Ralph Hope was an FBI agent for more than twenty-five years. Much of that time was spent in America, investigating drug trafficking, violent crime and terrorism. After 2001, he served for nearly a decade as an FBI representative in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa. He was deputy head of the FBI office in the Baltic States, and head of FBI operations in eleven West African countries. He was later selected as liaison representative for the US Department of Justice to United Nations Peacekeeping forces battling Islamic extremists in Mali.