Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on Deep Cover. Stephen Kaylish the gentleman's smuggler,
Speaker 1: the guy who orchestrates every single detail of operations. He
Speaker 1: gets arrested. Let's start walking away knowing something's up, and
Speaker 1: I get about. I don't know a quartermall away, not
Speaker 1: even that, and I'm surrounded by fete. Stephen was the
Speaker 1: right hand man of the big Boss, the top guy,
Speaker 1: the guy that Ned Timmins had yet defined. Ned's starr.
Speaker 1: Informant Clinton Shine Anderson tells him that the syndicate's top
Speaker 1: boss was a guy named Lee Rich. Not an outlaw
Speaker 1: biker or a dive bar musician, but more like a
Speaker 1: member of a fancy beach club with a sweet house
Speaker 1: and a big yacht, and for the time being, mister
Speaker 1: beach Club was hiding out down in the Cayman Islands.
Speaker 1: Unbeknownst to Ned, Lee was rattled by Stephen's recent arrest.
Speaker 1: He hadn't just lost a partner, He'd lost the entire
Speaker 1: smuggling arm of his operation, and he wondered what if
Speaker 1: Stevens started talking ratting him out. Lee was also worried
Speaker 1: that the FEDS might be watching him or listening to
Speaker 1: his phone. Calls. What he needed was a counter intelligence expert,
Speaker 1: someone who could sweep his house for bugs reassure him
Speaker 1: that he was safe. This created an opening for Ned.
Speaker 1: He could travel down to the Cayman's with Shine, posing
Speaker 1: as Ed Thomas, the badass biker, an ex military guy
Speaker 1: with special knowledge of modern spycraft. He would also claim
Speaker 1: to be Shine's cousin. That's right, cousin Ed. This would
Speaker 1: be It's big moment, his chance to step in as
Speaker 1: Lee's night and shining armor. But this plan wouldn't be
Speaker 1: easy for Ned to pull off. You see, at the time,
Speaker 1: the FBI typically didn't work internationally, and since the came
Speaker 1: Ins was a British territory Scotland, yard had to be
Speaker 1: looped in. While he waits around for the paperwork to clear,
Speaker 1: Ned rushed to get everything in order. He obtained a
Speaker 1: passport for Ed Thomas, he got debugging equipment and even
Speaker 1: took a crash course on how to use it. We're
Speaker 1: ready to go. We didn't get approval. I've got airline
Speaker 1: tickets and it was the night before, about three o'clock
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. The assistant Special Agent charge calls me
Speaker 1: and he says they just ocayed the project. This is
Speaker 1: like three o'clock and we're supposed to leave at seven
Speaker 1: or eight the next morning. Great, I'm psyched we're gonna go.
Speaker 1: So I go out to check on Shine. He's drunk
Speaker 1: and he had a three wheeler ATV He had flipped
Speaker 1: it and broke his collar bone, and the bone was
Speaker 1: almost through the skin. You could see the pointed edge
Speaker 1: of the bone protruding where it was broken. If I
Speaker 1: tell the bureau he's got a broken shoulder, it's off
Speaker 1: time out. So Ned he's got to tell his bosses
Speaker 1: and risk losing the whole operation. Either that or come
Speaker 1: up with a very last minute plan. Unbeknownst the Bureau,
Speaker 1: I had a friend that was a dodger out there.
Speaker 1: I said, Doc, I've got to take him in the morning.
Speaker 1: I can't tell I got to travel with him. So
Speaker 1: Doc tapes him up the shoulder a broken shoulder, and
Speaker 1: gives me tons of Perkadan. So just to recap here,
Speaker 1: Ned the FBI agent goes to his doctor buddy to
Speaker 1: get some major pain killers for his informant in order
Speaker 1: to go undercover. And we're in country where there was
Speaker 1: no field office and no backup. Just Shine the stars
Speaker 1: are never going to align again for this to go.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I flew him all with a broken shoulder,
Speaker 1: just taped him up and fucking took him. I'm Jake
Speaker 1: Halberd and this is Deep Cover, Episode five, A different
Speaker 1: kind of animal. When Ned and Shine got to the
Speaker 1: kne means looking for this mister beach Club Lee Rich,
Speaker 1: he was nowhere to be found. Lee was apparently off island.
Speaker 1: Ned and Shine started hanging around at a nightclub, a
Speaker 1: place called Look Club that Lee Rich owned. The club
Speaker 1: was right on the beach, place where locals, celebrities, and
Speaker 1: tourists all mingled, sitting around drinking strong dakeries and eating
Speaker 1: Jamaican jerk chicken. And then there was the hostess, the
Speaker 1: one girl always had a parrot on her shoulder. The
Speaker 1: parrot would you say dirty words to anybody that pulled
Speaker 1: up for that parrot would look at some guy in
Speaker 1: go small dick, Small dick. That spent a few days
Speaker 1: there getting to know the regulars. He wanted to learn
Speaker 1: as much as he could, but he couldn't ask any
Speaker 1: questions because well, he didn't want to draw any suspicions.
Speaker 1: As far as he could tell a few of the
Speaker 1: guys seemed to work for Lee, though it's unclear what
Speaker 1: exactly they did for him. To Ned, these guys, they
Speaker 1: seemed a bit like out of work lumberjacks on skid row,
Speaker 1: just biding their time into the next job offer from
Speaker 1: Lee materialized. Lee was handling hundreds and hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. People do a lot for that money. The
Speaker 1: trouble is the nature of the business draws killers. Ned
Speaker 1: says he was pretty much always on guard. You know,
Speaker 1: wherever you were, even if you're at the club, sitting
Speaker 1: at the table, you know, you're watching everybody around you.
Speaker 1: You're watching what's going on. And then one afternoon he's
Speaker 1: hanging out at the club having drinks when some unexpected
Speaker 1: guests arrive and incomes the people from the cruise ship.
Speaker 1: And I look in the line and here's an agent
Speaker 1: that works about two deaths over from me. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: guy named Bob from the Detroit FBI office on his honeymoon,
Speaker 1: an office made of Ned's who didn't know the deal
Speaker 1: that Ned was here not on holiday, but as an
Speaker 1: undercover agent. And his wife is with him, and she's
Speaker 1: in a little tiny bikini and she's a knockout, and
Speaker 1: these guys are all Oakland her and I'm just choking.
Speaker 1: I mean, this isn't going to be good. Because there's
Speaker 1: like six or eight Ali's guys sitting around this table.
Speaker 1: Bob and his wife start heading in Ned's direction. The
Speaker 1: wife comes over and puts her bag on a picnic
Speaker 1: table and then turns around and bends over to do
Speaker 1: something in the bag, right in front of these guys.
Speaker 1: And I mean, the bikini was barely covering anything. In
Speaker 1: that one second, like clockwork, the gaze of every guy
Speaker 1: there shifted to Bob's wife bent over her beach bag,
Speaker 1: except for Bob, who finally sees Ned. And I just
Speaker 1: went to my throat and had the look of death
Speaker 1: on my face. And he caught on right away. I mean,
Speaker 1: he caught in a split second. And so Bob steers
Speaker 1: his wife away and catastrophe is avoided. But after this encounter,
Speaker 1: Ned is really on edge. In his FBI reports from
Speaker 1: the time, he notes that Lee's guys seem to be
Speaker 1: on high alert. One of them keeps telling Ned that
Speaker 1: US law enforcement is putting intense heat on the whole island.
Speaker 1: Ned isn't sure what to make of this. But what
Speaker 1: he does get is that this guy is paranoid, which
Speaker 1: isn't good, right, because that means he's looking for plots
Speaker 1: and conspiracies, and here's Ned basically conspiring against him. The
Speaker 1: stress is unbelievable, the mental stress. You don't sleep, You're
Speaker 1: worried about your daughter getting kicked in any minute. You
Speaker 1: have no weapons down there, You have no backup. And
Speaker 1: if all of a sudden, want of Lee's guys get
Speaker 1: jealous or gets drunked up or coked up and decides
Speaker 1: to go fuck you up, you don't have much to
Speaker 1: defend yourself. There's no backup. You're not gonna really hit
Speaker 1: the radio and call nine one one. You're nine. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to call for help because nobody's coming.
Speaker 1: Ned had little to do other than sit around and
Speaker 1: wait for Lee to show up, but he never does.
Speaker 1: So Ned heads back to the US and then returns
Speaker 1: to the Caymans ten days later, and this time Lee's there.
Speaker 1: His guys tell Ned Lee wants his offices at the
Speaker 1: club swept for bugs. Immediately presto Ned was in business,
Speaker 1: So Ned and Shine they do their sweep. They don't
Speaker 1: find any bugs, and then Finally Ned gets his chance
Speaker 1: to meet Lee face to face. Lee looks like well,
Speaker 1: a guy who owns a beach club, tans, smiling, with
Speaker 1: a mass of brown, curly hair. Think David Hasselhoff on Baywatch,
Speaker 1: only not quite as Ned and Lee. They get on well.
Speaker 1: They grabbed dinner that night at a local Spanish restaurant,
Speaker 1: and the next day Ned sweeps Lee's house for bugs.
Speaker 1: It's also clean. Things are going well. It seems like
Speaker 1: Lee's slowly letting Ned in and Ned he seems to
Speaker 1: almost admire Lee. That's what it sounds like in his
Speaker 1: novel anyway. He was a handsome man, his features strong
Speaker 1: and well formed. Ned knew from shine that women loved him,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't hard to imagine there was quality in Lee.
Speaker 1: He was a wholly different kind of animal. When we
Speaker 1: come back after the break, Ned gets his big chance
Speaker 1: to really know his man of mystery, and so do I.
Speaker 1: When I pay a visit to Lee rich myself and
Speaker 1: we go window shopping for smuggling boats. I track Lee
Speaker 1: reached down a few months ago in a small coastal
Speaker 1: town in Florida. He didn't want to meet at his house,
Speaker 1: so we took a drive. Lee wanted to give me
Speaker 1: a tour of the area. We passed a bunch of
Speaker 1: boat marinas. You see that boat right here, the big
Speaker 1: blue Hall Hunner with the two masts over here on
Speaker 1: the right, straight straight down the dot. That's an old
Speaker 1: golf Star forty four. That's the first boat I ever
Speaker 1: went on, just identical to that. Lee tells me that
Speaker 1: he grew up in Tampa around boats. Both his father
Speaker 1: and his grandfather were sea captains. He himself built boats
Speaker 1: as a teenager, knew them inside out, and that's why
Speaker 1: when he was around eighteen, he was offered a job
Speaker 1: as a smuggler on a golf Star forty four, just
Speaker 1: like the one that he's currently pointing out to me.
Speaker 1: They had a big Perkins engine in him that you
Speaker 1: could motor sail, you know, you just run a real
Speaker 1: low rpm and you'd still get a couple of extra
Speaker 1: knots out of it. Was it a good smuggling boat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Look at that thing. It's like a tank that hold
Speaker 1: twelve thousand pounds twelve thousand pounds of marijuana. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a serious smuggling job. But Lie says he didn't
Speaker 1: initially get into the marijuana business to get rich. He
Speaker 1: started off as a teenager selling dimebags here and there,
Speaker 1: just making enough cash to support his life as a surfer.
Speaker 1: Like I said, my dream was to go surfing every day,
Speaker 1: make ten grand, selling some bags of pot, and get
Speaker 1: out of it and that was it. But it didn't
Speaker 1: pan out that way. By the time that he was
Speaker 1: in his early twenties, he had his own smuggling boat
Speaker 1: and he began making runs down to Columbia. So it
Speaker 1: was an opportunity to make easy money. Who wouldn't have
Speaker 1: done it just about in those days. Eventually he connects
Speaker 1: with a legendary supplier down in Barankia, Columbia named Julio
Speaker 1: Caesar Nasser David, who went by the nickname the Old Man.
Speaker 1: He was to marijuana what James Dole was to pineapples.
Speaker 1: The big grower. Lee and the Old Man they got close.
Speaker 1: Lee was a great smuggler. He was very successful. He
Speaker 1: hung out with celebrities and rock stars, but his real
Speaker 1: talent was finance, specifically moving cash. We're talking about huge
Speaker 1: loads of crinkled fives and tens. All those buys from
Speaker 1: stoners across the country. They added up. Lee would often
Speaker 1: personally move the money from the organization's safe house in
Speaker 1: Tampa down to the Canans, and here he relied, at
Speaker 1: least in part, on a pilot named Shelley Levitts. Shelley
Speaker 1: was not a smuggler, She was just someone who fell
Speaker 1: in love with flying as a girl. Oh it was magical.
Speaker 1: I remember rolling down the runway and that the feel
Speaker 1: of lifting off like it was yesterday. She gets her
Speaker 1: license when she turns eighteen and starts flying for an
Speaker 1: aircraft charter operation out of Tampa. One day she gets
Speaker 1: a referral for a new client, Lee Rich. I just
Speaker 1: thought he was a successful businessman, or just a successful
Speaker 1: guy and a successful family. He was very dynamic, very
Speaker 1: easy going, laid back, handsome guy, real friendly. She started
Speaker 1: flying him all over the place, Louisiana, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, Texas.
Speaker 1: It was a little while before I had any suspicions
Speaker 1: that there might be something beyond just a businessman. Her
Speaker 1: suspicions about who Lee really was came to a head
Speaker 1: one night when an airport employee tipped her off that
Speaker 1: the FEDS had put a transponder in her plane. They
Speaker 1: were watching her, and I remember saying, oh, well, thank
Speaker 1: you for the information. I appreciate that Shelley did have
Speaker 1: a hunch about why the FEDS might be tracking her plane.
Speaker 1: Shelley flew Lee Rich to the Caymans regularly. He would
Speaker 1: bring these heavy briefcases. So I kind of put two
Speaker 1: and two together to figure that, well, there might be
Speaker 1: money in there, because Shelley knew the Caymans were famous
Speaker 1: for one thing in particular, banking, lots of banks. Small island,
Speaker 1: a few houses, and a lot of banks downtown, a
Speaker 1: small island with a small airport, just a few buildings.
Speaker 1: Lee would get off the airplane or grab a bag
Speaker 1: or two and literally just kind of walk right into
Speaker 1: customs and right through it to the other side. And
Speaker 1: Shelley says that they could do that in part because
Speaker 1: Lee Rich was so well connected in the Caymans. He
Speaker 1: knew everyone on the island, including the customs officers. Plus
Speaker 1: he and his associates looked so clean cut and well
Speaker 1: put together. I would have considered them very polished executives.
Speaker 1: They just happened to ultimately be involved in smuggling. This
Speaker 1: is how Lee moved his money, posing as a perfectly
Speaker 1: respectable businessman with his briefcases and a few coolers. I
Speaker 1: mean literally, you go into the airport. You had one
Speaker 1: of those big hundred court coolers as stuffed with hundreds
Speaker 1: or fifties or twenties. We'd always pack some steaks or
Speaker 1: something on top of it or something. They opened a
Speaker 1: thing or something. You give him a couple of steaks
Speaker 1: or whatever and smile and walk on through. From the airport.
Speaker 1: Lee would take his coolers of cash directly to the
Speaker 1: Bank of Nova Scotia. He was tight with one of
Speaker 1: the bankers there who would arrange for the cash to
Speaker 1: be counted. The bank would take a one or two
Speaker 1: percent cut, and then Lee's money was clean. For a
Speaker 1: long time. This system worked very well for mister Beach Club.
Speaker 1: He was the man down in the can ins. In fact,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three, when Queen of England visited the
Speaker 1: island on her tour of the Western Hemisphere, she took
Speaker 1: a ride on his yacht. It all came to a
Speaker 1: screeching halt when Lee's right hand man, Stephen Kaylish, the
Speaker 1: gentleman smuggler, got arrested in Tampa. With Stephen in jail,
Speaker 1: Lee now had all kinds of problems for one. He
Speaker 1: was worried Stephen might start talking to the Feds, you know,
Speaker 1: revealing secrets. But also they were logistical nightmares. They had
Speaker 1: one million pounds of marijuana just sitting in Columbia waiting
Speaker 1: to be moved. Lee had committed to selling it, but
Speaker 1: without his master smuggler, how exactly was he going to
Speaker 1: do that. I usually built people around me that I
Speaker 1: could trust, and then by me trusting them and them
Speaker 1: trusting me, I trusted what their word was. I had
Speaker 1: lost one, Kayliss, who was a guy that did everything
Speaker 1: for me, whether you tell him to do it or not,
Speaker 1: and a couple of other people. I was vulnerable at
Speaker 1: that time. Even before Stephen Kalish was arrested, Lee had
Speaker 1: big problems. The US was starting to take a closer
Speaker 1: look at offshore banking hubs like the came An Islands.
Speaker 1: Lee still remembers the day his man at the Bank
Speaker 1: of Nova Scotia broke off their relationship. He flat out said, Lee,
Speaker 1: I'm not taking any more your money. Lee Rich was
Speaker 1: stressed and a bit desperate, and that's when Shine called
Speaker 1: offering the services of cousin ed the counterintelligence expert. Well,
Speaker 1: that was an opening. He needed somebody that he could trust.
Speaker 1: Ned played that role to the hilt. He swept Lee's
Speaker 1: house for bugs, but then stuck around ready to pitch
Speaker 1: in when needed, because well, Lee needed all kinds of help.
Speaker 1: He soon asked Ned if he could get him fake
Speaker 1: documents a birth certificate, passport, and driver's license. Said he'd
Speaker 1: look into it gladly. So trust was building, But then
Speaker 1: there were these other moments when it seemed like Lee
Speaker 1: might just be a little bit suspicious, like maybe he
Speaker 1: was having doubts about who Ned really was. More on this.
Speaker 1: When we come back after the break, Ned remembers this
Speaker 1: one day on the island when Lee asks him to
Speaker 1: come on a little trip to the bank. He starts
Speaker 1: talking about a rumor he'd heard that federal agents were
Speaker 1: snooping around, and then Lee turns to Ned and says,
Speaker 1: one of these agents looks a lot like you, So
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: We got to the bank and he just says, wait here.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting alone in the car and thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is it. You know. Lee walks back out of
Speaker 1: the bank and nothing, but Ned can't shake the feeling
Speaker 1: that Lee might beyond him. Even a little moments seemed
Speaker 1: like they could have sinister implications like this. One day,
Speaker 1: Lee suggests that Ned should go fishing for conk with
Speaker 1: his butler, a guy named Burtley, so they can make
Speaker 1: a dish called sea pie. This all seemed kosher until
Speaker 1: he and Burtley walked down to the shore to a
Speaker 1: small skiff, just the two of them, and get in there.
Speaker 1: You know, Burtley throws his three foot my chatty through
Speaker 1: it in a boat and I'm like, oh, this isn't
Speaker 1: too cool. So they paddled out into the mist to
Speaker 1: this site where Bertley supposedly knows the conk are. When
Speaker 1: they get there, Burtley points at the spot where Ned
Speaker 1: should dive to get the shellfish. Ned eyes the machete again,
Speaker 1: and he looks at the oars, and then he looks
Speaker 1: down at the water, and then he glances at Burtley.
Speaker 1: That's thinking house is going to play out. Finally, he
Speaker 1: just jumps in the water and dives for the cock.
Speaker 1: He sees the cock, grabs it, and all the while
Speaker 1: he's thinking about his next move. He was planning this
Speaker 1: out in my head. If I come up and he's
Speaker 1: got the machete. He ready to chop my head off.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, okay, I'll rock the bolt and then reach
Speaker 1: over the edge and try to get hold of this
Speaker 1: or to defend myself. When he surfaced, there was Burtley smiling, relaxed,
Speaker 1: perfectly friendly. But Ned was spooked. It was very tense,
Speaker 1: and there was always tense minutes like that that that
Speaker 1: Lee hadn't said, Hey, Burtley, get rid of this guy. Well,
Speaker 1: you'd be eaten by the sea life, you know, sharks
Speaker 1: and crabs and snappers and ship would just eat your body.
Speaker 1: You'd be gone. In Ned's mind, it began to seem
Speaker 1: like it was just a matter of time before he
Speaker 1: was outed. He started anticipating the would be assassins, especially
Speaker 1: when he returned home to the condos where he and
Speaker 1: Shine were staying on the island. Recently, I went down
Speaker 1: with Ned to the Caymans and he showed me around. Okay,
Speaker 1: well I don't see where Arabic. I think they've changed
Speaker 1: the numbers around. But we retraced his steps and we
Speaker 1: visited those very condos. Ned pointed out a set of
Speaker 1: stairs that led up to a room where he slept,
Speaker 1: or actually didn't sleep, No, you're always half awake waiting
Speaker 1: waiting for the door to kick in, you know, and
Speaker 1: you don't have a gun, you know, you couldn't have
Speaker 1: a gun here, so no, you're pretty vulnerable. There was
Speaker 1: hardly any people here, so we wanted to know if
Speaker 1: somebody was coming in the night. We would some beer
Speaker 1: cans on those steps here, so they hopefully stumble over
Speaker 1: and when they came up and make a bunch of noise,
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of beer cans on a dark
Speaker 1: and stairwell. That's where Ned was at. While Ned and
Speaker 1: I were in the Caymans. We had a few quiet mornings.
Speaker 1: We just chilled out in the living room of his
Speaker 1: rental condo and talked. Being there seemed to stir up
Speaker 1: all kinds of memories for him. He seemed more open,
Speaker 1: and so I just kept asking questions. Let me let
Speaker 1: me go back. I have some more earlier questions before
Speaker 1: working on this case, before kind of arresting Toby, had
Speaker 1: you ever gone undercover before? Not really, not with the FBI.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of undercover work in the army
Speaker 1: in Korea with drugs buying and penetrating drug organizations. This
Speaker 1: was new to me. Ned had mentioned serving in Korea before,
Speaker 1: but never in any great detail. Now he went on
Speaker 1: to tell me that for a while he was investigating
Speaker 1: North Korean agents who were sneaking down across the border
Speaker 1: and selling drugs like heroin to US servicemen. In order
Speaker 1: to stop this, Ned teamed up with his counterparts in
Speaker 1: the South Korean Military Republic of Korea Criminal Investiga ANITY
Speaker 1: Detachment and their boss his name was Tiger, and Tiger
Speaker 1: he wanted to be on his good side because he
Speaker 1: was a mean son of a bitch. So Ned goes
Speaker 1: under cover to make some buys and bust these North
Speaker 1: Korean agents. Did you have any dicey calls or dicey situations? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a North Korean crack off, a forty five
Speaker 1: round of the pistol and an alley that hit about
Speaker 1: six inches above my head he missed. Ned arrests this
Speaker 1: North Korean agent and then turns him over to Tiger
Speaker 1: and his men. Over there we had when it got cold,
Speaker 1: they had oil burning heaters. As you're close to him,
Speaker 1: there as hot as hell, So they put him in
Speaker 1: a push up position in front of that heater and
Speaker 1: just a ball cook him and then kicked the ship
Speaker 1: out of his rib zoom beat him and did you
Speaker 1: witness that? Oh yeah, he got burns on a skin.
Speaker 1: I never checked his skin, but I know as hot
Speaker 1: as hell. So I mean he's swatting and quivering. You know,
Speaker 1: he knew if he if he broke the push up position,
Speaker 1: he was going to get his ribs caved in. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I can get real ugly, you know. In the end,
Speaker 1: I don't know what they were did with the guy.
Speaker 1: They took him away, so I don't know what they
Speaker 1: did to him. Does witnessing something like that change you?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, Um, I guess I was
Speaker 1: always around a lot of violence, starting with the army,
Speaker 1: and and I guess I didn't think about it at
Speaker 1: the time. Let me ask you a question. You watch
Speaker 1: this so you're and some of this is making you
Speaker 1: aware of what people can do to someone if they
Speaker 1: fall into the wrong hands. Is this crossing your mind
Speaker 1: at all when you're basically the one that's behind enemy
Speaker 1: lines in the Caymans. I mean you've witnessed what can happen, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know you don't want to be taken prisoner.
Speaker 1: I have to believe in your mind that you're you're
Speaker 1: not going to be taken captive. When Ned told me
Speaker 1: all this, I've been talking to him for over a
Speaker 1: year on weekends, early in the morning, often several times
Speaker 1: in the same day, and honestly, he could be very guarded.
Speaker 1: There were some places he just would not go. And
Speaker 1: now I kind of understood why. As Ned is struggling
Speaker 1: to hold it together and the Cayans back home in Detroit,
Speaker 1: Ned's wife Kathie rarely heard from him. She had to
Speaker 1: rely on Ned's handler at the FBI to get updates,
Speaker 1: and he would call me like once every couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and go, oh, I saw Ned, and he gave
Speaker 1: me the signal that everything's okay. And that would be
Speaker 1: about as much contact or even knowledge that the bureau
Speaker 1: had of where he was, whether he was alive, whether
Speaker 1: he was well, you know, So that really started wearing
Speaker 1: on me. But she does recall at least one occasion
Speaker 1: when she did manage to talk with Ned. He told
Speaker 1: her about a fancy dinner that he'd had with Lee
Speaker 1: and some celebrities. He told me, oh, I had dinner
Speaker 1: with Ringo Star and Barbara forget the lady's name now,
Speaker 1: who he married who's ringo star married too? She was
Speaker 1: one of the Bond girls. And I said to him,
Speaker 1: how on earth do you think that I can compete
Speaker 1: with the kind of people that you are I'm sure
Speaker 1: running with, because I'm confident she wasn't the only woman
Speaker 1: at that dinner table. You know, everybody else is in
Speaker 1: sitting there as couples, and Ned is sitting there alone.
Speaker 1: That doesn't even make sense, of course, not, of course not.
Speaker 1: Cathy thought that Ned had always been very good at
Speaker 1: playing Ed Thomas, his fictional persona, but maybe he was
Speaker 1: too good at it. If you're going to do an
Speaker 1: undercover assignment like that, you are going to have to
Speaker 1: completely absorb yourself in that life. And in order to
Speaker 1: do that, you have to lose this life at least
Speaker 1: for a while. And to think that you can you
Speaker 1: can do that like an actor does in a movie. Oh, I,
Speaker 1: you know, immersed myself in the role of so and so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in this life, no one is yelling cut. You know.
Speaker 1: Cathy voiced her concerns to Ned, and he didn't object
Speaker 1: or argue with his wife. Just you know, listen to it,
Speaker 1: and and uh, who's saying is really true? That when
Speaker 1: you get that deep undercover with a bunch of gangsters,
Speaker 1: drug dealers and murders and bombers and whatever, that you
Speaker 1: know you're you're losing track of reality of what you
Speaker 1: really are. This possibility was not entirely lost on Ned's
Speaker 1: bosses at the FBI. The b RO eventually decided to
Speaker 1: send another agent named Lynn Stonebridge down to the Caymans
Speaker 1: just to check on Ned. I mean, they knew where
Speaker 1: he was, but who knew what was really going on.
Speaker 1: There was nobody else sort of on his side that
Speaker 1: was there. And then it also gave him a little
Speaker 1: stress released by telling me what's going on. And you
Speaker 1: could see he was worked up about some of the
Speaker 1: stuff too, So he just needed someone to talk to
Speaker 1: that he could trust. She was only on the island
Speaker 1: for a few days, and even she sensed the danger.
Speaker 1: You've start getting paranoid and watching everyone around you. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a pretty wretched existence, but Ned was still determined.
Speaker 1: It's not like you can call it time out and
Speaker 1: get out of the game. You know, they say you're
Speaker 1: in it to win it, not to play armchair psychologist,
Speaker 1: but like do you have to push your real self
Speaker 1: and your real feelings like down and kind of bury them.
Speaker 1: On some level, I think he would become hardened, you know,
Speaker 1: just like the rock Cid beating the hell out of
Speaker 1: this guy. I mean they heard him. They broke his
Speaker 1: ribj getor the ribs break. You know, this is the
Speaker 1: North Korean that was tortured. You have to suppress your
Speaker 1: feelings and go for the greater cause. And you know,
Speaker 1: and also it's a challenge, it's it's a challenge. What
Speaker 1: made it worth it for Ned was that slowly he
Speaker 1: was making progress. He was climbing up the ladder, way
Speaker 1: up the ladder. He'd started off at a roadside biker
Speaker 1: bar Detroit with Toby. Then he got Shine, who vetted everybody.
Speaker 1: He had a line on Mike Vogel, the Detroit grocery guy.
Speaker 1: And now here he was in the Canaans. He'd found
Speaker 1: Lee Rich, the big boss, mister beach Club. Not just
Speaker 1: that he'd earned his trust, Lee had told him that
Speaker 1: he was in the process of setting up a second
Speaker 1: base of up rations in the Bahamas. The scope of
Speaker 1: Ned's investigation was expanding exponentially. It seemed Ned had learned
Speaker 1: who Lee's supplier was. The old man done in bearing
Speaker 1: Kai at Columbia. But what was he supposed to do
Speaker 1: with this intel? Anyhow? Officially legally that was none of
Speaker 1: Ned's business. This was way beyond his purview as an
Speaker 1: FBI agent. But still he had questions. He wanted to
Speaker 1: know where was the money going if it couldn't be
Speaker 1: banked in the Caymans. He wanted to know where did
Speaker 1: this all end? Next time on deep Cover, Ned's undercover
Speaker 1: identity had been compromised and they had to put a
Speaker 1: hit on Ned and they were going to lure him
Speaker 1: to a location and give him a hot shot of
Speaker 1: drugs and kill him. And they also knew where we lived.
Speaker 1: Deep Cover is produced by Jacob Smith and edited by
Speaker 1: Karen Shakerji. Our story editor is Jack hit. Original music
Speaker 1: and our theme was composed by Luis Gara and Flawn
Speaker 1: Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by Amy Gaines. Mia
Speaker 1: Lobell is Pushkin's executive producer. Ned's novel is read by
Speaker 1: Walton Goggins. Special thanks to Julia Barton had their fame,
Speaker 1: Carly mcgliori, Leeta mullatd Maya Caning, Eric Sandler, Aggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Kadija Holland, zuwek Winn and Jacob Weisberg at Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Special thanks also to Jeff Singer at Stowaway Entertainment. Additional
Speaker 1: thanks to Joseph Betty check out his terrific artwork. If
Speaker 1: you ever get down to the Caymans, I'm Jake Albern