Frank Hawkins was a clandestine intelligence agent for the DIA during the Cold War, operating out of the shadowy Bremerhaven Station running agents into Eastern Europe. Subsequently he became a foreign and war correspondent for The Associated Press in South Asia, East Asia, Europe and the Middle East where he headed up all AP operations in the Arab countries as well as Iran and Cyprus from his post in Beirut. In the 1980’s, he was a senior officer at Knight-Ridder, then one of the largest newspaper companies in the world. Hawkins also had a stint as president of a small Hong Kong conglomerate and went on to successfully start his own consulting companies while living in the Florida Keys. He is the author of the highly rated “The Zurich Printout” and co-author of “$ea Weed,” which we wrote together with his daughter Liv. He and his wife Inge live adjacent to the Everglades in a space shared with an alligator they call Fred.