Honor to State : Outskirts Press : 9781977204882 : 1977204880 : 24 Dec 2018 : The author, a 37-year veteran of the Foreign Service, provides an unredacted, unabashed and often humorous account of how foreign policy was developed and executed during the Reagan-Bush years and how that impacted U.S. relations with three very different countries where he served as ambassador: Panama, Honduras and Portugal. This book is must-reading for anyone interested in the real story of what set off the events leading to the U.S. invasion of Panama and capture of its drug-dealing dictator, Manuel Antonio Noriega, and of the Central American crisis that pitted U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contras against the Sandinista regime in Managua. Ambassador Briggs pulls no punches in detailing the administration's successes and failures in a conflicted corner of the globe and in calling to account those in and out of Congress and the administration who sought to promote, subvert or sabotage U.S. policy. Briggs's sti