of intelligence, such as planting "kernels" of disinformation months or even years in advance across media outlets, then using them in "blowback" campaigns to blackmail or smear targets. Interpol's technical arm, Rosetta, altered Bannon's past in a process called "sheep dipping," after the practice of bathing sheep before they are sheared, that erased the background of an operative and created a new one with family history, friends, school, everything.

Interviews with the author. David Bannon (8 Apr 2003; 16 Jun 2003; 24 Oct 2003) and Hyung-Jin Lee (16 Jun 2003; 23 July 2003) Contact: davidbannon.net
http://www.davidbannon.net/main.html

COAST TO COAST AM:
Rebroadcast: Interpol & BPL
In a rebroadcast from 3/20/04, David Bannon discussed his work as an Interpol agent and Jim Haynie and Joe Walsh of ARRL commented on the broadband over powerlines issue.
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2004/05/23.html#recap

David Race Bannon, Ph.D.
race@davidbannon.net