Novelist Brad Meltzer wrote in The New York Daily News Tuesday that he participated in Department of Homeland Security ‘Red Cell’ operations tasked with identifying national security loopholes.
Time frames or missions were not discussed in the article, but in an interview with NPR, Meltzer says that it was “a few years ago.”
Meltzer writes that, in theory, “we’d destroy major cities like my hometown, New York. In minutes. And when I went home at night, I felt horrified, because I saw how easy it was to kill us.”
Meltzer says that he was recruited to the secretive program in an effort by Homeland Security to benefit from “outside of the box” thinking. Other participants, he writes, included psychologists and philosophers.
“As a novelist who writes thrillers with scenes that take place in the underground tunnel below the White House, I was somehow identified as one of those [outside of the box] thinkers,” says Meltzer.
The curious, non-descript claim of participation by Meltzer comes as he is promoting a new book, “The Inner Circle,” a thriller involving a plot about a secret uncovered in the National Archives.