GOING AFTER NORIEGA

SHOOTING THE MOON

The True Story of an American Manhunt Unlike Any Other, Ever

By David Harris - Little, Brown & Co. -- 394pp -- $26.95

In late December, 1989, six soldiers from Operation Just Cause--as the
U.S. invasion of Panama was called--kicked open the door of General
Manuel Noriega's office, hoping to arrest him. Instead, they found a
good deal of cash, assorted pornographic materials and sex toys, a
collection of porcelain frogs, and a framed picture of Adolf Hitler.
There was also a Santeria altar, upon which animal entrails had been
arrayed in hopes of bringing ill fortune to several people listed on
an attached piece of paper. Near the top of the list were the American
prosecutor and Drug Enforcement Agency investigator responsible for
chasing Noriega down--evidence of the high quality of Noriega's
counterintelligence.

Ultimately, of course, Noriega was cornered in the Panama City papal
embassy and flown to Florida, where he remains in federal prison, convicted
of violating the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations statutes.
He is the only world leader ever captured and then brought to trial in
the U.S. for violations of American law committed on his home turf. A three-man
team of U.S. law-enforcement stalwarts managed to accomplish this long
shot against the wishes of their superiors and other highly placed officials
in the U.S. government. Just how they did it forms the central drama of
David Harris' highly readable book, Shooting the Moon: The True Story of
an American Manhunt Unlike Any Other, Ever.

Harris, a 1960s antiwar activist who has made a career as an
investigative reporter and author, uses evocative language that often
reveals his liberal leanings, referring, for example, to a Reagan
Administration official as a "first-rate creep." His sympathies and
gonzo prose style--along with his failure to represent adequately the
"Reaganaut" point of view--may diminish the legitimacy of his book
as a historical document. But for the reader who can put up with
occasional excesses, along with a large amount of detail, the story is
riveting.

It's a tale ripe for the telling. As Harris reports, U.S. involvement
in Central America during the 1980s featured a level of government
corruption matched by few other recent affairs. Guns to arm the
counterrevolutionaries against Nicaragua's Sandinista government were
flown south on airplanes owned by CIA-run "cutout" companies, in
contravention of federal law. Cocaine was the return cargo, bound for
the States courtesy of the Colombian drug cartels. Profits were
laundered in between, in Panama. (These events competed for headlines
with a twin scandal involving gun sales to Iran, money from which also
went to help the Nicaraguan contras.) These criminal activities
weren't just taking place under the eye of the U.S. government: They
were a government creation, and high-ranking officials were dedicated
to protecting the efforts at any cost. The late CIA Director William
J. Casey, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
Elliott Abrams, and National Security Council staffer
Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North together cooked up enough schemes to
entertain conspiracy theorists for years.

The Contra intrigue and the case against Noriega were intertwined,
sharing many of the same shady characters, mysterious airlines, and
illicit banking arrangements. Indeed, Noriega's chief protectors in
Washington were Casey and, initially, Abrams. Harris documents how,
despite Noriega's many vices and a past littered with bodies, he had
been considered a friend of the U.S. who, among other favors, helped
facilitate secret support for the Contras and, interestingly, aided an
early phase of the DEA's drug war.

The initiation of what would become the Noriega investigation dropped
out of the blue--literally--one day in 1985, when a light plane
containing a shipment of smuggled cocaine made a forced landing on a
Florida highway, nearly hitting a DEA agent's car. The pilot and
proprietor of the air brokerage that handled the plane ultimately
became informants, revealing the identity of the plane's owner, a
Panamanian named Floyd Carlton. Carlton, a Noriega henchman, was
apprehended--and Dick Gregorie, first assistant U.S. attorney for the
Southern District of Florida, persuaded Carlton to turn informant. The
author portrays Gregorie as an intrepid crime fighter who had made the
war on drugs his personal jihad. He assigned a hard-working DEA agent
named Steve Grilli to debrief Carlton. It was largely from Carlton's
testimony that the case against Noriega was formed.

Harris chooses to tell much of his story through Grilli, who lived the
Noriega case for a couple of years. Grilli, Gregorie, and Kenny
Kennedy, the agent whose car was almost hit by the drug plane and who
was an integral member of the prosecution team, became victims of the
intense internecine politics of the Noriega takedown. Because these
three men persevered and were successful, against the wishes of their
superiors, their careers were damaged--which clearly outrages the author.

Indeed, Noriega is far from the only villain in this book. Casey is
depicted as a master manipulator. But the real bad guy, according to
Harris, is Abrams, drawn as an arrogant, Machiavellian apparatchik,
happy to do Casey's bidding when it came to using and protecting
Noriega but an ardent Noriega-hunter when the political winds shifted.

The heroes of the story--Gregorie, Grilli, and Kennedy--maintained
their integrity amid the moral swamp. Shooting the Moon captures the
flavor of the time and place. Its story is so wild that it couldn't
have been made up.