Badges of Betrayal: Based on a True Story - Paperback

by Phillip Montalvo (Author)

They sent him in. They left him to die. He came back to fight.

You know the story: a government agency recruits an ordinary citizen, promises him protection, and sends him into danger. But what happens when the mission goes wrong and the agency decides you never existed? What happens when the people who swore to bring you home are the same ones trying to bury you?

Badges of Betrayal: Based on a True Story is the harrowing account of Cliff Berry, a flight instructor from small-town Illinois who was recruited by a friend and former student to become a civilian contract "special operator" for the DEA. What Cliff believed would be a lucrative act of patriotism placed him in the middle of an unauthorized, off-the-books operation so dangerous that even DEA agents were prohibited from participating. Sent deep into Colombia on an undercover drug sting, Cliff was captured by Colombian authorities, abandoned by the very agency that deployed him, and left to rot in a foreign prison where attempts were made on his life. He did not just survive. He did the unthinkable.

Told by the attorney who represented Cliff and fought beside him for years, this is a story of betrayal at the highest levels, one man's refusal to be silenced, and a legal battle no one believed could be won.

- A real DEA operation gone catastrophically wrong

- A daring escape from a Colombian prison

- A courtroom showdown against the most powerful drug enforcement agency in the world