GHOSTS OF PANAMA
Author : Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Jr.
Panama, 1989. The once warm
relationship between United States and Gen. Manuel Noriega has eroded
dangerously. Newly elected President George Bush has declared the strongman a
drug trafficker and a rigger of elections. Intimidation on the streets is a
daily reality for U.S. personnel and their families. The nation is a powder keg.
Naval Investigative Service
(NIS) Special Agent Rick Yell has worked the job in Panama since 1986, and
lives there with his wife Annya and infant child. Like most NIS agents, he’s a
civilian with no military rank with a specialty in working criminal cases. The
dynamic changes suddenly when Yell inadvertently develops an intelligence
source with unparalleled access to the Noriega regime.
Now the agent is thrust into a
world of spy-versus-spy, of secret meetings and hidden documents.
Yell’s source – known as “The
Old Man” – warns when Cuban military personnel arrive and identifies
anti-American officers within the Panamanian Defense Forces, provides
information about an imprisoned CIA asset and helps track Noriega’s movements,
agitating for the dictator’s kidnapping.
The reports created by Yell and
his NIS colleagues shape the decisions made in Washington D.C., CIA
headquarters in Langley and the innermost sanctums of Pentagon.
The powder keg is lit on
December 16, 1989, when a young U.S. Marine is gunned down at a checkpoint in
Panama City. Yell and his cadre of trusted agents deploy immediately to
investigate the killing, and what they determine will decide the fate of two
nations. When President Bush hears the details they uncover, he orders an
invasion that puts Yell’s family, informants, and fellow agents directly in
harm’s way.
Using a blend of research and
interviews with the NIS agents who were directly involved, Ghosts of Panama reveals the untold, clandestine story of
counterintelligence professionals placed in a pressure cooker assignment of
historic proportions.
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