The Dark Art: My Undercover Life in Global Narco-Terrorism

by Edward Follis, Douglas Century (Contributor), Ray Porter (Narrator)

* Duration: 7 hours and 27 minutes *

A highly decorated veteran DEA agent recounts his incredible undercover career and reveals the shocking links between narcotics trafficking and terrorism

"It always ends with one phone call. Months - often years - of undercover work comes to fruition with an innocent-seeming conversation. The last call. One last call to set them up; one last call to bring them down."

Over the course of his 27 years with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Ed Follis bought eight-balls of coke in a red Corvette, negotiated multimillion-dollar deals onboard private King Airs, and developed covert relationships with men who were not only international drug-traffickers but - in some cases - operatives for Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Shan United Army, or the Mexican federation of cartels.

Follis was, in fact, one of the driving forces behind the agency’s radical shift from a limited local focus to a global arena. In the early nineties, the DEA was primarily known for doing street-level busts evocative of 'Miami Vice'.Today, it uses high-resolution-optics surveillance and classified cutting-edge technology to put the worst narco-terror kingpins on the business end of “stealth justice” delivered via Predator drone pilots.

Spanning five continents and filled with harrowing stories about the world’s most ruthless drug lords and terrorist networks, Follis’s memoir reads like a thriller. Yet every word is true, and every story is documented. Follis earned a Medal of Valor for his work, and coauthor Douglas Century is a pro at shaping and telling just this kind of story.

The first and only insider’s account of the confluence between narco-trafficking and terrorist organizations, 'THE DARK ART' is a pause-resisting memoir that will electrify you from page one. 


©2014 Edward Follis and Douglas Century (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Genres: Nonfiction, Crime, True Crime, Memoir, Drugs, Biography, Terrorism

7 pages, Audible Audio

First published October 7, 2014

Reviews

[Rainie Semmens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting & easy yo follow, I have read alot of books about drugs but never from the view of a Narco- terrorism before so that part alone was interesting, so was hearing all the stories about the people he met along the way, there were even many facts about drugs & drug dealing that I had never heard of before,
I recommend this book to any1 that wants an easy to read book to fill their weekend up with cause once you start you will want to finish it fast.

[Katherine Cowley · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you buy heroin, cocaine, meth, or ecstasy anywhere in the United States, you are directly supporting terrorist organizations.

That's one of the major take homes from this fascinating memoir by a retired DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) agent. It's a crazy, intense book by a man who has obsessively spent his entire life trying to take out top drug lords and terrorists. I say crazy because of the extents of what he does to befriend these people, to work undercover, to infiltrate groups and to use informants. Moral lines are crossed dozens of times, because that often was the only effective method to make any progress against these drug lords.

Further things I found particularly fascinating:
-The interrogation techniques, the way he would try to find the "malleable" part of a person
-How he sacrificed opportunities for love and family because he truly thought it was incompatible with the career he had chosen
-How the undercover art is being lost because of technology
-The constant judgment calls that had to be made in dangerous situations to try to get as much leverage against the bad guys
-This is a very different style of detective work than I'm used to seeing on TV or reading about
-Even in the U.S., often in order to make an arrest, an agent would buy--with real money--large quantities of drugs. This enabled them to obtain search warrants, and have a tight case for the courts. Sometimes the money was recouped, others times it wasn't. And sometimes it was insane amounts of money--half a million dollars.

This book was well worth reading because it exposed me to so many things that I previously knew nothing about. Not a perfect book, and the author is not a perfect man, but fascinating. It's a crazy world we live in.

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

A glimpse into the world of undercover work. This book is a lesson on illegal drug production, funding, and a peak inside the lives of drug lords. I was engrossed from the first page.

[Sam Klemens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started it at about 7 in the morning, and finished it at 3:41 in the afternoon. I thought it was a thrilling look into the undercover world. Obviously Hemingway didn't write this book, but hey, it's cool that Follis wrote his own book instead of having someone else Ghost write it. I honestly didn't mind the style or sometimes choppy writing, it was just the organization. Sometimes the stories would jump forward and backward, they wouldn't be fully explained, and it would just be a bit messy. Seems like some better editing could have taken care of that.

Overall though worth reading. Interesting stories from a smart guy.

[Mike Prusaitis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. The dark art takes you into the bizarre and scary world of what it is like to be under cover in the DEA. It certainly the kind of job I'm glad exist though even more glad that I never had to get involved with something like that. No thanks.

[Steven Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Retired DEA Special Agent Edward Follis had a long and distinguished career. He details it in his memoir, The Dark Art: My Undercover Life in Global Narco-terrorism.

Starting from his time working as a UC in Los Angeles, to his time in Southeast Asia as an attaché, to his time running counter-narco ops in Afghanistan and rubbing shoulders with smugglers whom had ties to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Follis's career was the stuff of films.

At the root of it, however, was the human element. Being able to relate to people, gain their trust, and befriend them was critical to infiltration their criminal empires and bringing them down with insider knowledge. People who think being a brooding, macho tough guy is the key to UC operations would do well to read this book. It's the affable, outgoing types who work best in the undercover environment.

I definitely recommend this memoir to anyone looking to learn about law enforcement and undercover investigations.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating career biography from military police to disrupting the heroin trade internationally to fighting war on drugs in cyberspace. These years of undercover drug interdiction lead to befriending and eventual arresting Haji Juma Khan ("HJK") who aided the Taliban while trading tons of heroin and opium. This book also touches on how opium profits the Taliban as HJK's drug network was a principle source of funding to the Taliban.

[Tim Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting inside look inside the live of an undercover DEA agent, taking down everyone from regional LA drug dealers to global Middle East terror networks. Some truly fascinating and raw insights here on just how much countries like North Korea fund themselves based primarily on opiates.

[Andy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shite. Follis is clearly a total prick.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, easily readable, but a bit too 'American' in my opinion. Ed Follis saved the world :-)

[Samurai Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dark Art: My Undercover Life in Global Narco-Terrorism written by both Edward Follis and Douglas Century. The Dark Art… is a 252-paged non-fictional stack of memoirs, published in 2015 by Scribe, containing a first-hand look into the cooperation between international drug-traffickers and organized terrorist; also known as narco-terrorism. Edward Follis vividly recalls the true and thrilling investigations that transpired during his 27 years working undercover with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Follis is an accredited special agent of the DEA with countless drug seizing operations, one of which resulted in the capture of Al Qaeda’s financial supporter and international drug-trafficker, Haji Juma Khan. The author does not hold back when it comes to understanding the reality of this dangerous industry. This book was written for anyone interested in learning more about the drug trade industry and its heavy influence on the illegal smuggling of terrorist soldiers. However, Edward Follis accomplishes this by taking the reader back to a time where the Drug Enforcement Administration was still well within its early years. Each investigation he talks about sounds like a new Steven Spielberg blockbuster, but his accolades speak for themselves. He starts the book off with his first day on the job. To my pleasant surprise, his first duty station was in downtown Los Angeles, “...in the heart of the financial district, right in the Los Angeles World Trade Center… on 350 South Figueroa Street, with a staff of about one hundred” (Follis 13). The author begins to build his ethos with his audience by being straightforward right out the gate. Maintaining that persistent trust with his audience proves to be his most efficient rhetorical tactic. Edward Follis recounts the numerous undercover drug deals he coordinated in local cities across Southern California. Cities like Riverside, Pasadena, Los Angeles, and even in the loading docks of Long Beach. One of these deals actually occured in the parking lot of a well-known theme park located in Anaheim. This book is a real eye-opener to global narco-terrorism and all its key players. For example, those undercover meets he had at the happiest place on earth was with a man named Kayed Berro. In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, the Berro family funded, produced, and distributed some of the best heroin known to man. Circa 1990s, Edward Follis found the wanted international felon living in Huntington Beach while in the process of writing his thesis for a Master’s Degree at the University of Southern California. On top of that, they would routinely meet up and walk around Disneyland Park. Doesn’t that just blow your mind? The Dark Art… is a must read for those who find pleasure in reading about the methods the DEA used to gather intel, capture and execute international extraditions of global narco-terrorists.

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dark Art is an exceptional inside look into the supply side of drugs and its direct link to terrorism. Edward Follis, retired DEA agent, delineates his numerous worldwide assignments giving a solid background of the major kingpins in drug trafficking over the past few decades. I highly recommend this one over any of the spooks' diatribes of gaslit-justified assassination as Follis embeds the very human, psychological angle of the dark art in disrupting one of the greatest ramifications of capitalism - illicit drugs.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Audiobook) This work is a recap from an undercover DEA agent, covering the various experiences he had from Southeast Asia, Mexico and Central/Southwest Asia. There is plenty of thrilling twists and turns, but also a man who talks of fighting both the criminals and the American system. Afghanistan was especially difficult, given the multiple battles on multiple fronts. It is somewhat self-serving, but not a bad read, all things concerned.

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and addictive, like the underworld crime worlds the author slips into undetected. I feel the author glosses over some of the most interesting aspects of life - like his love affairs, his failed engagement, and the obvious omission: what he had to do to earn the trust of each different mafia (ie: how many innocents?)

[Charmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

How is it possible to make what would appear a adventurous subject, dull? Seemed very self-aggrandizing. Which in some cases not a bad recipe for literature. But this was just another entitled white mans tale about how important he thought his life was. And really not sure his war on drugs made a difference.

[Wes F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating account of undercover work as a DEA agent in numerous locations, including Afghanistan. Kudos to Follis for his work in putting a huge dent in the financing of the Taliban insurgents through their complicity in the deadly global heroin trade--a true scourge.

[Joe Biscoe IV · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty cool and interesting book. The story telling is a little clunky at time and there is weird ends to some stories but it's enjoyable. Cool to read about the human element involved in the narco terrorism world, and the change of views as their careers progressed.

[Jim Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a very different personality from this guy so we differ in a lot of opinions and conclusions about certain subjects. I don't think we'd be good partners. But his book provided a lot of insight into the DEA's international conflict with narcotics and covered some valuable history.

[Joe Susnick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm unqualified to rate non-fiction but this was a decent read. Nothing monumental.

[Randall Hatcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read

Very brave and honest man true American cop. This is how the war on drugs should be fought. Thank you

[Matt B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Lots of fun war stories, good insight into DEA operations and how an undercover agent served his country the best way he knew how.

[Michae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall a highly enjoyable book! I enjoyed the book being split into three different parts. Each part representing a different part of the writers DEA career.

[J. Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read, enjoyable.

[Marcin W · Rating 2 out of 5]

just not for me. did not care in slightest. only tried it bc free with audible plus and Ray Porter narrating. gave up 25% in.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well written book that takes you into the world of undercover DEA work. I immensely enjoyed the book and have discovered that I read too many books about undercover cops, when Billy Queen (who himself wrote an account of infiltrating the Mongols Motorcycle club as an agent at the ATF, called Under and Alone) makes an appearances. However, his appearance was not a recap of a story I had read before.

This book however, is more of a memoire of Edward Folis' career, rather than an account of him infiltrating one particular organization. So if you are looking for a book like Under and Alone, this is not it. As he traipses along his timeline, he leaves out a lot of details about each assignment that would have been interesting. Instead of being a book about a man's career, it could have been at least four books detailing each of his undercover assignments.

That said, after I got over the initial disappointment of the book not being like Billy Queen's, it held up as a good biography of someone who truly believed in his mission. The only section that seemed to lack enough details (and I assume it is for safety reasons) was his time spent with the Mexican cartels. If it is for safety reasons that is perfectly fine to leave that out. But for how brief the section is, because he is not well known, it should have been omitted completely.

Despite the picture of a opium plant oozing on the cover. I expected his career was spent dealing with the drug trade coming up from Central America. Instead, it detailed the heroin trade, which I knew most recently came from Afghanistan, but again I assumed it came via the Mexican cartels prior to the toppling of the Taliban.

The one thing to note, and maybe most readers would not notice this, is that the book while quite interesting reads more like a police report than a story. It encapsulates Joe Friday's famous line from Dragnet, just the fact ma'am. The story reads as a linear timeline I went here, befriend suspect x, did a few things with suspect x, then at 0900 hours on March 6, 1992 we arrested suspect x and charged him with violating US Code Title 27. Rinse and repeat through his various stories.

What it did is made Edward Follis seem slightly standoffish. By this I mean he was a two dimensional character compared to most. The final incident he describes in Afghanistan, is the only one that I see a real person in the book. The rest as I say read like a police report. I realize if you worked as long as he did writing daily reports, your writing style can take on that tone naturally. So I don't believe it was a deliberate attempt to do this, it was just that old habits are hard to break. Plus since it encapsulates nearly 30 years of DEA work, I am sure Edward Follis was forced to revisit his personal notebooks to ensure he had correct details. On the job, your notebook would read like a point form police report. So unless you write the book from memory only, the details turn you into a two dimensional character.

Overall, once you've exhausted the many undercover cop infiltrates a biker gang series as I have, this book is a good introduction into the world of infiltrating drug lords. Unfortunately, I have not found a Billy Queen style book that talks about infiltrating say a Southeast Asian heroin drug lord's organization. Perhaps, bikers and the Mafia are less threatening to your safety, so detailing a single operation puts your life at risk. As I discovered reading this book, it seems that drug organizations are hard to cripple with prosecution, like you can do to a Mafia or biker gang. So writing a book like this does risk safety depending how it is written. Overall, I would recommend this book, but only after you read several of the undercover biker gang books.

[Judge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book and getting the perspective of a DEA agent in such a risky situation and having a very peculiar experience proved an interesting read.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good book, though far too short. Inexplicably short.

Edward Follis was a DEA agent, fighting the war on drugs around the world. And I mean literally around the world. You name it and he’s been there: Thailand, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Mexico. Anywhere drugs originate from, or are smuggled in from, the chances are that the intrepid Edward Follis has been there.

And this guy is no desk jockey. He really was out there undercover. The pages are packed with tales and anecdotes of his life running undercover operations against the Burmese Shan United Army, the Juarez Mexican drugs cartel, various Israeli gangsters and Nigerian crime lords, and that’s before we even touch upon al Qaeda and the Afghan heroin trade.

Which brings me to my disappointment. I loved this book, read it in two days, but was left wanting more. The book details organisations that have rarely been touched upon – how many book have discussed the war against the Shan United Army? And yet here the whole story is dealt with in just 27 pages. That’s despite the fact that the author claims the operations that he was a part of finished off the group. I was left wanting more which left me a little disappointed. Perhaps the author is saving stuff for a sequel?

Apart from the brevity, I only have one criticism of the content itself and that is how unaware the author appears to be of the pointlessness of the war on drugs, despite the fact that his narrative makes that abundantly clear.

For example, despite bringing down three of the biggest Afghan heroin barons, he writes in the epilogue that in recent years there has been a 67% increase in heroin seizures and a 59% increase in heroin charges in New York alone. So what was the point? Surely we should rethink the war on drugs? Surely, what his story is testament to, is the effectiveness of policing against individual drug lords but it’s ineffectiveness against the trade as a whole.

Similarly, in the chapter on the Israeli Abergil crime family, he writes: ‘Don’t be fooled by the reputation of MDMA as a harmless “party” drug: the global Ecstasy market is monstrous’. He then details various murders that have come about through organised crime groups fighting over the trade. But the same could be said about alcohol under prohibition. People like Capone fought over the booze trade until it was legalised. The fact that people like the Abergils fight over the ecstasy trade says nothing about the drug itself, it just speaks to the pointlessness of prohibition.

The nearest the author gets to such insights is when discussing the Juarez cartel and the downfall of it’s then leader, Amado Carillo Fuentes, who died undergoing plastic surgery. The author discusses how after his passing the cartel was very quickly taken over by others, in effect admitting that business carried on as usual. But rather than leading to wider questioning of the drug war, the author stubbornly sticks to his view that success can come from targeting those at the top, even repeating it in the epilogue.

I understand that having spent a lifetime in the war on drugs it must be hard to admit that it has all been a waste of time; that your life’s work has been pointless. In effect he spells this out in the epilogue, when he details how drugs are still sweeping the nation. This is a very good book but it would have been a brilliant one if he had had the guts to do so.

[Dan McGrady · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a fascinating book about a DEA agent catching some of the biggest traffickers.

But Edward is not a likable person at all.

There were three notable moments in the book that make it worth reading:

- he openly admits to using 'parallel reconstruction' using tips from NSA/CIA guys in Thailand. As he explains: they whisper a tip in your ear but that source of information can never be attributed to anyone - and he continues to still use that information as part of a criminal investigation. Something I'm sure any judge/lawyer/defendant would love to hear about - concealing evidence. Also very relevant after the recent Snowden leaks. Picture of snippet: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-zLSk0XA...

- he admits (note he is a DEA agent) "Weed is a party drug. Honestly I could give a damn if the gov legalized marijuana in every single state"... yet in later chapters he continues to put people in jail for it

- there is a hilarious scene late in the book where he is pretending to be Muslim in a mosque, while actually praying to his Christian god. Sitting next to him is Afghanistan's biggest Opium dealer, the person he's been investigating for a year - and he is praying that he hopes to god something will happen so he won't have to actually arrest the dealer. Since they became essentially friends.

- the book is page after page of him extolling moral high grounds over these lowly traffickers he arrests - yet he admits the Thai police will 100% torture this particular trafficker (like they do most big criminals), and then he continues to hand off this guy he caught to them without a second thought

Strange guy, with a strange sense of morality. Yet Still entertaining enough to read.

Even though I somewhat trashed it above, I actually found the book to be too short - I guess the publisher wanted it to be a quick read. But I felt it hardly dug into his times in Mexico. And it spent way too much time in Afghanistan where almost nothing happened in terms of progress of stopping traffickers. But I guess they were pushing the 'narco-terrorism' angle hard. I personally think it could have been better without pigeonholing the terrorism stuff in, and there really was very little counter-terrorism in the book.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Dark Art", by Edward Follis, covers the author's extensive career as an undercover agent and manager in our drug enforcement agency. The book is interesting in describing what an agent's work might be like, and what dangers he (or she) may face on the job. The disturbing thing about the book is realizing that as one street seller or even a drug kingpin is arrested, there's someone right behind them ready to take over that role. We've been fighting the battle against drugs for years and years, and while individuals are apprehended, it's difficult to say that true progress can be demonstrated. The books focus was on the author's undercover life in the fights against drugs, but I would have liked to learn even more about alternate approaches to the drug war as being taken by other Countries.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

As this and other recent readings indicate (Signs Preceding the End of the World, The Interior Circuit and The Cartel) I had a renewed interest in Mexico and the problem of the cartels that formed part of the year’s focus. It was a multimedia focus with viewings of Netflix’s Narcos series, the US version of The Bridge and Sicario. Follis was a DEA agent for many years and his book details how the US fights our drug wars around the world. The book is very descriptive and also wildly interesting on some of the crazier situations Follis and his compatriots fell into. One of the prime requirements for an agent would seem to be a high capacity for BS.