Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Cia Files Expose How America Backed A Dictator

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Cillian Dunne uncovers CIA documents and firsthand testimonies in Panama, revealing the complex role the U.S. played in supporting dictator Manuel Noriega.⁣ ⁣ Cillian's links⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dunne.cillian/?hl=en⁣ Book website: https://www.therighthandmanbook.com/⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Go to https://OmahaSteaks.com to get 50% off sitewide during their Red-Hot Sale Event. And use Promo Code INSIDE at checkout for an extra $35 off. Minimum purchase may apply. See site for details. A big thanks to our advertiser, Omaha Steaks!⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Looking to grow your investing skills and make smarter decisions with your money in 2026, join Her Money's Investing Fix, the twice-monthly Women's Only Investment Club, where expert stock pickers pitch ideas and you help build the portfolio. Since launching four years ago, our member-driven picks have outperformed the S&P thanks to smart, collaborative choices. We've got a strong track record and a community that's learning and winning. together. So go to investingfix.com. That's Fix with two X's, and join us. Manuel Noriega was the dictator of Panama between 1983 and 1989. His right-hand man was Carlos Wick Green. I got a call from Jose Goldner in Panama and said, hey, do you want to come down to Panama to live with Carlos Wick Green and to interview him about his time in the regime with Noriega? When I came down to Panama, I also uncovered several hundred CIA, DEA, and DOJ documents that back up Carlos'

story and tell the true narrative of what really happened with the rise, rule, and fall of Noriega and his relationship with the CIA and the United States. How exactly does that unfold? I get a call from my buddy Jack Moran, who lives down in Panama. His business partner is this guy, Jose Gouldner. Jose is in his 50s, and he sort of grew up in, like, in like a diplomat family. So would you be interested in speaking to Jose about this book sort of surrounding Noriega and Iran Contra? And I said, yeah, dude, I was living.

Was there a book that he'd already written or one that he was working on? He had access to the people that. Okay. So he had access to all of these people that have never spoken before, right? Because people are very tight-lipped. And so I get on the phone with this guy. I'm in the pool house in Los Angeles. This is the story.

This is the guy. His name is Carlos Wickery, and he was Noriega's right-hand man. Would you be interested in coming down to Panama to meet him? and then if he likes you to write his book. So I said, yeah, and then I got on a plane to Panama like a few days later. Never been before, barely speak Spanish. Show up at Jose's apartment. He basically says, okay, you know, starting tomorrow, we're going to meet Carlos.

If he likes you, you'll be here for quite a while writing his book. You're cool with that. And I was like, sure, whatever. I meet Carlos the next day at like an Italian restaurant, and him and Jose are speaking in Spanish for like 20 minutes. Carlos is cracking jokes. He sort of breaks into English a little bit. He's like speaking Spanish. then Jose says, hey, Carlos, you know, Killian is interested in writing a story.

He's a young Irish writer. He's written four books. You know, I think he could do a great job. So Carlos turns to me and he sort of like scans me up and down. He, you know, he can switch between being like super friendly and like the nicest guy you'll ever meet to, like having these really sharp eyes that really are penetrating you. Like they're assessing every single little part of your body because this guy was a triple spy, right? He just like, he was trained to do this. So looks me up and down and he's...

I'm going to say straight sociopath. Oh, dude. That's sociopath behavior. Like, I could be the nicest fucking guy. And then in a second, just whatever you need, whatever you need to be at that moment, right? Well, you've got to be to commit the sort of atrocities that this guy committed on behalf of Noriega. And still sleep at night. I still sleep at night.

You know, I told Danny that it was like compartmentalization. Like, he was able to compartmentalize a lot of this stuff. But anyway, scans me up and down. It says to me in English, he goes, you will do a good job. And then I was like, yes, I will do a good job. Or else. My life depends on it. Or else feeling.

So he basically, you know, he goes home. I go back to Jose's apartment. We make plans to, Jose has a bunch of different properties in Panama, in rural Panama. So myself, a translator named Diego, Carlos, and Carlos's Colombian girlfriend, I'll hop in a pickup truck. We drive like seven hours into the middle of nowhere in Panama on this, at this beach house with like no little Wi-Fi and no service and all this sort of stuff. I was terrified. I was going to say. People know where you're at, though, right?

You have let people know. Like, mom knows who I'm meeting, yeah. They kind of know. At least a digital trail. Totally. There is some sort of a digital trail. I mean, but like no service, like, you know, even if I shared my location with family and friends, like they wouldn't be able to tell where I was.

Right. I just told them the name of some little town in Panama. Like, you can barely even look it up. So, but anyway, I wasn't like terribly worried. I was actually really excited. So I started just in my free time, just doing loads of different. different, you know, exercises, sort of like reading books and then having myself, like, sort of recount these stories about Noriega and, you know, I wanted to be prepared for these interviews.

I really was like a blank slate. Like, I didn't know that much about Noriega or Carlos or anything like that, but these interviews start in this rural beach house. I've got this little voice recorder I bought on Amazon for like 40 books. And, you know, he starts sort of divulging everything to me. The translator is sort of there if I need him. So I don't speak Spanish that well. I can pick up a little bit on conversation, but he's telling me his life story, basically, and then I would stop him and ask Diego sort of what he was saying. Yeah. And then Diego would relay it to me, and then I would be able to prepare questions based on that. So we started out like a funnel like this. Yeah. It was very wide, like his childhood, like all that sort of really boring shit.

You know, nobody really cares about, but like he cares about. Right. Trust me. I know. He cares about it the most, right? And he want, he, because he saw this book as his legacy. he really wanted to tell his story. He was in his early 80s, very much so on his deathbed, and even though he was still quite strong and very fiery and full of life. But we start with the funnel,

and then as time progresses, we start to get into the more controversial information. He starts to get testier and testier. He doesn't love when you bring up narco trafficking or weapons trafficking, anything like that. And especially if you bring up anything bad that Noriega did, which there's a lot of stuff there, you know, his entire mood would shift,

right? And he would like completely deflect all of that stuff. Is he trying to, like, like it didn't happen or it's a lie or he doesn't want to focus on it? A lie, right? So I knew he was lying to me a lot. Yeah. And I can pick that up. Even though I was a blank slate, I really did a lot of research and reading during this time, right? Still early days, this was going to be a really long-term thing. I'm there for a few weeks in this rural beach. and then we get news that the country

has broken out into civil unrest. So the Panamanian government it was sort of released that they had accepted this like major bribe

from this huge mining excavation company that essentially would allow this company to like excavate all of this land and Panama and like would destroy

like natural wildlife and that sort of stuff basically just like gringo's coming into Panama fucking up the country right you know and people were really really pissed. So the country completely stops. People take to the highways and all supply chain and

travel ceases. So gas stations had no gas. Grocery stores had no groceries. It was a mess. The U.S. embassy is telling U.S. citizens to get the hell out of there. And I'm a U.S. citizen. I'm a dual citizen. I was born in the U.S., so I listened to them, right? And Carlos and I and Diego and his and Carlos's Colombian girlfriend were all seven hours from Panama City from the airport. And So we have to flee in the middle of the night, and we have to leave the beach house at like 11 p.m. Travel down this really long dirt road. As soon as we get onto the main road, it's clogged up by like all of these protesters in the middle of the night. So we sort of just have to wait there.

Carlos is telling me that, you know, this is normal for Panama. He's like protests like these happen all the time. Civil unrest is extremely common. And it usually trickles down from like the United States, right? Or like in this case, it was Canada. But usually it's like a, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a, world superpower that's taking advantage of like this what's essentially a third world country. So we break through these like hordes of protesters and we make it back to the city miraculously.

And then I go to my go to a hotel, camp out my hotel for like three days because I couldn't get a flight for like three days. I'm there watching the streets below from like the 17th floor and there were like people in balaclavas, like shooting fireworks into the sky. There were people shooting guns. There are these massive like school buses covered in LED lights like. blasting panamanian music and it just like didn't stop i think for like seven weeks right i managed to get out of there i was able to go to the airport at like 3 a m and like camp out at the airport

till i forget when my flight was like one or two p m it was miserable but then i go back to the states i go back to the to the pool house in los angeles and i just start writing the book and i don't go back to panama for a few months um but i'm there writing the book i'm drafting it up i sort of have my own space. I'm getting like, you know, the way when you set writing a book, you have like your first draft and it's like a skeleton draft and yeah, you know, it just doesn't feel right and you know that, you know, things are missing like here and there. The good feeling that I got when I finished my first draft was like this reads like exactly the way he would want me to write it. You know, it's like Noriega was my best friend like he was this guy who like was totally taken advantage of and

there's a lot of merit to that. But like, we did. talk about, like he didn't talk about like anything like illicit or anything like really terrible. Right. So I start going out on my own to interview all these people. I interview this journalist, this guy, Richard Costa. He's based at a Panama, but he's an American guy. He used to be a journalist for Newsweek based out of Washington, D.C. He's like arguably the most knowledgeable journalist, American journalists in Central America.

He just knows everything. And he was there for the Noriega regime and actively reported on it. So he and I meet. He tells me his side of things, and I tell him about the book. And he basically tells me, he's like, listen, this entire subject that you're covering, Panama, Noriega, Iran, Contra, it's something that a lot of people know a little about, but nobody knows everything. He said that what sort of exists here are people with different realities.

So Carlos's reality during this time is much different to, like, an American soldier who was sent to Panama during the invasion, right? They knew that they were there to oust a dictator, whereas Carlos's story, his reason for existing was to aid Noriega in, you know, rising through the ranks and becoming like the leader that Panama needed, somebody who put Panamanian interests first, right? Which is the tale as old as time.

Like you hear about dictators and their regimes rising up through the dust. It's like they start talking about like self-sufficiency. They talk about like nationalism, like, you know, know, independence in sort of every regard, like putting your country first. And that's exactly what Noriega wanted to do, but that went against U.S. interests. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I don't see a problem with that at all. No.

Except for all the bad shit that he did, right? Yeah, yeah, except for you, sometimes you have to behead some people. He did. Some people need killing. They just, they're in the way and they, you know, there's no way to deal with it. You don't want them, you don't want them hanging out talking bad about you. Totally. You know, and what was it?

Oh, my gosh. I was going to say, I hate to say Hitler, but it's, let's say, let's say, uh, Machiavelli, was it, you know, the big lie concept, you know, you tell a big lie, loud enough and long enough, and when you seize power, nobody will ever ask you if the lie was true or not. So it doesn't matter, you know, say it doesn't matter. Like once you get there, if you, you can wipe everybody out and nobody's going to question you. Yeah. But that's how most, you know, guys end up seizing power, right?

Like a strong man. And he was definitely a strong man. Total military strong, man. You know, and I'll sort of jump into that history a bit. Like, he was hand-selected by the CIA in the 1950s from his military school. It was called the Tereos Military School in Peru. And he was like, hand-selected. It was there.

He met this guy, Richard Helms, who ultimately became the director of the CIA in the early 1970s. He was the director of the CIA, like, during Watergate. But him and Noriega were, like, boys. Like, they were very good friends. And Noriega made it a point to become good friends with all of the director. of the CIA, he did them like favors and, you know, if they needed, I like to say, like if, endeared himself to them. Yeah, if the US, he wants to be needed. Exactly. If the US needed their trash taken out in Latin America, they called Noriega. Right. If they had problems with Fidel Castro,

they called Noriega to figure it out. You know, he did them a lot of favors. But the, the, um, the first sign of, of sort of, uh, things going to shit were in the, we're in in 1976, 1977, when, uh, H. W. Bush was director of the CIA and those two, like, really butted heads. Like, H.W. hated Noriega. And Noriega hated him. And that was when things

like really started to go to shit. So I'm learning all this, right? After I interviewed Carlos for the first time in the beach house. And I know I'm going back to Panama again. And this time I'm going to be living with Carlos in his apartment in the city. Is there a reason that, that, uh, Bush and is there a specific reason why or just people said they didn't like each other?

I can tell you what. So Noriega had like a massive ego, right? a huge, of course, you know? Mass of ego and... Humble people don't get there. No, hell no. Yeah, too, no. And he was the chief of intelligence of Panama at the time.

There was another dictator before Noriega called Omar Torrijos. He was like a socialist dictator. So the US didn't really like him. The CIA didn't really want him in power. But so a lot of the communication went directly to Noriega and not to the dictator. And Noriega claims, I read his memoirs and I watched a bunch of interviews. and Noriega claims that Bush was like pro Panama. So Bush essentially, Noriega was saying that Bush wanted Panama to have independence and to own the Panama Canal where at the time the United States owned the Panama Canal, the country's like greatest resource, right?

It just generated so much money that, you know, why would the US want to give that up? Yeah, that doesn't even. But they did. Jimmy Carter gave it up in 1977, right? And now obviously Trump is, it's in the news a lot. He wants to take it back. because China bought up the ports and now Black Rock owned the ports.

It's very complex and like I don't understand the economics behind it fully. But in 1976... I think he probably just doesn't want China have a hold in Central America. Totally. You know what I'm saying? Like it's probably...

And there's a lot of merit to that. You know what I mean? Like Danny and I spoke about that too, about how the... It's sort of like, you know, I used a bad word. I said infection, but it's like it really is like... It's called a Belt and Road initiative.

They're trying to buy everything up. Of course. Yeah, you don't want China, you know, being buddies with Canada and suddenly there's six bases in Canada and people are like, oh, it's none of your business. The fuck it's not. Yeah, it's legit. You know, people can say what they want, but it's a legit worry.

And the Panama Canal is just so important. The same problem that Russia has with the old, you know, Soviet bloc states where it's like, hey, we're going to put American bases or NATO, whatever in here. And of course, Russia's like, no. Yeah. So you can kind of understand. It's kind of like you feel like, fuck you. That's none of your business.

But when it's us, it's our bit. Now it's important. Yeah. Now it means something. Totally. And people can say what they want. It sort of falls under this thing, the national security doctrine, which is just which basically just means like the U.S. should, it wants to put national security first.

Right. That's what's important. Yeah. I don't think any, I think that's okay for anybody. They all should. Every country should do that, right? And that's part of the reason why sort of like Noriega and Omar Torrejos, like they really gained a lot of steam, right?

They got a lot of power. But in 1976, Noriega claims that HW was pro Panama, doesn't really make the, that much sense, right? It's very much a lie, I think. Oh, okay. I'm going to say, they're both pro-paying them all. Why aren't we buddies? Yeah, it doesn't make sense. But then, you know, the, like he claims that the CIA sort of sabotaged the Panama Canal to speed up the negotiations between Omar Trijos and Jimmy Carter, so that the Panama Canal would go back into Panamanian hands, right? One of, one of those accelerations was, Noriega claims that the CIA planted bombs in the Panama Canal. And, like, when the

the bombs went off, the claim was like, oh, if, you know, if Panama owned the canal, we could make sure that this doesn't happen. Like, we could watch it more closely. It's kind of bullshit, right? It doesn't really make sense. But this is what he says. Behind closed doors, I do know that things got really fiery, right? CIA, HW was asking a lot of favors of Noriega, and Noriega is starting to sort of toy with

them a little bit, being like, I'll do this, but you got to give me this. Right. You know, there's a lot of, Norwayga was on CIA payroll for a very long time, but there's a lot of stories of him sort of taking these black bags filled with cash and, you know, having them delivered to his office and people say that he made millions upon millions from the CIA through like backdoor dealings. So there was definitely a lot of shady shit going on there, you know, and I spent a lot of time with guys that thought they could cut corners and get away with it. But when it comes to food, you don't want to cut corners, especially around the

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Omaha Steaks.com and an extra $35 off with promo code inside at checkout. At the time, or like a couple years later, you know the movie American Made? Yeah, yeah, of course. So that's, that's starting to go on toward like the late 70s. like early 1980s, Noriega's, Raymoly check, and Middleman. Listen, I'm so old. I watched on HBO. I watched the, oh, shoot, double cross with, oh, shoot, Hopper with, I forget his name. It was the original.

No, I haven't seen it. Are you serious? No, with Dennis Hopper? Dennis Hopper played Barry Seal. No way. In the original one where he's getting. and they actually have a huge scene where Noriega shows up and you know

that the cameras are there and he's pushing the button and it's making the he was so loud he's like you're trying to get us get me killed it was like so he had to he revved up the engines and he was trying to get Noriega he's like why don't you come with a fly with me and we'll go back like he's trying to bring him

with him to the United States holy shit come on we'll go to Miami's like no no no no to hold the photographs and everything there's all these photos and I can't believe yeah this was back in like the 80s. No way. And I saw it on HBO sitting in my parents living room. Yeah. So I've known about this. You know, I've known the whole time. Right. Oh yeah. And you know, it's funny. Obviously, I'm like, I think it was in high school when I invaded. Yeah. 1989 was the invasion. I know. What about? I graduated in 88. So yeah. Well, okay.

Yeah. Right before. But, um, you know, obviously like, I like, I'm, I wasn't even alive when this stuff happened. That's why I calm myself like a blank slate coming in. These, these people weren't. Yeah. I didn't know any of the shit. But the, uh, the, uh, Like the Barry Seale stuff and all those like CIA drugs, you know, narco trafficking pilots. Do you feel that's accurate? I was told that it's not fully accurate by guys in Panama. But that being said, like everything is sort of just testimonials, right? At this point, everything is testimonials.

Everyone's just telling me their story. I don't have these documents yet. The documents that I unearth, these classified documents are, I guess now previously classified documents. I didn't know they existed. So I write this first skeleton draft. after the book. I know that I have to go back to Panama to live with Carlos for, like, I'm only going for like two weeks. So I fly back, Carlos picks me up at the airport. This time he's a little bit more intense, right? This time he's like, all right, strap in, like, we're in for it for the

next two weeks. So he picks me up, takes me to his apartment, and we immediately just start drinking. Immediately breaks out a bottle of this thing called Seco. I actually don't really know what it's made with, but it's like a clear, it's kind of like vodka. It's like a clear liquor. start drinking at like nine in the morning, drinking all day. He's bringing all these friends and family over to the house. He's getting really emotional telling a story. And then I sort of start to contest him a little bit. I'm like, you know, you told me this the last time, but now you're telling me this.

I was like, what is like the truth here? Like, you know, what are you trying to say? And, you know, he starts to get a little bit more bold as well. You know, he starts cracking jokes about like kidnapping me, uh, keeping me there in Panama, stuff like that. I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out, but I sort of just like, pull up my socks and I'm like, you know, as long as I stay cool and like, you know, keep my head on straight, like everything's going to be fine. So I do just that.

Every day that I'm there, he, things lighten up a little bit. I, you know, I call Jose and I call a few guys and I'm like, hey, you know, Carlos isn't letting me leave the apartment because he didn't let me leave. He didn't let me leave a site, right? I couldn't even go for walks. Like one day I wanted to go for a walk along the, this thing called the Sinta Costera. in Panama City, it's just, it's like this beautiful walkway, like, right on the water. He had his Colombian girlfriend, like, go with me and, like, trail me. Like, I wasn't allowed to go myself.

And so I call Jose and I'm like, you know, what's up with this? Like, am I good? Am I safe? And he's like, yeah, he's like, what he's doing is he wants to see how you live and he wants to watch you 24-7 to see if he can trust you, right? He wants to look at my mannerisms. He wants to, you know, he wants to see how the enemy sleeps, right? And so I do a good.

job. I'm cool. You know, I start to, you know, mesh in. I'm trying to speak more Spanish. I'm like actively only trying to speak Spanish. I'm trying to win him over. Every day, he starts introducing me to new people, all these former regime generals of Noriega coming over to the apartment, we're all having breakfast. Zero trust for me. Some of them won't even look me in the eyes because I'm a gringo. And then this one guy comes over. His name was Jose Hilario Trujillo. He used to be the mayor of Panama City, but he was in the Air Force under Noriega. And in like 1988, I think he was pretty close with Noriega. He wasn't like the top Air Force guy that was this dude Lorenzo Purcell, who I met, I think his son or maybe his nephew, something like that.

But I met the people that were still alive that could tell the story. Trujillo comes over with this big, big black briefcase. He slams it down on the table, doesn't say hi, opens it up and pulls out like hundreds of these CIA, DEA and Department of Justice documents. and he slams him down. He's like, he's like, look, he's like, mirror, mirror. Like, look. So I'm looking through them. I'm like, holy shit.

Like, this is, this tells sort of the entire story from 1971 all the way up until like 1987, right? It fills in all these blanks. And what it filled in was like what exactly where the US government, the DA and CIA asking Noriega to do? Like, what exactly was he doing for the US government? Right. These documents just, it's the paper trail, just proves.

exactly what he was doing. All of the illicit stuff like the narco trafficking and like racketeering and money laundering like benefiting from that stuff behind closed doors, documentation doesn't exist about that, right? Like if it did, it's been shredded for decades. But you're saying this was that documented, this does prove that or it's missing? This, so the money laundering stuff is missing. But what this does prove is that Noriega was like a true ally for the US government for so long. Right. Right. And he really, and he curbed like the narco trade from Escobar and the, Choos, like Columbia for so long that the narrative that the sort of that the American seller,

the narrative that currently exists is that like this guy like used to help us out, he was an asset in Central America and then he went rogue. What they don't really say is that like they prepped them up, used them like milked this guy dry and then like discarded him when he sort of like started to revolt and when he started to act upon like his own interests and his own nation's interests. That being said, it's very complex because, like, the people of Panama also hate Noriega, right? He was brutal to the people at the lowest levels. You know, the, uh, the wealth disparity in the country was like, was awful. I like to call it a third world country with the golden crown, right? Because the golden crown was like, you know, the banking system. Like, you know, are you

familiar with the sort of like the reason why the banking system exists there? I mean, for banking, Am I so? It started, they call it like the Switzerland of the Americas because a lot of people like money laundering. I was going to say, yeah, yeah, money laundering. I know that there was that law firm that was in Panama that got busted and they showed all these Americans and American companies that had laundered money. Well, and everybody, really, Russians, like, you know, tons of people in Europe, tons of

people in, like they were all using it. But I also know that at one point, Noriega went in and nationalized the banks and just took all the money, right? Totally. Okay. Yeah, I think that happened. And he became dictator in 1983, and then he passed a law called Law 83, which did just that. Like, he, they put more regulations on it. I say that because, like, it was still, like, a total money laundering hub.

Like, gave me the ability to seize money. Totally. Yeah. With ease, right, without really a process. He just took control of the country, right? He took control of everything. So I'm learning all this stuff anyway, through these documents, about Noriega's relationship with the U.S. D.A., all that sort of stuff.

and Trujillo, you know, speaks in Spanish, doesn't speak in English, says all this stuff to Carlos. Carlos turns to me, he's like, yeah, you know, you can speak to Trujillo if you want. So then Trujillo leaves, Carlos and I spend like the next week and a half at that point, sort of interviewing all these other people. I've got a lot more detail for the book. During that time, I also make use of sort of like getting these contacts from Jose and these other guys who can also put me in touch with Americans too. because at this point I was really getting mostly Panamanian stories and some journalists and stuff like that. But I get put in touch with US soldiers during the invasion.

I met this one guy who he is sort of like a tinfoil hat kind of guy now, but he was a CIA operative. And he lives in the woods in the rainforest in Panama, and he covers his house in aluminum foil so that the satellites can't see him. Oh, my God. He's one of these guys, but so interesting, dude. I'm asking him all this stuff.

and he's like, well, did you know that like, like, this special task force existed and, and like did this behind the scenes? And I couldn't, like, there's no documentation to prove like anything this guy says. So I can't put that much of it in the book. Yeah. But there are people like that that exist in Panama, like these sort of like guys with extreme PTSD from sort of being involved in this whole thing. It's funny.

I would meet these guys in prison where you could talk to them for six months and they were completely normal and you had great conversations. and then one day a certain topic would come out, come up, and they'd start talking and you'd realize like, you're bat shit crazy. Like I had no idea. You're insane. Like you were totally, you know, I've been panging out with you for six months. You've been great.

And now I realize you're a fucking lunatic. So, yeah. Yeah. It's funny because you would think, oh, no, that guy, someone that insane, you wouldn't be able to have a conversation with, no, you got a complete conversation on. And there's one or two topics that they're just. nuts. Yeah.

Next thing you know that next thing you know, you start picking up on the fact that they're like standing in the shadows and stuff and you're like, what's going on? They're like, well, it's the satellites. Yeah. What's it? Bro, they're tracking me. And you're like, oh, shit.

Like, he's fucking insane. He's totally normal yesterday. So, yeah. So, I mean, I know what you're saying. Like, you can have a conversation and you, so you want to give validity to what they're saying, even when it's, it's the insanity because you're thinking, no, he's normal. So there must be some validity.

to this and then you're so you can't but you can't really trust it no of course not i think like it's you gotta like use your your best judgment right with guys like that if you can tie it into something that to an accurate part of it then maybe it's true yeah yeah because this guy was you know we started talking about like panama and and and noreg and all this stuff and then somehow we ended up in in egypt and how the aliens built the pyramids and how we you know yeah so he was one of those kind of guys, right? He just like broken record. I assume every single time he meets someone new,

he has the exact same conversation. You had me kill Egypt. Yeah, dude, I know, right? He was so compelling right up until he said talking about aliens. But anyway, like the, those two weeks fly by, I have a super strong, super strong sort of understanding of what Carlos is telling me. And then also the narrative that has not been told like through these documents. Well, I don't own the documents yet.

So I go back to the U.S. I write several more. Do you have to own them? So in order to publish them in my book, any permission from the guy who owns them, which is true here. And how does he come across? Noriega gave them to him. Okay. So he owns them. Yeah. And he's, they're like one of them. Because they were sent to DiOenorega, so he has ownership. And then he assigned them or gave them to the other guy. Now he owns them and he can give them to somebody else. Okay. Totally. As opposed to being stolen. Yeah. And they weren't, they weren't stolen because they, you. know, they were addressed to Noriega.

They were sent to Noriega. Perfect. But, yeah. So what Noriega did actually was he kept them in this little, like, black binder in the late 80s. I know this because 60 minutes did an interview with Noriega in, like, 87 or 88. And it must have been 87, because he hadn't been indicted yet. But 87, 88. And Noriega, on camera, they're in his office.

He opens up this black binary. He's like, look at all these letters. Like, look at all the gratitude that America gives me. like, I'm not an enemy of the United States. These documents are saying that I'm a friend. I'm an ally. They need me. And they do. I've got a bunch of them. I've got like hundreds of them that they say the same thing.

Like, without you, we would not be able to curb narco trafficking in Latin America. He really was like the most important guy. I'm sure they were sure that the United States was thrilled that they sent him those. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Oh, my God. It really played into George Bush's hand, right? They're like, fuck.

Yeah. They must have been pissed, especially at this point when Noriega was like actively working against U.S. interests, right? But Noriega, I think it's, to me it was obvious that he wanted to use him as collateral. And then when the invasion happened and he was extracted by the U.S. military and brought to Florida to stand trial, he actually wasn't allowed to use those in his defense. Right. Right. Yeah. So the trial was unjust, right? It was kind of a BS trial. But anyways, that those documents existed. And then he was able to pass us onto Trujillo, who started to, in many has become a historian. Like he feels very strongly about sort of what happened in Panama and he has

always wanted to like tell the true story. Like he's written books in Spanish about like Noriega's relationship with HW and like even the history of Panama going all the way back to their independence in 1903 where the US government like essentially helped them get independence from Colombia with the intention of like digging at the canal so that the US could. Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to complete the canal that was started by the French, right? Totally. French had abandoned it. Yep. Yeah, exactly.

And so anyway. You know what's funny? I don't think, I'm not sure. I don't know if Colby knows. Probably only because of this interview. I'll probably tell you, no. I don't know. You know what the Panama Canal is, right?

I know it's a canal. You probably take ships through it, you know. Okay. You know why it was built, right? Trade, you know. Yeah, but I mean, that way they don't have to go all the way around. Like it's much, much quicker. And it's not completely a canal.

It's part of, part of its canal, part of its a connection of, like, man-made lakes. Yeah, exactly. You can fish there and stuff. So they have like a lake that they made. So sometimes the ship, it opens a canal. But do you know why they have the canal? To save time? And, but it's also a series of, what do they call them?

Levees? I think, yeah, levies, I think, oh, no, maybe not. But I know what you're talking, where they shifts. Yeah, because why not just dig a ditch all the way through? Why do they have these stops? Where they have to raise the water level. Right, because the earth and because of gravity and the earth is not, of course, a complete circle. It's really more like an egg.

And because of gravity, if they cut it, there'd be massive flooding. The water from like the Pacific would flow into the Gulf or maybe it's the other way around. I don't know. But, I mean, it would literally like raise like several feet on one side of the North American continent. Probably maybe all over the world. I don't know. you know and then we'd wobble no I'm just showing you I don't know about the wobble but whatever like so they literally the the boats go in they raise a they have like a blockage and then they pump in

water to raise the boat up then it goes into another levy they raise it up some more they goes into another level they raise it up till they equalize the water line and then they it can go on into the golf or go into I don't know if it's the golf at that point but they can go into the Pacific ocean like it's super it's it's the the making of it is like a man it's like a marvel like it's it's amazing and and it's and it took forever for it took an entire multiple countries to go in and dig and build this fucking thing because it's so i'm going to say it's complicated it's not that complicated but it's a massive undertaking oh yeah and they pay it's big money to go through the levy Because it saves tons of time and resources, fuel, to get all the way around.

So it's like, hey, it's worth it to pay these guys. And they make a ton of money. Like Panama, whoever's in control of it and running it, they make good money running this fucking thing. Yeah. Not like they're breaking even. No. No, it's something like 7 to 10% of the world's trade passes through the Panama Canal. Something like that.

I mean? Crazy money. Yeah. It's a lot of money. And that's part of the reason why Trump, like, was so vocal about it because when the Chinese own the ports on either side, they essentially could control what passes through to a certain degree. So, and in the Panama, in the Canal Treaty of 1977, which passed the canal into Panamanian's hands, one of the sort of stipulations was that if there was ever a threat to, like, the United States and threat to the Panama Canal, the U.S. could come back and take ownership. and put U.S. troops back on a Panama land. Yeah, we'll hand it over, but if it gets bad,

then you have to understand. We have the right to come in under military law to take it. Totally. Yeah. Run it. And yeah, and the argument was that like the Chinese, like, our threat. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

That's sort of what. There is validity to it, you know? Yeah, no, that's super for life. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But it's, but yeah, anyway, so I've got this really strong piece of material. I know these documents exist.

we send out the book through Jose, we send out the book to sort of historians, people who were regular civilians who were alive during the time, and then also some other like military regime generals under Noriega to fact check it. They all read, this is you've already written the book. I've already written the book. Are you trying, when you're saying fact check it, are you trying to get additional interviews or just fact check? Fact check.

Yeah. So at this point, I'm leaving some details out here because I interviewed a crap load of people to build this book. most of it is Carlos. Two-thirds of the book is written from Carlos' perspective. One-third is written from my perspective, like, hunting down these documents, going to Panama, like meeting all these people.

And I talk about everybody that's a story in and of itself is the actual investigative journalism. Whenever I write stuff, I tend to, I like to do that. Yeah. Because sometimes it explains the seriousness of it or how you got this information. And I think it lends to the overall story anyway. Yeah.

Plus I get to talk about myself, which is huge, because I love that. Yeah, and originally I didn't even want to do that. I didn't even want to do that originally. But otherwise, how do you figure out, if you don't do that, then how do you explain to the reader how this came together? Yeah. Like, why do I have this and nobody else does? Yep. So.

Yeah. Because I put Carlos's story in like what he told me word for word. But in my chapters where like I'm the protagonist, I'm like, this is what Carlos told me, but I don't believe it. Yeah. This is what I believe and this is why. and the reason why is because I interviewed these people and this is what they told me. So there's,

I tried to make it like as balanced as possible because Carlos's story like, don't get me wrong, like it is poetic, it's rich, it's an awesome story. Like it's an awesome story. It would make like an unbelievable movie. But, you know, there's bullshit in there.

You know, and I don't want someone to pick up my book and think, oh, this kid was taking advantage of. Yeah, he just co-signed on this guy who's trying to sugarcoat, I don't want to be that kind of investigative. I don't want to be that kind of writer. I want to be an investigative writer. I need to, you know, dig in that dirt and get my hands dirty.

So that's exactly what I did. But I essentially, we get word from all these people. They're like, hey, you know, story's good, but you can't prove any of this stuff. So you have the stuff, though. But the stuff is there. So then we develop a plan for me to come back to Panama and sit down and have these negotiations with Trujillo to hand over the documents and to allow us to publish them. in our book, right? So he's open to the idea. I think he started seeing green. You know, he saw the money.

Truthfully. And so we go, I fly to Panama, there for a couple weeks with the most rag-tag group of people. Like, I was there with a couple Americans, a guy who, like, lived in the rainforest. This guy, Sindo, literally lived in the rainforest and, like, hunted for his food. He kind of worked for Jose, and he was in the city because Jose promised him for all his hard work that he would, that he would, that he was. would send him to a brothel. So we have this American guy come up called Dutch to take Sindo to a brothel. He just so happened to be there for all the negotiations, right? This guy with like no teeth, like lived in the woods.

But he's got his priorities right. So let's not forget that. Why worry about, why worry about, you know, retirement when you can just bang hookers in the city and then go back to the rainforest? You know, this guy really was like of retirement age, but like that's just what he wanted to do. And so anyway, we have this real rag, dig group of people.

We meet with Trujillo and Trujillo's base you, like, I'm open to this, but you've got to deal with my son if you want these documents. And we're like, okay, why? And Jose explains that in Panama, when you reach a certain age, your children do all your business for you, all you're negotiating for you. Okay. So this guy, this guy Trujillo's kids essentially owns like a brothel, right? So you're telling me that at some point when I get old enough that Mary Shelley is going to. going to be doing my taking care of my bank account if that's what you want absolutely not absolutely i'll just deal with it yeah if you lived in panama that that would be your reality we're staying in the

u.s so go ahead sorry but we uh we go to what's essentially a brothel it's a bar but it's the only other patrons in there are hookers just trying to pick up like americans to to take them back to their hotel and make a hundred bucks right um and we are taken into this back room this real ragdad group of people. Trujillo's kid comes in. The wallpaper is like this like Miami 80s, like Miami Vice Scarface type like really tacky wallpaper. The guy sits down and he tries to sort of bully us a little bit. He's like, what are you going to give me for my dad's documents? And he sort of starts acting like that. Jose is an extremely strong negotiator. Strong arms the shit out of him, right? Just strong arms the shit out of him, just like really puts him in his place. And the guy is like, okay, yeah,

okay, for like this percentage of the book, of the book's profits, like, I'll do it. And I was like, okay, I can give up that much for these documents, for all the proof that I need to make this credible. So go back and forth to this guy. People think that books make tons of money. No. They just don't. You know, the disparity between being a bestselling author and being just a regular offer is just massive. And you could be a bestselling offer for two years in a row and the next year, you're sleeping in your car.

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Journalists just don't make any money. Books just don't make any money. Yeah. Yeah. It's fucking sucks. Yeah, dude, it's rough. But it's like, for me, it's like fulfilling. I'm sure when you, you've been writing for so long.

Oh, when you're finished, it's a great feeling. It's amazing. The problem is it's just completely underappreciated, you know, thankless work. Yeah. And it's, it just grinds you down. Yeah. And truthfully, I mean, that's why. You got to start a YouTube channel.

I was literally just fair to say, that's why. why like I gotta try to look cool, right? And tell my story. Like, I gotta, I gotta be like, I went to Panama, like, because it is cool. It's a cool story. It is a cool story. You know, you gotta document the shit out of it and put it on YouTube. Yeah, that's a good point.

And then you get a following, like, what's his name? Coffeezilla. Oh, yeah. You need a coffeezilla kind of name too. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, look what he's doing the same thing you're doing, but he's making probably a million, two million dollars, a couple. I don't know what he's making.

I'm just making, I don't know, who knows. Let's say that. Let's say he probably, I bet he's making a million. And he's got a, and you'll get Patreon because then people are like, fuck, this guy's doing great things. And I know he's starving. Yeah. And he's got a Patreon and it's only $19 a month. And what do I give a shit?

You know, and then they give you a, you get a fuck couple thousand guys like that. And you're making $40,000 a month on Patreon. And you're like, there's tons of ways to capitalize on this. And then you can just, you know, in some ways people think, oh, well, yeah, but I don't want it to be entertainment. No, no, no, you can do more things when you get that money. Right. You'll be in a position to do great things with it. You're definitely limited.

You know you're limited by by just, just riding. Yeah, yeah. Totally with the dogs. Yeah, you can't do that. Yeah, living in a spare room. Yeah, dude. Yeah. So, yeah.

You do better work if you were driving a BMW. I would. Really? I'd be happier. Yeah. People say money doesn't buy happiness, but I think. Losers. I think it does.

Right. Yeah. I've been for it. Yeah. But, uh, but anyway, yeah, we, you know, we do this. sort of handover. It takes a couple months for the guy to really feel comfortable

with handing over the documents, which I'm not sure why. I think he was just lazy. He's got all of his fucking friends telling him, oh, you're getting screwed. You could make a half a million dollars. You could...

Big time. Yeah. Like, there's a real attitude of like, the gringos are fucking, you know, that kind of thing. So basically we go back and forth for two months. He flies to Los Angeles where I was.

I meet him. I'm actually flying back to Dublin, Ireland, like that very day. It was like the last day I could do it. He really like took his time, but official handover, uh, sorry, official contract signing. And then he sent me the digital version so I could like take them with me and print them out and stuff. So I fly back to Ireland. I'm there for a couple weeks, uh, starting up like a new investigative book. Um, but then I have these documents and I start sort of sifting through them, translating them. There's like 500 pages. It takes so long. I then fly, I have a little bit of money to,

fly to Rome from Ireland. And I get this free apartment from like a family friend. And I live in this apartment for one month literally just like locked myself in like deciphering these documents and these letters. And there's also like these human rights reports. And there's a lot of like articles from like the New York Times and like the Washington and from Newsweek and from D.C. and basically just like outlining the story from 1971 all the way like 1987. That's like the area that it covered. So I do that. I spent like a month just like solely doing that in Rome, having a little bit of fun too, but literally, just mostly just like in this apartment. And then, uh, then I write what is now, like the, the manuscript, like the working draft of the book. I, um, send it to the guys,

everybody that can like speak English. Everybody reads it. They already like it. And then, uh, and then like two days later, Carlos dies. He drops dead of a heart attack. two days later. So he never got a chance to read the book. Oh, okay. Never got a chance to read the book. But even then, like, he, yeah. Yeah, he knew exactly sort of what I was doing, but that was back in March.

And then between like now and March, I've just been like slowly refining it by sending it to people for fact checking. They've basically said, like, this is great. But, you know, this little piece here that you said, like, I don't think it's quite accurate. Like, this is what you should do. So taking all that into consideration, then I go, I just spent the last month. in Panama there speaking with like their newspaper la preenza it's like their head newspaper interviewing all these veteran journalists who reported on norega like while all this stuff was happening just making sure everybody was cool sort of with the fact that like me uh like an irish guy is telling their

story and and i will go so far as to say that this book like i think it's going to be the most accurate like a story told of like this sort of thing like ever right especially Because there are books, books have been written about it in Panama, but they're obviously hypercritical of Noriega, and they focus a lot on the people and like the civil, like, unjust, like, yeah, how it's like unjust civilly during the regime and whatnot, whereas I focus more on the relationship with the United States, which I think just explained things far more, because it really was the CIA and the US that, like, built him up, gave him everything that he needed, used them. And then when he started saying no, in 1984, Point Dexter and, and Oliver North came to him, they said, hey, we want you to send Panamanian troops to Nicragua to fight and train the Contras. And Noriega said, no. At that point, they had just been, like, trafficking weapons and stuff for the Contras. And they didn't even like the Contras.

Carlos called them animals. They liked the Sandinistas. Carlos trained Sandinis before they were asked to train the Contras. Noriegas says no, starts acting on his own interests. And then that really pisses George Bush off. even though HW is VP under Reagan, he's still, like, basically controls the CIA. Like, the Bushes are the CIA, you know what I mean? Like Langley, Virginia, like that building isn't called Langley.

It's called, like, the George Bush Institute or something like that. You know what I mean? So he's super pissed off. He's like, after all, we've done for you. Now you're going to tell us no. And from then, the contention just, like, builds and builds and builds. There's this guy, Hugo Spadafora, who's, you know, killed by Noriega's troops in 1985 and beheaded and chopped up and his body's thrown across the border in Costa Rica.

And it's like this massive, massive deal. It's like, like, imagine if like he's sort of like a Che Guevara type. You know what I mean? Like a revolutionary. Like a huge deal. And then 86, 87 rolls around Iran-Contra affair. The US has egg on their face publicly for the first time. It's like the greatest public embarrassment.

So can you explain what the Iran-Contra affair is? Yeah. the specifics of it because most people that are watching this are not going to know. In a nutshell, the Iran Contra Fair is the U.S. Congress put a trade embargo on U.S. sort of selling arms to Iran or doing any sort of trade with Iran because in 1979, the Ayatollahs overthrew the Shah of Iran. The Shah of Iran was a U.S.-backed like puppet dictator, puppet, whatever you want to call them. The Ayatollahs came in.

Iran changed forever. during that time Hezbollah the terrorist organization took American hostages and the US were sort of negotiating with them to try

release them and in like a tactic the Congress like sort of made this embargo right but secretly the US government were selling we're ignoring that

trade embargo and selling weapons to Iran and using the profits of those sales to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. The contras were like, as Carlos described them to me, they were like animals, but they were, in theory, pro-American government, whereas the Sandinesis were communists, we're anti-American government. So what are, you know, we're trying to back them to overthrow the Sandinesis, right? Totally. Trying to back them. Yeah. But we don't have money

from Congress. Like Congress won't give us money, won't give the, is it the CIA or won't give, won't give whatever that element of the United States government. They won't fund it. So the U.S. government, the CIA, figured out another way to fund it. Exactly. Yeah. And it was all just like behind closed doors. Yeah.

Which is illegal. Illegal. Yeah. What it essentially was is just the American government like lying to Congress and then also lying to the people, right? It's just one giant lie. Right. Which, you know, happens all the time, right?

I was going to say, but for the greater good. Yeah. For the greater good, right? but the reason why it was such a big deal is that, you know, in the 80s, obviously, like, the media is popping like it's everything that happens is being televised and these pictures started to come out of, of these, of this plane shot down. Eugene Hassanfuss was this pilot. I think he got shot down in this aircraft. I could be wrong about this. But anyway, it was these photos that were taken in like 1985, 1986 of this plane shot. down with Hassan fuss that proved to the world that they were supplying the contras with like weapons and money right before that like nobody knew it was all behind closed doors and when that happened it just proved to be like a major embarrassment for for the US and the blame was shifted on to point

dexter and uh north north all over north and they were the ones that were running the operation for yeah the CIA uh it was like yeah like the government like Reagan said that like like he knew nothing about it and he testified that and all that sort of jazz. But obviously, like, how. Which is just absolutely. It's not possible. It's just not true. No, it's just not possible.

Yeah. And he didn't really testify, by the way. He didn't really, he didn't really say much of anything, by the way. He probably, he probably was able to say, I can't remember about 150 different ways. Not sure. That doesn't, I don't recall that. At this current time, I can't, I don't believe that I can remember that it's possible that I don't. I mean, it was just amazing how many ways he kept just shifting and denying and, and, yeah, that doesn't seem like something we would have done.

I don't recall that. It's like, yeah, it's not a fucker. Jesus, you're a slippery old guy. Yeah. And there's, like, you can, the footage of those, like, trials or whatever you want to call the hearings. Yeah. They're on YouTube, but there's like a hundred plus hours of them. It's impossible to go through.

Same thing with Oliver North. Same thing. They dragged him in front of Congress. Does this, wait, does he cut. Does he fall on his sword? Does he kind of say he was, he kind of, doesn't he kind of say that Reagan knew nothing about it?

Is that he kind of, that's, yeah, like him and Pointexter like very much fall on their swords. But then Bush becomes president in 88 and in like the early 90s, at North and Point Exeter are, you know, like, like the entire case is thrown out. Does he, does he, um, whatever you call that, um,

like everything's just washed away. Yeah, what is it? He gives him, um, a pardon, right? A pardon. Does he pardon them? Pardon, that's the word. Yeah. So everything just...

People were walking around with t-shirts that said Oliver North for president. No way, really? That was great. Did he ever run for president? No. No, he couldn't, right? Yeah. No, I think he could.

You could be a former general and run, but the controversy, like, I'm sure he probably thought about it. They probably did like a, you know, a soft survey or something and probably figured out, like, eh, there's probably just not enough. And you need backers. And he was not a wealthy man and whoever, who's going to back him and... it's, you know, it's very seldom you want to back someone that just doesn't have a chance. Right.

Like he kind of became, for a lot of people, he was kind of an American hero. Of course, other people felt he was, you know, should go to prison. Of course. Yeah. I mean, that's just like the way of the world, I guess, right? It's just people are going to be split in terms of that in pity. But in, I guess in my opinion, like reading about it, you know, this guy, Richard Seacord, who was involved with North and Pointexter in a lot of these sort of like backdoor negotiations.

He wrote this book called Honored and Betrayed. And I think it applies to Point Dexter and North quite a bit too. It's that they were really propped up and honored, right? They were like you guys were American heroes. Like we owe you for doing this service to America. For clarity sake, look, because it's a still thing is cloudy, is that Oliver North and Pointexter are running an operation to help fund rebels

that are trying to overthrow a communist government in South America. You see what I'm saying? You see a problem with that. While the Soviet, there's no, it's not Russia, it's the Soviet Union. So we're still during the Cold War. And the fear is,

for the United States, the fear is that we don't want the communists to have a foothold anywhere on the North, Central, or South American continent. Like, we do not want a communist government to be there, to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union or China, even though they're not really friendly, even at the time. But we don't want that because if there is a war, then they can very quickly deploy troops on the North America or on the American continent, right,

North, South America, and move up through Central America and come into the United States. Now that's the, that's the theory, right? Right. And that's what Reagan and Bush and always pushed that, hey, this is a real thing.

The Soviets or the communists ultimate goal is to take over the world and spread communism everywhere. And they, if they get a foothold here, they could come into the United States and take over. Now, in reality, the communists can barely feed themselves. There's never a plan to take over the United States. They can't even get their people here.

Like they don't even have vessels created. The only government really in the world at that time, and really today, that has the ability to move their military and invade another country that has the vessels and the machinery to do that really is the United States. Right. Right. Like we have military bases everywhere. Like the Soviets were never in a position to do that.

Yeah. You know, even at the height of their power, they were never in a position to invade the United States. They were probably never in a position to get enough troops into South America to come up. So in a way, and Reagan, by the way, pushed that constantly. The evil empire. It was always, but it was really more about by scaring the American people, you can keep getting the American people to fund the military machine that pays all these bills that keeps all of your buddies in power, which keeps you in power, which keeps Reagan in power. And so at that time, I think that's more what it was because the truth is, if once the, once the wall fell, Soviet Union collapsed and we got a hold of all of their military, you know, secret documents and talk to their, their generals and everything. The truth is, there was, there was just never a time when they were thinking about dating the United States.

Did they want to spread common of them? Sure. But, you know, what can they really do? Like, they can barely get their own troops around their own country. It's so massive. and they're not really invading much of anything. What, Afghanistan, they couldn't take, they couldn't hold it. We couldn't hold it.

You know, they're not, they're not really invading anything. They're just trying to keep, keep going. But, but yeah, Reagan and Bush and all these guys use that as a way to keep a foothold on power. And I love Reagan, by the way. I think Reagan's probably one of the best presidents we've ever had ever. I loved Reagan. I thought he was hilarious. He told great stories.

I thought he was a great president. But it was a whole manipulation. Yeah. Like scare everybody and keep me in power, scare everybody, keep the Republicans in power. Yeah. You know. Well, you just told that better than I ever could.

Well, I'm just saying for clarity. No, I just want to be clear. Of course. Why this is important. Yeah. And that it's really the thing. And to do it, they were breaking laws to do it. They were funding people that Congress, Congress, who it really is in the know,

disagreed with Reagan. Like, you're pumping all this money into the military for the wrong reasons. Like the Soviets aren't about to, you know, growing up as a kid growing up in Florida, I felt, I've constantly felt like any day now there were going to be Soviet troops landing in New York and California and in Florida. Yeah. And they would have a foothold and we may be fully blown, a full blown war. Yeah. They can't even get here. Yeah.

They're not even trying to build. Or they're not even trying to build troop transports to get here. They have no interest in invading the United States. It'd be virtually impossible for even now to this day. China and Russia got together now and wanted to. I doubt they could take and hold Florida. Right. If they could get here at all.

No. Yeah. In many ways, I think because I completely agree with everything that you're saying, I think in many ways it was like an ideological battle. Yeah. You know, it wasn't necessarily like a boots. It was never boots on the ground, so it's a Cold War, but it's all about ideology.

And that's one thing that the Russians, like did know how to do was spread a communist ideology to like all these socialist nations. But communism is a great. It's a great concept. I love the concept of communism. It sounds great. We're all going to work together and we're all going to be, we're all free health care. We're all going to work together and love each other and take care of each other. And it doesn't work. It's never worked. It's never going to work as long as humans are involved. It's going to somebody's going to consolidate power, take advantage of everybody else. and at least capitalism at least has the honesty, it's at least honest, that you know what,

the people that own the businesses are going to take advantage of the workers, and the workers have every opportunity to open their own businesses and compete, and then they can be in control, but that's the bottom line, and that's just the way people are. People are going to always be concerned with their own self. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, From the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup

that provides a clear picture of your health today and may uncover early signs of conditions like heart disease and cancer. The healthier you means more moments to cherish. Take control of your well-being and book an assessment today. Medcan. Live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. interest and it's horrible and it's dark and it's it's nature and you're not going to breathe that out of people and you're not going to educate that out of people because there's always going to be some psychopath that's going to be like yeah they'll believe anything yeah and they're going to

seize power and they're going to take over and and communism just never ends up working yeah you know capitalism does and it's you know it's at least honest about it right I don't mind you kind of fucking me over but don't don't tell me you're doing me a favor while you're doing it yeah Like at least, you know, and at least in capitalism, you have the ability to go out and start your own business. And maybe, maybe you can be on top someday if you work hard enough. Right. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

I completely. Okay. Yeah. You don't have to agree. You can disagree completely. No, I do. I do. I'm a total capitalist.

Okay. I mean, even though I'm a poor writer and I could probably benefit from socialism. Yeah. No, I'm a capitalist, man. I think, I think merit-based society is like the way to go. But that being said as well, like these, so these guys like that, that sort of communist influence and whatnot. Like, you look at Cuba, right, in Fidel Castro.

In Latin America, Fidel Castro, to a lot of these, like, socialist countries, like he's like a god, right? Let's look at today with, like, Maduro and Venezuela. He was the VP of Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013. But Maduro now is a $50 million bounty on his head that the U.S. government has put on his head, right? He's being supplied with, like, weapons and money from China and Russia, and he even had this, like, really, it's kind of funny. he had this press conference where he shows off his Chinese phone.

He says, the Americans can't track me now. He's like, because of this wonderful Chinese phone. Right. Right. And it's just so obvious. But it really just, it goes to show that like the Cold War, I don't think it ever really technically ended. Like the wall falling and Gorbachev being like kicked out or, you know, taken out of his seat

or whatever. That's all. It just went on it around. It just went underground. Like, you know, Putin's a product of the KGB. Like he was a KGB spy. Like this stuff like never really, this stuff like never really ended. And it all just sort of, it's all just.

proxy wars, like we're one, America's funding one side, the Soviets are funding the other side, but now it's, you know, the Chinese that are sort of rising up and, and like, doing things a little bit differently with the Belt and Road initiative, but they're still funding Venezuela at the moment. Like, did you see the amphibious tanks that, that they gifted Venezuela? I'm pretty sure it was China. Like, dude, there are these wild missions, wild tanks that just, like, there's videos of them, like, rolling off the beach, like, into the ocean and, you know, they're, it's meant to, like, show like, oh, we, you know, if these U.S. warships are really going to attack us, like, we can defend ourselves. Like, no, the fuck you can't. No way, dude. Those things are like floating

islands. Those things are like islands, dude. Right. And what are you, what are you going to have? Like, they, they give them probably what, 20, 40, even if they give them 100? I don't even know, but like, not enough, you know, but it just, it just goes to show that, and this is what I try to really highlight in the book. Because even though this book is like, it's about Noriega, Panama, Iran, Contra, like, all of these very complex issues. that nobody knows everything about. The book serves as a framework for how and why the CIA and the US government pick a foreign strongman, how and why they build them up and use him, and then how and why they

discard of them when they have no more use, only to repeat the cycle and do it all again. Like all over the world, so many different, like, uprisings have been funded by the CIA, just like we had spoken about. You know what I mean? Like, funding the contras, like, that was, their intention was to put the contras into power to have a U.S. friendly leader in place that they could, you know, obviously have control, but if they ever, like, wanted to put, like, U.S. military bases there, they could, like, trade is easier.

Like, it just, it makes sense. It's, um, it's sort of just like, it's a, it's a way of the world that, like, I don't think a lot of, I think a lot of people do realize this and know this, but they don't know why they know this, or they don't know why or how it affects the people in that country and, and sort of how really at the end of the day, it sort of is like imperialism. It's like U.S. imperialism. Yeah. You know, which nobody ever puts that.

label on it. At what point, kind of jump in there and explain from here on where at some point, I understand that, and you kind of talked about it, you said, yeah, we used him up and then we discarded him, but you don't explain the invasion. Of course. So you want to explain like, you know, you discarded him and the way that happened was, you know, the invasion, the tracing him down, because I think we talked about that prior to all this. Right. Okay. Does that, that stuff, when you and I had that conversation wasn't going to be on camera. Yeah. Right. So you and I are thinking we already just discussed that. No, we didn't discuss it on film. Okay. Yeah. Well, I can start with how he became the dictator, right? 1981, previous dictator, Omar Tarihos, mysteriously dies

in a plane crash. Okay? Mysteriously dies in a plane crash. He's about to win the election or something like that or he was going to? No. No. He was, he was, he was already. Already dictator. Yeah, he was already the dictator. But the, uh, the situation in Nicaragua was intensifying. The Sandinistas were winning. The United States really needed an ally in Panama to take care of that problem in Nicaragua. Omar Treyhos was saying no, he was a socialist. He was on the side of the Sandinnesis. Mysteriously dies in a plane crash. Sometime after 19... It happens. It happens. Yeah, mysteriously. Some time later, Noriega becomes the dictator, 1983. CIA are asking a lot of favors of of him to support their efforts in Nicaragua. Noriega does like weapons trafficking, things like that. Oliver

North and Point Dexter come to him in 1984. They say, thanks for, you know, helping us out in Nick Raghuath with all the weapons and the money and whatever. Now we want you to send Panamanian troops there and like really dive into that for us. Noriega says no. As the years progress, he continues to say no to the US government and CIA when they ask him for favors. He's really focused on curbing the drug trade coming out of Colombia. The documents that I have proved that that he was just like basically stopping like all of that trade. Right. So a lot of those drugs coming out of Columbia could not go to the US. Obviously, they did filter through, you know,

and the CIA and the whole Barry Seal thing. That's how they got them in through the airplanes and through those trade routes. Right. 1987, 1986, 87 rolls around Iran-Contra affairs, Iran-Contra is exposed. Noriega becomes a scapegoat, right? A lot, they, the media, the narrative,

they find a way to shift the blame to Noriega. The war on drugs starts, Nancy Reagan, you know, makes an announcement. And Noriega continues to contest the U.S. government as years passed by. Reagan actually did say to Noriega right before HW became president,

right at the very end of Reagan's term, second term, he said to Noriega's like, dude, you need to leave Panama. Like, you need to stop doing this. If you want to live, like, you've got to get out of there. He's like, you've got to stop what you're doing and get out of there. And Noriega said FU. You know what I mean? He said FU. His ego got so big.

HW comes into power in 1988. Noriega's, like, there's no democracy. in Panama, all of the elections are BS. Right. Yeah, all of Noriega's guys and the dictatorship are running the country. So, HW decides to launch Operation Just Cause, which is the invasion of Panama, happened on December 20th, 1989. The U.S. sent 27,000 troops to Panama with the intention of extracting Manuel Noriega to

take him back to the U.S. to stand trial. Do you understand how insane that is? you have a dispute with the leader of another country, and you send in the military. You're making veiled threats like, oh, we'll come get you. So they indict him on drug trafficking. Three different charges, racketeering, money laundering, drug trafficking. Right.

So they indict him. And are you saying that he wasn't doing that? No, I think it's pretty obvious that he was. Okay. But they didn't have a lot of proof. Right. Well, they've got an indictment. Yeah.

So they've indicted him. And you think, okay, so we've been. indicted Putin, like that Putin's been, you know, like I think the international court, like they're saying, we'll arrest you if he ever leaves Russia and goes to other country. Like they're going to arrest him and put him on trial in Belgium or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Wherever the, um, the UN is. But so it's, it's almost, it's ridiculous. But the United States indicts this guy and then invades his country to get him. on the indictment, that's pretty fucking amazing. Like, that's in, like, I don't know, I don't know of that ever happening, ever. Like, that's just in the United States history. That seems really, really balzy. Super balzy didn't need, like, it was, up until that point, it was the largest military exercise since Vietnam.

Like, it was huge. It was 27,000 troops. It lasted 10, 11 days, because Noriega hit out in the Vatican embassy in Panama. to try, like, get shelter and whatnot. And U.S. soldiers, like, surrounded the Vatican Embassy, like, trying to psychologically torture him, playing, like, Van Halen's Panama on repeat to, like, try, like, get him out of there. Like, dude, it was nuts.

You know what I mean? Like, but the Panama Defense Forces were so much weaker. Like we said earlier, they're, like, security guards compared to the U.S. government. There is this great documentary. Barbara Trent directed it. It won the best documentary at the Oscars in 1993 or 1992. and it sort of focuses on like the civilian aspect of the of the of the u.s invasion of panama the u.s said that they that like there were like 300 casualties on panama side in reality

it was like thousands right it was like 3,000 and there were stories of like the u.s go of the the u.s. army like testing weapons out on the panamanian people like it was it was one giant like test right um but they get noriega of course they do you know what i mean like they know exactly where he is they get him they bring him to miami they bring him to florida he stands trial. It's like a like a BS, BS trial. He goes to prison here in Florida for I think 11 years or something like that. And then he gets extra diverted to France because he can't go back to Panama. Well, not yet. Or they don't want him back. They don't want him back yet. But they, France want him because he had like this money laundering scheme in France. He owned a bunch of

property and the friend. And he really pissed off the French government. Oh, I thought he went to France because like they were saying you can come here and retire. No, no, no. They hated them. They put him in, I forget the name of the prison in Paris, but they put him in like a shithole prison, like a really terrible prison. And he was there, I forget how long he was there for, but in 2011,

the Panamanian government is basically like, all right, we want him back. So he comes back to Panama and he dies in prison in Panama in 2017. Oh, yeah. So he, I mean,

he spends like the last, what, like 20 years of his life or so in behind bars, like in prison. But yeah, in 1989, he basically is a subject of like the U.S. invasion of Panama and it was titled Operation Just Cause. Yeah. Sounds nice. Yeah. Reasonable. Yeah. It makes it sound reasonable. Yeah. Just like I think it's kind of a funny title because obviously H.W meant for it to mean like it's a just cause. But then the way I see it is like, oh, why are you invading Panama? Just cause. Just cause. Just because we can. Yeah. You know. And that's kind of, you know, but the interesting thing here, the book.

sort of follows this theme that the, behind these closed doors, what it really comes down to is two men, H.W. and Bush, just budding heads. Like, there were personal vendettas. Like, the U.S. invasion of Panama. You just said HW and Bush. Oh, sorry, H.W. and Noriega. My bad.

Yeah, my brain. Yeah, H.W. and Norega. Budding heads, personal vendettas. Noriega pissed Bush off so much that he just, like, the tensions rose, and it just led to the U.S. invasion of Panama. I will send up, fucking, 5% of the fucking military down there to fucking take your ass out, right?

And then they, and if we have to, if we have to roll through a few neighborhoods to do it. That's exactly what they did. Yeah, there's, there was this one really great story that Carlos told me, can't be proven, totally behind closed doors, said that Bush and a few other nameless, faceless people of the CIA were meeting with Noriega and his people and the meeting, whatever, whatever it was about, got really testy. And apparently Bush stands up. like I'm not taking this shit, you know, points in Noriega, he says, you're going to regret this.

And it's like, yeah, and the way Carlos tells it is like, yeah, it was like a, it was like a threat. It was like a personal vendetta. It was like a personal threat. It had nothing to do with like the nations or, you know, national security or whatever. It was, you know, one guy being pissed off by the ego of another guy. And don't get me wrong, Noriega pissed a lot of people off. Like, he was not a good person. Right. But behind those closed doors, that's what a lot of people say really led to, uh, that's what led to the invasion of Panama, not necessarily the scapegoating of like the iron contra affair or whatever. But that's why it's so complex, this whole thing. It's like I, I feel every time I, I talk about it or every time I speak to

someone who's really knowledgeable about it, it's like opening up a chest and all these bats are flying out and, you know, you're just discovering things that you never, never thought about or never seen before. And yeah, it's complex. It's, it's complex for a reason. Yeah, when I was watching the documentary, you know, and they were just talking about the different civilian casualties and, and I guess the military was trying to say that the Panamanian military was, it was kind of like an urban combat, right? Like they were using, they knew the neighborhoods and the U.S. military didn't, so the military is just, you know, they're going through these neighborhoods trying to find the Panamanian military. And so they're, obviously there's a lot of shooting and that, you know,

civilians get killed and it made me think of there is a movie called siege which has Denzell Washington in it and Bruce Willis Bruce Willis is like a general let's say I think he's a general in the movie and so there's it's this funny this is all pre 9-11 this movie and it's about a terrorist group inside of New York, and they're setting off bombs. And so they send in, but the president sends in the military to take control of New York City and find the terrorist cells and get rid of them. And Bruce Willis has a great, he has a great speech in front of the, you know, the president and the joint chiefs of staff.

And he, he's saying the whole time, he's saying, Bad idea. And this is, you know, this is my troops. And he's like, we're not. He says it much better than me. But he says, you know, this is a military. We're not a scalpel, you know. We're a blunt instrument.

Like, we're a hammer. And we don't deal well with the, you know, we're not the police. We don't deal well with civilians. Like if you're in the military, like civilians, you know, they complain back. like it's a blunt boom. You know, we're not having a discussion about this. I said, get back. I don't have to get back.

It's just a smash of the fucking face. And he's like, this is a bad idea. He's the way, if you tell me to do it, I will do it. But you have to understand how bad this is going to be for the civilian population. And sure enough, it's bad. I mean, this is, this is a U.S. troops taking over a U.S. city trying to find terrorist organizations. And I mean, it's a great movie. It's a great, great movie, but it makes me think of every time you have the military go into any civilian population.

Like the military, as great as they are at some things, are horrific. They're not police officers. They're not warm and fuzzy, and they're not going to try and reason with you, and it's just blunt force. And then it's very quickly, you know, when your only tool is a hammer, Pretty soon everything looks like a nail. And that's, you know what I'm saying? That's how they handle everything. You know, no, we get back, get back.

No, okay, bam, bam, bam, they just start firing. Yeah. And that's the kind of stuff that happens in the movie. It's brutal. Yeah. They don't know how to do. They don't know how to do those things. Same thing with you're looking for these guys and, you know, it becomes urban combat.

And everybody becomes like, oh, no, he's a civilian. He's, no, you know what? He's a 15-year-old. He's 15 years old. He kind of looks like a man. It's dark. He's in the whole. He should be in his, he's in the alleyway.

If he wasn't a, if he wasn't a risk or wasn't a danger, he would be in his house. Kill him. Kill everybody that's outside at 11.30 at night is an enemy combatant. And very quickly, people start to get killed. You know, it's a bad situation to send the military into any type of civil, any type of residential area to deal with civilians. It's just bad. It's always, it never, nobody, you never hear any good stories. How could it end up?

Right. The military came in. They were great. They were great. Yeah. You know? Of course. Billy Bob from the cornfields of Nebraska is not going to deal well with a bunch of

Panamanians throwing rocks at him. No way. He's not going to have. He's not going to be okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And he doesn't have a can of mace.

You know, he's got a, he's got an M-16 or an, what is it? What is it? What is it, AR-15? Yeah. It's all bad. Yeah. It's all bad. Yeah. So they eventually, yeah, they grabbed Noriega and they, they kill thousands of civilians going in.

And yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. But I mean, like you said, that's the same thing over and over and over again. It's constantly they prop up a dictator. And as long as they do what the United States says, they're happy. And in the moment they say that they start giving any kind of pushback, it's like, okay, well, this is going to go bad for you. Forgive me, you probably, I know you went over it. Like, what are these documents? What, they're their communication? with the U.S. government in Noriega? Yeah, these are docs that came from, looks like, sounds like the U.S. government, the CIA, communicating with Noriega that only Noriega was in possession of. That the United States government kind of says, like,

that's why I was joking around about Bush, like if he said, hey, man, we really appreciate everything you're doing and helping us here and helping us. Like, I'm sure Bush is like, fuck, wish I hadn't sent that. Like, that was a mistake. Like, a lot of these documents, I'm sure they don't wish had survived. Yeah. They're correspondence.

So they're letters, right? They're letters typically between the administrators of the DEA and Noriega, some of which are letters from just various CIA agents to Noriega. But they're all just correspondents that are talking about like something. So for instance, a lot of the DEA ones will be like, we want to thank you, Mr. Noriega, or Colonel Noriega, for stopping X amount of narcotics from passing through the Panama Canal on X date. And then they will literally say, like, without you, like, our efforts would, like, would not be this great.

And, like, the narco trade from Colombia to the United States would be, like, a huge risk to the security of our nation. Like, they'll say things exactly like that. So, their direct correspondence, their letters directly to Noriega from an official member of the U.S. government. And they're all, like, they're all positive. They have, it's basically either gratitude or asking for a favor. And it just shows, like, how important Noriega was, because there are hundreds of these letters. So they're working together, they're friendly, and then they go and indict them. Yeah, but once he pushes back.

But the problem is behind the scenes, Noriega is also kind of selling, I'm assuming it's kind of like selling airspace, right? Like, is he really picking up drugs and transporting it and military transport? Or is he really allowing planes to kind of land, you know? This is something that Castro supposedly had been, had done for like a decade. and I think he just at some point got word where they kind of lease their airspace. They'll allow, let's say, a Colombian plane that they know is filled with drugs.

Drugs. They'll allow thousands of keys in a plane to be landed in their airport, refueled, and then take off again to drop, or unloaded, loaded onto boats, and then shipped over to the keys where they could just drive it up through Florida, something along those lines, let's say.

And so they're leasing that space. So you're, you know, people are like, okay, well, what they're doing is you're now conspiring, you're now in the conspiracy to import drugs into the United States. And they can make a ton of money doing that, you know, which is what Noriega was doing. He's stopping these drug shipments. And then he's allowing some flights to go in as long as he's getting paid for it. But he's also every once in a while seizing. or stopping or seizing or working with the DEA to seize shipments of drugs

and then so that he can then get a letter from the United States government. He's also on their payroll. He's getting like 100,000 or something. And this is 30 years ago. Yeah. No, 40 years ago. 40 years ago, 100,000. That's like getting a million dollars a year cash from the United States government.

Plus, what's he getting from these drugs coming in? Every time they land, they're paying whatever, $1,000 a kilo or something. you've got, you know, however many kilos on this plane or that plane. You know, it's, I forget what they call it, Pisa or, there's a name for the tax. The narcos have a name for the tax. Pete knows it. The name for the tax that they charged to move drugs. Because what a kilo costs in Colombia versus what it costs the moment it crosses the border in the United States

or in New York City is vastly, it starts off at 1,500 bucks, and by the time it hits New York, it's $30,000. Right. Because it's been charged over and over and over again, this tax by every single leg. You know, you go through the tunnel, that's fine. We want $1,000 for every single kilo you're going to bring through the tunnel. Right.

Yeah. Whatever. That's exactly right. That's exactly what Noriega was doing. And it's funny you brought up Castro because totally doing that. And Carlos knew all about that. But didn't he stop at some point? say and Carlos sort of you think it's still going on no I don't think it's still going on I could be

wrong about that like what do I know but um but what Carlos told me was that like that absolutely went on and that they would like that's also how they would like trap a lot of guys too so Castro you know would provide information to the CIA and DEA there's a reason why Castro stayed in power for all those years you know I mean like if the US really wanted to they could have just done what they did to Noriega to Castro and I know that's what they kind of did with the Bay of Pigs and all of that, and that was unsuccessful, but at least 90 miles from Florida.

That was another, you know what I mean? It's like, fiasco. Yeah, so Castro, Carlos described it as Castro fed the white bear just enough to keep it, you know. Kobe doesn't know what the Bay of Pigs is. Yeah.

Yeah, no. They killed all them pigs and nothing to do with them. I'm currently trying to learn about it. I didn't know. Oh my gosh, bro. I didn't know that much about it. I still don't. It's horrific.

It's funny. It depends on whose side you are, whose version you read or, you know, believe, I guess, is that, and honestly, I really think that basically Kennedy just fucked those guys over. Yeah. Like he, he, the invasion was that the CIA trained a bunch of guys, gosh, I'm going to say somewhere, let's say Panama. I don't know, somewhere in South America, they trained a bunch of these guys who had been displaced by Castro when he took over. So trained a bunch of former military officer or former military, Cuban military to invade Cuba. So they were going to invade Cuba.

They did invade Cuba, not they were going to. They did. They invaded Cuba. And the agreement with the United States was, one, if you can get a foothold and hold a beachhead, we'll allow you. You can call in, call the United States, and we will support you. We'll send you air support, fuel, and ammunition. All you got to do is hold a beachhead for like a day. They held a beachhead for like five days.

They invaded. They held the beach head. And after five days, they just, and you could hear them pleading with the CIA to, we're good. Send us truth. Send us this. And keep in mind, if they can take any part of Cuba at that point, then the United States government can come in and help support them and whatever.

And of course, the Cubans may or may not have uproes against Fidel Castro. But, you know, they basically let them run out of fuel and ammunition. And then they just got grabbed by the Cuban military came in and just overwhelmed them and took them. And so really it was it was Kennedy that just completely, of course, Kennedy's administration is like, oh, it was just a, it was a horrible operation. It was just a, no, no, no, you let those guys get fucking slaughtered. Yeah. That's what happened because he wasn't, he didn't like. And he also, by the way, limited because they had one plan where they had air support.

So they had their own planes. So the Cubans that were invading had their own planes. And Kennedy said, no, no, no, you can't have any air support at all. They're like, we've got our own planes. We're not asking for the U.S. military to come in. We have our own planes. His fear was it looked too much like a Normandy operation, like a military-backed operation. if you're having, if you have your own air support and everything.

And he still agreed, though, if you can take the beachhead. It's like, okay, you keep limiting everything that we're doing. They still took the beach. They held it for several days. And then he just let them run out of, and they got grabbed and they're executed. And I think it's 3,500 men or something. I forget how many they got and they killed them all. And it was fucking brutal.

It's a huge betrayal. Yeah, it was a huge betrayal. And Kennedy, of course, blamed it on the CIA. Oh, it's the CIA operation. Right. No, no, you limited it the whole thing. You didn't live up to any of the obligations that had been agreed upon. The problem was most of the obligations that were agreed upon were with the former administration.

Oh, really? But he still, once he took office, imagine this, he'd been bashing, I forget who he ran against, but he'd been bashing him the whole time about Cuba. Really? And the guy can't say anything. And then when Kennedy takes over and they have their first meeting, when they kind of hand over power, they have a meeting and he says,

oh, by the way, we've been training these guys and they're going into Cuba in about two months. Wow. Now Kennedy's like, fuck, I really don't want this to happen. And what if it fails?

And then when he hears the plans for the operation, he does two things. One, he changes it from a very easy place to land to the Bay of Pigs, which everybody told them is horrible. Like, no, no, no, no, you can't land there.

Like, it's rocky, it's this, and there's almost nowhere to go. Like, no, it's a horrible place. No, no, that's where they're going to land there. Okay, well, you're fucking, like, that's a problem. And all these planes and this, this, this, this air support. No, we're getting rid of that. It looks too much like a Normandy style operation.

Fuck! Yeah. They still go in. And he says, but if you can take the beachhead, you could take the beachhead and hold it for 24 hours or whatever the time was. We'll send in troops. Well, they held it. They held it.

They requested troops for fucking days on days on days. and they refused to send anything in, and they allowed them to run out of fuel and ammunition, and the Cubans came in and slaughtered them. And that's kind of what happened. And then, of course, immediately Kennedy turned around and just blamed everything on the CIA, and it was a botched operation.

It was horrible. And it was all planned by the CIA and the form administration, but the truth is, you're the one who was really the problem. And, of course, the papers loved Kennedy. Yeah. They loved them. You know, there was Camden a lot, right?

Like, that was the name of, that was the kind of the, that's what they kind of called the Kennedy administration was it was Camelot because they were all so beautiful and well-spoken and wonderful people. And so, but the truth is, it was all bullshit. Yeah, it was just fucked up. But see, by fucking up, because of that, that's when the Soviets came in and said, well, you know what? Fuck, they're going to try and take this. So let's go ahead and support Castro.

And that's when they were going to start putting nuclear weapons. in Cuba. And that's what led to the Cuban missile crisis. Yep. Which Kennedy did a great job with. Yeah. Really? Right.

Yeah. It's in, yeah, the whole thing is... It's super interesting. Super interesting. Yeah. I'm trying, like, little by little,

to learn more about it. Actually, I, that's why I was supposed to go to Cuba a couple weeks ago. Oh, really? Yeah, because there's a guy,

there's a guy in Panama who, who thinks that my next book should be about that. Even though a lot of books have been written about, you know, which I'm not crazy about,

but, But there's, I think there is an angle. I just don't know what it is, you know, because I do think that the betrayal, like theme of betrayal is very strong there. You know what I mean? I'm trying to figure out if I want to ride it or if I don't. But I need the right contact in Cuba.

And a lot of those guys are dead. Happened so long. Oh, yeah, yeah. The, what was the name of the book I read? It was like the 241 brigade, or something. That's absolutely not the name, by the way. But it was something, it was the name of a, like the, whatever the name of the brigade was, that was actually the brigade that I think had gotten out of Cuba or something.

But one of the things was about, and this is part of the reason I say it was, Kennedy did an amazing job of keeping us out of that invasion is because this is what I had heard was that we thought that the only missiles were on the boats that came in. Right. But what I had heard was that Cuba already had smaller, kind of like almost hand-held missiles, right? Like that they could have still fired missiles at if the troops had come and they had the ability to do it.

So there would have been nuclear, small nuclear weapons that would have been, used to fight off an invasion. I'd heard that somewhere. I can't recall where. And as a result, because for a long time, I used to think they should have just invaded. But the truth is, if that would have happened and Castro would have used nuclear weapons, I believe, if he had fired those or used those or those troops had fired with nuclear weapons and we had determined that nuclear weapons had been used, I think that, I think nuclear weapons, I think, then Kennedy would have had no choice but to fire. nuclear weapons.

Yeah. It's also funny how close I feel like the Joint Chiefs, you know, did not like him at all. Like if there was ever a time when there could have been a possible military coup, that very well may have been in the United States, that very well may have been the moment. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. He did not like him at all.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. That was the closest. Yeah. the U.S. ever came to like fucking destruction. I read a book, by the way, of one of the intern that he had an affair with.

Huh. It was like 100 pages long. It was great. Really? It was probably a good. Do you remember what it was called? Yeah. It was something about a secret.

Something like my secret or the secret or something. Her name was Mimi. I remember her name was Mimi. And it's like 100 pages long. But somebody like, I forget Kissinger. I forget who it was that came out with his. This is this autobiography. Yeah, it's probably Kissinger.

Yeah, mentions, just happens to mention that Kennedy was definitely having an affair. In fact, he had had a longstanding career like 18 months or something with a, with an end. He doesn't name her, but very quickly they figure out who exactly. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Or Connecticut. Boom, boom, boom. Okay, it's got to be this chick right here. And they show up on her front door.

She walks out one day to go to work. And I mean, she's like 60 years old. And I'm just like at this point, walks out the door. and I mean there's like 50 reporters. Are you so-and-so? Did you work in the Kennedy administration? Were you at the... And she was just like...

And so she went ahead and wrote this a little quick 100-page book probably just to cash in. And it was great. It was a great little tiny short read. It really was an amazing little memoir. Just about her time in the White House. It was really good.

Does it paint any sort of picture of like behind the scenes decisions that Kennedy would have made or anything like that? Not decisions as much as just who he was and how he treated her. And, you know, not a gentleman, not a gentleman. Like at one point because he's he's he's banging this chick whenever he wants. And she's like 18 years old. You know, he's like at his 40s. Right. And he's having, uh, sleeping with whenever you.

And she just does whatever he wants. if he just, you know, says, stops and pulls his, you know, thing out, and he says, lock the door, and she drops on her knees and goes at it. He does what, and at one point, he's with his brother. And his brother is super stressed out. Like, she's in the room. And he's like, listen, you know, what's going on with such and stuff? Like, we got to figure this out.

And he's like, yeah, you're all stressed, quit stressing so much. And he goes, he goes, you know what? He said, he was, Bobby's under a lot of stress. He goes, Mimi, why don't you, you know, give him a blow job? And his brother is like, his brother turns to him and says, the fuck is wrong with you. You know, what do you? You know, and he says, Mimi, will you please leave? And she leaves.

I mean, he just balls him out. And she blows one of his fucking other staff members. Wow. Like, there's another time she asked her to do that. And she is, and I did. I did. Exactly what he asked me to do. Yeah.

She's like, he's the president of the United States. She said, I was, I was enamored with him. I was absolutely enthralled with the fact that I was a, around him. She said, and I did exact. So you read it and you're like, oh, wow, what, he was really kind of a pig. Like, he's a really, yeah. It's a great book. And I don't think she made any of this up. She's 60-some on years old. She's retired. She doesn't need any of this. She didn't want the, she kept the lie for her whole life until she was outed. And even in the book, she was never really negative. She never said, oh, I felt like I was taking advantage of her. She never

says any of that. Yeah. She takes full responsibility for all of it. It's a great little book. That sounds awesome. It says something, Once Upon a Secret. Oh, it's something like that. Come on, Colby. I'll look it up.

I'll find it. Once Upon a Secret, I'm telling you. Listen, I have a horrible memory. If I, that's right. Once Upon a Secret,

my affair with President John F. Kennedy. What's your name? Mimi Alfred. Bro. There we go. I am nobody's more impressed with me than me right now.

It's a great book. That sounds awesome. And it's only like, Like, how many pages is it, by the way? I say 100. Maybe it was $199 or something. Super short. How many?

It should say right underneath it. It'll say like pages. It says the weight of the book. How many pages? If it's on Amazon. 224 pages. I really feel it was short. I always felt like it was shorter than that.

Huh? Oh, that one says 198. One 98. Yeah. I'm thinking I always remember thinking it was very short. Yeah. That's actually a regular. And I'll be honest with you,

The pages are very, it's a square book. It's not the typical 280 pages or 280 words per page. Right. Which is probably what your book is. Yeah, about that. Right. Yeah. It's not.

It's probably 150 words per page. So it's a tiny little guy. I'm telling you, if you put it on a regular thing, I'm telling you it's probably 100 pages, maybe 30,000 words, 40,000 words. Yeah, nowhere near the 90,000. 90,000 words is about a 300 page book. Yep. This book's 90,000 words. Yeah.

Do you see? Yeah. Yeah. See? Yeah. So it's a great book. It's a great book, though. I mean, if you can't, you, bro, you knock it out in four hours, three hours. You'd knock the whole thing out. Yeah. But it'd be, it's, and she writes, the way she writes is, it's phenomenal. The way she, like, her marriage, if when you, if you read it and you get to this point,

Like how do you sum up a marriage, a 30-year marriage? Like that's tough. She doesn't like, literally, it's like a paragraph. And it's not, it's a little bit more wordy than this, but it's basically like we had 10 good years. There were family vacations, you know, Disney World, Sea World, such and such, you know, whatever. Went to Hawaii, you know, a week in Hawaii. You know, there were amazing times. And then she says there were 10 bad years.

There were 10 years where we ignored one another and then it was over. I mean, I'm telling you when you read that, like as a writer, when you read it, when I read it, I like got goosebumps. It was so good the way she summed it. I was like I felt like I totally understand her marriage. Yeah. I totally understand what happened. And it was great. And I love the divorce.

When the divorce happened, she explains over the course. of like, it's like a page where she explains she walks in one day and she says, she explains her their relationship at that point, how it went on a daily basis. And one day she walked in, and she was like 58 years old or 60 years old. And she walked in and she said, and her husband's reading the paper, sitting in his chair reading the paper. And she walks in and he folds the paper down, and looks there and he says, yes. And she goes, I think I want a divorce. And he goes, I'll start looking for apartments tomorrow. And she said, okay. And he puts the paper. paper back up and continues to read.

And she says within, and like the next paragraph explains that, you know, you got a lawyer. I got a lawyer within a month. We had an agreement and, you know, and it was over. Wow. It's really, that's awesome. And, you know, those are those kind of joining things that you need to explain. Right. But it's not the whole thing.

Yeah. That's interesting. That's kind of like poetry here. Like it's, it's beautiful. And so little words you understand like such a variety of emotions. Right, right. Yeah. Totally get it.

Yeah. So, um. But yeah, it's something. And it may tell something about, she mentions one or two things about what's going on, but very briefly. Yeah. It's interesting.

It does explain stuff. And it explains like the first time they had sex, like where it was, which room it was in. He sees her one time at a party. Next time she finds out she's been chosen to be an intern. She's thrilled. She's there. And I think it's pretty much on a first.

or second day, he comes in. He says, what's your name? He's like, have you seen the White House? Have you had a tour? She's like, no, not yet. And she's totally nervous. He's like, well, here, let's, let me take get her a tour. And he walks her around. He walks her right into one of the bedrooms, like the Roosevelt bedroom or the George Washington bedroom. They all have these names. Walks in there, and he basically lays her down on the bed or takes her, takes her clothes off, lays her down, naked on the bed, and has sex with her. Wow. I mean, it's That's wild

Fucking, it's insane She explains all the different times Right And then she'd go off to like She was living in the dorm She'd go off for the semester To go back to school He would call her

Huh At the dorm Like they had a A phone You know like a pay phone In the dorm Like you don't have phones Right

It's a pay phone And some girl would come And say Hey Your cousin's on the cousin So and so And whoever Whatever his nickname was

And she'd be like And she'd run over And she'd run over Pick it up And he'd go hey Mimi how you doing how's classes and have little conversation he called like once a week or something and it was just she would live for those phone calls and then when when you know then sometimes he'd say what are you doing this weekend um i can have a car come pick you up and you can go with me for you know

you can be there you probably shouldn't leave the room and you understand and the press knew they knew but they gave him a pass back then you didn't talk about stuff like that you gave him a pass and she stayed in the room you know this massive room where that's the whole top floor of some hotel where he was going to be and he'd come up every once in a while and hit it fucking leave and she just wait around for him to come back and hit it again and leave and she'd get in a car and they'd take her back and put her on a plane and fly her back on this is going on for six months or 18 months i forget the length of it but it yeah this is a good book it's a good book that sounds awesome and it's a good book and it's a good book i say that because it's something i'm totally not interested in right

but i was riveted by her writing yeah and how good it was it sounds great honestly yeah yeah So the book. The book. Yeah. So what did, who relate? Did you, did you self-publish it? I'm releasing it on November 4th with a company called Bookhouse Publishing. Okay.

The reason why we're releasing with them is a, we sort of have this like mutual connection. A guy who used to be a CIA agent. Use them to publish one of his books. So we know them and we know how to work with them and all that sort of stuff. So we're doing it on November 4th. So it's a publisher. But it's a, but it's an honest. online publishers. They're still going through Amazon to publish. It's a publishing company.

Absolutely. Yeah. Amazon. Just a print on demand. Exactly. And then Ingram Spark like so that bookstores can, you know, buy it wholesale and stuff like that. It's the same thing. I mean, like the only difference is that like when you say you're publishing with Penguin or whatever, you have like so much prestige. It like looks so. Yeah. And if you go into Barnes and Noble's, it's probably there's probably five copies, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I could just, that's why I'm going to take my Garth Brooks book and I'm just going to take like five of them and go and stick them on the shelf and leave. They'll be like, every once in one, they'll be like, we don't have this in the system. What is this bar code? Jennifer, do you know about this? I'll take some pictures of me next to the book in Barnes & novels. I want to go to his bar. Anyway, he's got a bar in Nashville called Friends in Low Places.

I want to go in there with the book. I actually have a stand I made, a stand where I've got, you can put like 10 books in it. I want to go in there and put it on the bar. Oh. And then, like, if the bartender goes, hey, man, what's this? I'm like, I don't know, bro. Paul told me to drop this off.

I guess Garth is selling books or somebody wrote a book. I don't know, bro. And just walk off. Just leave it there. They'll be like, what is this? You should totally do that. I've been there. I have a video, have Jess video the whole, my wife video, the whole thing.

Like, I don't know, bro. Talk to John from the publishing company. I don't know what these guys are doing. I was just told to drop it off, walk off. What's he going to do? Stop me? Like, he's going to be like, oh, it's got to. pitcher and go.

So we must be doing something. That might be the straw that broke the countless match. Yeah, that might. And then the season desist comes. This is enough. Yeah, I was going to say, I've had a, I published a book with Skyhorse publishing. And it's funny, I shouldn't say this.

But, I mean, I made more money publishing with Amazon. Way more money. I mean, the Sky Horse did pay me in advance, you know. Yeah. but by all, trust me, you're going to, you'll make more money, which they want you to do anyway. Yeah. You'll make more money doing a bunch of podcasts and publishing the way you're doing it

than you were ever going to, going to, you know, double day or, double days down, pin line, whatever. I don't know. I don't know. I had a piece, I had a fiction book published when I was 25. I got taken advantage of. I don't even think I've seen $100, like in total. Did you get an advance?

No, no advance. I was just taking advantage of, you know, and I didn't do any, like, I felt like I was screwed, so I didn't do any, like, self-marketing. I honestly just, like, it was, like, the child that I just got rid of. You know what I mean? I, I abandoned it. But, yeah, ever since then, I've just done self-publishing because I, you know, I can control it more, and I've just begun to notice that you can still get it into those regular distribution

channels yourself. You don't need to be a publisher to get into, like, all the distribution channels. that you want. Right, right. So. Well, I was going to say about the, if you had documented this whole kind of thing with just grabbed like a, you know, whatever, a Sony, not one of these, but like a Sony, Vio and a gimbal.

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of talked about, hey, I'm here with so and so. We've been doing it. Talked for five minutes about what you're currently doing and then shut it off. I mean, it doesn't, it's not like this, it's not this setup where it's polished and everything, but you could have several of those and you could put those on your channel. Right.

then, you know, twice a week. And then when you're completely done, you do a whole thing like this, where you do like three hours talking about each chapter of the book. Not read it, but just talk about it. You know, this is how this started. Do like a 30 minute, 30 minute, 30, and release those, you'd be shocked how many people would. And you were doing this.

People, because people would be interested in you and then they're going to go and they're going to look for you and they're going to find this. Right. And any interview you do, you just tell them, listen, at some point we have to talk about my YouTube channel. Yeah. Because I'm trying to monetize this at some point so I can keep going. Got it.

And then that would you, next thing you know, you're coffeezilla, you know, two years later. Right. Because you're doing it anyway. I mean, someone's going to take a few hours a week. Right. And it doesn't have to be polished. You'll get better and better. But, you know, a year from now, you'll be putting out videos that are fucking flawless.

Yeah. Because you'll just learn. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good to know. And you don't have to, they don't have to be, they don't have to be perfect. Because what's great is that two years from now, Mary Shelley's heard, the same story. Two years from now, people will look back and the first few videos you put out

are just dog shit. Like you're like, oh my God, I was, I'm not looking in the camera. I'm looking at myself. I'm doing this. I use this word out of context. I, you know, they're just horrible, right? Like I'm half my face is off the camera. Like it's staring at the dog in the back. Like I don't know what I'm doing. But what's great about that, you want that. Because in two years from now, when you're putting out coffee zilla style stuff and you're making $10,000, $30,000 a month, people will look back and say, bro, I remember when you were making videos with your iPhone, you know, whatever. And they're like, you've come so far.

And then they're ingrained and they are, they have an interest in your story. And then they become like super fans and they join your Patreon and everything. And they love what you're doing because this is a guy that drives a for forklift, you know, for Walmart. And he loves the fact that he watched your entire journey. Right. You know, and he's able to support it. It's not like he's giving you money. He feels like I'm supporting a journalist that I think is doing good work.

Yeah. And I want to. And it only costs me $9.99 a month. Right. He doesn't. He's like, it's nothing. Like, that's a joke every month. Right.

To help support this guy that I've been following since he was making. you know, making shitty videos with his iPhone in the, you know, in the bathroom at the airport while he was waiting for us to get on the plane to Panama. So, yeah, I mean, it's, so you, you know, you almost want to put up shitty videos at first. Right. Yeah. And then the great thing about YouTube is, too, you can put up an entry, an intro video. Like when you first go to my channel and you're not subscribed, the first thing that comes up,

it goes, hey, my name is Matt Cox. And I tell you, it's like three minute video. at five minute video. I'm like, look, I just got released from federal prison. I just started this channel. Here's what I want to do. And I explain really, you know, I did the best I could with that video. And then I post it. But once you subscribe, you never see that video again. Interesting. It's only for new people. Right. So you would start your channel and you'd say, you know, hey, my name is Killian. Here's what, you know, I'm an investigative journalist or I'm trying to be an investigative journalist. And I've written several books. I've written this, this, this. I just finished this book about

Panama and I have these I came across the you know I managed to acquire these you know secret documents you know from the CIA which actually prove that the government was working with Noriega you know you can you kind of very briefly give a brief discretion right now I'm I'm about to start another book and I really appreciate if you subscribe with the channel I'm gonna be posting twice a week blah blah blah blah about three four minutes and then thank you very much please subscribe please tell your friends yeah I really need your support and that's it yeah and then they just they subscribe they never see

the video again. Yeah. But they know who you are. Right. They know what you're doing. Huh. They get invested in you. Yeah.

And then they start watching the other videos. And then, let's face it, six months later, boom. Holy shit. He just came out with the book. He finished the book. Yeah. Oh, man. I'm so proud of you, bro.

You finished the book. Oh, my God. I know that time you got pulled over. You were telling that story about when the Panamanians pulled you over. I was thinking, oh, fuck, he's done. He's never going back. He'll never finish this now. But you fucking powered through it.

Yeah. It's insane. It's insane. It is. And they will get, I mean, that's a great way to do it. And it doesn't matter that they're shitty videos at first. Yeah. You'll naturally get better.

Right. Yeah. Mary Shelley's doing a channel right now. She's getting better and better. Great. Yeah. No, this is, honestly, I don't know how to monetize this stuff. So that's, yeah.

Trust me. It's not through books. Yeah. I got like eight books out right now. Right. It's not books. Yeah. Although books do pay for my car payment.

They pay my car payment. They pay my manager. I'll make a thousand or 2,000 a month on books. It's not terrible. No. And you have to do an audio book. You'd be shocked. I'd say 30% of my book sales is through audio.

Do you provide the audio? I don't because I can barely read. You don't want to hear me read my book. It's horrific. But you, I'm sure, can read. Right. You know? And I'm serious.

I wish I'd know we're laughing about it. But if you heard me read, it's bad. It's bad. If I could read, I would probably. probably be doing one of those, I'd probably have a second channel, like the one that my stepdaughter's doing, which is basically taking like a true crime story. Yeah. And just reading the story and just saying, you know, in 1985, you know, Jennifer Hudson, you know, was walking on the beach. You know, and I do that whole thing. And then I'd say, you know, and she was never seen again. And then I'd say,

you know, you jump. And then you jump, you know how they tell it. You'd give it the little, the little intro. And then you jump back. And then you'd jump. And then you jump. And then you jump. And to, you know, she was raised in a small town. You know, and I'd probably do that whole thing, but I mean, I read so horrifically. It would take me four hours to read a 45-minute story, and then it'd take another six hours to edit it. It would be that horrocious. Well, yeah. Is that a word horrocious?

No. Horrific. Horrible. Horridous or I think I kind of conflated those. That's one of those things. Horrific. We'll have a comment. Yeah.

People, like, he won't take that out. If he cared about me at all or my dignity, he would take that out. I'll probably just going to cut out the part where you corrected yourself. You see? Just the end of it. I'll just keep going. People like, this guy said, what's wrong with Cox? It's kind of a tard sometimes.

Ridiculous. So, yeah, yeah, it's definitely, yeah. Yeah, you can't be, you can't, you can't, you can't let the comments get. You can't even, can't even let the comments get to you. Sometimes I'll get a, I'll get a little bit irritated. And then I'll say, hey, bro, you know, I'm not for everybody. I get it. Like, I can be a jerk sometimes.

Like, and, you know, almost, almost, I'd say, 56% time they go, oh, bro, I didn't mean that. Like, I was just saying, you know, I was drinking last night when I wrote that comment. Right. Yeah. As opposed to if I'd come back and be like, oh, fuck yourself. But, you know. If you were talking. If I tacked them.

Yeah. It's not. Yeah. It's not the way to go. Every month's a while, though. So what, so the book, so the book, you said you are releasing it. Yes. Yeah.

On November 4th. Oh, okay. What, like five or six weeks from now? Okay. Yeah, pretty soon. Yeah, yeah. Are you taking pre-orders? I'm going to be taking pre-orders like two weeks out.

So mid-October, though, pre-order will be available. Okay. Yeah. Are we holding this video? No, no, you release us whenever you want. Yeah. I would say it's probably... So you're not a marketing genius then.

I'm not a marketing genius. Okay, I just say you should want everybody to kind of hold it. No, or at least make the pre-orders. Yeah, well, the pre-order, I mean, what do you guys usually take like two weeks to post a video? I mean, hey, sometimes it's next day. Yeah, but most of the time, yeah, yeah. Like, for example, that guy, I was mentioning on break. Like, if he can come today or tonight and everybody's still available,

I'll go home, touch up his episode and get it ready for tomorrow. But really, and realistically, one to two weeks. Yeah. Yeah, well, two weeks is perfect because that's when the pre-order is going to be available. Okay. And we're trying to, like, load up on pre-orders as much as we can. Because I'm doing a bunch of different interviews, like, but the media really only started yesterday.

I sent you a text with that article that came out in the UK. That was the first thing to come out. So between, I guess, like, today and November 4th, I'm just trying to have stuff come out, like, as frequently as possible. What's the headlines that the media's, the articles are saying? This is because Colby has no idea what the name is. Yeah, what are these guys saying? Yeah.

How Manuel Noriega's aide gave a Dublin author a trove of CIA files. So were they... Are the files, like are they publicly available now or are they never publicly available? Never, never publicly available. But since you got a hold of them, they've been made available. Yeah, I'm going to be putting them on my website. No, no, I'm saying from the CIA. Oh, no, no, no.

The CIA is like, this is classified information. Pretty much. Yeah, most of them are DEA documents. The CIA documents have these stamp on them that's a top secret. Right. And they've never been made public. Like you can't go into like whatever that like registry is. Yeah, you can't,

you can't follow Freedom of Information Act and get them. Exactly. Yeah, because they were in Noriega's possession. So it wasn't, you know, I think they were one of ones. I'm sure like they had their own thing, but they were shredded for sure.

But Noriega kept them. Yeah, I was going to say back then, there's not like there's a digital footprint of them somewhere. No. These are just somebody fax something. And then once you get rid of the document, the only existing one is the one that you have.

Totally. Yeah, and the CIA ones, like the really interesting CIA ones are from like the early 1970s. Like they go from 71 or 72 to like 1980. And then when the narco trade like really kicked up a notch in the 80s with like Escobar and that stuff, the DEA came into the picture way more than the CIA because communism was no longer like the greatest threat to America. It was it then became like the narco trade, which was like an even bigger threat. And so Noriega just became more important and more powerful. And the DEA started collaborating with him a lot more than the CIA did.

Even though the CIA were still using him for intelligence when it came to, like, Fidel Castro and basically any socialist or left-leaning leader in Latin America, they just like used Noriega to get that information or to like butter them up. Because intelligence is like a business, right? Like Noriega goes to Castro and he says, hey, the CIA want to know about this. can you give me enough to feed them? Right. So I get a check. Yeah. So I can get the check.

Dude, exactly. Yeah. What are you working on now? Right now I'm working on a story about this guy, Nikki Kelly. It's an Irish story. In the late 1970s, him and a group of other guys in the Irish Republican Socialist Party, speak of socialists, were arrested because the Irish state thought that they robbed this train. and they associated them with the IRA

and Nikki fled the country and while he was gone the other guys basically got proved innocent that they were not members of the IRA and they did not rob this train so Nikki thought it was cool to come back he comes back the Irish state throws him in prison anyway

there's this thing called the special criminal court in Ireland it's like a juryless court so it's like you know you're standing before a judge and like they're not really taking your story in consideration like you're already guilty Nikki's judge actually fell asleep during the trial. It's a very famous thing in Ireland. It's called the sleeping judge.

Nicky goes to like a terrorist prison. Basically, it was like a prison for like IRA members. And he goes on hunger strike for like 37 days. And the people of Ireland sort of like, you know, he becomes like a cult, like national hero. And then in the late 80s, in the late 80s, he finally gets like led out of prison. And it sort of just shows like an injustice in the Irish.

government that still kind of exists today and a lot of it has to do with um britain's sort of like oppression of Ireland and how it still sort of lingers even though Ireland got its independence from Britain and you know like a hundred years ago so I know as like someone who doesn't know Irish history that probably just like but um it's very much like a passion project for me it's like an Irish story and I've known Nikki for like a few years he's he's quite old now and kind not necessarily on his deathbed, but I don't think I'll have that much longer to, like, get the story out of him. Yeah. And he's also in on the book, and, like, he wants it told.

So total passion project, man, I'm going to do this. And then I'm trying to set up another thing in Latin America. I was supposed to go to Cuba a couple weeks ago, fell through for reasons I can't really say. And then I've got, like, a major interest in what's going on in El Salvador with Buckele as well. I'd really like to speak to that guy and maybe check out that prison down there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What is your, what is your stance on that? My angle? Yeah. I don't want to eat my words, but, uh, but like he's like, he's got the highest approval rating of like any president in the entire world. It's like 90%. Yeah. And he completely cleaned the country up.

Yeah. You know, when Bitcoin looks like it's going to become like even more powerful and stronger worldwide. As the years past, it seems like Bitcoin. How's that, uh, he, uh, Buckele scrapped their currency and everybody uses Bitcoin. down there. Holy shit. I did not even know that. It's a crypto society.

Yeah. And he was the first country to do it. Probably the only country to do it. But as Bitcoin becomes more expensive, El Salvador's, like GDP and their wealth vastly increases. Now, that being said, I don't know what's happening behind closed doors there. But from the outside. I was going to say you've got these, you know, humanitarian organizations that are

complaining that you're, he's scooping up people that are. You know, they're not getting due process. They're not getting this and that. And some of that's probably true. Like, you're going to end up, you're going to scoop up some maybe semi-innocent people. I'm pretty sure if you're covered in tattoos in El Salvador, you're a member of a gang. Or at least you make a bad decision. I don't see that you're really a decent person who's also, you know, working as a CPA and has a family and you're a wonderful person.

But I guess it's possible that some of those people got out and were living normalized and they got scooped up. And I think ultimately then if you have due process eventually, maybe some of those people get let go and put back into society. But in general, I don't know what. Once again, he's a strong man. He steps in and says, look, I'm sorry. This is going to be horrific for some people, but this is what has to be done. Yeah. You know, and so I think that that was the only alternative to basically just a failed state.

I don't know what the other choice is. Yeah. Dude, El Salvador, I think before Buckeli, like, swept the nation claim was the most dangerous country in the entire world. Horrific. Oh, my God. Now they've got tourism again. Yeah. Gorgeous.

There's the, yeah, low crime rate. Businesses are now willing to invest in the country again. I mean, hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. And please share the video. Also, if you want to check out Killian's book, we're going to put the link in the description box.

It's called the right-hand. and you can go there, you can go to Amazon, and you can pre-order the book right now. When does the book come out? November 4th. Book comes out on November 4th, so 1st? 4th. November 4th, so after November 4th, you can just buy the book.

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