Robert Riggs
Don Bentley’s career zigzagged from flying an Army helicopter gunship on combat missions in Afghanistan, to working counterintelligence for the FBI, to now writing suspense filled novels based on the knowledge of his previous careers.
Hello. I’m Robert Riggs.
In my last episode, former FBI agent Don Bentley took us inside the training of Special Agents at the elite FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
After the FBI, Bentley launched a successful writing career. He intimately knows the subject that he writes fiction about.
Don Bentley is the New York Times bestselling author of the Matt Drake series spinning out potboilers about terrorism and intelligence operations.
He has also written two Tom Clancy Jack Ryan, Jr. novels…the latest on bookshelves everywhere is Zero Hour.
Robert Riggs
In this second episode, we discuss Bentley’s transition to writing and our individual association with the late Tom Clancy.
Clancy, a legendary author, was known for his precise descriptions of everything he wrote about in his best selling novels about spycraft and military weapon systems.
Clancy turned his books into video games and spellbinding movies starting with Hunt For Red October.
Robert Riggs
Here’s my interview with veteran decorated Army helicoper pilot, former FBI agent, and author Don Bentley.
Don Bentley
Sure so after I after I left the Fbi I went to work with some friends of mine who were veterans for a small company that that that developed and helped marketed technology for for folks who were looking to. Penetrate the the special operations market and so for the next ten years I worked for companies who who designed tools for folks in the special operations and intelligence communities and so I got to for 10 years besides my Fbi time besides my time in the military. Meet the people and and get to rub shoulders with the folks who would be characters or could be characters in my novel and so Matt Drake is a um person who works for the defense intelligence agency or de and that's a.
Don Bentley
We had technology a huge technological overmatch against the taliban. They couldn't operate at night we could. We had just sensors and things that they had no no counter for now you look at that twenty years later not only is night vision. Um, very commercially aware but they can match. What we do with very cheap um sensors like what we're saying and so this shift to a near-peer engagement with China where it's a very conventional force-on-force operation is certainly worrying but it's just as worrying now that you can have. You know a a special operations force a team of navy seals coming in from the ocean to go mount an operation or a raid and you can have somebody with a $200 drone that has it loitering overhead. That's just watching that team come in even though it's pitch dark outside and so. That has certainly changed things and I think there are a lot of folks paying attention to how ukrainians are successfully waging irregular warfare against the russian conventional forces.
Robert Riggs
Well I recently went to see top gun Maverick and I had as a reporter done a couple of documentaries out on carriers and all but as I sat there and watched it and I really wondered if you know this is. Obsolete technology that floating airfield in the in the world of what could be a swarm of drones coming in are you are you toying with that in any of your books coming up that kind of thing.
Robert Riggs
Well Don Bentley thank you for sharing your stories with us. Thank you for your service to the country both with the army and the Fbi and we look forward to talking to you again in the future and also reading your books. Thank you.
Don Bentley
Um, absolutely thank you so much for having me robert.
Robert Riggs
You can find Don Bentley’s work wherever books are sold. The latest in his Matt Drake series is Hostile Intent and for Tom Clancy it’s Zero Hour.
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