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After the fight, Bannon searched the farmer's house for his girlfriend. Eventually he found Shin. She had been dismembered and stuffed in a freezer.
It was also during this time that Bannon investigated a North Korean terrorist who also happened to be a double agent and longtime friend. He intercepted her as she was about to plant a bomb outside a South Korean national security agency. Before she could execute her plan, Bannon used lethal force to stop her. As he stood over her body, he was struck from behind and knocked unconscious. He awoke in the back of a truck as it approached Korea's Taejon Prison. Bannon says that as the truck pulled up to the prison's front gates, he noticed "wild dogs and pigs gnawing on corpses that were buried under piles of rock and stone." Bannon was stripped naked and detained with thousands of other prisoners. During this time he was tortured and interrogated, and witnessed horrors such as people being tossed alive into furnaces, or attacked by dogs. Bannon says his Archangel training prevented him from losing his mind during the ordeal. After three days, Bannon was returned to Interpol officials in what he calls a "classic spy swap."
Archangel was disbanded in 1989.
"Officials felt Archangel was guilty of vigilantism," Bannon says. "However, the head of Archangel still had a number of operatives that he wanted to slowly work into legitimate work, including me."
Bannon continued to work as an operative for Interpol for the next 10 years, investigating several high profile cases, including the famous raids on the Wonderland Club in "98. In a sophisticated operation, police arrested over 100 people from 12 different countries who belonged to a club in which the guidelines stated that members had to have at least 10,000 sexual pictures of children under the age of 13.
Finally, in "99, Bannon had had enough.
"I wasn't as young as I used to be, I had a daughter, it just wasn't working for me," Bannon says. "I did what a lot of people do when they want to get fired I got really lame at my job. I showed up late, I wouldn't return calls, and it worked."
Returning to mainstream society, however, wasn't easy. "It was like I had post-traumatic stress disorder," Bannon says. "I was almost incapable of functioning in normal society. I couldn't talk about what I did, and everyone I met I was trying to assess if they were child molesters. . . From the day I was recruited into Archangel, I lived in fear. In my book, I purposely wrote about events that happened 20 years ago. So many of those people are dead or in jail or just don't care anymore. I skipped over pretty quickly the events of recent years. I'm not ready to share those just yet."
Where's the Beef?
An amazing story, right? An amazing, incredible, edge-of-your-seat, holy shit kind of story. But is it true? Or is it all just the fantasies of a middle-aged, mild-mannered computer geek? And if it's true, why isn't it making headlines around the world?
A quote from a recent Publishers Weekly review might be one reason: ". . .if there is any truth to be found in this story, his former collaborators on both sides of the law must be allowing its publication only because they realize how completely implausible it all sounds."
Indeed, Bannon's biggest drawback is that he has too good a story. Nonetheless, plenty of folks, including members of the local media (not to mention dozens of starry-eyed fans who showed up at Bannon's recent Borders book signing) believe he's the real deal.
Charlotte Observer reporter Olivia Fortson, who wrote a story about Bannon, says she believes him 100 percent.
Ramona Holloway, who, along with on-air partner Matt Harris (the "Matt and Ramona" show on 107.9 The Link) interviewed Bannon, believes him as well. "Matt is a little skeptical," she says. "But I buy his story hook, line and sinker."
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