The shadow war
The shadow war (English original title: Clear and Present Danger ) is the title of a novel by Tom Clancy , which was published in 1989. The book was filmed in 1994 under the American original title. In German-speaking countries, the film was given the deviating title Das Kartell .
The book is a political thriller and is about the US government's fight against drugs . This leads to the use of military force against the drug cartel in Colombia .
action
A US Coast Guard ship under Captain Red Wegener boards a yacht in the Caribbean and discovers that the owner, his wife and two children have been murdered. The murder is drug related and the wife and daughter were raped prior to the murder . The perpetrators are still on board and are arrested. They are nicknamed The Pirates . The Coast Guard believes that the perpetrators would get away with under-sentence if they did not confess, and is holding a court-martial to sentence one of the perpetrators to death . After his bogus execution , the second made a full confession.
Further investigations on the mainland reveal that the murdered businessman was doing money laundering for the drug cartel . The following action, TARPON , leads to the confiscation of $ 650 million from the cartel. In addition to this action, the US president , who is on the election campaign, wants to wage the war on drugs more vigorously and thus keep his election promise. He wants to hit the source of the drug trafficking with a covert operation against the Colombian cartel . The plan is being carried out by three senior officials: the President’s Security Advisor Vice Admiral James Cutter, CIA Assistant Director (Operations) Robert Ritter and CIA Director Arthur Moore.
The plan, called SHOWBOAT, consists of several phases. The first operation in the plan is EAGLE EYE , in which planes transporting drugs from Colombia to the United States will be intercepted by an F-15 fighter and forced to land or, if refused, shot down.
This is followed by Operation VARIABEL , for which Spanish- speaking members of the light infantry with Latin American roots were recruited and trained. Domingo Chavez is one of those men. The units are dropped off in Colombia and have the task of observing small airfields, which serve as the starting point for courier flights, and of destroying these and production facilities.
Meanwhile, Ernesto Escobedo, the head of the Colombian drug cartel, sends the former Cuban secret service agent Félix Cortez to the USA to look for the cause of the missing aircraft. This builds a relationship with Moira Wolfe, the secretary of the FBI - Director Emil Jacobs and get her the information that her supervisor to Colombia flying to a meeting with the local Minister of Justice. Cortez passes on this information, however, is furious after learning that Escobedo the FBI director, the US ambassador in Colombia and another senior official in the car while driving from the airport into an ambush had lure and murder. He fears reprisals from the United States.
The assassination worsened the situation with Operation RECIPROCITY . John Clark is given virtually a free hand to take action against the cartel. He drops a laser-guided bomb on a house where the cartel is consulting. The bomb, which does not leave any remains of its own due to its flammable shell, makes the attack look like a car bomb attack . Not only cartel members die in the attack, but also their relatives and domestic staff. Cortez suspects the US was behind the attack and links the bomb to the recently discovered activity at the airfields. A second bomb that kills other cartel members suits him: he decides to use the weakening of the cartel to rise himself. So he stages an ambush on Escobedo and withdraws armed drug barons to pursue American troops attacking processing sites and weaken the cartel members. He wants to kill two birds with one stone by killing the Americans and sacrificing men of the cartel in the process. However, he then came to the conclusion that US actions would help him even further. So he sends Cutter, the US President's security advisor , a fax setting up a meeting.
Jack Ryan was named Acting Deputy Director Intelligence during these events because his boss, Admiral James Greer, is dying. Moore and Ritter do not inform him about Operation SHOWBOAT because they do not trust him and want to keep the circle of those who knew it small. However, Ryan is concerned about the incidents in Colombia and is briefed by his friend Robby Jackson, a naval aviator, about the launch of the plane that dropped the bomb and about the special forces. He asks Director Moore what is going on in Colombia and is replied to tell the Congressional Monitoring Committee on Intelligence that it has nothing to do with the incidents. By lying to the committee, Ryan would break the law.
During Ritter's absence, Ryan opens his safe, finds the documents about the secret operations and copies some of them. He thinks these actions are illegal and gets in touch with FBI agent friend Dan Murray. The two initiate the director of the FBI and begin an independent and secret intelligence operation. An officer follows Admiral Cutter as he flies alone to Panama and observes and photographs him as he meets with Cortez. Cutter and Cortez agree not to disclose the Americans' operations when Cutter abandons the soldiers in Colombia and helps Cortez take over the leadership position in the cartel. To do this, he wants to cut drug imports into the USA in half after he has gained power and not pass on any information to the press . Cutter, who was instructed by the President to end the operation as soon as possible after the collateral damage , arranged for the communication with the units in Colombia and their supply to be suspended. He also had Ritter in Washington destroy all documents and passed the coordinates of the troops' whereabouts in Colombia on to Cortez.
On the deathbed of Admiral Greer, Jack meets Ryan John Clark, who finally clears up the matter of Operation SHOWBOAT . He wants to fly out the soldiers who have since been severely decimated as a result of the betrayal and the resulting attack. Together with the cooperating FBI agents, you decide on a secret rescue operation.
Domingo Chavez and other survivors are rescued by helicopter . However, Clark wants to get his hands on Cortez, who ordered the hunt. Cortez and his employer Escobedo are arrested during a raid . Ryan forbids Clark to kill Escobedo. So Clark Escobedo later hands over his rival in the cartel as a “traitor”. Cortez is interrogated and later transferred to Cuba.
background
The shadow war can be seen as an allegory of the Iran-Contra affair , as it made headlines in 1986, while the book was being written. The US government supported the Contras in Nicaragua with money from illegal arms sales to Iran . Congressional hearings also revealed that the Contras had smuggled tons of cocaine into the United States and that the CIA knew about it.
The original title Clear and Present Danger is a quote from the grounds of the judgment of the US Supreme Court from 1919 on the Schlenck vs. US , which approved the restrictions of the First Amendment (which guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of the press ) by the Espionage Act of 1917.
Classification in the Jack Ryan cycle
The book The Shadow War is the fifth novel to be published around Jack Ryan to be introduced by Tom Clancy in The Hunt for Red October . In this novel, Jack Ryan and John Clark meet for the first time, and their connection is taken up further in subsequent novels. Domingo Chavez, called "Ding", also makes his first appearance.
filming
In 1994 the book was filmed under the title Das Kartell . The main roles were played by Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan and Willem Dafoe as John Clark.
literature
- Tom Clancy, The Shadow War, Heyne, November 2001; ISBN 3453199014