Manuel Noriega’s Billion-Dollar Detroit Drug Operation, with Former FBI Agent Ned Timmons

FAQs

• How did money from the Detroit-area operation reach Manuel Noriega?

  Timmons said the Cayman organization counted its money at a house in Farmington Hills, and he would load it into boxes that were flown from Willow Run Airport to the Cayman Islands. As US pressure made it harder to bring that much money into Cayman banks, the organization developed a contact with a colonel who worked for Noriega, flew briefcases of money down for Noriega, and he agreed to take care of them.

• What was Ned Timmons' undercover role in the Cayman Islands?

  Timmons said a source introduced him in the Cayman Islands as a cousin, and he worked undercover as a security specialist for the drug dealers, alone. He said that as far as he knows, it was the first time an FBI agent had worked undercover offshore.

• How did this investigation lead to Noriega's downfall?

  Timmons said the Cayman Islands trafficker he had worked for undercover pleaded guilty, served ten years and testified against Noriega. He said the man agreed to testify for the Kerry Commission, and that this built the evidence it took to approve the invasion of Panama and take down Noriega.

• How much cash did Ned Timmons see moving through the drug operation?

  Timmons described a pallet of US hundreds five feet by five feet by five feet, and said there was so much money that they switched to weighing it because it burned up the engines in money-counting machines. He said he was once sent from the Cayman Islands to Tampa with $250,000 to pay a bill.

• Does Ned Timmons still hear from people he helped take down?

  Yes. Timmons said the Cayman Islands trafficker he worked for undercover still talks to him about once a week. He said the man had told him the Colombians would kill him and his family if he quit, and later said that if he hadn’t been arrested he would be dead, because that was the only way he could stop.