A Word on Words; 2418; Larry Collins

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha on guns in the once again welcome to word on words why people's that's the title of this book and the author of bestselling author larry collins is here with us the talk about wacky story of intrigue and mystery story of a conflict between two intelligence agencies the drug enforcement administration and the central intelligence agency welcome large a world where huge are delighted to be here cia year old friends at the cia our lives now all your bestselling books they love them because they owned the wanted an occasional was cia's who could turn out to be of a long running for the most part for the most part

you give is a new cia in terms of my work yes i guess i do although he now i think it's an important point to mention in black hills i showed the cia going off the reservation in a certain sense but i must say that in my experience over the years when the cia has gone off the reservation it has almost always been because it was ordered to do so by the nation's executive authority if the cia run off the reservation in central america with noriega and closing its ice the drug traffic it was because kicking the sandinistas in the head had become the primary goal of ronald reagan and through him they'll case got the most fascinating aspect of this book is this you take real i think of bill casey and the noriega two characters made for the

movies and you use them as real life personalities you put words and allows so which we all believe our very close to reality and then you create a web of fictional characters who they react interact or enacted a framework casey and an oreo talk first of all about the challenge of doing that and then maybe a word about the ethics of doing that goes something lou reed may say oh you shouldn't done that in case you know legalization and an actor well the challenger do it is to give a sense of reality to the book because while black ingels is a novel with all of the conventional tools that you put into a novel the intrigue in the suspense and the sex and so on but fundamentally is meant to be a novel becomes very close to the truth

and so therefore i felt justified in interweaving my fictional characters and the fictional characters are purely creators of my imagination with the real character down the case that casey there are i think three or four scenes which take place in his office i got a lot of the dialogue which i employ in that in those scenes from an officer of the cia who is deeply involved in managing a couple operations who met frequently with casey and he agreed to speak with me on the condition i would not use his name in the book so i i've changed his name someone and he's a character bow on dialogue love and the case's mouth are words which he said to make a sea of sad when they discuss the condor operation and i take it that there are also fictional character that no longer really only libre snarky you know i would take a plea talks like

fox just like the prototypical cia called we're operator director manipulator who has lost his idealism of the ever had it who believes that pragmatism is a way of life in international politics who's convinced in his own mind that whatever you do in the name of a country my country right or wrong in my country and so i take it that and hinckley and others are drawn at least on composites a real life people known all about yes i think that yes that's about us or neutral is based an important agree on a character who was with the agency for many many years i did not talk to him but i talked to a large number of his associates and i think that the most of them would agree that the portrait which i give them just as you said of a man who has lost his moral way in that very difficult

jungle a covert offers have to act in march if he ever do you have a strong idea and the moral base your set a strong ideological base and most particularly he had a strong base of being expedient getting the job done keep your eyes on the big picture forget about the small minor difficult and embarrassing moral problems onsite the narcotics of the da officer it is very much built on a guy that i've known for many many years now retired from the va and that we call him kevin great we call him kevin brady he's called something slightly different now i met him when he had probably the most dangerous job at the da offered anybody he was their representative maurice say when they were breaking the french connection well here's some cat cafe idea about now this is more the story of the struggle between two federal agencies it is a struggle and a very real sense between two characters getting radiant

jacqueline jacqueline being a cia agent who has not yet lost his mar way who is struggling to many are struggling hard enough but struggling with a conscience that tells him i should not do this but i know it from the most often he doesn't anyone tell the other side this is it a lot totally totally idealistic hero kevin gregory and the conflict between the two men begins and really an unknown in southeast asia before the ultimate conflict in central america why did you put them together and put at odds in that place that far removed before bringing him did you have to hear because that incident took place it didn't take place exactly as i described it was there were two offices of what was then the baby and didi who see the

tribe's season mr klein mo rocca being there and the cia was the iraq flying heroine out of northern laos undoubtedly destined for the veins of american troops in vietnam and they were stopped making arrests that law enforcement are to stop their predecessors were stopped by the cia cia rivera comparing of the cia said you cannot and they say to him and they say and they say to her jacqueline they say look you know where this is going it's going through vietnam where we've got fighting men and they do not use these drugs to mechanics of our of our soldiers and the heart is a higher calling hear the heart cause syria on the senate and so they push kevin raye i'll play is i'm sure they did there are guys talking about and that was their initial confrontation and getting ready says

la won this round bo i'm going go and by god he gets on the guzzler that's exactly the character army's this kevin brady is going to be he's a cop you know he's an irishman from new york winter fordham law school night and whose credo is very simple was and how the mall is the law is the law and applies equally to every individual and every organization there's no organization even your cia and has the right to be above the law and of course the cia guy say in fact our brief that the agency is the national security of the united states and therefore our concerns and our interests have to predominate or the concerns of any other agency of the us government and one of the things john that i learned when i was researching the book up until recently no da officer stationed outside of this country could initiate an

investigation into a suspected drug trafficker or recruit an informant and juliet first cleared the name of that individual with a local cia station in iowa i didn't know whether that was a virtual world grounded in fact or not but the point is well made than you then you take this tool bill casey great illustrations in power jacqueline does in the agency home from laos southeast asia is about to be reassigned he's about to take on maybe the most important assignment in a cia officer ever took on the angel or rabbi antonio noriega now us all a little bit worried come from where i want to

make an end an example of in a sense the old agency officer really guys of my generation mr yale harvard princeton after the second world war were swept up into either a sense of patriotism during the korean war the desire to serve the nation to join the cia for them most noble of reasons in this case my mr winters rather wealthy come from an old maryland family failed marriage will not understandable understands nice vassar girl and who very slowly step by small step moves away from those high ideals with which he joined the agency and finds himself carrying out acts which he would never have committed twenty years before because he has had to go down the path of political expediency instead of trying to find where and that dark jungle floor at a covert

operations the reliable route should be i don't jot jacqueline is not meant to be a village he's not meant to be perhaps a flawed hero that many people find him the most arresting plot lines that idea i mean it seems to me that it's the have it is that it seems to me that time to commit that to commit to an agency as we did for so many years in the cia to write a video call word lead in the best of causes is to is to risk the possibility that the agency will become infected with its own sense of self righteousness in its own quote new ideas which is not ideal isn't at all and then in

timed to move the worst of causes are which i think happened in this case so then a meets with casey and casey says gay jurors down there and make sure johnny vaughan boys are generally be ensuring will be on taxes world all with the law but then it's not just his professional life you meet wanting a boy an aristocrat the wrong the south salva more than done and his gun and his commitment to his other causes family as violent so you before so it is a fallen hero every socialist realist be distressing comic when i when i had set up this basic conflict between the two men women and great cod a woman in here and i was intrigued by this proposition suppose you how a

panamanian law late twenties early thirties politically very liberated by central american standards who is a kind of a panamanian pass tonight and she is committed to the cause of overthrowing a dictator was a slave a country many well into an egg and one day she's a cocktail party in panama city and she meets a very attractive american he's in an aeronautical engineer who comes down periodically to inspect our aircraft out air force base and they fall in love and they have a pretty intensely passionate physical affair until the day she suddenly discover is that this man that she's in love with whom she's sharing her bed is the secret power behind the throne that she's trying to topple what does she do what predominates her physical passion or political passions i checked how that question with a lot of my female friends and three my wife got to come up with the answer that it cannot work but there's one thing that fascinated me a good friend of mine who spent most of his life

as a covert operative when the agency says that you know well daughters don't make good spies spies make good adult to do rely on it and i'll bet you have a guide tell you that was a spy was in the adult i lied and all your own while a book but but i'm fascinated by by how you were and how you take the reality of of what happened in that the conflict in central america how your age of fit into many different criminal schemes drugs was one thing he was screaming money on ransom money in in kidnappings

he was the worst possible person we could've pick propped up and paid to be our anchor our anger agent there a silly this do is to leave it alone that very real conflict there is the thrust of your book affection <unk> about tony noriega for a moment i daresay there's not anomalous in the country nine journalists in the country done the research you have done on him and on his trial i mean we in effect in the final analysis kidnapped him run this country in and put him on trial here to talk a little bit about about this plant well but first there's a crisis some we just can't forget if noriega committed the crime so which he's been convicted we mustn't

forget it we the united states government put him in a position in which he could commit those crimes we returned noriega into the successor dictator of two meals because we needed him to run the camp to war if if panama had been run by a leftist who was opposed to our efforts to overthrow sandinistas he could've put fifty thousand people under the streets a panama city everyday screening that we are a violin the panama canal treaty in a way which we are using our bases in the canal zone to support the war effort given the fact that though the effort to get on the ed sheeran as it enters a public opinion that would have to get over in terms of a public opinion and in terms of a congress noriega's of as a fast they can't be smart he's shrewd he's rather well read an incident with the fall

but he was a man who whose ideology was fundamentally in his pocket he no he he did this country great services i was with a un officer the state department last week who was he as a young army officer in panama nineteen sixty four when there was an uprising against the canal occupation certainly that noriega saved five of his men are taken into protective custody at all of these vehicles returned to a month or so horses when there is an installation right next to noriega's headquarters which was financed by you and i'll let taxpayers dollars to eavesdrop on all his political opponents for their telephone conversations because they all the telephone lines in panama costa rica thailand based we the cia has or the cia had the right to get annoyed the list of anybody who was conversations we want to listen to and that included obviously

leftists are associated with things like the mit of the fart the plo and the libyans who had offices in indiana and in panama bankers who we expect it were money laundering people were violating the embargo on the soviet union and every week an office at the agency can buy right up to the week before the invasion to pick up the agency's real to take a lot of conversations what is fast at the the other thing you do with regard to cia is your show in about is a graphical way is i've yet read how the agency would go about creating front commercial institutions to help it car had its it's more nefarious activities and was quite a simple matter here in the country where there are not to establish the ethics and banking and finance and end

commercial and prices is quite a simple matter to create a fund and make it and drop of ale or what's really going all you get on the other side you get into the da out with kevin great a sleeve jack for a moment you've created not a fascinating a scenario by our show is it a work study early works by making a kit co opting now the drug pusher on the head of the drug operation clapping the people in it then using those people to get to learn to get to him and big fish the larger target it shows our words first of all by him

by letting up the da come very close to really making the largest grams of drugs largest possible grab she ever imagined and then it's blown because local a local offices move in and sort of say sending the cia had said we've got a thirty year we're taking this where taking the television cameras and were them i think about this but then there's another scenario in which in which there is a man caught up and robes trying to make a killing time making a piece of the nest egg for his wife very well educated very bright fellow summit medical doctors i remember that's right and raymond raymond gets caught and in rio says becomes a hero what he does and that's based on the real case it was it a million by geo has run out of new york but in real life it was run out of atlanta and

it was called polar cap and through this this just misinformed mainly i use the name ramone lesson and i know and i but i always made a point never to know was real name so i would never blew out by mistake that he was caught running low and it was the classic asian ally say we have some good news and the bad news is you go to twenty five and you're not going to find that our federal penitentiaries are much like the fraternity house you knew back in college and the good news is if you work with us we can do something to reduce that time and for the real mom they actually they penetrated the money side of them adding cartel and it led to the arrest of a man named eduardo who had wandered something like twenty two billion dollars over the years for the cartel and a look at what were the very very very big case and ramon the real ramone was responsible for this the evidence that the government acquired was so overwhelming films of these guys being in hotel rooms and martinez it's laying out

a back of the bus with them a lot of money he pleaded guilty and the us attorney in atlanta very timely open up all those files into they're just going to go back in the visitors' the real ramon not like a woman ramone has had a happier destiny been won by side and among doesn't happen now he's alive and well and i converse with well at that that that story of the the cable moment in the book when ramon an opportunity to going to stay out and by that time you saw caraway lessons of idealism and so he would know that that decision he did have to make and was in in those circumstances he knew that in going back to manning he wasn't really running the risk of his life because there have been an arrest which permitting people could've thought was represented a penetration his or his money laundering organization and he debated and he said you know if i go you

guys get me my life back and i said yeah this is serious enough you go and report you get your life back and he did you know you had you had great success as an author or fiction and nonfiction i'd like to ask about the differences and approaches to writing you have men a bestselling author i mentioned fall from grace maze argue have ben acosta on well a number of books but is paris burning oh jerusalem to that were fantastic sailors talk about the difference in riding solo and in collaboration well i think the difference is is key i think collaboration works very well in nonfiction because you have four hands to do the research say can cover twice as much ground and

you are limited by the fact that you uncovered you can't make something up and so you don't have to use imagination when you're when you read a novel writing is to make up here and i did the full foursome suddenly imagination becomes a vital component of what you're doing and no matter how similar you maybe no matter how well attuned you may be working with each other the human imagination does not work in the same way into the mines i found as a consequence of doing the fifth horseman that i enjoyed writing fiction film a comedy did not and that's really the fundamental reason why we each one a separate ways in in writing fiction writing novels well i think in some ways more difficult it's wonderful to create characters that belong to you the euros in for fundraising you may remember the central character modern woman in the front has assessed vote but she

never does that she's she exist only here in my mind and yet people would write to me and say so where is she very because we like to go lay flowers and write i thought how wonderful that i've i gave so much for somebody mentioned to cooper's never existed to jacqueline give it goes is a composite of a lot of people and so he's really mine one is it is it holding my and this to make these characters to put them in the situation and to put them in situations in which you can then portray the moral dilemma in which family in words and actions which you can't do a nonfiction because ben gurion it will not really give you the full resume of the moral dilemma that he may be going through when he decides to firearm is ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch

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