Mike Fredericks

Mike Fredericks, author of the award-winning Busting Drug Dealers: Diaries of a DEA Special Agent, began his US federal law enforcement career in January, 1971 as a US Customs Security Officer (CSO), known as "skymarshal." Promoted to Special Agent (criminal investigator) with the US Customs Office of Investigations eight months later, he served on temporary duty with the US Secret Service and on multiple federal drug task forces.

In 1973, he transferred from US Customs to the newly-created Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). After twelve years in three different domestic assignments, he transferred overseas and served the next fifteen consecutive years outside the Continental United States (OCONUS) at posts of duty in Colombia, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, and South Asia. Returning to Washington, DC and DEA headquarters in 1998, he was assigned as a Staff Coordinator for DEA International Operations, overseeing DEA activities in Eastern Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East. He was subsequently promoted in 1999 to Section Chief (Chemical Investigations) in the Office of Diversion Control. He retired from DEA in 2000 after nearly thirty years in US federal law enforcement.

Post-retirement, Fredericks continued to work on contract for three years, supporting DEA's sensitive investigative unit, training and supporting foreign national police narcotics teams working in concert with US embassies overseas.

After the 9/11/01 World Trade Center attack, in 2004, he was hired as an aviation security specialist by the Air Line Pilots Assn, Int'l (ALPA), and for the next ten years conducted counter-terrorism training and aviation security courses for US and Canadian commercial airline pilots while acting as ALPA's intermediary point of contact with US law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

He is currently retired and resides with his wife in northern Virginia.