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Law

Former Prosecutor Remembers His Role In Bringing Down Manuel Noriega

`Sea of Greed` is a book by Judge Douglas McCullough reflects back on the Manuel Noriega arrests.
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  Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was a infamous figure on the international stage during the 1980s. Before he became a caricature of the "crazy" dictator, he was on the payroll of the CIA and helped the United States gain information on Cuba.

His downfall came following the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, but the seeds of his destruction were planted on the coast of North Carolina. That's where a busted marijuana smuggling deal led U.S. Attorney Douglas McCullough on a long journey that would end with Noriega's prosecution on drug charges.

Judge Douglas McCullough is currently serving on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, but in the 1980s, he was a U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. There he came across a drug case that he would eventually tie to Noriega.

The Coast Guard encountered a ship full to the brim with marijuana. Two Guard members interviewed the captain, but during the conversation, the tell-tale sound of a shotgun cocking gave them pause. Their radios weren't encrypted, and they worried the smugglers would eavesdrop on their call for assistance, so they left the boat.

"They had to leave sight of the boat and find a pay station telephone to call for backup," McCullough said on The State of Things. "By the time they could get back to the boat, everybody was gone."

Eventually, one of the smugglers on that boat would get arrested on a separate charge in Florida. McCullough got wind and ultimately turned him against Noriega, who had been laundering money for the smuggler and his partners.

"They didn't know it was going to be quite as easy as it was," McCullough said. "All they did was put the money in duffel bags on a Lear jet. Fly it from the Florida area to Panama. Taxi over to the military side of the airport where DEA surveillance could not see them. And then they would be given a military escort to the bank."

Mcullough wrote a book about his role in bringing down Noriega called “Sea of Greed”  (Fish Towne Press/2008).

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Alex Granados joined The State of Things in July 2010. He got his start in radio as an intern for the show in 2005 and loved it so much that after trying his hand as a government reporter, reader liaison, features, copy and editorial page editor at a small newspaper in Manassas, Virginia, he returned to WUNC. Born in Baltimore but raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Alex moved to Raleigh in time to do third grade twice and adjust to public school after having spent years in the sheltered confines of a Christian elementary education. Alex received a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has a minor in philosophy, which basically means that he used to think he was really smart but realized he wasn’t in time to switch majors. Fishing, reading science fiction, watching crazy movies, writing bad short stories, and shooting pool are some of his favorite things to do. Alex still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up, but he is holding out for astronaut.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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