Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on deep cover. In the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the FBI took down a massive drug smuggling ring which
Speaker 1: was importing huge loads of marijuana from Colombia into the
Speaker 1: United States with the help of agent Ned Timmins. The
Speaker 1: three ring leaders were caught and imprisoned. Case closed, or
Speaker 1: so it appeared, until one of the ringleaders, Stephen Kaylish,
Speaker 1: revealed that there was a silent partner, and he was
Speaker 1: none other than General Manuel Noriega, the ruler of Panama
Speaker 1: and a top CIA asset. This prompted congressional hearings and
Speaker 1: an indictment. Meanwhile, Ned was still busy at the FBI.
Speaker 1: Thanks to all of us undercover work, Ned still had
Speaker 1: all minds of contacts in the drug world and they
Speaker 1: were still paying off. In fact, he was getting even
Speaker 1: deeper into the illegal drug trade. These are the people
Speaker 1: that would have supplied the drugs to likely rich. There
Speaker 1: are the people that controlled everything on the Earth coast
Speaker 1: to Columbia. At one point, Ned pose as a buyer
Speaker 1: and he busted a smuggler who was bringing in cocaine
Speaker 1: and marijuana into the US. So another win for Ned,
Speaker 1: and it also opened yet another door for him. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: Neddie got a call from the smuggler's wife, a woman
Speaker 1: from Colombia. We'll call her Simone. Simone reached out to
Speaker 1: Ned because she wanted to help her husband. Basically, she
Speaker 1: wanted to get his sentence reduced or get him moved
Speaker 1: to a better prison. Simone had information to trade, so
Speaker 1: she contact did Ned, hoping to make a deal. She
Speaker 1: was connected with the biggest people in the cartels and
Speaker 1: talked a good game. She knew what she was talking about,
Speaker 1: she knew the right names. Ned was eager to work
Speaker 1: Simone's connections, but he was also leary about messing with
Speaker 1: the Colombians. I don't think twice at killing you the Colombians.
Speaker 1: Anything can happen, you know. Remember you don't know anybody
Speaker 1: but yourself. So Ned had his concerns, but he's still
Speaker 1: interested in working with Simone. Seeing where her connections might
Speaker 1: take him. He decided to ask his wife, Kathy Timmins
Speaker 1: for help. At the time, Kathy was busy with her
Speaker 1: own work at the FBI and she was pregnant with
Speaker 1: their second child. So Ned said, I want you to
Speaker 1: come down and meet her so that you know she
Speaker 1: has someone that she can call as the backup person
Speaker 1: to me, you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: as in here we go again. I mean she'd been
Speaker 1: through this before, like when Ned came home with Toby Anderson,
Speaker 1: the violent country western singer, and now this I always
Speaker 1: was being introduced to his his informants or his co
Speaker 1: operators as as like the backup person. You know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't listed as the case agent or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I think it just gave Ned a feeling of you know,
Speaker 1: and may and maybe he did it to try and
Speaker 1: further show the the co operator you know that here's
Speaker 1: here's someone else that you know has got your back.
Speaker 1: So despite it all, Kathy agreed to meet Simone, Ned's
Speaker 1: latest source at a hotel in Detroit. I went down
Speaker 1: to the hotel and then met her, and you know,
Speaker 1: she spoke briefly and he said, well, you know, if
Speaker 1: you need anything, give me a call. You know that
Speaker 1: you're gonna be working with Ned. But on the way home,
Speaker 1: Cathy had second thoughts about the whole arrangement. I mean,
Speaker 1: she was strikingly beautiful woman and now she's sitting here
Speaker 1: with no husband, she's got no other connections. Besides, Ned,
Speaker 1: it's not a not a good situation to have your
Speaker 1: husband involved in. I mean, you can almost predict trouble.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Albern and this is deep Cover, our final
Speaker 1: episode nineteen eighty nine. Yes, hey, is this is Jake.
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm okay? Thank you? Can you're hear me? Okay?
Speaker 1: That's Simone. There are a lot of details about her
Speaker 1: story that I can't share with you. I need to
Speaker 1: protect her identity. But here's what you need to know.
Speaker 1: After meeting Ned, she started brainstorming with him about what
Speaker 1: intel she could offer. She was still hoping to help
Speaker 1: her husband, who at this point was in federal prison
Speaker 1: in Michigan. Will please started conversations, a lot of conversation.
Speaker 1: It was, as I said, a person that you could trust.
Speaker 1: But she was scared about ratting on the cartels and
Speaker 1: ultimately she got cold feet. It was too dangerous. So
Speaker 1: I didn't know want to take one point, and this
Speaker 1: meant she couldn't help her husband. But she actually kept
Speaker 1: meeting with Ned, and I think one of those days
Speaker 1: who were sitting in the restroom, i'll attracted to each other.
Speaker 1: Simone says that she trusted Ned more than that that
Speaker 1: he seemed like a hero to her. That's the word
Speaker 1: she used, whoa because the way he moved, the way
Speaker 1: he taught his security, he's self confident, how muchure he was,
Speaker 1: and those were things in his personality that I was attracted.
Speaker 1: Simone eventually told Ned that she was willing to connect
Speaker 1: him with other sources. She knew another Columbian who needed
Speaker 1: help and he was willing to talk. Simone even offered
Speaker 1: to meet Ned in Venezuela and make the necessary introductions.
Speaker 1: They spent a week down there together. Oh, Jake, it's
Speaker 1: almost like the two of us were separated from the world.
Speaker 1: You know, just sat her own, drank wine and talked
Speaker 1: about other stuff. And well, just intelligence is beautiful, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean you walked through the airport whether and people
Speaker 1: were running into pilings and walls and dusts staring at her.
Speaker 1: You know. I spoke with another FBI agent who was
Speaker 1: down in Venezuela with them. He told me that Simone
Speaker 1: was beguiling. He said, quote, she didn't walk, she glided.
Speaker 1: She was quite the beauty and she knew how to
Speaker 1: use it too. This agent suspected that Ned and Simone
Speaker 1: were getting a bit too close, but he didn't say anything,
Speaker 1: in part because Ned was such a veteran at this
Speaker 1: type of work. Ned and Simone did have an affair.
Speaker 1: It actually started just a few months after they met.
Speaker 1: It was like an escape, an escape from what, escape
Speaker 1: from drug cases and FBI and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: stress and whatever. It was a release. It was almost
Speaker 1: like I didn't care anymore. What do you mean you
Speaker 1: didn't care about what exactly? I was totally burned out
Speaker 1: with the FBI and the stress of running big cases
Speaker 1: like this and dealing with other divisions and other agencies,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's very complicated to work big cases
Speaker 1: and abide by the rules and and all the legal
Speaker 1: issues and FBI protocol and everything. It was just an escape.
Speaker 1: I asked Simon if she ever felt pressured or coerced
Speaker 1: by Ned. She said no, never, that their feelings were
Speaker 1: mutual and her family adored Ned. I was really also
Speaker 1: with me, was like, so he was sick. I know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: All of that being said, Ned's affair created some serious problems. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it was not good for his marriage and professionally well,
Speaker 1: Ned was a federal agent. Someone was providing information to
Speaker 1: the FBI, and Ned was supposed to be assessing the
Speaker 1: value of her intel. Could she or her connections help
Speaker 1: the US government or not? Now, NED couldn't really make
Speaker 1: that call objectively. There was a conflict of interest and
Speaker 1: a power and balance too. It's not too ethical, it
Speaker 1: wasn't too honorable, Hannah. It just happened after it started.
Speaker 1: Did you have a moment of like, oh shit, what
Speaker 1: have I done? Kind of thing? Yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: always had thoughts that it's the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 1: It's it's nothing you want to want to become public
Speaker 1: er or whatever. You know. It was just kind of
Speaker 1: spiraling out of control. I didn't know where it was
Speaker 1: going to land. While all this was going on, Ned's
Speaker 1: biggest case, the one that helps spark congressional hearings and
Speaker 1: the indictment of Noriega, that case was still simmering. The
Speaker 1: defendants in the case we're all serving time. Mister beach club,
Speaker 1: the gentleman smuggler, and the grocery guy. They're just counting
Speaker 1: the days and the weeks and the months until one
Speaker 1: day in mid December of nineteen eighty nine, when something
Speaker 1: weird happens. On that day, Stephen Kaylish, the gentleman smuggler
Speaker 1: says he was thrown into solitary confinement. Well, solitary you
Speaker 1: have no access to television, radio, I mean you get
Speaker 1: a blanket, pillow, food, you don't have contact with other prisoners.
Speaker 1: It's basically for protection. Stephen had been watching the news
Speaker 1: for weeks and had an inkling that something big was
Speaker 1: about to go down in Panama. You know, they've ratcheted
Speaker 1: up this whole, this whole thing about Noriega and Panama.
Speaker 1: It's in the news almost daily. Noriega's waving a fucking
Speaker 1: machete around. I mean, I'm watching them just fall to pieces,
Speaker 1: you know, but I mean the guy's office rocker. For
Speaker 1: over a year, Noriega had been thumbing his nose at
Speaker 1: the US, basically saying, you guys want me gone, but
Speaker 1: you can't do anything about it. Remember, thanks in large
Speaker 1: part to this investigation and Stephen Kaylish's account, Noriega had
Speaker 1: been indicted as a drug trafficker, and it seemed like
Speaker 1: this indictment was now fueling something bigger, like the US
Speaker 1: might actually take action. In his novel, Ned writes about
Speaker 1: how big a deal it would be if the US
Speaker 1: could take down Noriega. Ned knew the very little of
Speaker 1: what he was doing made any real difference in the
Speaker 1: drug war. It was a cynicism that came with a territory.
Speaker 1: As long as there was demand, there would be people
Speaker 1: willing to run the risks of supply. As long as
Speaker 1: twenty million Americans were smoking dope, there would be dope
Speaker 1: in America. There would be cocaine and heroine, and for
Speaker 1: the pill poppers, there would be crooked doctors and false prescriptions.
Speaker 1: He knew that, but getting to a guy like Noriego
Speaker 1: would make a difference. Down in Panama, Noriego was presenting
Speaker 1: himself as the great defender of his country and its canal.
Speaker 1: He delivered impassioned speeches, hyping his role as the hero,
Speaker 1: almost like pr stunts, the way a promoter might hype
Speaker 1: an upcoming fight between two heavyweights. And this is when
Speaker 1: Noriega appeared, wielding a machette as he spoke to a crowd,
Speaker 1: and eventually all of his taunts they hit home. With
Speaker 1: President George Bush Senior. Part of the problem was optics
Speaker 1: to the public. Bush sometimes came across as mild mannered
Speaker 1: and even meek when he was running for president. Newsweek
Speaker 1: even ran a cover story about Bush that would become
Speaker 1: infamous called Fighting the whimp Factor. And now here was Noriega,
Speaker 1: the uber alpha male, waiving his machete. Gradually tension mounted.
Speaker 1: The US issued sanctions against Panama and tried pressuring Noriega
Speaker 1: to step down. Noriega just dug in his heels. So
Speaker 1: the stage was set, and then a group of Panamanian
Speaker 1: soldiers opened fire on four off duty US servicemen. Good
Speaker 1: evening every science an American military man was killed by
Speaker 1: a Panamanian fruit Saturday night, President Bush and Panama's military dictator,
Speaker 1: General Manuel Noriega, have been circling each other from a distance.
Speaker 1: Bush addressed the nation and laid out the case for war.
Speaker 1: Many attempts have been made to resolve this crisis through
Speaker 1: diplomacy and negotiations. All were rejected by the dictator of Panama,
Speaker 1: General Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug trafficker. They called the
Speaker 1: invasion operation just cause it was a big undertaking, involving
Speaker 1: nearly twenty six thousand US troops and three hundred aircraft.
Speaker 1: During the fighting, twenty three US servicemen died, hundreds of
Speaker 1: Panamenians were killed, maybe more. The exact death toll remains
Speaker 1: in dispute. Some estimates are in the thousands. It's a
Speaker 1: little stomach churning to think about the number of people
Speaker 1: who died to capture a single man. And for a while,
Speaker 1: Noriega himself was nowhere to be found, which back in
Speaker 1: DC was rather awkward. I've been frustrated that he's been
Speaker 1: in power this long, extraordinarily frustrated. The good news he's
Speaker 1: out of power. The bad news he has not yet
Speaker 1: been brought to justice. US forces eventually tracked down Noriega
Speaker 1: hiding in the Vatican embassy. They tried to smoke Noriega
Speaker 1: out by blasting rock music deafening volumes. I actually remember
Speaker 1: watching this all unfold as a kid on TV. The
Speaker 1: soldiers played songs like We're not going to take it
Speaker 1: by Twisted Sister. US generals eventually called off the tactic
Speaker 1: after a Vatican officials complained anyway. Noriega eventually turned himself
Speaker 1: in and that was it. The last member of the
Speaker 1: smuggling syndicate was in custody. After his capture, Noriega was
Speaker 1: flown to Miami, where he went on trial. He was
Speaker 1: found guilty and sentenced to forty years in prison on
Speaker 1: eight counts of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering. Officially,
Speaker 1: that was the end of the story, neatly packaged with
Speaker 1: a bow operation just cause, a righteous effort to take
Speaker 1: down a drug trafficker. But I gotta tell you, like
Speaker 1: so many people, I never really believe that this is
Speaker 1: why the US invaded. So I talked with John Dingis,
Speaker 1: a former MPR journalist who covered Noriega at the time.
Speaker 1: He also wrote an excellent book on Noriega called Our
Speaker 1: Man and Panama. I don't buy the theories that are
Speaker 1: put forward of why the invasion was done other than
Speaker 1: a raw exercise of US power. For John, there war
Speaker 1: wasn't about drug trafficking charges or our desire to restore
Speaker 1: democracy in Panama. I think it was a power decision
Speaker 1: by George Bush, the fact that Noriega had defied him personally.
Speaker 1: You don't fool around with the US government in the
Speaker 1: way that Noriega was doing it. That's it the old
Speaker 1: rules of the playground. A little guy acts out, the
Speaker 1: big guy puts him in his place. It's a classic
Speaker 1: gangster move. In the end, seems like what Ned Timmins
Speaker 1: and Stephen Klish helped provide. Wasn't a motivation for war,
Speaker 1: wasn't a cause? They just provided a convenient excuse when
Speaker 1: we come back. A moment of reckoning for Ned, both
Speaker 1: for his marriage and his career. Months before the invasion,
Speaker 1: as the whole conflict between Bush and Noriego was still
Speaker 1: heating up, Ned was facing problems of his own. He'd
Speaker 1: been having an affair with his source, Simone, and he
Speaker 1: was still working with her now down in Miami. At
Speaker 1: some point he started to worry that his colleagues were
Speaker 1: spying on him. Like he remembers this one day when
Speaker 1: he was driving around. I was starving, so I whipped
Speaker 1: around a few times and pulled into like a burger
Speaker 1: king or something, and all of a sudden, here's what
Speaker 1: I believe was an agent comes running through the alley
Speaker 1: and prep radio fell out of his waistband and I
Speaker 1: look and I see him jump in a car and
Speaker 1: pretty obvious FBI surveillance. Suddenly the paranoia that Ned felt
Speaker 1: down in the Caymans kicked back in. There was a
Speaker 1: supervisor in Miami. I strongly believed that, you know, he
Speaker 1: when I'd come into Miami for the meetings, that he'd
Speaker 1: have me surveiled. I would meet with Simone, but never,
Speaker 1: you know, there was never an overnight stuff or anything.
Speaker 1: I meet, whether he usually had somebody else with me, whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, I think he kind of felt something was
Speaker 1: going on. Meanwhile, back in Detroit, Cathy gets a call
Speaker 1: from Ned's boss. He'd been in touch with the supervisor
Speaker 1: down in Miami. Apparently the guy who'd been watching Ned
Speaker 1: and the supervisor in Miami had said that Ned was
Speaker 1: in trouble and that they were pulling him in, and
Speaker 1: that Ned was having an inappropriate relationship, a sexual relationship
Speaker 1: with with the female operative, and that that Ned denied it,
Speaker 1: but that they were going to be sending him home.
Speaker 1: Kathy says she'd actually suspected what Ned had been up
Speaker 1: to for some time. Kathy was an investigator, and a
Speaker 1: good one. She'd found hotel matches in Ned's coat one
Speaker 1: night and pieced together that he'd been visiting a hotel
Speaker 1: where Simone was staying. You know, you can imagine it's
Speaker 1: a typical married fight at that point. It's got nothing
Speaker 1: really much to do with the FBI or his undercover work,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't have cared less about his undercover work
Speaker 1: at that point, I just said, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to I don't want to talk to you about it.
Speaker 1: I don't you know, I don't want you near me.
Speaker 1: Then there is the issue of what would have happened
Speaker 1: to Ned professionally, what the consequences might be for having
Speaker 1: an affair with Simone. Typically, what you would do next
Speaker 1: in the FBI is you start an investigation to find
Speaker 1: out what may or may not have also been compromised.
Speaker 1: On that case, I don't believe that they opened one
Speaker 1: up on him because he basically came home and said
Speaker 1: that he was going to resign. Ned says there was
Speaker 1: no investigation. He says he came back from Miami and
Speaker 1: resigned on his own accord. At the office in Detroit.
Speaker 1: No one knew why Ned suddenly disappeared. Even his partner
Speaker 1: Linnis then a Lavish's was mystified. I think everybody was
Speaker 1: kind of scratching their heads. It was kind of a shocker, saying, gee,
Speaker 1: what happened? Question was you know, I'm saying, literally thinking
Speaker 1: back at it, nobody really knew. Was he terminated or
Speaker 1: did he leave on his own? No, there was no
Speaker 1: real explanation as to why he was there. One day,
Speaker 1: when the next day he's not. Officially, the FBI said
Speaker 1: it wouldn't talk to me about Ned, but I did
Speaker 1: speak with one of Ned's former supervisors from the early eighties.
Speaker 1: He wasn't there when Ned resigned, but the way that
Speaker 1: it all played out for Ned, it didn't really surprise him.
Speaker 1: The supervisor told me that back then, in certain situations,
Speaker 1: agents did sometimes just resigned to avoid a big, messy investigation.
Speaker 1: He also told me that six years was a very
Speaker 1: long time to do undercover work. At one point, I asked, Ned,
Speaker 1: why didn't you just walk away before things got out
Speaker 1: of control, like back when your first son was born.
Speaker 1: I don't know if if you want to call it
Speaker 1: an addiction, adrenaline addiction, or you know, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: That's all I lived for was I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I love my kids. I talked to him every day.
Speaker 1: Yet you know they're on separate size of the US,
Speaker 1: but I can you know, I can't spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time with them, but you know, we we talk
Speaker 1: every day. I don't know what would happened. Maybe if
Speaker 1: I could pull the throttle back hand, all things would
Speaker 1: have been a lot different, But it didn't happen. So,
Speaker 1: Cathy says she respects what Ned accomplished as an agent,
Speaker 1: but it's all overshadowed by the cost that it exacted
Speaker 1: on both of them personally, And she still wonders how
Speaker 1: and if it might have all played out differently, if
Speaker 1: somehow Ned had been able to walk away from the
Speaker 1: undercover work, if he had just been working cases. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have those opportunities. You can't go sit at
Speaker 1: a bar all day if you're working cases. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't go off on these. You can't create a
Speaker 1: whole new persona of yourself. You are who you are.
Speaker 1: You're just an FBI agent. You're not God, You're not
Speaker 1: some movie star, you know, having dinners with fancy people
Speaker 1: in fancy places, and you know, you're just an average person.
Speaker 1: If you remove the undercover work from the equation, might
Speaker 1: our marriage have failed over time because of alcohol and
Speaker 1: fooling around the stuff. Maybe, but we will never know.
Speaker 1: In any case, After he stepped down, Ned's colleagues at
Speaker 1: the FBI did throw him a little goodbye party. It
Speaker 1: was at this restaurant in Oakland County. Some people from
Speaker 1: the other law enforcement agencies, from our old police department came,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't hugely attended, but you know, there were
Speaker 1: enough people there, and you know, they gave him a
Speaker 1: plaque and wished him well, and you know, we all
Speaker 1: had lunch, and you know, he gave a little talk
Speaker 1: about how he'll miss the FBI, and you know, but
Speaker 1: this is what he wants to do now. And he
Speaker 1: worked so hard and that's all he ever wanted to be,
Speaker 1: was an FBI agent, and he just threw it all away,
Speaker 1: literally threw it all away. Looking back, Ned says at
Speaker 1: the undercover work, it kind of slowly wore him down,
Speaker 1: and that's why he resigned. I'd just had it was
Speaker 1: out of gas. I wanted to do something different, you know,
Speaker 1: I had just exhausted with the FBI. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: he was. But the way he talks about it, it's
Speaker 1: clear to me that these were his glory days. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I think part of Ned is still stuck in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. He talks about everything that happened like it
Speaker 1: was yesterday, boasting about the role that he played in history.
Speaker 1: And there is a certain logic to his conviction. Ned
Speaker 1: flipped Toby, which led him to shine, which perhaps more
Speaker 1: than anything else, led to the downfall of Lee Rich
Speaker 1: and in a way, Stephen Kalish too. Without them, there's
Speaker 1: no star witness to testify against Noriega, and without that, well,
Speaker 1: there's much less of a pretext for invading Panama. A
Speaker 1: bit of a stretch, maybe, but it's not crazy. When
Speaker 1: I was done reporting this story, I went back and
Speaker 1: reread Ned's novel. What struck me most was how and
Speaker 1: where it ended. The image that we're left with is
Speaker 1: of Ned at the very top of his game. Ned
Speaker 1: was back to the less glamorous, if more direct work
Speaker 1: of hitting the dealers where they lived. He'd gotten so
Speaker 1: used to undercover work he would literally walk from a
Speaker 1: courthouse where he had been testifying and make a buye
Speaker 1: in his suit and tie. He didn't give a fuck anymore,
Speaker 1: and it only made him even better at the work.
Speaker 1: In the novel, Ned doesn't resign from the FBI. He
Speaker 1: just goes right back to work chasing bad guys. And
Speaker 1: in the very last scene of the book, Ned is
Speaker 1: down on Louisiana. He's just finished visiting Lee Rich in jail,
Speaker 1: and he's at some hotel, sitting at the bar. The
Speaker 1: lighting is very dim, and mysterious, and he meets this
Speaker 1: woman who's clearly simone. It's their first encounter. He's just
Speaker 1: having a drink and she walks in. Using the mirror
Speaker 1: behind the bottles of booze on display on the top shelf,
Speaker 1: he watched the figure of a woman moved through the
Speaker 1: dim light. He turned as she got close enough, and
Speaker 1: found himself looking into the face of one of the
Speaker 1: most beautiful women he had ever seen. She put a
Speaker 1: newspaper in front of Ned. It was an article he
Speaker 1: had read, an article about the case and ultimately about him.
Speaker 1: Are you this agent? Ned turned to face her fully.
Speaker 1: The fuzzy edges of perception given to him by the
Speaker 1: whiskey started to straighten themselves as he scanned the room
Speaker 1: to be sure she was alone. Columbians were known to
Speaker 1: use women as assassins, or maybe she was just marking
Speaker 1: him for another. But apart from a few the drunks
Speaker 1: in the room given her the once over, no one
Speaker 1: was paying any attention to him. Who's asking? The woman
Speaker 1: goes on to tell Ned she knows someone down in
Speaker 1: Columbia who's in deep trouble. Ned took her by the
Speaker 1: elbow and guided her to a seat next to him.
Speaker 1: What is it you need, he asked. She looked back
Speaker 1: at him with tears glossing the surface of her eyes.
Speaker 1: We need your help. And that's how it ends, kind
Speaker 1: of suddenly. I guess you could call it a cliffhanger
Speaker 1: or a teaser for a sequel, but you get the
Speaker 1: basic idea. Ned is about to go off on another
Speaker 1: adventure to help this damsel in distress. While he never
Speaker 1: directly admitted it to me, I think Ned spends a
Speaker 1: fair amount of time thinking about how this all might
Speaker 1: have played out differently. In addition to his novel, he
Speaker 1: teamed up with different and cranked out two screenplays, one
Speaker 1: called Dope and the other called The Came In Connection.
Speaker 1: Like the novel, they read kind of like alternate versions
Speaker 1: of history, parallel universes, with the same characters but different outcomes.
Speaker 1: He had some guy that was writing some screenplay or
Speaker 1: something out in La and and and I said, Ned,
Speaker 1: the whole story doesn't make any sense unless you tell
Speaker 1: the end. It's really not a success story at all,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, sure his cases might have worked
Speaker 1: out great, but you know it is not a success
Speaker 1: story at all. And no one knows them better than Ned.
Speaker 1: Later on, I told Ned what Cathy said. That's that
Speaker 1: could be looked at that way. You know, well, I
Speaker 1: mean it took a toll. You take a psychological and
Speaker 1: a physical beating for all this stuff, you know, so
Speaker 1: everything you pay a big price for. It's almost like
Speaker 1: I was on a rocket and as no matter how
Speaker 1: high is that rocket going to go before it turns
Speaker 1: around falls back to Earth. I don't know. Would you
Speaker 1: know that rocket was going to run out of gas
Speaker 1: one day? So maybe it did, you know. It's been
Speaker 1: about thirty five years since Ned Timmins made his big bust,
Speaker 1: sending a whole host of criminals away to prison. Mike Vogel,
Speaker 1: the distributor, the grocery guy. He stayed in the Detroit area,
Speaker 1: in that quaint little town right out of a Norman
Speaker 1: Rockwell painting, kind of the last place you might expect
Speaker 1: to find a former crime boss. Mike also served ten
Speaker 1: years in prison. His old life on the outside gradually
Speaker 1: fell apart. When you get out, or actually when you
Speaker 1: go in, there's a realization you don't control a fucking thing.
Speaker 1: You don't control anything in your life except maybe when
Speaker 1: you breathe and when you don't breathe, and I was
Speaker 1: aware that gone that long, no marriage could survive it,
Speaker 1: none whatsoever. By the time he got out, Mike's ex
Speaker 1: wife had remarried, and when Mike went to pick up
Speaker 1: some of his old furniture from her house, he saw
Speaker 1: that his kids had posted some of their artwork in
Speaker 1: the kitchen on the fridge. When he took a closer look,
Speaker 1: Mike saw that his kids had changed their last names.
Speaker 1: They'd taken on the stepdad's last name. Mike confronted his
Speaker 1: ex wife, said, what the fuck are you doing? This
Speaker 1: is Oh well, that's the way it was. You can't
Speaker 1: hold blame for people that believe they're doing the best
Speaker 1: for other people. Mike told me that he later reconnected
Speaker 1: with his kids, that he developed a relationship with them,
Speaker 1: but it took time. Sadly, just before this podcast was released,
Speaker 1: Mike passed away at the age of sixty nine. As
Speaker 1: for Stephen Kaylish, he told me that he had to
Speaker 1: come to terms with the past. Over the years, a
Speaker 1: lot of stories have surfaced about Noriega and how brutal
Speaker 1: he was that he'd had a rival executed. Stephen claims
Speaker 1: that this wasn't the Noriega that he knew back in
Speaker 1: the early eighties. Still, it was a moment of reckoning
Speaker 1: for him. I wish ashamed. It's probably the best description
Speaker 1: ashamed that I would. I had done so much and
Speaker 1: tied myself so closely to a man that was capable
Speaker 1: of such atrocities. After getting out of prison, Stephen started
Speaker 1: a telecom business that made cards, you know, the ones
Speaker 1: he's swiped. He says that his business did very well,
Speaker 1: and he ended up moving into that big mansion out
Speaker 1: in Hawaii where I visited him together. He and his wife,
Speaker 1: Faby run a horse ranch that offers equine therapy, you know,
Speaker 1: peace of mind through horses. The reality is, in the
Speaker 1: years that I've been here with Faby, I've learned a
Speaker 1: great deal about myself and a great deal about many
Speaker 1: things I was not aware of. And you know, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: I never expected to be in a place where I'm
Speaker 1: at peace. Well, I feel safe, truly safe. As for Noriega,
Speaker 1: he served seventeen years in federal prison in the United States.
Speaker 1: He was eventually extradited to France, where we spent about
Speaker 1: a year incarcerated on money wandering charges. Then he was
Speaker 1: extradited again, this time to Panama, where he spent roughly
Speaker 1: another five years in prison. He died at the age
Speaker 1: of eighty three. Lee Rich, you know, mister beach Club.
Speaker 1: He was supposed to do thirty years in prison. In
Speaker 1: the end he served ten. His sentence was reduced after
Speaker 1: he cooperated with the congressional hearings. When I caught up
Speaker 1: with him in Florida, he broke out a photo album
Speaker 1: that included pictures of him in jail. Lee showed it
Speaker 1: to me the way he might crack open an old
Speaker 1: high school yearbook. This is prison, this one. This is
Speaker 1: all of us in Lafayette, Louisiana in prison. That's the
Speaker 1: main players and all those trials with Bogel, Kayalus and myself.
Speaker 1: At one point he actually came very close to trying
Speaker 1: to break out of prison. Week, if you can believe it,
Speaker 1: Lee left prison to get dental work done. He was
Speaker 1: escorted by a transportation officer named Gene. Minute I got
Speaker 1: into van, should give me the key, I don't do
Speaker 1: my handcuffs in the back and always brought me food.
Speaker 1: And then I got the no, Gene all right, and
Speaker 1: we would have our little thing on the side going
Speaker 1: to the dentist. I actually spoke to Jeanne. She told
Speaker 1: me that little thing on the side. He was just
Speaker 1: a friendship anyway. That's when Lee hatched his plan. He
Speaker 1: had a pilot who was going to land a plane
Speaker 1: not far from the dentist's office. Just swoop down and
Speaker 1: pick him up. But first he'd have to get away
Speaker 1: from Gene steal her car. Basically, just tell you you
Speaker 1: got to get out of the car now and take
Speaker 1: the key from the van. Just leave her standing in
Speaker 1: the parking lot. So the big day comes, He's sitting
Speaker 1: in the car with Jeane. He's about to make his
Speaker 1: big move when he realizes there's no gas in the car.
Speaker 1: It's almost empty. Okay, I would have got down the road,
Speaker 1: made me three miles outside the road and no gas,
Speaker 1: out of gas, no money. I would have inbusted escape.
Speaker 1: So I left alone. I went back to to jail
Speaker 1: that night and cried my sorrows. And Lee also says
Speaker 1: he couldn't do that to Jeanne because he really cared
Speaker 1: about her deeply. In fact, he and jean they ended
Speaker 1: up getting married Kathy Timmins. She and Ned got divorced.
Speaker 1: Kathy raised her kids two sons, almost entirely on her own,
Speaker 1: and she went on to have a really distinguished career
Speaker 1: in the FBI. After nine eleven, she worked under Director
Speaker 1: Robert Muller to help set up an office that shared
Speaker 1: intelligence and worked with state and local law enforcement. She's
Speaker 1: retired now, never remarried. She still stays in touch with Ned.
Speaker 1: You know, people were always surprised at, you know, how
Speaker 1: much we always still talked over the many years because
Speaker 1: I think he you know, we had so much that
Speaker 1: we knew about one another, and you know, at the
Speaker 1: core what that's like being a police officer, being an
Speaker 1: FBI agent, working these things our families. Back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, Ned and Kathy actually worked a case together.
Speaker 1: Ned had been hired as a private eye to solve
Speaker 1: a particularly vexing murder down in Georgia. Ned knew he
Speaker 1: need help from a really good investigator, so he asked
Speaker 1: Kathy to help him review the case, and briefly, once
Speaker 1: again they were a team. He's still never been able
Speaker 1: to actually leave that undercover role. He's never really replaced
Speaker 1: the people that he knew, the people that he was
Speaker 1: close to. It's like he'd never moved on. He never
Speaker 1: moved on from it. It stayed with him, and it's
Speaker 1: like he's still trying to find the end of it.
Speaker 1: It is. It's like he's still trying to find the
Speaker 1: end of the story. Ned Timmins still lives in the
Speaker 1: Detroit area. He's a successful private eye, runs a company
Speaker 1: called Legal and Security Strategies. He's handled security for local
Speaker 1: media outlets and right now he's trying to chase down
Speaker 1: the guys in China who are counterfeiting American tobacco products.
Speaker 1: He also specializes in jet ski fatalities, investigating how and
Speaker 1: why people died while zipping around on their jet skis.
Speaker 1: After leaving the FBI, Ned and Simone were together for
Speaker 1: about two years. Ultimately it didn't work out. They still
Speaker 1: stay in touch. In fact, Ned says that he periodically
Speaker 1: sends her a few hundred dollars to help with the bills.
Speaker 1: Over the years. Ned He's also stayed in touch with
Speaker 1: Lee Rich. In the late nineteen nineties, Ned built a
Speaker 1: house down in the Caymans. Two of them actually got
Speaker 1: a big boat, and he started hanging out with Lee again.
Speaker 1: At that point, Lee was out of prison and the
Speaker 1: Caymans were still his home. Even though he was no
Speaker 1: longer the island's Robin Hood. Lee Rich and I were
Speaker 1: friends undercover, and we were friends when he got arrested,
Speaker 1: and we still talk once a week because our personalities
Speaker 1: congealed or whatever you want to call it. I love
Speaker 1: that he used the word congealed. The two of them
Speaker 1: remained close friends to this day. Recently, Ned planned a
Speaker 1: trip down to the Caymans. Lee was supposed to come too,
Speaker 1: but he had some health issues and he couldn't make it.
Speaker 1: Ned went anyway, and I tagged along. Down in the Caymans,
Speaker 1: Ned he seemed to be some in his element. Sure,
Speaker 1: he was now in his seventies and walking with a limp,
Speaker 1: but he seemed to love reprising his role as a
Speaker 1: man of mystery. At the time, he was working on
Speaker 1: a bounty hunting deal to locate a highly sought after
Speaker 1: a US fugitive. He had a driver taking him around.
Speaker 1: Big guy almost looked a bodyguard. At one point we
Speaker 1: headed over to the house of Lee's old butler, Burtley.
Speaker 1: You may remember him. This is the guy who took
Speaker 1: Ned fishing for conk back when Ned was undercover, and
Speaker 1: at the time Ned thought Burtley was actually going to
Speaker 1: kill him. Later on, when Ned lived in the Caymans,
Speaker 1: they actually became friends. Burtley passed away a few years back,
Speaker 1: and now Ned was visiting his widow. Hey, who's there?
Speaker 1: You remember me? Ned ye talking? They sat down and
Speaker 1: reminisced about old times, back when Burtley was still alive.
Speaker 1: Ned seemed genuinely happy, caught up in all the memories.
Speaker 1: And as we were getting ready to leave, Ned very
Speaker 1: discreetly took out his wallet and slipped the widow some
Speaker 1: money to help out, make sure that she was all right, okay,
Speaker 1: get run all right, thank you okay. Then he shuffled
Speaker 1: back to the van, and for a moment I had
Speaker 1: this strange sensation that I was watching a play, and
Speaker 1: in it, the role of the Islands Robin Hood was
Speaker 1: being played not by Lee Rich, who was out sick,
Speaker 1: but by his understudy, a man who knew the role,
Speaker 1: had memorized it in fact, and played it well. Deep
Speaker 1: Cover is produced by Jacob Smith and edited by Karen Shakurge.
Speaker 1: Our story editor is Jack hit. Original music and our
Speaker 1: theme was composed by Luis Gara and Flown Williams is
Speaker 1: our engineer. Fact checking by Amy Gaines, Mia Lobell as
Speaker 1: Pushkin's executive producer. Ned's novel is read by Walton Goggins.
Speaker 1: John Custer is Pushkin's art director, and our show art
Speaker 1: and character illustrations were drawn by Victor Kurlow. You can
Speaker 1: see them on our website, deepcoverpod dot com. The site
Speaker 1: was created by Tyler Adams. Special thanks to Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Heather Fain, Carl mcgliori, Lee to Mullad, Maya Caning, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Aggie Taylor, Kadija Holland, zuwek Gin and Jacob Weisberg at
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. The first version of Ned's unpublished novel was
Speaker 1: written by James Coyne and edited by Andrea McLaughlin. Lee
Speaker 1: Rich has just published a memoir. It's called In Too Deep.
Speaker 1: It has the full story of his life. Stephen Kaylish
Speaker 1: also has a memoir on the Way The Last Gentleman Smuggler,
Speaker 1: so please check them both out. Additional thanks to Sophia Kiafulis, Twi,
Speaker 1: La Gore, Scott Vieira, Nathan Saunders, Elizabeth Ostman, and James Baxter.
Speaker 1: Tape sinks this season were by Elizabeth Eads, Barbara Sprunt,
Speaker 1: Robert Jamison, Audrey McGlinchey, Greta Weber and Sean Cologne. And
Speaker 1: a very special thanks to Jeff's singer at Stowaway Entertainment
Speaker 1: who uncovered the story and thought I should tell it.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Albern