#109: Inside the Mind of a Dictator’s Right-Hand Man (Cillian Dunne)

0:00Cillian Dunne, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You lived with a dictator's right-hand man. Was he as evil as everyone from the outside would make it out? Absolutely not. No. I mean, I lived with the guy for about four months overall, spread across two years. And I mean, the guy had committed some atrocities, to say the least. But I actually found him to be incredibly personable. He was extremely loyal. And he was like, you know, I was a guest in his home. So, of course, he wanted to sort of show off like Panama at its best and the Panamanian people at its best. But like, you know, he took great care of me.

0:41It was a little intense, as I'm sure you can imagine. You know, he was like a triple spy trained by like Mossad in Israel, like the CIA, DEA, and then I guess Fidel Castro too. When you say intense, why was it intense? He was just, he had the ability to sort of know what you were thinking at all times, so you couldn't be like disingenuous with him. So like my motivation for going there was to write a book, like using his story to write a book that where, you know, he's the main character, but like the themes overall relate to something much greater, which, you know, I'm sure we'll get into a good bit later on.

1:19but Carlos knew that his story was sort of like a conduit to tell a bigger story and you know he didn't let me get my answers easily all the time so I had to like really pry like for instance Manuel Noriega who was the dictator is sort of infamous for being accused of like drugs drug trafficking money laundering things of that nature people put him in the same box as like Pablo Escobar when in fact he was like a little bit closer to a Fidel Castro. And Carlos like never wanted to speak to me about like any of the illicit things that he or the dictator were accused of. So I had to walk on eggshells, quite frankly, a lot of the time living with him.

2:02I couldn't get him to become like super fiery because he was incredibly volatile. And like one little slip up could like literally could have meant like us fist fighting in his living room. so why was he playing hard to get and why wasn't he giving you the information when you asked he it's just like he's a product of this sort of era of espionage where like the cold war you know this the cold war everything was clandestine discreet like behind closed doors carlos is very much a product of that so he doesn't he's really tight-lipped in general like if he has a secret it's he sees it as like leverage instantly so he doesn't give you anything like easily and and you don't get things from him easily, if that makes sense.

2:44He's just, it's almost like a way of life for him that he has to be tight-lipped. And it all ties into his loyalty and sort of his own personal beliefs about, like, human relationships. And, yeah, so I had to pry and pry and, like, win him over. And there were some, like, really intense moments where, you know, both of our motivations came to the forefront. And I was like, listen, I want to tell, I want to write, like, the best fucking book possible here. like I want to win like a Pulitzer Prize like I want to go all the way and Carlos was like well I want to have a legacy like I want my children and their children to be able to read about my life so we had to like sort of find where those two motivations intersected and to and to do that it just took time like walking on eggshells like figuring out what could we talk about very openly and what could we talk about like more subtly and then I would have to like take what I learned from Carlos's conversation and go out and find those extra details by myself.

3:42So it was intense. Like, it was a tough environment. Why did he want you to live with him if he wasn't willing to share? So he shared, like, his story, right? He shared what he wanted me to hear. And I knew that. I'd been, like, warned about that before going to that, you know, he saw this book as his legacy. He was going to tell me the best possible story where he comes out like John Wayne, like where he comes out as like the hero but living with him uh he did it because he wanted to see how i how i lived like what kind of a person i was like outside of the interviews so like after we would like we would literally wake up like 8 a.m have breakfast together like he loved to drink so we would start drinking at like 9 a.m and i got you know fiery and like all that sort of stuff that comes with drinking alcohol and asking like these really crazy questions but he basically just wanted to like see what kind of a person I was like all the time and part of the reason why it was so intense is because like he wouldn't really let me leave so I wasn't allowed to like leave his presence and if I did he had this like Colombian girlfriend this lovely woman Natasha who like if I wanted to go for a walk he would like send Natasha like out with me so that I like could never be alone so there was an element of distrust where like I'm a gringo coming from coming down from the United States even though I'm Irish coming down to Panama where like they have a terrible relationship with gringos just because of their history and you know there's that hurdle to get over right away and then secondly like he you know he is spilling secrets even though he he told me his story like his story still had like incredible amounts of never before heard you know stories and major secrets and and like testimonials essentially about world leaders that like nobody's ever heard so um so yeah it took a while to to sort of get there let's say um but the the tension was just high because of that it was like a pressure cooker like I was constantly being put to the test how did it feel being trapped where you couldn't leave and not be followed it was fucking terrifying I uh I remember on like my third day there I woke up so hungover because like all we did was drink and talk which was great I have I got like dozens if not like well over 100 hours of like great recordings from those conversations but like I mean I woke up day three like covered in sweat like anxiety super high and I literally I was like I was freaking out and and this would have never happened but I like took a picture of myself in the in the bedroom that i was staying in just like looking like complete shit being like okay like if i genuinely don't come back to the u.s after this this is what i looked like when it all went south you know and i was like genuinely like really freaked out but that's sort of like day three like when things were really at its lowest that was when we connected the most that's that's when he sort of he had his light bulb moment like okay this kid's struggling to tell my story like because I quit my job to do well yeah basically I quit my job to do this and to do another project but I was practically homeless I didn't have anywhere to live um I had no money I was like flying down to Panama on other people's dimes that were like sort of funding me during this book process but dude it was like even if I went back to the US I was like I'm gonna be like in my car or like couch surfing so my life was already like pretty low and so I just like sucked it up and then Carlos I think recognized that and then on that trip specifically um we just like really connected and and the conversations flowed easier and he was sort of like okay I know you're really in this like like let's do it like little by little I'm going to give you better secrets and like more in-depth information about the relationship between myself and the dictator Noriega so was it what you were expecting when you went there or did you not have any expectation i uh i was like a blank slate i had like no expectations whatsoever i i took the opportunity because i didn't have anywhere else to go and i just finished writing a book in like a high-risk environment where i was uh in i wrote like a prison book about bloods and crips in california in south central los angeles and to do that i interviewed like some you know really crazy motherfuckers like some some guys who have done some really terrible things so I felt really confident in my ability to interview and extract information from people that have have like know what it's like to murder someone or know what it's like to you know be a con man and and you know and at the very I guess at the the highest end of that spectrum like Carlos was somebody who just had like an incredible story that um that is rooted in the foundation of like criminal activity like I just love the sound of it so I went blank slate didn't know what to think barely spoke Spanish and just like sort of like hoped that everything would work out and then with every introduction or every meeting or every conversation that I would have with like a stakeholder of the story um I just I got more welcomed or like the feelings that I got were like sort of more welcoming my knowledge expanded and then I got I mean I got a few like breaks in terms of like my confidence like I met this central or this American journalist in Central America this guy Richard Coster who he worked for Newsweek based out of DC for a long time um and he's just like one of the most knowledgeable people about Cold War history in Central America and I met with the guy and like he sort of just gave me his good graces and he gave me some so much information and and just like day by day it got easier um even though like the risk was sort of like looming over the entire time like my parents were calling me every day being like where are you like share your location like what do you mean you're seven hours outside of like panama city like on at some rural beach house where like you won't have service for three days like that's literally what it was like so it was scary but i kind of just like i kind of just like like the only way out is through you know i just gotta get through it let's go back to the first question though how is he not evil being the right-hand man of a dictator i think like it's the word evil there is obviously it's it's really strong um and i think that a lot of his actions were evil but i think that i think that people live in and like this isn't my own thought that i conjured up but it's something that i've come to believe over time just from interviewing all these different kinds of people that I think people live in different realities I don't think there's one reality I think there are multiple different realities like you and I live in a different reality and when you converge those two realities there's going to be like differences you know what I mean and when people find differences in in one another sometimes that sort of escalates to violence or things of that nature I think that with Carlos I think he was so convicted in his beliefs while he was the right-hand man of noriega that like murdering someone for the cause was the right thing to do in his head where like you and i would hear that and we'd be like no bro that's straight up murder like that's you know that's a that's a sin like you can't do that and i think we're in the right there but carlos likely would have never thought that he was in the wrong for doing that because he was a little bit he was like machiavellian in a way like the and justifies the means, like everything everything is sort of done for a reason and a lot of Carlos' reasoning for doing these horrible things, these evil things were for like you know, essentially for him and Noriega or their regime to remain in power, so How does that make him not evil though?

11:39I don't know, I guess like would you say like Barack Obama's an evil person? Oh How many bombs did he drop on Syria? Or how many bombs were dropped on Syria while he was president of the US? I wouldn't describe Obama as an evil person. I guess what's interesting is they're defending their homeland, but a dictatorship is kind of being cruel to their homeland. And so I understand where you're coming at here, but murder is murder. Totally. And murdering your family is pretty brutal and evil, I would consider, no matter the intent behind it and the programming and the cause. I struggle to see how someone that is doing harm to their own team as something that's not evil.

12:41listen I think it's absolutely like the actions are evil my frame of thought is more like anybody is capable of like doing evil things if that makes them an evil person which you know there's a lot of merit to that then yeah you can absolutely label that like you could label Carlos as an evil person no problem but I am not labeling Carlos an evil person Do you think it's because you have more context on who he is? Absolutely, yeah. Was he an evil person before you met him? I think he did terrible things, but I know what you're getting at. I absolutely have bias. I wrote two-thirds of the book from his perspective.

13:23I had to get into his shoes, and to be able to do that, you can't have any prejudice against your characters. It's a big thing in writing. You can't judge your characters for their actions. So, I mean, hell yeah, Carlos did terrible things, you know most of which I I still don't really know about he never would have divulged that information Carlos's own children even said to me and a couple other partners in my project that you know there's no way he told me like all of the crazy things that he did like all the terrible things because going back to what I said earlier like his motivation for this book was to have a legacy to sort of you know when after he dies um that his like life and his life story will live on like you know in memory or whatever and uh and so there's that's inherently wrong too you know what i mean because he's embellishing facts like i can't trust that story so what i did was i tried to back up what he said by hunting down documentation which i ultimately did do um but when it comes to like very specific incidents of killing other people like he was open about a lot of it and I absolutely do think that those are like evil acts but um I just don't think it's as it's as black as black and white as like someone's like good or evil I think there's a little bit more of a spectrum but let's just say Carlos teeters in the evil on the evil side of that spectrum for sure he was capable like sociopathic capable of compartmentalizing parts of himself like being a different person around other kinds of people like you know those are like manip those are like manipulative traits of his character which is like evil you know you're like deceiving someone else and and he was capable of doing all that stuff but i you know i like i'm really open about it like i really came to like like the guy and i care for the guy like i lived with him i met all his family it's weird how you can see like so much normality in the life of someone who has lived like such a larger than life life like carlos owned a restaurant with fidel castro like he sat in boardrooms where major political decisions were being made in the cold war in central america and then i'm sitting in his living room and his kids are like joking around and pulling out like family photos being like this is when we went fishing at the lake when we were 11 years old and that same year if you google it and like just even or ask chat gpt or whatever and say you know list all the bad things done in panama in 1984 like it will give you like a very detailed list of like political opposition that were excommunicated people that were assassinated like civilians that were shot down like protesting in the streets you know you can't justify any of those actions, but the reason why I think Carlos' story matters is because the world has only really been told one version of this sort of whole story when it comes to Panama and Noriega and ultimately the US invasion of Panama in 1989, but the story that they tell is that, you know, evil dictator has a stranglehold over his nation, he needs to be taken out of his throne because he's like a he's a threat to like national security all of that has merit to merit to it but what nobody ever talks about is that for literally decades the cia and dea and the u.s government were like best friends with these guys they were using them um and yeah both parties were benefiting but i like to describe it as when the u.s needed their trash taken out in latin america they would call noriega and like so carlos was a part of that sort of little squad So the Americans would call and they'd be like, we have a problem with Castro in Cuba.

17:14Like, let's say Castro's taken 12 of our men hostage, 12 CIA guys hostage. Like, we need you to go figure that out. And they would do it, you know, and they would do it mostly on behalf of the American interests. So why did they do it? They, you know, everybody sort of that I spoke to seemed to have their own different kind of motivations. like Carlos his his motivation throughout this time was to remain loyal to Manuel Noriega by any means necessary so he really truly devoted his life to protect the dictator he just like that he was he was fired up by it like anything that could potentially happen to Noriega like Carlos always wanted to be several steps ahead um Noriega's motivation throughout all this I think was a little bit more sinister and like narcissistic you know he had this massive inflated ego like he he really thrived on that power and he thrived on power as so many leaders do he thrived on power like in these really big settings like in the masses but he would thrive on power and like these really small settings too so he loved he loved like being one-on-one in like a negotiation and just like really belittling belittling the guy and like attacking him and just using these really terrible manipulative techniques to get what he wanted, which ultimately was just power and influence, which is why he could have never remained in that throne.

18:43But a guy like him should have never been in that position anyway, which it's kind of an interesting thought. He was put there by the US government and the CIA, but he was this rabid dog this whole time you know how does a dictatorship form it you know there's a lot of uh there's a lot of sort of like repetitive or like cyclical aspects to this like if you look around the world and you see that usually a coup there's like a like a political party or like a family or whatever in power and then a coup usually starts up a coup d 'etat what's a coup d 'etat a coup d 'etat is basically when there's like when like rebels rise up against the government and try to like overthrow the government so um like um like a like an example of a coup d 'etat in iran in the 1950s uh in 1953 there was like a coup d 'etat against the like the family that was running iran and it all had to do with the oil so the rebels were like we are giving away all our oil to britain and to the US.

19:52They're the ones that are profiting from this, not us. We want to take control over our government so that we can control the oil. And so a coup started. But what usually happens is America usually backs one side, the American-friendly side, and then Russia backs the other side. So it's like a proxy war. And so when a dictatorship happens is, let's say those rebels um let's say those rebels are being backed by the like the cia and they overthrow their government and those rebels now become the government the the political power that's that's leading the nation they the u.s is basically like or the cia is basically like okay you know we help we scratched your back now scratch ours so like let's say in the case of a country with a lot of oil the rebels take over the government the rebels are pro-america or like you know they're they claim to be pro-america because they've been taking money and weapons from the cia typically when that happens it's a dictatorship right it's like if it's a military overthrow of a country usually the military strong arm like the general becomes the dictator like noriega did and then the US just or like the CIA especially during the Cold War just squeezed everything they could out of those nations that yeah.

21:18So who was the government before in Panama before it became a dictatorship? It's a good question so there were there were two like main dictators in panama uh during the cold war so noriega was from 1983 to 1989 but from 1968 really 1969 to 1981 this guy omar tarijos was the dictator now when he when the coup d 'etat happened in 1968 in panama that's ultimately saw omar tarijos become the dictator it was like a really complex one because there were two successors from the rebels one was a guy boris martinez who was like the americans pick basically and then the other guy was omar tarijos who was a socialist who sort of his ideologies leaned more in the direction of like fidel castro and like you know communism um so when when you know so the the dust settled from that coup omar tarijos edged out the americans candidate so the americans had to deal with this guy who was like a socialist um in panama and they didn't really want to do that but they had no choice because the people really loved omar tarijos and he was like even like to this day like if you bring up his name in panama they're like yeah we know he was a dictator but like we liked him you know he was sort of like how like hugo chavez in venezuela like when when he first came into power as like a socialist dictator you know the poor people of the country like really loved him.

22:53It's sort of like a cyclical thing that happens all over the world, but Omar Tarihaz didn't really want to serve American interests his whole life, or especially his whole career as a leader. So in 1977, he negotiates the Panama Canal Treaty with President Jimmy Carter of the US. And what that essentially meant was that the Panama Canal would no longer belong to the United States, it would now belong to Panama. And the reason why that became a problem was because the Panama Canal generates so much money. I think like five to seven percent of the world's trade passes through it. So just incredible amounts of money just from taxes and tariffs and stuff like that.

23:37So Torrijos does this really huge thing for Panama, for his nation and for their independence and basically like for their future and then in 1981 he mysteriously dies in a plane crash uh it's and it's pretty mysterious because he the plane like flew into the side of a mountain called cero marta and uh carlos claimed that he because nobody believes it right like even like young kids in panama it's like a conspiracy but um you know i met up with this journalist in panama who said that there were eyewitness reports of like the plane exploding in midair i spoke to an air traffic controller who like used to be like an army guy and his theory was that um these like sort of uh beacons were moved that like essentially they operated as almost like a sonar for the plane so in periods of like you know fog or or like like at times where like you can't really see that far ahead like from the cockpit you like rely on these beacons and this guy claimed that you know he acknowledged that somebody moved one of these beacons like in the mountain range and the plane didn't know that the mountain was there and just like flew into it but either way all these conspiracies come back to Manuel Noriega who ultimately becomes the dictator like directly afterwards and a lot of people think that the CIA and the US government like paid Noriega to take out Omar Torrijos to to pop him or to like you know kill him while he was on the plane or whatever and uh i think there's a lot of merit to that because if you look at the way like these these like coups and these like military overthrows or you know a transition in regimes usually like usually the dictator like dies or like is assassinated you know what i mean and and the outcome of that is always someone else comes into that position who is now the point of contact for for like the u.s government so in in this case, Omar Torrijos hadn't really been a friend of the US since he came to power in 1969 because he was a socialist who believed Fidel Castro was correct and the US government wasn't.

25:46Noriega, on the other hand, was like, he was like, whatever you ask me to do, like, I'll do it. So the theory and like what I believe and what, you know, Carlos kind of told me but was like really hesitant was that this transition was because the US were like, okay, let's take this guy out so that you can sit in the throne manuel and now when we need to ask you guys for favors when we need you to take our trash out we're going to come directly to you and we won't have we won't have to worry about tarijos or this guy in the middle to to say no to us why didn't the u.s just take over panama you know i i guess like they absolutely could um and i'm not like an economist by any means but i do know that when you like when you swallow up like a new nation like you're taking on all their debt and like you're taking on all of their issues so it probably just wasn't worth it but panama like if you go there it's like obviously you're in a central american nation like visually you know you're not in the u.s but they use the u.s dollar like panama city literally looks like miami it's like high rises like on the water um it's like a lot of things are really muddled off of the u.s so in a way it's like the u.s has this territory that they don't have to call like part of the u.s they don't have to like worry about any of their problems but they can benefit from all of like the good things that that come out of that country which in this case in panama's cases the panama canal the banking system there which is like people call it like the switzerland of the americas it's just like for a long time not really anymore but it was very like loose so a lot of people could like launder money there um and then like natural resources.

27:28There have been like a lot of issues recently in Panama where like mining companies are like bribing the Panama government to, you know, excavate in like these really sort of like, like these geologically important areas of the nation that are just like fucking up natural wildlife and stuff like that. So, you know, people take advantage of like this third world nation all the time. um so norag uh manuel uh noriega noriega noriega yeah so he passed away in 2015 uh you were saying i think 2017 yeah uh what happens to the country or to panama when the dictator who's running the place dies so uh he hadn't been the dictator for god like nearly 30 years at that point right so how does how does someone get kicked out of the dictator and what happened 30 years prior so in this case uh the the u.s invaded panama in 1989 they sent like 27 000 troops to panama with the intention of extracting manuel noriega noriega had been indicted in 1988 by the u.s government which essentially just means like he was accused of money laundering, drug trafficking, and racketeering.

28:51And basically, you know, it was just like the U.S. were just like painting him as like this horrible dictator. Even though he had just been literally the puppet for them for the last several years. Exactly. Yeah. And that's sort of like what a lot of people don't realize about this whole thing. But, you know, they just like turned on him. And then in 1989, the U.S. sends 27 ,000 troops to panama the panama defense forces are like might as well be like security guards compared to like the u.s army like they have like the tanks like they've got the you know the the jets like bombing you know bombing uh these like really poor neighborhoods of panama like there's there's no chance of um of panama even being able to defend themselves but they do this for 10 days noriega is on the run in his own country he seeks shelter in the vatican city embassy in uh in panama i've never visited it but it's like right in the city and u.s army uh surround him for 10 days while they're sort of like doing what they do and in the country and fighting off the the troops or whatever and then after 10 days they they get him out you know noriega gives up they fly him to miami he has a trial for against these charges obviously it's like like a bullshit trial like there's of course he's he's guilty but there actually isn't that much proof like documented proof uh that like sort of showed even though like you know that he's guilty because of so many testimonials from people who were like yeah like i paid him off or he was totally guilty of all these things or like he is responsible for this murder or whatever but the you know uh the prosecution like really just like didn't have a lot of a lot of like documentation or like actual evidence to like prove it which was really interesting but either way he goes to jail in miami i think for 11 years then the french are like no we want this guy like he's been money laundering and in paris for years like we we want him to be serving time in a prison in paris so they extradite him to paris somehow put him in this like really horrible prison that i can't remember the name of uh and he's there for a few years carlos actually moves to paris uh to like Carlos moves to Paris so that he can like visit Noriega at prison every day and Carlos after being like on top of the world and like this dictatorship regime for like you know at least 15 years Carlos is doing well in both regimes he's now a busboy in Paris at cleaning tables so that he can go see Noriega like after his shifts and see him every day in prison then in 2011 Panama are finally like okay we want him here like we want noriega to die in one of our prisons noriega comes back carlos moves back to panama with him uh noriega dies like six years later from uh like a botched surgery he had like they said that he had a well he's sorry he did have a tumor i think it turned out to be benign but like he had like a brain hemorrhage during the surgery and like tipped him over the edge and he died like in like a hospital in panama in 2017 but the majority of the country were like rejoiced you know they were like you know he's dead like the wicked witch of the west is dead you know what i mean like he he was like this villainous figure for so many people there and i think rightly so there's so much merit to that but when carlos tells this story he's like my best friend of 50 years like is dead you know what i mean like he was like i was in the room when he died like i would have like given my own life for manuel to be able to spend like 10 more years alive on this earth like he really was like i were like i got the impression that carlos wished he had died protecting noriega why was carlos so loyal they they had like uh for they met because they had a relation or well carlos cousin married noriega that's how they met um but noriega like really altered the course of carlos's life from a very young age like carlos grew up in this province called chirokee in panama like it's not rich it's not super poor but carlos like didn't grow up with a lot of money so at a young age he really didn't have a lot of direction you know i i understand that his parents were hard-working people and you know they did their best or whatever i i didn't hear any negative stories but carlos was this kid who like fought he gambled, loved cockfighting, like, he would, like, have, like, knife fights with kids in the streets, like, when he was, like, a teenager, like, he was a crazy motherfucker, but Noriega was, at this stage, like, a very, I guess, promising student for the U.S.

33:34military and for the National Guard in Panama, like, he was a young guy, but everybody knew him, he was top of his class in the Trios Military academy in in peru which is like it's like a really it's an infamous um military school where like the cia pick a lot of like like hand select a lot of people out of there to ultimately become like assets for the u.s government for the cia noriega was hand selected as like a teenager they were like you know this guy is you know intellectually bright like physically like he was what he was he was a super small guy um but he he was like very compliant like a very good soldier and so noriega takes carlos under his wing carlos is very much like in awe of this guy like being so successful at such a young age and carlos like never knew anybody successful so if noriega told him to do something carlos would do it because ultimately carlos wanted to sort of be along for the ride with noriega so it was in carlos's best interest to sort of just do whatever noriega did and and i think that um that loyalty was is a mix of like delusion and also i think he um what's the word i'm looking for he carlos shoots from the hip like he's very you know his gut always leads the way so if he unless he has like a reason not to trust somebody his first instinct to sort of to give you a chance and I think Noriega just proved to him at such a young age that like he was always sort of going to have his back to my knowledge he always did that Carlos was like if you know if you have my back like I will literally take a bullet for you so I think the relationship is hard to to sum up but um but they just like they were they acted like brothers you know what what are some of the key lessons that you learned from Carlos with your time with him that you've applied in life and what are some takeaways that have changed the way you show up in the world I think it's a great question and like I uh reflect upon like this whole thing all the time dude like it's been two years I it just like it changed everything for me it changed the way that I see the world but um I what I took from Carlos was that I need to have more conviction in what I say and what I do and what I believe like I think that something that I always struggled with and had like very little self-confidence with was like are my opinions valid or like is the way that I feel about this or is the way that I'm thinking about this the right way to think like will others understand this and will they like accept me for it so that's a you know that's just like me being like a little neurotic or or whatever insecure but with Carlos I always like I had to be convicted in every question that I asked him if I contested him on something I had to be convicted and I've noticed that when I'm just like applying that to my own everyday life if I just like if I'm more convicted in what I want and what I say and just being more sure of myself and more certain about what I'm saying people just take me a lot more seriously and there are less roadblocks both externally and internally for me when I'm trying to get something done so yeah Carlos basically like in a way you could just say like have balls, have a pair of balls, like do what you believe, believe what you do.

36:59Why do you think you lacked conviction and confidence before that? I don't know. I think, uh, I was always just like, I was a super shy kid as a, as like a teenager in school. Um, like luckily I was never bullied or anything like that. I was just always like really quiet. I always just sort of thought that, um, like nobody really wanted to hear what I had to say and uh and so I just didn't say anything but then that almost opened the door to like writing for me it was like a way of expression so when I was like 18 I started uh sort of doing creative writing in my free time I started out writing like screenplays for film and then that led into the books but as I continued to to write and like as I you know finished my first book and finished my second and my third, I sort of started noticing that I was almost stagnant in the way that I was living because I wasn't putting myself out there and doing what I truly wanted to do and trying to grow in the way that I wanted to grow.

38:02So I really just, I tried to use the books as a way to justify everything. I'd be like, I just need to understand different types of people better. If I'm going to write you know 12 different characters in this book in this book with 12 different realities and 12 different ways of seeing the world like I have to like really go out there and and like meet people who think like this so doing that and just sort of pushing myself gave me more confidence in what I was doing and then by the time I am with Carlos I'm 27 years old I like I'm in Panama like hardly speak Spanish like really risky like high tension environment I just I just naturally develop more confidence in like what I really wanted to do and I just had more conviction and in my decisions um just because I really just did put myself out there and this was like for me the ultimate putting myself out there moment because I literally I was out there you know was it isolating growing up being you know quiet and feeling like you needed to silence your thoughts because no one would respect them yeah definitely i uh if it weren't for my dad i literally i like i would have just stayed in my house like writing or watching movies like the whole time i would have really been a loner but um from a very young age he pushed me to play like team sports so it was big like soccer guy and rugby and uh that's how i got all my friends you know i just like played sports and I showed up practiced three times a week and then you know a match on the weekends and it just um it made it easier for me to to sort of not worry about like putting myself out there because I had like these schedule things that I had to show up to and my dad was like the accountability for me there like if I didn't show up he'd be he'd be like pissed you know but what I really always just wanted to do was just be alone like just to especially when I started writing like when I was 18 I was sort of coming out of my awkward phase like a little bit then but um I just really truly wanted to be alone and just like writing and being in my own head and like living in fairyland like creating all these little stories like I just absolutely love it but you know that it just like that there's no longevity to that like you gotta if you want to be a good writer like you gotta experience the world so I just learned that thankfully after you know writing a couple books and growing up a little bit and um and I just yeah like I said I just like put myself out there, but totally like, if you want to be a writer, like if you want this career to work, like you got to get used to being alone, like 90 % of the time.

40:39You just have to. When did you move to America? I moved to America when I was 19. What did that look like? It was, so it was, it was easy for me because I, I was born in the States and I was raised in Ireland. But I like, my dad would work in the US and he would almost like commute between Dublin and Boston quite a bit. Um, his, like his father, like my grandfather was like sick, uh, when I was like five years old and my dad said, okay, we're all going to go back to Ireland and like sort of be where, be there with him while he's passing. And we just sort of stayed. And so I, I did all my schooling in Ireland, but I also spent a lot of time like on holidays in the US and basically was raised in like two different places so by the time I come to the US when I'm 19 I'm playing soccer at college the college called Northeastern I've got like my own built-in friends like right away just kids on the team makes it really easy um I was just like hyped up like you know the way like obviously the three of us here are like all you know all lived in live in different countries and we're all like in the US as like young lads like there's like a really exciting feeling about coming to the US especially a big city like LA.

41:57I used to go to Boston most of the time, but whenever I go to New York or Miami or something like that, it's electric. There's just something so exciting about it that you just don't guess, like in Ireland or England or wherever you're from. The US is so unique. So it was a great feeling moving. So where did times get low? Because you mentioned your time in LA before going to Panama, you were filming a documentary with Crips and Bloods and sleeping in your car. go back to those times and how they were for you yeah man they were tough I uh so I the Crips and the Bloods like that that book um I quit working full-time to write us so I had like zero income I was relying off like very little savings I had an apartment with a couple guys for like four more months when I started that project so my goal was to get the book the prison book finished in three months and then I would take one month to like find work so I could continue to pay rent finished the book in three months released it and then like a week after that I get the call about Panama so I have a decision to make do I want to go back working full-time and be able to like pay rent and live here or do I say yes to this opportunity in Panama like with the their former dictator's regime and like everyone's speaking Spanish and like basically like immediately it was like this massive mountain to overcome but i said yes to it because i believed that was the right thing for me to do my gut just told me so i yeah i mean i like i had to sacrifice like not making any money for a few months like when i really got into the panama stuff and then after like three months of being involved in the project then i you know i'm here in la i'm not in panama anymore where everything's sort of paid for um couch surfing i'm sleeping in my car and then um this irish woman her name is miriam she's like a very good family friend of ours lets me sleep in her like pool house and her and her husband's pool house and i'm like sleeping with their dogs and stuff like that and there's like no ac and like it actually was like a really lovely little sort of space but i was like in debt going into debt like broke as hell you know living in someone else's house basically like with their dogs um waking up every day at like 6 a.m going getting into my car going somewhere to like eat ice icy like rotisserie chicken like in my car like ralph's rotisserie chicken like in the car park like just really like lonely shit but it was all just it was all just to like get the book done and and to just like literally just like put everything that I had into telling like the best possible story so like yeah my life was absolutely terrible like I couldn't take girls on dates I had no no money like my friends were off like doing you know doing things like Friday through Sunday you know they worked like nine to five jobs like they were having fun um but I just like I just couldn't relate to anybody during that time so it was you know psychologically like really tough but I just put on my blinders and literally I was like your life is going to be a lot like your life is going to get a lot better the more time you put into this so just put in all the time you need get this done as quick as possible the right way and by the time it's all over like you won't be sleeping on your friend's couches or you won't be in your car or you won't be sleeping with the dogs in uh in a pool house but you know i look back on that time and i'm like yeah that was really tough but like i'm so happy that i did it because I'm not really afraid of like going backwards anymore like I'm I'm not afraid I'm like if if god forbid like if I ever find myself in a situation where I'm like homeless again I like kind of know what to do to get myself out of it because I've I've already done it if that makes sense it's like it's quite comforting so um so yeah dude I mean the the tough times aren't aren't over that's for sure like it's there's always going to be tough times but that like sort of uh taking the leap of faith and like doing something creative like i just like jumped right into the deep end and i was like drowning for a little bit but like now now i've got my little flow ease and i i feel fine you know yeah you're kind of tying yourself to a future outcome in the moment to keep you going because without that you're just alone in a car eating or a tissue that is not just like the saddest image you've ever seen like it's it was so sad it was so sad dude.

46:27But yeah, I wouldn't trade it for Atten. It just put hair on my chest. So you then went to this place called Panama and you referenced to me and you've said it before that Panama is a third world country with a golden crown. What's the golden crown? Golden crown is the canal and the banking system. So I know I've already sort of touched on the canal. I'm no economist. I'm not a banking expert, but the canal just generates a crap load of money for for panama um just through taxes and tariffs and like all that sort of stuff and even just jobs for for panamanians the banking system is like there is so much wealth in panama like in the one percent like the disparity is is insane so the golden crown like is that one percent but most of that is comprised of like americans who have sort of taken advantage of like a very liberal banking system or a lot of them are back in the day they were like literal drug lords that would like launder their money in uh in panama because the banking system was so liberal but from the outside like you like the irs or whatever couldn't look into a panamanian bank account and be like oh you know you're laundering money or like you're this is fraud and you you know you claim this and your taxes in the u.s but you have all this money here in this foreign nation And so it was really just a way for people to keep a lot of money safe and not be taxed on it.

47:54And so the 1 % naturally just continues to get richer. They really just drain sort of all of those resources for themselves and all of that money. And the other 99 % is living in like a literal third world country. So if Panama is bringing in 5 % to 7 % of the trade through the canal, my guess would be that 5 % to 7 % of the trade is more valuable than the upkeep of the city. Why doesn't the US take over Panama? because because like my understanding is if they've got the most valuable transport with trade coming through america and going through the panama canal surely it'd be valuable enough for the u.s to just go no we're gonna take that and if the city's booming and it kind of looks like miami there's big high rises on the water there's clearly money there what's stopping the u.s do you know um like i do know i mean the panama canal treaty of 1977 like it it basically says that uh the u.s is not allowed to have like american troops on in the canal zone so like basically they're are like u.s or they're where on our u.s military bases like in panama it's like the southern command for the u.s army just where it's also uh position is just like extremely be strategic for for the u.s army so the the u.s like there's always like the threat for panamanians that the u.s like if they really wanted to could just like take all their soldiers from those military bases and like invade the nation like they absolutely could do that i think they don't want to take on the burden like of you know the debt of the nation or like i said i'm not an economist but an economist but um there's a lot of like bs that comes with like swallowing up like a new nation so i just don't think they are really interested in doing it but it's interesting that you ask that because the canal is something that the u.s does want and trump has been very like vocal about it um the reason why he's been vocal is because um you know the u.s is obviously in And there's a lot of tension with China in terms of spread of influence all over the world.

50:15The US is worried that China is spreading their influence and taking up ground and resources that the US feels that they have a right to have. In Panama, there were these two Chinese companies that bought up the ports on either side of the canal. I'm not sure when they did it, but they owned either side of the canal, basically. So the threat for the US is that the Chinese could potentially delay American shipments passing through the canal. They could screw with America, basically, by having these two strategic points and just squeezing the Americans. How did China acquire the ports? They just bought them.

51:00Yeah, they were just available for purchase. I actually really don't know how that is even allowed, but they bought them. And so Trump was saying that this is like a huge threat to the US because the Chinese could, you know, it's like a lot of our trade passes through the Panama Canal. Like we can't have our enemy controlling what passes through this water, this very important waterway. so what happened was black rock the company which i really i can't i don't can't answer too many questions about because i really don't know that much but extremely wealthy american company um black rock ended up buying the ports off of the chinese so now the ports are owned by like an american company now so america has like more power over the panama canal and and yeah so i mean nothing is really stopping the u.s from just putting troops there and taking it back but it just on the one hand it goes against the treaty that was signed like the peace treaty that was signed 50 years ago but then on the other hand like if they do do that they got to deal with the consequences which is like okay you're essentially taking on like a new nation you know like how much money are you gonna uh delegate to like feeding these people and to keeping up like the upkeep of like the infrastructure and like you got to worry about like just like a bunch of bullshit that they probably don't want to worry about when all they really care about is the Panama Canal.

52:24Is there any threats for the Panama Canal globally? Is there any things that could really impact global trade and impact everyday people going through their days? I would say, I would say yeah. I mean, do you remember when that, uh, that ship got stuck in the Suez Canal in Egypt a few years ago. It was like a cargo ship, and basically it got stuck in the Suez Canal in Egypt, which connects the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean or whatever it is, so that boats don't have to go around the Horn of Africa and go the long way. But this ship got stuck and just blocked up all the trade. Boats couldn't pass through the canal, and it completely fucked up world supply chain for weeks.

53:13Did it purposely get stuck? I don't know. That's actually a great question. And I think no matter, like Elliot and I were talking about this too, you should just always question everything, I think. People love to be conspiracy theorists and put on their little tinfoil hat and say that aliens built the pyramids and all that, no matter what you believe. But I think it's always important to be like, why are people asking this question? Why was this the outcome? How did this happen? And so it's a fair question, although, you know, the pilot or the ship captain or whatever you call them probably just made like a really stupid mistake.

53:52And like literally had like the worst day of work ever. Yeah, I guess some days, sometimes we want to steer something however we can to make the story better. Whereas it could have just been something so simple. I bet it was just something really silly that the guy just really regrets doing, obviously, and he just completely screwed up. But it absolutely affects world supply chain totally. There's an interesting fact that in the 1940s, when Pearl Harbor happened, that brought the US into World War II, the Japanese originally wanted to bomb the Panama Canal. because it was actually if they if the japanese screwed up the panama canal and screwed up like the trade passing through it would have been like a way bigger pain in the ass for the u.s military because then they would have to get like they couldn't like get their ships up through the canal like they would have to take them all the way down through like argentina and then like all the way back up like the ones that were sort of like in the pacific or like in yeah like in the pacific or like by like uh the western like latin uh countries so it would have been like a huge pain in the ass but the japanese the only reason why they didn't do it was just because it was too far away they would have had to get their boats close enough that they're like uh these like float plane bombers like the kind of planes that like land on the sea that they could take off close enough and then just drop bombs on the panama canal and they estimated that just trade would have been like super screwed up for the u.s for like three months but three months in a war is like such a long time it just really uh it's it just like it really affects like america so much that like they just have such an interest in keeping it running smoothly and like you know to do that they need to have control over it so panama like negotiating that treaty in 1977 is like a massive deal for both parties because panama now has like this huge responsibility to make sure that it, you know, it runs smoothly.

55:52And then the U.S. is sort of now, like, always looking over Panama's shoulder being like, you know, are you good? Like, are there any risks? Like, are there any threats, like, being posed to us right now? And there's still, like, a huge interest there. After spending so much time with Carlos and understanding all of these stories, like, you have over 200 documents from the CIA and the DEA. how's your perception relationship thoughts feelings on the u.s government and the people in power and the i guess intention they have behind their decisions how do you feel about about all of that um i think like i would say that after doing this like my distrust of government has increased um why so i just think that like there's like there's just we we just really don't know what's going on like as everyday civilians like we don't know what's going on because we're not supposed to know what's going on like if the american people were truly if their sort of opinion or if they if if what they wanted was truly taken into consideration like it would just be a nightmare for any sort of decisions to be made at like these really high levels so what a lot of this ultimately comes down to is individual personalities so you know you've got these guys making these decisions in foreign policy that are going to have like a ripple effect that's going to affect like millions of people all around the world like at the end of the day at the end of the day they're working off either like statistics or they're working off like their gut and like most times these like huge decisions are made at a table like you and like we're talking like we are right now like you and I are sitting down at the table and just like working it out you know so I I would say like my distrust my distrust like is something that I think everybody should have I don't think anybody should like fully trust their government they don't always have they don't no matter what they're not going to have like your best interest in mind they have the nation's best interest in mind, which is fine.

58:03I'm just sounding like an individualist, which, you know, I kind of am, like, I like that. But that also being said, you know, I think that at the end of the day, like, those really high-level decisions are just, they're made by, like, human beings. People can make the wrong decisions. It all just comes down to motivation, which in government, like, motivation always just seems to circle back to money. You know what I mean it's never like usually it's never about like civil rights or you know the safety of like our people um i think at the end of the day it just comes down to like what's going to generate the government the most amount of money so that we can keep this country running keep the lights on so that's what i think i mean i sound kind of cynical when i say it a little bit and then i probably also sound like like a realist and in other opinions that i have but my my brain like I just have a tough time.

58:58I just don't think there's one answer for everything. I just think decisions and personalities are fluid and ever-changing. And I think people in politics naturally just have to be on their toes. And I just don't trust that somebody's motivation is always the right one. I think people act on their own self-interest quite a bit. Yeah. So maybe their intention isn't, they don't really care about the people. maybe they don't even care about the nation they just care about themselves they care about number one themselves but that's just human nature I wonder if we tie in this evil piece and you brought up BlackRock and these big major companies that are probably making a lot of the decisions behind closed doors I wonder who the Manuel like equivalent is now like who's the puppets of the US right now because like BlackRock aren't just buying the ports for no reason they're buying it for power yeah right totally dude so I wonder like who actually is making the decisions and like I'm fascinated by I'm fascinated by the the actual reasoning and the messaging behind different things.

1:00:24Like why a certain message is being pushed and who's actually making that message be pushed. And, you know, I just wonder about the corruption and what the intentions actually are behind all of these things. I think it's more important than ever to actually question everything and get to the bottom of why you think and kind of why things are going the way they are going. And if they serve you, great, onboard it. If you don't think they do, have the courage to not onboard it and disregard it. Because I think more than ever, we are getting more and more silenced because we're getting told something is true.

1:01:04And regardless of whether we feel it's true or not, we're scared to say we don't think it's true because we don't want to be left out and X, Y, and Z. And I feel like there actually is potentially, and call this cynical, but potentially there's a whole lot more corruption than maybe we think. And there's, and we're just blinding ourselves and acting dumb. Like it's not actually happening. You see so much stuff going on and you go, that can't be right. That's not true. Like surely people aren't taking that as gospel. Surely they're questioning that. Surely they aren't throwing common sense out the door.

1:01:39Do you think there is a lot of corruption going on? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think, uh, it seems to be like quite prominent i i think it's funny because i was just having like a like a discourse about this with someone like last week and um and they were like could you imagine if social media existed around the time of like the jfk assassination like what people would be saying on twitter about it like it you know what i mean like it's it is like i is social media like shaping our the way that we see the world and our governments that much more than i guess the way like people thought before social media was was a thing i i do think so i think that um i think like herd mentality is like a real thing i think that i think i'm actually taking this from uh crap men in black the movie but uh tommy lee jones has like this great like quote in the movie he tells Will Smith's character he's like you know Will Smith's like yeah like why don't we tell the world that like aliens exist and that we're like we're our planet is like being shared with like all these other all these other like life forms and um and Tommy Lee Jones says because people are like too panicky he's like a single person is smart but people are dumb and obviously that's in like a comedy movie from the 1990s but it's so true like like you speak you can have like such a good conversation and like a debate with someone like one-on-one but as soon as like audience comes into into the situation and and you're like what you're saying is to like win over an audience like to win over the most amount of people like just like things change you know what i mean like things change when there are that many voices in a room and i think like you go online and you see people like expressing their distrust for like the current administration and no matter what there's like merit to what people on the ground floor of the country are saying because they're the ones experiencing it but you know when you see somebody like posting about like the national guard being in portland or whatever and and like a liberal person on twitter will post about it and be like this is disgusting this is terrible and then the comments are suddenly are flooded with like republicans being like no you're just like a snowflake or like whatever and like whatever people say and i just think that like you get in your your own little echo chambers online you believe what you want to believe but at the end of the day like none of that shit's affecting like what the government actually does so hell yeah like there's no matter what there's going to be corruption in government um but i think that like we just don't know the half of it i wonder if it's not affecting what's being made the decisions that are being made in government maybe that's true but maybe perhaps the government are influencing what's being shown on the screen so that then they can indirectly influence what's happening in the government dude 100 like have you seen i like i really don't know too much about this but didn't like israel israel are now like sponsoring uh influencers on tiktok to like push pro-israeli propaganda and like it but uh like israel's being like very open about it they're saying like explicitly like we are doing this to get like our message out there so that people can you know understand like how we're feeling and like what we believe and like whatever so hell yeah like governments are putting so much so much money and time and resources into social media because like it's so powerful like yeah but that's public stuff i wonder what's going on behind closed doors.

1:05:24What do you mean by that? Like, the different propaganda, the different messaging that gets promoted online, and the intent behind the messaging and why it's being presented that way. Like, I wonder if it's actually because they believe the thing, or if they're just trying to influence a nation in a particular way to get what they want. Yeah. And, uh, I don't know, man. I don't know all the answers here, but I think the emphasis here is how do we just not take anything as gospel? Anything. And just think. Use a level of thought, a level of introspection, and a level of awareness, and a level of common sense with everything that we're presented with online.

1:06:14yeah like like like if something's red and you can see it to be red but then someone tells you it's blue surely you're gonna still think it's fucking red but i feel like what's happening online is something's red we know it's red someone's telling us it's blue and we just automatically adopt this belief that the fucking red is blue yeah and it's not um it's like we're throwing common sense out the window. Is there anything that you've learned over the last couple of years

1:06:48about insider stuff and through all of these documents that you've gotten that you kind of can't unsee? Maybe was there any beliefs that you've had that you now don't have or was there anything that's been debunked through your findings? Not necessarily, but there's this really cool string of documents that I uncovered that But they're from the CIA, DEA, and Department of Justice. They're like this little bundle about the former, before Noriega, Omar Tarihous, the dictator before him. The U.S. government had arrested Omar Tarihous' brother's bodyguard in New York. And he was smuggling cocaine, I guess, and he got caught.

1:07:35and in these documents between like cia and doj and and basically all within the u.s government they were saying like okay we have leverage over the dictator now like let's like use this against him and they tried to like use it against him like make his life miserable for like eight years or something by trying to pin the um the arrest of like the this bodyguard on the dictator and his brother basically saying like if your bodyguard is narco trafficking then you guys must be too um but like in these documents they explicitly say like we're we're gonna use this against them you know so it's like it's very malicious it's very like it's a it's a it's a it's a power play you know but i think like i was i was a blank slate going in i wouldn't say i was like super naive so like when i read stuff like that i wasn't necessarily surprised and i don't think people are going to be surprised by like the language that was used in those documents and like the motivations that like the u.s government like the doj had or the u.s government and but what i do think is just that like when it's when it's so explicitly said on like a piece of official documentation that's been like kept secret for decades like it just it's just it's proof that the u.s government like lies to itself and to others because why why would they tell the truth all the time you know what i mean it just um i think it would just cause people to go into a frenzy if they if they knew everything that the government was doing all the time like i think unfortunately there's just got there has to be stuff done behind closed doors to get things done sometimes you know and not to say that like in a like even in like a malicious way like you like you got to do this like you got to kill this guy like i actually don't believe in any of that stuff at all like i essentially a pacifist like i don't fight like rarely been in fights like i i really do believe in using your words and peace as much as possible but i think that like there are situations where you know for good and for bad where like you got to do things that the people don't know about do you think that you've uh gotten stronger and more tough and more direct with your time in the last couple of years oh yeah big time i i would like say yes to basically every opportunity like two three years ago if someone wanted to like have like a little screenplay 10 page 15 page like short movie screenplay written up i'll be like hell yeah like i'll do it for free like i'll whatever and i'll I'd spent so much time like doing things to both like, like, you know, increase my skills.