Three Sisters Ponds: My Journey from Street Cop to FBI Special Agent- from Baltimore to Lockerbie and Beyond

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AuthorHouse, 2013 - Biography & Autobiography - 278 pages
In September 2000, I was sitting on a bench facing the Mediterranean Sea in the French Riviera town of Nice. I had flown there during a three-day break in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial in Camp Ziest, Netherlands, where I was expected to testify. As I sat on this bench eating lunch, I suddenly found myself overwhelmed by emotion. It was an awakening: I realized that my being there was the fulfillment of one of my many life dreams and goals that were launched thirty-one years earlier from another bench facing the Three Sisters Ponds in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park. Now, from a bench in the French Riviera, I began to chronicle the manifestation of those dreams and goals, accomplished through my thirty-six-year law enforcement career as a Baltimore City policeman and FBI agent. I'm hoping my story catches on with anyone who dares to dream and set challenging and aggressive life goals. I hope to inspire and encourage more interest in law enforcement careers by sharing my professional experiences and the educational, leadership, and career opportunities that were availed to me during my law enforcement career. My responsibilities as a Baltimore City policeman included saving lives, catching murder suspects, confronting wayward police, and dealing with crisis situations such as the 1971 student riots at the University of Maryland and the 1974 Baltimore City Police strike and riots. As an FBI agent, I was a part of the 1981 Brinks armored truck murder/robbery investigation in Nyack, NY; took part in New York FBI SWAT operations; and was involved in international extra-territorial terrorism investigations such as the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the attempted bombing of then-Secretary of State George Shultz's motorcade in La Paz, Bolivia, and the kidnapping and murders of Americans in Srinagar, India, and Karachi, Pakistan.

About the author (2013)

Phillip B. J. Reid was born in Baltimore City, Maryland, on October 27, 1948, one of four sons of Wendell and Ernestine Reid. His early childhood began in Day Village, a small black enclave in the Turner Station section of Dundalk, Maryland. His family later moved to Baltimore City, where he graduated from Edmondson High School in 1966 and joined the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) in 1969. Mr. Reid was a member of the BPD for eight years. During that time he was assigned to street patrol duties for three years; the personnel division, where he recruited police officers, for two years; and finally the BPD training academy for three years as a certified Maryland Police Training Commission instructor. In 1972 he received an associate's degree in law enforcement from the Community College of Baltimore, and in 1975 a bachelor's degree in sociology from Morgan State University. He was later appointed adjunct lecturer in the Division of Continuing Education of the Community College of Baltimore. Mr. Reid joined the FBI in 1977, and after graduating from the FBI Academy, he was assigned to the FBI's Norfolk, Virginia, field office. In addition, he was assigned to FBI field offices in New York; Alexandria, Virginia; Honolulu; Anchorage; Denver; and Washington, DC. In November, 1991, he was promoted to supervisor at the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), located at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, where for two years he conducted investigations involving employee misconduct, including that of former FBI Director William Sessions. He subsequently was promoted to field office supervisor and assigned to the Honolulu, Hawaii, field office. Five years later he was promoted to assistant special agent in charge and assigned to the Anchorage, Alaska, field office. During his assignment in Alaska he was promoted in place to special agent in charge. After two years in that position, he was reassigned to the Denver, Colorado, field office, again as the special agent in charge, overseeing the FBI's investigative responsibilities in Colorado and Wyoming for the next two and a half years. He remained there until he retired in May 2005. During his twenty-eight years with the FBI, Mr. Reid was assigned to various types of federal investigations that included bank and armored truck robberies, fugitives, extortion, white-collar crime, civil rights violations, cyber-crime, organized crime/drugs, kidnappings, foreign counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and extraterritorial terrorism. He spent extensive amounts of time overseas conducting FBI terrorism investigations, such the 1988 attempted bombing of Secretary of State George Shultz's motorcade in La Paz, Bolivia. For three years (December 1988ndash;November 1991) he was one of the full-time case agents assigned to investigate the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people were murdered. During that time, while traveling extensively, he provided coordination among the FBI, the American embassy, Scotland Yard, Scottish law enforcement, the CIA, and the Maltese government regarding the investigation, which eventually resulted in the indictments of two Libyan suspects in 1991. In 2000 he testified in the trial in the Netherlands that resulted in the conviction of one of the two suspects. While assigned to the Honolulu field office, Mr. Reid was asked to establish and supervise a counterterrorism extraterritorial squad to investigate all murders, kidnappings, or serious assaults of American citizens in Asia and the Pacific Rim countries. He worked personally with US embassy officials, including ambassadors and CIA station chiefs, and with host-country law enforcement and military officials in those parts of the world. He traveled extensively throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim, including India, Thailand, Pakistan, Japan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. Some of his investigations there included the March 8, 1995, execution-style murders of a

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