Dave DeBatto

Prior to deployment to Iraq, Dave had been an Army Instructor in the Army’s Counterintelligence Agent course and also served as a German linguist in signals intelligence (SIGINT). While serving in the Sunni Triangle area of Iraq, his team's responsibilities included; tracking down the infamous "55 Playing Card" Iraqi fugitives, searching for WMD as well as high level Ba'ath Party and top Iraqi military leaders. His team's intelligence collection efforts lead to the capture of one of the "55", as well as the capture of several Iraqi generals, top intelligence operatives, assassins and large caches of conventional weapons and warehouses full of top-secret documents.

Dave, or “Daoud” as the Iraqi’s called him, developed close working relationships and the trust of several top Iraqi leaders and was able, because of those relationships, to obtain information not available to other American officials, military or civilian. His weekly tribal council meetings, which involved as many as fifteen sheiks of several competing tribes, was the largest and most successful of such gatherings in the entire Iraqi theater of operation. Paul Bremer began to attempt to host similar meetings, although on a much smaller scale, sometime later.

Dave was wounded during an intelligence-gathering mission near Camp Anaconda, Iraq in late 2003 and spent almost six months in several U.S. Army hospitals undergoing rehabilitation therapy before being medically retired in the spring of 2004.

He has given expert analysis of events in the Middle East and the Global War on Terrorism on numerous radio and television networks including: FOX, CNN, NPR, MSNBC and others. Dave is widely quoted as a source for terrorism and National Security related stories by several leading news organizations.

Dave is co-author of a four-part fiction series for Warner Books called "CI”. The first installment, “CI: TEAM RED”, was published in May 2005, the second, “CI: DARK TARGET”, in February 2006 with the third being released in October 2006 and the fourth book in May of 2007.

His first non-fiction book, “THEY STILL DON’T GET IT”, which exposes the gross negligence with which the U.S. Army has treated their Counterintelligence function for many years, will be published by Cumberland House and is scheduled for an October 2006 release.

As if that wasn’t enough, Dave was also co-host, until January 2006, of a daily, nationally syndicated radio talk show, “AMERICA AT NIGHT”, which was heard on over 80 stations, M-F from 12-4 am EST coast to coast.

Dave is a much sought after speaker and is available to speak before conference groups and seminar audiences on a wide ranges of topics, including: Iraq; the War on Terrorism; Intelligence Collection in an Asymmetric War; the Current Status of Military Intelligence; Islam and America; Negotiating within the Arab Culture; the Near Future of the Persian Gulf Region; American Hegemony in the Early to Mid 21st Century, and other related topics.