David Race Bannon wrote a book, Race Against Evil: The Secret Missions of the Interpol Agent Who Tracked the World's Most Sinister Criminals, in which he claimed, well I will let Publisher’s Review speak for the book:

With all the style and tension of Clive Cussler, Bannon tells the tale of how he was recruited and trained as a "cleaner"—tracking down, interrogating and "eliminating" child pornographers who his boss at Interpol had determined were beyond the reach of other law enforcement agencies.

From his carefree days as a Mormon missionary in South Korea, Bannon claims he quickly moved into petty smuggling; a short stint in a South Korean prison; a cover identity teaching close combat training to Belgium's elite police forces; a romance with a sultry French antiterrorist combatant (daughter of a wealthy banker with her own villa in the south of France); and, following her death on a joint mission, his assignment to the top-secret Archangel unit of Interpol.

From here on, the story takes off. Though describing his former self as always gallant and perfectly efficient, Bannon never misses an opportunity to share the moral and emotional torment that came with his license to kill—nor, for that matter, does he miss a chance to use a cliché or bad pun.

If there is any truth to be found in this story, his former collaborators on both sides of the law must be allowing its publication only because they realize how completely implausible it all sounds. In a small category with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind-Chuck Barris' tale of game show host as CIA assassin—this "real-life drama" should appeal to fans of fast-paced thrillers.

Kung Fu magazine wrote an well referenced, extensive article about his adventures:

http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=499

When online critics posted to the magazine article, the author responded, as had David Bannon earlier:

05-21-2004, 09:46 PM

Jason Putman
Junior Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Southeaster United States

Thank you for your comments

As much as I'd love to accept any award for being the first to "break" this story, readers will find in the detailed reference notes that the first major media venue to investigate and confirm Bannon's account was National Public Radio (NPR) last July in an exhaustive 30-min report on The Todd Mundt Show. Since then, the story has been investigated and confirmed by two newspapers (Charlotte Observer [31st largest metro in the U.S.] and a story I wrote for a much smaller paper, The Lake Norman Times) and most recently by Fox News Channel in a report that aired on March 24.

I have been researching this article, and other similar works, for over a year in preparation for my new book on the world's intelligence special forces, coming from Random House in 2005. My father is a retired DEA special agent in charge, so I've been around some pretty astounding things, although not from personal experience. My dad vouched for Bannon and Defferre; and then he vouched for me when I pursued all the interviews.

The heart of the article, "Kungfu Secret Agent," is the volume of interviews. I spoke in person and via phone with law officers, intelligence officers and Interpol agents, all of whom worked with Bannon. I interviewed Bannon's Interpol supervisor, Jacques Defferre, in person before the gentleman's death. Some of the interviewees didn't care for Bannon, others spoke of him with long years between them, but all confirmed the existence of Team Archangel and that they had worked with Bannon and Defferre. Bannon's book, "Race Against Evil," has been confirmed as accurate and credible by intelligence and law officers with whom he worked. The interviews are detailed in the article and speak for themselves.

Bannon himself wrote his first account for Kungfu Magazine in 2001, as Gene has noted, and then told the full story in his book from New Horizon, which was fully vetted by the attorneys of the book's distributor, Penguin-Putnam (no relation, darnit). My own publisher is repeating the vetting process, checking all of my tapes, transcripts, contact information and support documentation—as would be required by any major media venue. As with all journalism, the interview tapes and transcripts, as well as full contact information, are held by my book publisher.

Bannon currently serves as an expert witness on global human trafficking for federal appellate courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. I confirmed this with two law firms that have hired him as an expert consultant—both of whom have independently verified his credentials and background with Interpol before putting him on the stand to testify. This corroboration is hard to refute or deny.

If my writing style isn't up to Kung Fu standards, or if I have dramatized in a way that readers find distracting, I accept full blame. It should not reflect poorly on the hundreds of Interpol officers who shed blood and sweat and years defending children. The sacrifices of Team Archangel were too dear to be dismissed because of my flaws as a writer.

When I interviewed Bannon and Defferre together, I was struck by their normalcy—so remarkably normal that it was almost abnormal—it was easy to miss them, to let your eyes slide over them and onto someone else in the coffee shop. Only after talking with them in detail did I begin to sense the remarkable depths of quiet violence in both men. After Defferre was killed, and with much investigation, I have concluded that Bannon revealed his story as a safety measure that has little to do with book sales. Going public, but retaining support docs, he has been able to leave what Defferre (with characteristic panache) called "the secret world."

Bannon himself has a much deeper motivation and when he discusses it, his demeanor is one of unwavering resolve and dignity. Bannon is a child advocate and his book is secondary to spreading the world about what he calls "this most horrific atrocity," child sex trafficking. After talking with these men in person, all of the subsequent support docs and confirming interviews served to increase my own horror at the sheer volume of children abused in sex trafficking—and to begin to understand in part the immense frustration of men like Defferre that ultimately led to a Team Archangel.

Much of my research was assisted by Professor Chiu Hse Yu of Singapore University, with whom I co-wrote "Interpol's Secret Army" for the Western Libertartian Alliance political journal. Bannon also has an article in the same issue, "The Hidden Slavery: Global Sex Trafficking," which—true to his character—mentions nothing about his own book. The issue in question can be downloaded in entirety (1.9 M) as a PDF file at:

http://westernlibertarian.org/paper/WLA%20pg%201%20high%20res.pdf and http://westernlibertarian.org/paper/WLA%20pgs%2018-23%20high%20res.pdf

or got to http://westernlibertarian.org/paper and choose "WLA Complete".

Professor Chiu's web site (and contact address) is: http://www.geocities.com/chiuhse_yu [note: this link is next to worthless]

I am pleased to correspond with anyone who has read Bannon's book and done the hard research needed to qualify their findings—including, of course, the year I've spent gathering interviews, photos, and support documentation that confirm undeniably the facts of this article.

Thank you for reading the article and offering your comments. I hope I have addressed your concerns.

Jason Putman
http://www.geocities.com/JasonPutmanwrites
JasonPutmanwrites@yahoo.com

Ernie Hancock interviewed him three times for his radio show:

David Race Bannon is the author of "Race Against Evil". The book details his work as an Interpol assassin and the history and structure of Interpol. This New World Order police force has total immunity and is under no jurisdictional limits. Armed with the mission to fight child pornography, they have been allowed to operate with absolutely no controls by any government. Do I exaggerate? Tune in and find out.

http://ernesthancock.com/archive/media/2003-06-02-ernie.mp3

http://ernesthancock.com/archive/media/2003-06-30-ernie.mp3

http://ernesthancock.com/archive/media/2003-10-02-ernie.mp3

Speculation was raised that Interpol would find a way to silence him. Have they? He was recently arrested. And now, is his story unraveling?

First came an extensive exposé from Bullshido.net, a site dedicated to uncovering martial arts frauds, hoaxes, freaks and fights:

http://bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=30325

and, http://bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=31108

Probably based upon these disclosures, and working with Interpol, came an arrest by the U.S. Dept. of Justice of David Race Bannon in late January of this year:

http://usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/January/06_usncb_049.html

[Corrected attribution.] The following Letter to the Editor, including publisher's commentary, was published in the Mondo Boulder [Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 by Modest Geniuses, Ltd.]:

February 7, 2006, via e-mail

Hello,

My name is Mark Moore. I am the Ex-Brother in Law to this Idiot, David Race Bannon, A.K.A. David Dilley.

My Sister Susan was Married to this man around the time he claimed that he earned a Doctorate Degree from some University in Seoul Korea. They had Divorced before these claims were manifested and circulated.

I am in Law Enforcement and I am glad to say that I am proud that someone finally nailed him. I sure that if the "Powers that Be" would check further they would probably find more Fraudulent claims against this Excommunicated Mormon Missionary.

Might I add he has helped ruin my Niece Jessica's life over this, I hope he gets everything he has deserved!

Thanks for reading,

Mark R. Moore

-----------------------------------------

Not having the resources of an alternative weekly paper, Mondo Boulder has not verified the claims of Mr. Moore, who we find to be the School Resource Officer of Oakway Middle School, Westminster, SC.

—Peter Aretin

Which was written in response to the following article which was published in the Mondo Boulder [Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2006 by Modest Geniuses, Ltd.]:

JANUARY 29, 2006

Lost Innocence

Move over, Oprah Winfrey, and make a big ol' space on that couch for Pamela White. And what would a multi-millionaire media maven and cultural icon have in common with Bolder Weekly's editor?

Lost innocence.

Yes, both women have recently been the victim of a literary hoax. But while Oprah's nemesis, best-selling "memoir" author James Frey, walks free and is still seeing heavy book sales, David Wayne Dilley, White's hoaxer, has been arrested in a Boulder eatery for criminal impersonation ... of a cartoon character, maybe.

White penned a sensational Boulder Weekly cover story last year around Dilley, who changed his name to David Race Bannon after the character in the Hanna-Barbera Johnny Quest cartoon series. Bannon was described in the article as a former Interpol agent, "a 'cleaner.' It was his job to get close to the worst perpetrators of child trafficking and child sexual exploitation, to extract information from them by force and to kill them. He was an assassin."

The piece dripped prose of hair-curling potency: "David Race Bannon has nightmares that would freeze your marrow. In his dreams, he sees dismembered children, 4-year-olds chained to beds in Bangkok brothels, photographs of infant rape and images of blood–always blood."

Except it looks now as if Bannon, and maybe that blood, too, is fake. A brief AP story in Saturday's Camera describes Bannon's arrest because "his two-day law-enforcement training course would cost Colorado more than $3,000." That was his mistake. If Bannon had simply settled for claiming to be an Indian and collecting $90,000 a year from CU, there would have been no problem.

There's no explanation in the wire story of just who was going to be soaked for this course, what it was, or when, or where. So much for the "Five Ws and an H" they used to go on so much about in J school. The piece does mention Bannon's Interpol claims, his book, a talk at CU and appearances on network TV, but does not mention, perhaps mercifully, the splashy BW cover piece.

Though B-Dub's readers gushed over the piece, there should have been a few warning flags. The cartoon-character name, for instance. Or had Pamela probed, the institution that had supposedly granted Bannon/Dilley a doctorate would have been found to have never heard of him.

The secret agent scam is one of the oldest wheezes in the book. Interpol may or may not have blown the whistle on the fraud not long after the article appeared, but if they did, the Weekly played it for laughs in their November 11 edition:

Boulder Weekly can neither confirm nor deny that Editor Pamela White received a phone call at home last week from Rachael Billington at Interpol HQ in France. Nor can it confirm nor deny that Interpol’s spy panties are in a twist over a recent article that included an interview with Dr. David Race Bannon, who claims to have once worked as a covert agent for Interpol.

The Interpol representative who may or may not have contacted White might or might not have started the conversation by saying that nothing she said was to be recorded, repeated or reported in any way, before asking White to run the following statement:

"Interpol’s General Secretariat in Lyon has no record of David Race Bannon having been employed and no knowledge of individuals mentioned in Mr. Bannon’s book. Interpol exists to facilitate the exchange of information between the world’s law enforcement agencies and to provide analysis of criminal data and other services. Accordingly, the claims in Mr. Bannon’s book can only be seen as deceptive and irresponsible fantasy."

Somehow, the image of Interpol ordering a Boulderian alternative weekly not to report receiving a telephone call seems right out of the imagination of Johnny Quest, or maybe Race Bannon.

—Peter Aretin

Here is the link to the original Boulder Weekly cover story on David Race Bannon.

Questions were raised about the article's accuracy (and Bannon's veracity), including this letter to the editor, scroll down to “Fake Heroism.”

The author of the cover story defends her article here.

Are Jason Putman and David Bannon one and the same?

http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4494972,00.html

And some further details of the arrest:

http://speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=134&id=2483

So is Bannon a sad fantasizing little man, or a “cleaner” for Interpol? I have my opinion after reading his book, and finding exciting details of his “life” revealed on the Ernest Hancock radio interviews that purportedly occurred during the time the book covered, yet were not in the book. That makes no sense to me, unless his imagination has embellished on a fantasy over time.

But, in truth, we may never know, as proving a negative, where a conspiracy is alleged, will never satisfy everyone. Some will say, 'see I knew he was a fake' (as I have just done). Others will say, 'Interpol and a collaborating U.S. government are going after him for exposing their dirty little secrets' (and God knows they have plenty to expose).

Time and you will be the judge. [Note: As of 3-7-06, no account of his scheduled Feb. 2 arraignment have appeared on the DOJ web site.]

UPDATE: Peter Aretin, (kudos) Publisher(?) of ( Mondo Boulder) has subsequently brought the following Associated Press summary of the DOJ case/trial against David Race Bannon to our attention:

http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/county_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2423_4812711,00.html

...A man who claimed to be an expert in illegal trafficking of children was sentenced to five years' probation and ordered to get mental health counseling after pleading guilty to criminal impersonation.

David Race Bannon, 42, of Charlotte, N.C., also was ordered to get substance abuse evaluation and treatment and ordered to serve 100 hours of community service...

[Backup link, in case above link goes dead: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/14934828.htm]

See an additional story about David Race Bannon and his story at:

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/14897513.htm