FBI Investigator & Negotiator to speak at Ventura College
25 Years of the Truth behind the Headlines
James Botting is Author of Bullets, Bombs, and Fast Talk.
James Botting is Author of Bullets, Bombs, and Fast Talk.

Ventura, CA - Over the course of his career, James Botting would rescue hostages from an armed gunman; save airline passengers from a desperate skyjacker; deliver a kidnapped baby back into its parents’ arms; watch helplessly as a crazed madman commits mass suicide with his followers; help calm a prison riot; and much more. He’d come close to death a few times—sometimes perilously close, escaping in various ways. As he writes in his book, “Sometimes we were good, and sometimes we were lucky.”

After Botting’s retirement from the FBI, he worked in the film industry serving as head of security for a major studio. He then served as Chief of Police for the Ventura County Community College District for six years, from which he recently retired. He will be speaking on his life in the FBI and signing books available for purchase on Thursday, September 24 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the Reading Room of the Evelyn and Howard Boroughs Library on the Ventura College campus. Light refreshments will be served. For information on the event, please call 805-654-6462.

Sounds like the latest fiction hero from Vince Flynn or James Patterson, but Bullets,
Bombs, and Fast Talk isn’t a novel, and James Botting isn’t a fictional character. He was an FBI agent whose career saw him take part—sometimes peripherally, more often personally—in almost every major hostage incident over the course of his twenty-five years as a hostage negotiator and SWAT agent. Wounded Knee. Patty Hearst. TWA 847. Cuban Prison Riots. Rodney King. Ruby Ridge. Waco. He recounts all those and more in gritty, bluntly honest, and often humorous detail as only a participant can. He highlights the successes and pulls no punches analyzing the failures. He vividly relates a number of times when he stared down death, and then came through unscathed.

Botting also discusses the evolution of hostage negotiation over his career, from play-it by- ear and shoot-from-the-hip to a carefully choreographed psychological game of life and death. As one of the first members of the FBI’s international Critical Incident Negotiation Team and a longtime member of the Crisis Negotiation Team in Los Angeles, he was at the forefront of that evolution.

Bullets, Bombs, and Fast Talk is real—intensely real—and Botting lived it. See what he
saw, hear what he heard and said, feel what he felt, and live what he lived with this insider’s personal account of his twenty-five years in the FBI.

James Botting served in the FBI for twenty-five years, sixteen as a crisis/hostage
negotiator and twelve as a SWAT agent. He served as the team leader of the FBI’s Crisis
Negotiation Team in Los Angeles from 1981 to 1995 and as a supervisory member of the
Bureau’s international Critical Incident Negotiation Team from its inception in 1985 until his retirement in 1995. He has personally negotiated numerous hostage/barricade incidents and responded to several high-profile cases. He lives in California.

Title: Bullets, Bombs and Fast Talk: Twenty-Five Years of FBI War Stories
Author: James Botting
ISBN: 978-1-59797-244-4
Price: $26.95
Details: 6 x 9, 272 pages, 16 B&W photos
Pub Date: Available Now