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

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.

Mark Harmon starred as Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS for eighteen seasons and also served as executive producer of the show. In other television work, Mark received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for the critically acclaimed The West Wing and for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Special for Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years. Other credits include Reasonable Doubts, for which he received two Golden Globe nominations; Chicago Hope; From Earth to the Moon; St. Elsewhere; and Moonlighting.

Leon Carroll, Jr., a native of Chicago, Illinois, was a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps, attaining the rank of major. Leon then began a twenty-year career as a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). He served in seven different locations, including tours as a Special Agent Afloat on the USS Ranger(CV-61) and as the Special Agent in Charge of NCIS offices in the Republic of Panama and the Pacific Northwest. Upon retirement from NCIS, Leon was selected to be the technical advisor for the top-rated drama of the same name, holding that position for twenty seasons.