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“In a New York minute, everything can change”
I got an email yesterday, from an Amazon customer who hasn’t yet received his copy of “Barry ‘the boys,’” my book about the biggest drug smuggler in American history, and it has prompted me to do something I’ve been reluctant to do: Announce my coming—but not quite yet imminent—demise. My reply to the customer whose…
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The Wolves of Wall Street
The most interesting character among the players of the Sarasota ‘hyena pack’—it’s a professional designation used by law enforcement and financial fraud specialists— is Ramy El Batrawi. Plus, he’s still active. Ramy El-Batrawi has been around major cocaine transactions for decades, yet he appears to have emerged unscathed. He is untouchable and knows it. He…
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Governments, Gangsters, & the Trial of El Chapo Guzman
The trial of El Chapo Guzman is as disappointing to criminologists trying to understand the deep structure of the drug trade as a rained-out series between The Yankees and Red Sox is to baseball fans waiting to place bets on who’s going to win the American League. This week in El Chapo’s trial was like…
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The JFK assassination and ‘Barry & ‘the boys’
Two hours before John Kennedy was assassinated on Friday November 22 1963 at 12:30 p.m. Central Time, the stripper headlining Jack Ruby’s Carousel nightclub in Dallas was in a panic to get out of town. The National Archives and Records Administration today began releasing government documents never been disclosed on the Kennedy assassination, under a law passed in 1992 after…
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Keeping it in ‘The Family:’ Director’s Mobbed-Up Dad
Doug Liman, the director of the new Tom Cruise movie ‘AMERICAN MADE,’ has a dirty secret in his family closet. His Dad was a Mafia groupie. Which wouldn’t matter, except Liman loudly claims his new film is based on the true story of Barry Seal, when it isn’t. And it amounts to a further Iran…
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Barry Seal & AMERICAN MADE’S Cigar Store Indians
(Want to see why the new movie “based on a true story” AMERICAN MADE is an insult to America? READ “Deep Watergate, a chapter from “Barry & the boys.’) The most interesting thing about the new movie ‘AMERICAN MADE’—assuming you’re immune to gape-jawed curiosity at an obviously-smitten director unspooling an $80 million love letter…
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A True Story about Barry Seal & the CIA
Speaking of the new movie “American Made” about Barry Seal and the CIA and drug trafficking… and we WERE, weren’t we? I mean, with all the MONEY rolling in– day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade– why would anyone ever talk about anything ELSE?
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The Mystery in Medellin: Why was ‘American Made’ there?
This is a story about a plane crash. Start here: Everybody in-country was tired, or sweaty, or both. “Swelter” is a word that acquires new meaning in a South American jungle. It was the last day of filming. Tom Cruise has been in-country for 20 sweaty days in a row. Everyone was anxious to get…
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‘American Made’ turns Seal story into “madcap ’80’s romp”
A new movie coming out in four weeks attempts to pull off a feat no other biopic from a major Hollywood studio ever has… Called “American Made” and starring Tom Cruise as drug smuggler Barry Seal, the upcoming release has airbrushed out the very things that made its main character famous to begin…