Authors: John Gilstrap,Kurt Muse

Six Minutes To Freedom (35 page)

BOOK: Six Minutes To Freedom

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Authors’ Note

Six Minutes to Freedom
is equal parts memoir and tribute.It is not, and should not be considered to be, the definitive history of this slice of time.
SixMin
, as we’ve come to refer to it among ourselves,is one man’s story; but we chose to tell it in the third person becauseKurt’s saga affected many people, and we wanted the freedom to portray their stories as equal to Kurt’s own.

For purposes of narrative clarity, some of the characters are in fact composites of several real people. Examples include the prison guards and the Delta operators. We feel that as long as we do not play fast and loose with the factual events, we can streamline the number of character names we throw at our readers.

Many of the players’ names have been changed. Most of the CIA operatives and all of the Delta Force operators who participated in the research for this book did so only on the condition that they remain anonymous. Thus, we took enormous liberties with their identities, in some cases creating characters from whole cloth to serve the roles of their anonymous counterparts. We made a point, in fact, to draw these characters in such a way that they are truly unrecognizable. We felt no compunction against making short people tall and transforming women into men and vice versa. It was the least we could do since some of the players are still actively involved in their ongoing mission to keep us all safe.

One of the hardest decisions was to change the names of Kurt’s coconspirators. It is Kurt’s choice to come forward with the details of this chapter in his life—of their lives—and out of respect for his friends and their families, we thought we owed them plausible deniability. While all of them willingly cooperated in the research for
Six Minutes to Freedom
, many still live in Panama among former PDF officers whose take on these patriots’ efforts to topple a dictator might be understandablybitter. The last thing we want to do is make their lives more difficultthan they’ve already been.

The final note involves dialogue, which we didn’t hesitate to create to serve the dramatic construct of a factual scene. For example, if our research turned up evidence in a diary or in an interview that “Colonel Smith greeted us cordially,” we portrayed that moment as a fleshed-out scene in a manner such as this: “Colonel Smith stood as they entered the room and extended his hand. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said.”

Call it dramatic license, if you will. Our intent is not to deceive the reader—again, the facts and tone of the conversations are real—but merely to make the story more enjoyable.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2005938604

ISBN: 978-0-8065-3605-7