355: Martin Reardon – Top Ten Predator Manhunt, LEGAT Riyadh and Doha

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On this episode, retired agent Martin Reardon reviews his Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution (UFAP) nationwide manhunt for a child predator wanted for the 1995 kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old girl in Wilkes County, North Carolina.

Released from state prison just weeks earlier, Rickey Allen Bright had served 15 years of a life sentence for a 1979 offense involving a 6-year-old girl. Due to the heinous nature of the offense and his previous conviction, Bright was named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List and featured on America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. He was fugitive #444 and on the top ten list for three weeks. He was ultimately captured during the January 1996 East Coast blizzard just hours after America’s Most Wanted aired the segment about the manhunt for the third time.

After the case review, Marty talks about his assignment as a Legal Attaché in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Doha, Qatar, and his post-FBI career in the Middle East.

Special Agent (Retired)

Martin Reardon

1991 – 2011

Marty Reardon served in the FBI for 21-years. His first assignment was to the Charlotte Division’s Hickory, North Carolina Resident Agency, where he conducted bank robbery, fugitive manhunts, white collar crime, organized crime and drug trafficking investigations with local and state law enforcement agencies. He was also the sniper team leader of the SWAT Team. Marty also supervised a multi-agency organized crime drug task force that led the FBI’s North Carolina office in arrests, indictments, seizures and convictions from several years.

A couple of years after the terrorists attacks of September 11, Marty served as the FBI’s Assistant Legal Attaché in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he worked closely with U.S. and host country security and intelligence services in several high-profile terrorism investigations – most notably the 2004 Al Qaeda attacks in Al Khobar and their assault on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah that same year.

In 2005, he oversaw the arrest and extradition of an Al Qaeda operative who was subsequently convicted in the U.S. for conspiring to assassinate President George W. Bush.

His following assignment was as the FBI’s Legal Attaché in Doha, Qatar, where he oversaw the Bureau’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence efforts in that country, as well as arranging for high-level meetings between the FBI Director and Qatar’s Emir, and the U.S. and Qatari Attorney General.

Following his overseas tours, Marty was given a one-year sabbatical to attend the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where he earned his Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies in 2010, and was then reassigned to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division as a program manager.

In 2011, he was promoted to Unit Chief of the FBI’s 24/7 Terrorist Screening Operations Center 2, where he oversaw the worldwide management of encounters with individuals on the U.S. terrorist watch list.

Marty retired from the FBI on December 31, 2011, and joined The Soufan Group, an intelligence consultancy based in New York, as a Senior Vice President assigned to their regional office in Doha, Qatar until 2022. He continues to serve as a consultant.