At the Devil’s Table
IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES (2007), an exclusive article about the insider behind the fall of the Cali drug cartel. It was also the public introduction of Jorge Salcedo, the crime syndicate’s one-time chief of security, who risked his own life saving his family and bringing down the cartel. The book version came next, published by Random House (2011). A series of foreign-language versions followed. In Spanish it was “En la Boca del Lobo.” In Portuguese: “A Mesa com O Diabo.” It has since been publishes in Dutch, Polish, Italian and Serbian. There have been television versions as well. In 2014 Sony-Teleset released its 80-episode Spanish-language telenovela “En la Boca del Lobo.” And in 2017 the popular Netflix series “Narcos” based its Season #3 on the Cali cartel. Both Salcedo and author Rempel served as story consultants for the series. To this day the Colombian and his family remain in hiding and under U.S. witness protection somewhere in the United States, their secret location still unknown even to the author.
Among the reviews: “In this powerful and riveting work of nonfiction, William Rempel demonstrates the virtues of investigative reporting. After gaining access to someone who could — and indeed did — bring down a cartel, Rempel has an extraordinary story to tell.” David Grann, author of “The Lost City of Z”
It started as a page one story. . .
The Gambler
It’s a rags-to-riches tale. . .
ABOUT KIRK KERKORIAN, who made and lost billions on bold business ventures on his way to becoming one America’s most successful self-made tycoons. . . A press-shy billionaire with a little-known but inspiring personal story . . . The son of illiterate Armenian immigrants who arrived in Los Angeles broke and struggling to avoid evictions. Kirk quit school as a boy in the eighth grade, cleared brush in the Sierra-Nevada mountains, worked as a day laborer at MGM Studios, and tried to launch a professional boxing career. A lethal right jab earned him a nickname in the boxing press: “Rifle Right Kerkorian.” But Kirk later brought the scrappy determination of a boxer to the business world. He ended up owning the MGM studios where he once worked for a few dollars a day — on his way to building the world’s biggest resort hotels, transforming the face of Las Vegas, and becoming one of the world’s richest men. Unlike some of his more notorious contemporaries, Kerkorian never put his name on any of his buildings. And he gave away billions without fanfare to charities, Armenian groups, and humanitarian causes.
Among the reviews: The Gambler “chronicles Kerkorian’s singular career and his engrossing life story… Rempel’s account is expansive and exhaustive, which is all the more impressive given that he had little authorized access. The official Kerkorian camp refused to cooperate… and Kerkorian gave almost no interviews during his life.” The Washington Post.
The Marcos Diaries
This president led an insurrection. . .
TO PREVENT THE PEACEFUL TRANSFER of power near the end of his constitutionally limited second term. The twice-elected Ferdinand Marcos insisted that he alone could fix his troubled country. Overnight, the president imposed his own rules, rounding up and jailing political rivals, closing independent media outlets, and silencing all public criticism. His unpopular, corrupt, and authoritarian regime replaced democracy for what would turn out to be more than 13 years. Fortunately, he left behind this remarkable document — his nearly 3,000 pages of neatly handwritten diary and related records.
When his dictatorship finally fell in 1986, the diary was left behind in the Marcos famil'y’s rush to escape into exile. It was later leaked to investigative reporter Rempel who found a treasure trove of insights into the mind, motives, and methods of a democrat transforming into a dictator.
Rempel’s book takes readers inside a string of plots and political intrigues, showing how the dictator-wannabe privately lobbied and compromised members of the country’s supreme court. It also adds historic detail to the very public sex affair between Marcos and an American B-movie actress, an episode that launched forsaken first lady Imelda Marcos as a political force in her own right — with her own limitless access to the national treasury.
Among the reviews: “This fascinating book, based on (Marcos’s) secret diaries, penetrates the strange, tortured mind of a man who not only deceived his own people and the world but deluded himself.” Stanley Karnow, author of “In Our Image, America’s Empire in the Philippines.”
Originally published as Delusions of a Dictator — The Mind of Marcos as Revealed in his Secret Diaries, by Little, Brown and Co. (1992). It is now available digitally as Diary of a Dictator – Ferdinand & Imelda: The Last Days of Camelot.