My passions are history, art, the roots and mechanisms of modern terrorism, international criminal activity, and the nature of the American civilian firearms market. I have written three nonfiction books: Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America (The New Press 1999), Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil (Random House 2005) (with Barbara Newman), and No Boundaries: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement (University of Michigan Press, 2009). 
You can order No Boundaries from Amazon.com here.
You can also read a Dallas News review of the book here, and a very nice piece in Spanish from the front page of La Opinion (Los Angeles) here.
Few human beings are monsters. But they too frequently get caught up in passions that make them behave collectively as if they were two-legged monsters–cruel, inhuman, brutal. Modern terrorism, the Spanish Inquisition and its secular and modern spawn, Nazism and the Holocaust, are examples. I like trying to figure out what currents and artifacts of a given society and history over time give rise to and fuel these and other monstrous phenomena. Why, for example, are Americans willing to accept 30,000 deaths from firearms every year, many of which are preventable, but spend billions of dollars and give up vast swaths of civil liberties (think that airport line) because one-tenth that number died in one day of terrorist attacks? Why do two young men from the same neighborhood and family background choose different paths: one joins a street gang and the other becomes a cop?
I was born into a military family and raised largely in the American South, where I learned to shoot in the Boy Scouts and was on a rifle team in high school. I attended a military prep school, served in the Air National Guard as a small arms specialist and in the Army National Guard as an anti-tank platoon sergeant. I Worked for the Department of Defense (Advanced Research Projects Agency) in Thailand for a while during the 
Vietnam War. I also served three years as a District of Columbia Police Department reserve officer. I graduated from the University of Florida (BA Pol. Sci. 1962)and Georgetown University Law Center (1972, editor, Law Journal).
I practiced law in and out of government, became a journalist and spent six years as an assistant managing editor at the very conservative The Washington Times newspaper in Washington. I then spent two years at a small think tank in Washington studying terrorism and international organized crime. I went to work in 1993 (following the first WTC bombing attack) as a Democratic counsel on the U.S. House of Representatives Crime Subcommittee staff, where I worked on legislation and hearings involving terrorism and firearms. I currently work part-time at the nonprofit Violence Policy Center in Washington. The rest of my time I devote to projects involving the study of crime, terrorism, and history. I am a registered independent.
Please note that all opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone.
wow. you sound like a very interesting person. i’d like to get to know you. (hwa)
It’s your photo from the 70’s that tells the whole truth. You became who you were.
I just read your article about the MS-13 gang. I am the victim of that crime and you are only partially correct. The fact is that Victor Calles saved my life from his brother and the other two – the three of them came to our apartment. They threatened to kill me if Victor did not do as they said. I would not be alive today if he did not do what he did. The government, however, wanted to make a sensational story that did not exist and now an innocent man is sentenced to prison for 19 years for a crime that he did not commit, but was in fact a victim along with me. He has never been a part of MS-13 and did everything humanly possible to keep his younger brother out of the gang to no avail. It is a total perversion of justice. Not only was I victimized once by the three named individuals, but again by the government. I will never be the same.