David Tuch’s ‘The Wireless Operator’ explores the modern drug trade
David Tuch didn’t set out to write a family memoir. He stumbled into a geopolitical epic. His cousin—Harold Derber—wasn’t just a wireless operator from wartime Manchester. He was a master mariner, a gun-runner, a Cold War intelligence asset, a Miami mob associate, a humanitarian ferrying refugees out of Cuba… and the man who invented the “drug mothership,” the smuggling system that reshaped global narcotics forever.
Tuch’s book, The Wireless Operator, reads like a crime thriller because Derber lived like one. The archive trail spans FOIA filings, declassified CIA material, lost DEA files, undercover surveillance photos, and the memoirs of a glamorous lover who may have been CIA. What emerges is a portrait of a man who moved through history’s firestorms with unnerving ease.
Below, a sharply abridged version of our conversation—lean, punchy, and every bit as cinematic as the life that inspired it.
What made you realize your cousin’s life wasn’t just family lore—it was a book?
What made you realize your cousin’s life wasn’t just family lore—it was a book?“The story already had the ingredients of a big-screen crime thriller… but what convinced me was the romance at its heart.” Derber was entangled with a woman likely doing contract work for the CIA while he himself was aiding Cuban intelligence. “They played a wonderful cat-and-mouse game that led to a heart-stopping romantic choice.”
How did you uncover the real scope of his operations?
Tuch started with a casual genealogy chat. “There was almost nothing about him online.” Then came newspapers, national archives, FOIA requests, interviews with agents, associates, and his lover’s memoirs. The DEA destroyed its files. The NSA file is still classified. “Despite government obstruction, what emerged was an epic web of espionage and organized crime… Narcos meets The Crown.”
What discovery hit the hardest?
His invention of the drug mothership. “It exploited a loophole that let him transport thousands of tons of marijuana with impunity.” And the wildest unverified claim? “That Derber was the KGB chief for Miami.”
How do you reconcile the Manchester Jewish kid with the drug-trade godfather?
“He was addicted to adventure and financial gain.” Wartime trauma sharpened it—Blitz, rationing, Blackshirts, Jewish internment camps. “It couldn’t have been a positive experience.”
Did you brush up against classified material?
“Yes.” Newly declassified CIA and U.S. National Archives files, plus “never-before-published undercover photos” of the biggest marijuana bust in U.S. history.
How revolutionary was the drug mothership?
“It industrialized drug trafficking.” Before Derber: small craft. After Derber: maritime mega-ops. Post-assassination, the cartels copied him. The 1970s import boom followed.
How did he see himself?
As a “soldier of fortune.” Ideology was a costume. “Mostly a way to provoke the government agencies he was defying.”
His ties to Cuban intelligence?
Extensive. He worked with Fidel Castro and especially Captain Víctor Pina—Che Guevara’s co-founder of Cuban intelligence. After Bay of Pigs, Derber secured exclusive transport out of Cuba to the U.S.
What personal traits made his constant reinvention possible?
“He could read people and switch codes as easily as languages.” He could operate with Castro or Meyer Lansky, file lawsuits to JFK, produce Coppola’s first films, and drink with Norwegian sailors. The throughline: mastery of loopholes.
Did you speak to people who knew him?
“Yes.” Former crew, associates, law enforcement, plus intelligence figures. Some had never spoken publicly.
Did you structure the book for cinematic pacing?
“Absolutely.” Real history, maximum velocity.
What part of his legacy stays with you?
“Audacity.” Followed by “ingenuity.” And finally: “the chaos that followed him everywhere.”
The Wireless Operator is history written with a fuse burning—WWII survival, Cold War spycraft, Miami mob politics, narcotics innovation, refugee smuggling, assassination attempts, and a romance between rival intelligence networks. Tuch turns a family secret into a sprawling chronicle of the twentieth century’s shadow economies.
