POWELL HAD 40 DAYS before his Senate confirmation hearings. He decided he did not need to go off to the military equivalent of a nunnery to study how to handle the chairmanship. He had no secret plan for change, and he did not want to come crashing through the gate with new ideas. But he did want to look at the major operations that might have to be executed after he’d taken over.
He figured that there were several crises that might leap up and grab him with little or no warning, and he wanted to examine what military plans were on the shelf to deal with them. Plans would be his stock-in-trade in his new job. Powell knew he had an image among some senior officers as a pampered Washington general who had run only on the political fast track. They would be asking if this White House kid knew anything about the nuts and bolts of field operations.
Recognizing that Panama was a military crisis waiting to happen, he flew to Fort Bragg to examine the Panama plans. While he was there, a terrible storm hit, keeping him at Bragg for two days. Carl Stiner took advantage of the delay to brief Powell in extensive detail so he would understand that the 18th Corps was able to tailor force packages within 12 hours for just about any need that might arise in the world.
They went over the Panama PRAYER BOOK plans, including the BLUE SPOON plan for offensive operations against the PDF. Powell was surprised that it took so many days for the force buildup. Within a day or even hours, the entire landscape of a crisis could change. The plans did not take this into account. He made it clear to Stiner that the 18th Corps had to be able to move as rapidly as events. The new, lighter Army had this capability, but the existing plans did not exploit it. Things had to move much, much faster.
The plans offered no possibility of surprise, no invasion under the cover of darkness. Night-vision goggles and other technology gave U.S. forces the unmatched ability to launch a large operation at night, hitting multiple targets simultaneously. Night operations were the great advantage of the modern army. Hey, what gives? Powell asked.
He didn’t see an urgent need to change the plans overnight, but he decided they ought to get working on a detailed review. They should see if it was possible to come up with a new concept that emphasized surprise, speed and the night.
Soon Stiner had five of his best officers down in Panama on two-month rotations, reworking the plans. He provided them with a direct satellite communications hook-up so he could talk to them and be right on top of each refinement they made.
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During the latter part of August, Cheney received intelligence reports that came from an FBI source alleging that Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the multi-billionaire head of the Medellin cartel, was in Panama and was perhaps planning to move his base of operations there. Escobar, listed by Fortune magazine as one of the world’s ten richest men, was the chieftain of the worldwide illegal narcotics industry. According to the intelligence, he apparently believed that Noriega could guarantee him more protection than he received in Colombia, where officials seemed to be getting serious about cracking down on the drug lords. Particularly good information for an area in which intelligence is usually spotty at best, thought Cheney.
The administration was due to announce a comprehensive plan for its war on drugs and the President was going to address the nation on the subject in an evening speech on September 5. Cheney felt pressure to do something to assist with the drug problem. He could see Bush’s frustration mounting.
One sign that the administration was leaning forward on drugs was a new, sweeping 29-page legal opinion from the Justice Department issued June 21, stating that the President had legal authority to direct the FBI to abduct a fugitive residing in a foreign country for violations of U.S. law. This could be done even if the arrest was contrary to customary international law, the opinion said. It overruled a 1980 Carter administration opinion that had concluded the exact opposite—that the FBI could not enforce U.S. laws abroad.
The opinion could apply to both Escobar and Noriega.
The new FBI intelligence on Escobar’s whereabouts seemed like a much-needed break. Cheney asked Crowe to see if the JCS could come up with something that could be done to assist the effort to apprehend Escobar. Though the military apparently could not make such arrests, Cheney felt his forces could provide substantial assistance.
The President approved a tentative plan presented by Cheney and Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to apprehend Escobar. The first phase was to put “eyes” on the ground to conduct tactical reconnaissance of the location where Escobar was holed up according to the FBI informant. A special operations unit already in Panama could do this. It would confirm the FBI source’s information, and Escobar would be quickly snatched. The military would provide intelligence, communications and protection, but FBI or Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents accompanying the team would make the arrest.
Three strong arguments were presented for the operation. First, the arrest of Escobar would be a big bonanza in the drug war, making the point that there was no sanctuary—especially in Panama—for drug dealers. Second, it would scare the hell out of Noriega, who would surmise that he might be next. Third, White House speechwriters were looking for concrete examples of successes in the drug war for the President’s upcoming speech, and the Escobar arrest would offer a stunning illustration.
In the end, the operation did not come off. The FBI had irregular access to its informant, who had provided only a general location where he claimed Escobar was staying. The special operations unit went searching for the house but was unable to find it. And there was also evidence that the report that Escobar was in Panama had been planted as part of an FBI sting operation against other drug traffickers.
Cheney was distressed they had not been able to provide more timely intelligence. He ordered the Joint Staff to increase its intelligence capability.
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Because the Escobar arrest was not carried off, there was a blank space in the President’s planned speech on the drug war. To fill it, Bush aides had the DEA lure a suspected drug dealer to Lafayette Park across from the White House for a crack sale on the President’s doorstep. Holding up to the camera a sealed plastic evidence bag full of crack, the President told a national audience on September 5, “This is crack cocaine seized a few days ago by Drug Enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the White House. It could easily have been heroin or PCP. It’s as innocent looking as candy, but it’s turning our cities into battle zones, and it’s murdering our children.”
The Washington Post soon disclosed that the drug buy had been set up, an embarrassing revelation for the administration. All the publicity on the drugs put the spotlight once again on Noriega, an unpleasant symbol of American impotence in the face of illegal narcotics.
On his last trip to Washington before relinquishing command in Panama, Woerner had visited the State Department for a talk with Deputy Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger. The new assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, Aronson, joined the discussion and raised the possibility of a military solution in Panama.
Eagleburger, conveying the confidence of his three decades of foreign affairs experience, stated categorically, “We will NEVER invade Panama.”
After a White House meeting in September, Crowe told the senior members of the Joint Staff: “I don’t know when it’s going to happen, I don’t know what’s going to precipitate it, but I am convinced that we are going to have to go in with military force into Panama to resolve the situation, and we need to be ready to do it.”
• • •
On a rainy Wednesday morning, September 20, 1989, Powell went to Capitol Hill for his confirmation hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He had fixed in his mind some goals for the hearing. First, he wanted the committee to know he realized it was a changing world. Second, he wanted to say that, despite these changes, he did not want to oversee a hollowing out of the armed forces through budget cuts. Third, he didn’t want to speak against Admiral Crowe. He wanted a hearing that made no news.
“Secretary Weinberger laid down certain criteria for the use of U.S. military forces abroad,” Senator Nunn said to Powell toward the end of the uneventful hearing.
Powell half-smiled. He remembered well. In the spring of 1984, Powell was serving as the Secretary’s military assistant when Weinberger drafted a major speech laying down six tests for use of military force. As soon as it was circulated for approval by the administration, bloody fights ensued. All the chiefs, except the Chairman, General John W. Vessey, Jr., were violently opposed. Reagan’s national security adviser at the time, Robert McFarlane, stalled the speech until after the fall presidential election.
In the end, as was generally the case, Weinberger had his way. On November 28, 1984, he delivered the speech at the National Press Club. He felt it was the most important of his tenure. The tests were: (1) “The United States should not commit forces to combat overseas unless the particular engagement or occasion is deemed vital to our national interest”; (2) the commitment should only be made “with the clear intention of winning”; (3) it should be carried out with “clearly defined political and military objectives”; (4) it “must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary”; (5) it should “have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress”; and (6) it should “be a last resort.”
The speech, Powell knew, was part of Weinberger’s titanic battle with Secretary of State George Shultz. State frequently pushed for military solutions to its problems, while Weinberger and the military, who actually had to carry out the use of force, were more cautious.
They were good rules, in Powell’s view, but he wasn’t sure they should have been publicly declared. This had the effect of chiseling them in stone, so that whenever the United States used force, somebody was going to object: wait a minute, you didn’t follow one of the rules.
Nunn asked Powell, “Do you believe, as some so-called experts have said, that the Joint Chiefs under the Weinberger criteria are too reluctant and too reticent to use military forces abroad in certain contingencies?”
“My experience over the last several years,” Powell answered, “is that the Joint Chiefs have been quite ready to recommend to the President the use of military force in situations.” He cited the Persian Gulf escort mission, Libya and the 1983 Grenada invasion.
“So there is no hesitancy,” Powell went on, “to use the armed forces as a political instrument when the mission is clear and when it is something that has been carefully thought out and considered and all the ramifications of using military forces have been considered.
“I do not sense that they go down the Weinberger checklist and say, ‘Ah-ha, condition number three has not been met,’ ” Powell continued. “Secretary Weinberger’s very famous speech and his guidelines are useful guidelines, but I have never seen them to be a series of steps each one of which must be met before the Joint Chiefs of Staff will recommend the use of military force.”
The committee voted unanimously to confirm Powell. Within a day, the full Senate approved his nomination on a voice vote, a procedure reserved for the most uncontroversial questions.