Washington Monthly Maligns the Character of Brave Patriots Protecting Us

As an author, I’m judged by the body of my work. As a man, I hope to be judged by the content of my character. I hope that judgment will include not only how I comport myself and how I treat others, but whom I choose to surround myself with.

One of the greatest pleasures of my adulthood has been the friendships I have forged with some of this nation’s greatest patriots and bravest warriors. John Giduck is one of those outstanding men and it is an honor to call him my friend.

John is a tireless trainer of United States law enforcement, military and intelligence personnel. He lives out of two battered pieces of luggage as he crisscrosses the country throughout the year making sure that those who keep us safe have the absolute best possible training in order to do so. John never says no, and he never lets an agency’s lack of funding determine whether

or not he’ll show up and share his exceptional knowledge of how to save lives. If I were John’s accountant, he would drive me crazy.

But I’m not John’s accountant, I’m his friend. I wrote the forward to his latest book, “Shooter Down – The Dramatic Untold Story of the Police Response to the Virginia Tech Massacre” and though I have never done the narration for any of my own novels, I agreed to be the reader for the audio version of the exceptional book he wrote with Sergeant Major John Anderson (Special Forces, retired), “The Green Beret in You.” I did so because I knew the VA Tech book would help cops save lives in the future and that the Green Beret book – if every man in this nation committed to reading it – would help save America..

Despite the majority of the world’s Muslims being peaceful and tolerant people, Islamic terrorism is a fact. As of the writing of this article there have been 16,921 deadly attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam since 9/11. Not only can we not ignore this, we should not ignore it. Elements (not all) of the left, though, see it a different way. Islamic terrorism is somehow our fault; we the victims are to blame.

Now John Giduck, Sam Kharoba, retired Marine Lt. Col. Joe Bierly, and retired Army Major Richard Hughbank are being singled out and slandered in hopes that they will stop teaching our law enforcement officers how to identify terrorists and prevent terrorist attacks. It is reckless, it is reprehensible, and it should not be tolerated.

As John Giduck’s friend, and as an American who cares about national security and responsible journalism, I wanted to call attention to this situation.

I’ll let another good friend, retired Chester, Pennsylvania Police SWAT Commander Major Joseph M. Bail, Jr. fill you in on the rest.

Summary rebuttal written by Joseph M. Bail:

Dispelling the Falsehoods of Washington Monthly Magazine

By Joseph M. Bail

Recently, the Washington Monthly published an article entitled, “How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam,” by Meg Stalcup and Joshua Craze. In it, the authors maligned the reputations of Sam Kharoba; John Giduck; retired Marine Lt. Col. Joe Bierly; and retired Army Major Richard Hughbank. I’m going to explain how the authors told portions of the truth, twisted to convey false impressions, and how the information they were given was obtained under false pretenses.

Giduck has a law degree, a master’s degree in Russian studies, and a Ph.D. in Middle East studies. He was contacted by Craze who said he was writing an article on the need for American police to be better prepared to respond to terror attacks. In response to questions about how Giduck knew Russian spetsnaz soldiers whom he interviewed after the Beslan school siege in September 2004 for his book, Terror at Beslan, he explained that years before he had known the former director of the KGB for the St. Petersburg region, Anatoli Kurkov. With Kurkov’s help he met and trained with Russian spetsnaz hand-to-hand combat instructors, and over time met with others from different units. Giduck said he knew men in Alpha, Vityaz, SOBR, Rus and others. However, in the article they say that they called Rus and Vityaz. Rus supposedly said that they never heard of John, and Vityaz confirmed that he had attended some type of “commercial” course, but not any counter-terror training.

To think that Russian spetsnaz units can be called by looking up their numbers in a phone book is ridiculous. Even if they had somehow gotten a number, would anyone really believe that they would tell these unknown people the truth about anything, if they even talked to them at all? Giduck said, “They obviously didn’t want confirmation. If they had, they could have simply asked me and I would have put them in touch with the right people.” Retired Green Beret Sergeant Major John Anderson was given permission to accompany John on some training programs. “They did everything John said. This included counter-terror hostage-rescue and close quarters battle,” he said.

Yuri Ferdigalov was a spetsnaz commando and war veteran. He traveled to Beslan with John as the siege was happening, then on two more trips interviewing those involved in the operation. Yuri confirms that they spent a great deal of time with officers from Alpha, SOBR and Rus. I can verify the same thing as I accompanied them on their final trip. We did days of interviews of Rus commanders on their base. I also met an Alpha officer John wrote about in his book.

Russian speakers Igor Livits, Lisa Tongren, and Lance Alred confirmed that a year ago a spetsnaz colonel visiting John said: “The official position of my government now is that no rapes occurred.”

Stalcup and Craze cited journalist C.J. Chivers who wrote an article about Beslan for Esquire in 2007, and who also insisted that no rapes occurred. Giduck said:

Clearly the targets of the article are experienced Americans providing much needed training to law enforcement. Many statements in the article were false, or skewed to create false impressions. Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that we need to stop trusting people like Craze and Stalcup who say they’re on our side.

Chivers suffers from the same problem as the rest of us. He wasn’t inside the school either. So just like me, he is left to report what others tell him. In their article Chivers challenges me to give the name of one girl who was raped at Beslan. Two hundred thousand females are raped in America every year, but I bet he couldn’t give the name of a single one of those either. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen to them.

Hughbank, a decorated veteran with two tours in Afghanistan, insists Craze interviewed him under the pretext that he was a doctoral student conducting research for his dissertation. Hughbank is columnist for Inside Homeland Security magazine, and has written two books on terrorism. He has a master’s degree and graduate certificate in terrorism studies, and is a doctoral candidate in homeland security.

Bierly says, “They misrepresented themselves to me. I was honest in trying to answer their questions and they lied. They said that I did ten years of ‘black ops’ after the Marine Corps. I never said that.”

To see the complete rebuttal, please click here.