Terry D. Turchie

Terry D. Turchie is a former Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI. His leadership was the driving force behind the capture of the two most elusive and solitary domestic terrorists in U.S. history.

In his early years in the FBI, Terry chased timber thieves in the Oregon forests. By the 1980s, he was chasing Soviet spies at the United Nations in New York, and on one memorable occasion, depicted in New York Magazine, wrestled Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov to the ground at a subway station. After a tour at FBIHQ in Washington, D.C., he took over a counterintelligence squad in San Francisco and within a year disrupted two major East Bloc espionage operations.

Between 1994 and 1998, Terry directed the UNABOM Federal Task Force (UTF) that finally caught and convicted Theodore Kaczynski for an 18-year long string of terrorist bombings. Robert Graysmith, an author who wrote about the case in a 1997 book UNABOMBER—A Desire to Kill, called Turchie “the heart and spirit of the investigation.”

After Kaczynski pled guilty to the UNABOM crimes in 1998, Turchie was promoted to Inspector, and was immediately tapped by FBI Director Louis Freeh to direct the Southeast Bomb Task Force in the North Carolina’s hunt for Olympic Park bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. His interagency coworkers admiringly described him as the “FBI’s Ace.”

In 1999, he was called to Washington, D.C. as Deputy Assistant Director in the new Counterterrorism Division of the FBI. Between 1999 and 2001, he testified before Congress and traveled extensively overseas with former FBI Director Louis Freeh to facilitate joint investigations of international terrorism in the Middle East, Asia and the former Soviet Union.

Turchie is a recipient of the FBI Director’s Award as well as the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service. He is currently the Director for Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism for the University of California at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and speaks to hundreds of corporate and law enforcement groups based on his knowledge of how to solve complex terrorism cases.

Also be sure to see the bio for Mr. Turchie’s frequent co-author, Dr. Kathleen Puckett.

By This Author

Homeland Insecurity: How Washington Politicians Have Made America Less Safe
The authors lead readers on a detailed exploration of how the politics of power were born, and have continued to endure, in the highest offices of the American government.

Hunting the American Terrorist: The FBI’s War on Homegrown Terror
Profiles of UNABOMBER Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, and the Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph, and the next potential American terrorist.