How did you get connected with the Noriega family?

I got a call in October 2023 from a buddy of mine called Jack Moran.

He's an American guy, but he lives in Panama and does business in Panama with a guy called Jose Golder, who's a Panamanian guy.

And Jose is in his 50s. He was sort of raised in a, in like a diplomatic sort of government family.

During that time in the 80s, the Noriega regime was like raging when he was like a teenager and in his early 20s.

And I had just written a book where I was in like a high-risk environment in South Central LA,

interviewing Bloods and Crips.

It was a prison book that I wrote called Dreams and Incarceration.

And then Jack says, hey, I got access to this story through this guy, Jose, in Panama,

about the old dictatorship.

Do you want to call him and see what's up?

So he calls me. I was actually on the verge of being homeless when he called me in living in LA, like in my car and like on friends' couches and stuff.

So, you know, we spoke for like 20 minutes. He told me the whole story and then I just said yes, like right away and I hopped on a plane to Panama like a week later. Whoa. Yeah. So I knew, I mean, I was like a blank slate going into this pretty much. I knew who Noriega was, but super surface level. So when you went down there, who did you end up meeting? I met. The first guy I um, the protagonist, like the subject of the book,

this guy Carlos Wick Green. He was Noriega's right-hand man, his enforcer. Um, he was, uh, also,

like, you know, Carlos's cousin was married to Noriega. One of his wives, the guy had

multiple secret women, but, um, she was, uh, yeah, she was the reason why Carlos met Noriega.

So Carlos was like 18 when he first met Noriega.

Noriega was a, he actually worked for the US Army at that stage, and he was like a CIA asset.

And then over the years he built himself up to essentially become the dictator of Panama in 1983 and Carlos stuck with him

the entire time and became his right-hand man. So he was like the dictator's right-hand man.

The Cold War was such a crazy fucking time that shaped like the world we live in now. It's kind of

crazy. Like going back, there's so many stories from that time that are all connected from like Iran Contra to Kennedy assassination, Watergate to Noriega.

...