Skip to product information
1 of 1

Ghosts of Panama: A Strongman Out of Control, a Murdered Marine, and the Special Agents Caught in the Middle of an Invasion

Publisher: Harper Select

Contributors:

Mark Harmon (Author)

Leon Carroll (Author)

Contributors: Mark Harmon (Author) ; Leon Carroll (Author)

Regular price $18.99 USD
Regular price $19.99 USD Sale price $18.99 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Format
Inventory
In stock

BISAC categories: History -> Military -> Naval

BISAC categories: History -> Wars & Conflicts -> General

BISAC categories: History -> Latin America -> Central America

View full details

Product Description

Panama, 1989. The once warm relationship between United States and Gen. Manuel Noriega has eroded dangerously. Newly elected President George Bush has declared the strongman a drug trafficker and a rigger of elections. Intimidation on the streets is a daily reality for U.S. personnel and their families. The nation is a powder keg.

Naval Investigative Service (NIS) Special Agent Rick Yell has worked the job in Panama since 1986, and lives there with his wife Annya and infant child. Like most NIS agents, he's a civilian with no military rank with a specialty in working criminal cases. The dynamic changes suddenly when Yell inadvertently develops an intelligence source with unparalleled access to the Noriega regime. Now the agent is thrust into a world of spy-versus-spy, of secret meetings and hidden documents.

Yell's source - known as "The Old Man" - warns when Cuban military personnel arrive and identifies anti-American officers within the Panamanian Defense Forces, provides information about an imprisoned CIA asset and helps track Noriega's movements, agitating for the dictator's kidnapping. The reports created by Yell and his NIS colleagues shape the decisions made in Washington D.C., CIA headquarters in Langley and the innermost sanctums of Pentagon.

The powder keg is lit on December 16, 1989, when a young U.S. Marine is gunned down at a checkpoint in Panama City. Yell and his cadre of trusted agents deploy immediately to investigate the killing, and what they determine will decide the fate of two nations. When President Bush hears the details they uncover, he orders an invasion that puts Yell's family, informants and fellow agents directly in harm's way.

Using a blend of research and interviews with the NIS agents who were directly involved, Ghosts of Panama reveals the untold, clandestine story of counterintelligence professionals placed in a pressure cooker assignment of historic proportions.

ISBN-10: 1400254477
ISBN-13: 9781400254477
Author: Harmon, Mark, Carroll, Leon
Publisher: Harper Select

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781400254477

ISBN-10: 1400254477

Publisher: Harper Select

Publish Date: August 26, 2025

On Sale Date: August 26, 2025

Language: English

Pages: 272

Dimensions: 8.9 × 5.9 × 0.8 in

Weight: 0.62 lbs

Product Reviews