Manuel Noriega

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 and think oh this uh this kid was taken advantage of yeah he just co-signed on this guy who's trying to sugarcoat or yeah

I don't want to be that kind of investigative writer.

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 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, 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 of weeks and,

with the most ragtag group of people like i was there with a couple americans a guy who like lived in the rainforest uh this guy cindo literally lived in the rainforest and like hunted for his food he kind of worked for jose and he was in the city because uh jose promised him for all his hard work that he would uh that he would send him to a brothel

uh 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 like it was crazy but he's got his priorities right

Yeah, why worry about retirement when you can just bang hookers in the city and then go back to the rainforest?

This guy really was of retirement age, but that's just what he wanted to do.