Bullets, Bombs, and Fast Talk: Twenty-five Years of FBI War Stories

A desperate gunman holds a planeload of innocent passengers hostage. A heavily armed cult leader refuses to leave his compound, threatening mass suicide by a hundred of his brainwashed followers. A neo-Nazi militant in a cabin hideout keeps federal agents at bay with gunfire. A baby disappears; his only trace is an ominous ransom call to his parents. Prisoners riot, threatening the lives of prison officers and hundreds of other inmates. How do you react? What do you do? What do you say? Your words, your actions can save lives—or lose them. James Botting faced these challenges and daily pressures during a fascinating and demanding twenty-five-year career as an FBI hostage negotiator. He found himself involved—sometimes peripherally, more often personally—in many of the FBI’s most famous events since the 1970s. From Ruby Ridge to Waco, Patty Hearst to Rodney King, and Wounded Knee to TWA 847, Botting was there and on the spot. Along the way hostage negotiation techniques evolved, changing from play-it-by-ear and shoot-from-the-hip to a carefully choreographed psychological game of life and death. Botting was involved every step of the way. In Bullets, Bombs, and Fast Talk: Twenty-five Years of FBI War Stories, Botting vividly describes these events and more as only a participant can. He reviews the successes and the times the FBI fell short. He chillingly recounts a number of times when death seemed inevitable, only to come through unscathed. Botting pulls no punches with this gritty, detailed, and often humorous insider’s account of life at the end of a gun as an FBI hostage negotiator.

From 1971 to 1996, when Botting was an FBI SWAT team member and crisis negotiator, he worked on many of the high-profile crimes irrevocably etched in Americans collective memory—Wounded Knee in 1973; the Patty Hearst kidnapping; the Rodney King riots; the ill-fated capture of Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho; and the Branch Davidian tragedy in Waco, Tex. Bottings insider view of FBI operations at these events is intrinsically interesting, and he brings added value through his own on-the-scene observations. Bottings style occasionally comes close to tough-talking cliché (bad guys are lying assholes), but is oddly satisfying. There are sometimes predictable dynamics, for example, feuding among the LAPD, the DEA and the FBI, and the frequent cluelessness of FBI higher-ups; refreshingly, though, Botting is respectful of his fellow FBI agents and the Bureau. Readers into guns and real crime drama with a sprinkling of black humor (Its amazing what the public will do for entertainment, he says of a crowd yelling at a suicidal woman to jump) will like Botting and the stories he has to tell. Photos. (Feb.)
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