THURMAN ORDERED the more than 13,000 men and women under his command to wear their combat jungle fatigues with the irregular brown and green camouflage patterns every day. He had the soft-drink machines near the command’s intelligence offices removed, so officers would no longer congregate there, making themselves targets for PDF spying. He intensified the major Category Three and Four exercises, sending anywhere from 150 to 500 men out on maneuvers around Panama in boats, helicopters, tanks, amphibious vehicles and aircraft. At least one helicopter exercise ran every night. These exercises were designed to appear random, but many involved actual targets that might be hit if offensive operations were ever ordered against the PDF.
One night during the week after the failed coup, Lieutenant General Stiner arrived at Howard Air Force Base in Panama aboard a C-20 airplane. He and his key planners and commanders were all wearing civilian clothes so they might slip in unbeknownst to the PDF.
Thurman met with Stiner and said that he wanted them to refine the BLUE SPOON contingency plan down to the finest details—“to a cat’s eye,” Thurman said.
Yes, sir, Stiner replied.
Then you and the 18th Corps will rehearse it every two months.
Yes, sir.
Every two months for the next ten years. “I won’t be here but somebody will,” Thurman added.
On October 11, Thurman’s request for an additional deployment of military police was approved. Soon 24-hour-a-day police patrols were set up along some sensitive routes. Thurman ordered his helicopters to fly exercises to the headquarters of the PDF’s Battalion 2000, an 800-man force considered Noriega’s most potent and lethal, based at Fort Cimarron east of Panama City.
• • •
Powell was already intimately familiar with the PDF leadership. As Reagan’s national security adviser, he had spent long hours examining the intelligence files of PDF officers, looking for alternatives to Noriega. He’d concluded that there was no one. The top 10 or 20 officers were committed to personal power and wealth. There was no way the U.S. could support these thugs. In Powell’s view, only Colonel Eduardo Herrera Hassan, the former Panamanian ambassador to Israel, was a decent possibility; but he had been tainted, in the eyes of some Panamanians, by his involvement in several 1988 CIA coup plans that never got off the ground.
General Kelly’s assessment of the PDF was even harsher. He felt there was sufficient intelligence to conclude that all the top leaders were murderers or torturers.
Powell was not sure they were all that bad, but with the prestige of President Bush and the United States on the line, how could the military risk participating, even indirectly or by implication, in the installation of another power-hungry self-seeker?
It couldn’t, Powell concluded. He decided there was only one answer: the BLUE SPOON plan had to be made more ambitious. Any offensive operation against the PDF must be total; it must capture or drive out the entire leadership. Then legitimate civilian political leaders could take charge.
Powell issued a guidance to Thurman directing that the CINCSOUTH be ready to respond to a contingency in Panama on two hours’ notice with the forces already in place there. And for a full offensive operation against the PDF, the BLUE SPOON plan would have to be radically changed: Thurman would be given only 48 hours to mobilize for a large-scale attack—not the previous mobilization time of five days.
• • •
During the week after the coup, Powell had ordered Kelly and Sheafer to set up a small, secret planning cell in the Pentagon, consisting of officers from Kelly’s J-3 operations staff and Sheafer’s J-2 intelligence staff. This cell was to work closely with Thurman and Stiner and their people to make sure that every detail was shared and coordinated.
Traditionally, operations and intelligence worked separately. Powell now wanted them in each other’s back pockets. One key to a lightning offensive operation was making sure the U.S. forces knew everything possible about what they were attacking, as well as how they were going to attack, down to which squad would go through which door in which building. The planners were to make sure that each individual target folder—intelligence, maps, drawings, pictures, and all the specifics on the U.S. units assigned to hit that target—was up to date and briefed to those who needed to know. There would be more than two dozen targets.
• • •
On Saturday, October 14, Carl Stiner went to the Ball Camp Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, for his daughter’s wedding. During the reception afterwards, he was pulled away to take a call from the Pentagon. Stiner was to fly to Washington the next morning to give the Chairman an off-line briefing on progress to date on revising BLUE SPOON.
Stiner arrived at the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, accompanied by Major General Gary Luck, 52, a short, gray-haired Army aviator and paratrooper. Luck was the commanding general of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
Stiner told Powell that substantial modifications in the BLUE SPOON plan were in the works. First, the conventional forces and the special operations forces were to be integrated under one commander—Stiner himself. He would give his orders directly to the various service commanders, including General Luck, whose special operations forces would be assigned to the most threatening PDF strongholds. These included the Comandancia, Battalion 2000 at Fort Cimarron, and the Modelo Prison, where CIA agent Kurt Muse was being held.
If he got the full 48 hours’ notice, Stiner planned to bring in perhaps 11,000 additional troops to Panama to supplement the 13,000 at the Southern Command. He felt it was important to go with the full force, which would allow him to strike simultaneously the targets his planners had identified. Simultaneity should minimize casualties, fully engage all PDF units, and ensure that the PDF leadership was dislodged. Stiner said he didn’t think there would be many fighters in the PDF—he planned to use special teams for psychological operations to frighten PDF troops and officers and encourage them to surrender.
The plan was set to be executed at night, Stiner said, and his instructions from Thurman were to rehearse so much that the Panamanians would grow numb watching ground and air exercises.
Powell asked what would happen if there was another coup attempt and the President decided he wanted to support it. He needed to be able to tell the Secretary and the President that the military had forces and a plan to receive Noriega from hypothetical coup leaders, or to abduct him.
The troops deployed during NIMROD DANCER in May could provide the short-notice force, Stiner said, and there were some special operations people on the ground in Panama who could respond to presidential orders. But Stiner emphasized that the in-country troops would not be enough to do all that was required. My recommendation, Stiner told Powell again, would be to go with the total BLUE SPOON plan.
Powell agreed.
• • •
The next day, October 16, Powell had Major General Luck into his office at 10 a.m. for two 30-minute dress rehearsal briefings. Five hours later, Powell and Luck presented themselves at the Oval Office with Cheney for presentations to President Bush on two top-secret special operations plans.
Cheney started the briefings by saying that he wanted the President to be aware of the special capability that could be in Panama nine hours after he ordered its deployment: four hours to assemble, and five hours to travel by plane.
The first special operations contingency plan was code-named GABEL ADDER. Luck outlined how he could go to Panama, or anywhere in the world for that matter, with a force of about 300 that could be used to rescue Americans or any other hostages. The team could also be used to abduct one of the drug lords or Noriega himself. Its specialty was forced entry into anything from a hostile country to a barricaded building where hostages were located.
The team included:
• A Delta squadron capable of overt or covert strikes during the day or night. All of it could be used at once, and smaller portions could also be deployed.
• A package of 16 helicopters, code-named SILVER BULLET.
• Elements from SEAL Team 6 for any underwater work or beach landing.
• Special intelligence teams to provide support for the operators. For example, one team of three listeners, code-named ROBIN QUART, traveled with sophisticated equipment that could be used to tap telephones without cutting into the wires, or to eavesdrop on conversations from a distance without having to plant bugs.
• A medical unit, a communications unit and a command and control staff.
In the second half hour, Luck presented the ACID GAMBIT contingency plan that could be used to extract Muse from Modelo Prison.
A month before, Bush had received a personal plea for help from Muse, in a letter smuggled out in a book. Powell was all too aware of the impact American hostages had on presidents. Overreaction to the plight of Americans held captive abroad had become a pattern. Powell’s approach to the hostage situations was to try to keep the response measured, and if possible, presidential emotions in check. But it was difficult. The CIA had created immense pressure for the military to develop a rescue plan, and Bush had made it clear that he would order a rescue if there was clear evidence that Muse’s life was in danger.
Luck showed aerial photos of the prison and the route a helicopter assault would take. He presented a detailed scale model of the prison in a box that flopped open, showing the downtown neighborhood in which the prison was located, the terrain, and the prison itself, including guard posts, entrances, exits and the exact location of Muse’s 8-by- 12-foot, second-floor cell. Muse had been held in solitary confinement there for six months now.
Luck gave a minute-by-minute, at times a second-by-second description of how Delta forces would make the synchronized assault and proceed to Muse’s cell by stunning the guards, perhaps not even killing any of them. Muse would be free and safely aboard a helicopter in nine minutes.
Cheney was not recommending an execution of ACID GAMBIT. The briefing was to demonstrate capability, and show that the Pentagon had responded to the requests for a plan from the President and the CIA. Cheney knew that Bush was under pressure on the Muse issue from CIA Director William Webster, who in turn was under pressure from covert-operations specialists. And the President was sympathetic, Cheney knew, to the CIA’s desire to avoid at all costs a repeat of the murder of Beirut station chief William Buckley. Like Powell, Cheney was sure that Bush would order a rescue if Muse was in jeopardy.
Nonetheless, Cheney had been working hard for months to dampen any enthusiasm for execution of ACID GAMBIT. The first reason was that Muse was not in any great danger, and was being fed and treated well. Second, a rescue would put everyone else in Panama on notice that the United States possessed this quick-snatch capability and was willing to use it. Cheney thought that there were more valuable targets—the drug lords or Noriega himself—for a snatch. To blow the capability just on Muse would not be wise.
In addition, Cheney believed that a high-profile rescue at the prison, right across from Noriega’s headquarters, would be a very direct affront to the PDF. As Cheney’s lawyers had warned him, there would be unforeseeable consequences from a decision to violate the sovereignty of another nation in order to release a single person under arrest for violating the local laws. A war could start over one man. If the sole concern of the U.S. government was Muse, a rescue would be reasonable. But there were thousands of other Americans in Panama, and any one or any group of them could become hostages or prisoners.
• • •
Some of the special operations forces dispatched to Panama in the spring had been sent back to the United States. Now Max Thurman wanted more. If he had to snatch Noriega or rescue Kurt Muse or some hostages on short notice, he needed the capability on the ground in Panama, not standing by at Fort Bragg waiting to be dispatched. By Friday, October 20, Thurman had requested and Powell had approved a secret deployment of a special operations team to Panama with Major General Luck commanding. Powell carried the deployment order up to Cheney, whose approval was required for any new deployment of troops anywhere in the world.
The reasons given for the deployment were: normal, prudent preparation for more Category Three and Four exercises; response to increased tensions; and enhanced capability to respond to emergencies. In addition, the exercises carried out by these forces, and others already in Panama, were superb rehearsals for actual operations.
Cheney was impressed by the contrast between Thurman and his predecessor, Woerner, who hadn’t wanted more forces.
Without argument, Cheney signed the orders for the special deployment, code-named NIFTY PACKAGE, and consisting of: a Delta squadron, the SILVER BULLET package of 16 helicopters, and the three ROBIN QUART signals intelligence listeners, plus Luck and his staff of specialists. The only major difference between this deployment and the forces called for in Luck’s GABEL ADDER rescue/abduction plan was that no SEAL Team 6 unit was included in NIFTY PACKAGE.
Delighted to receive the extra forces, Thurman sent them on a series of intense, high-adventure night exercises that only resulted in some dented helicopters.
• • •
Army Chief of Staff Vuono worked to keep his hand directly in the Panama planning. He summoned Stiner and Luck, two of his own generals, up to Washington on October 27 for a full, private briefing on the changes that were being made to BLUE SPOON.
“This is a goddamn sophisticated plan here,” Vuono said after hearing the outline. At the outset, more than 350 planes and helicopters would be flying close together in the airspace above Panama. He urged Stiner and Luck to make sure they were coordinated. “You’ve got to do as much rehearsal on something like this as you possibly can.”
Yes, sir, Stiner replied. He was spending about one third of his time on planning and rehearsing for Panama.
To operate that many aircraft in such a small area at night, it was necessary to equip every pilot, co-pilot and aircraft crew member with super-sensitive night-vision goggles that would allow them to see almost as if it were day. With the goggles, they would be able to distinguish friendly U.S. troops from Panamanian forces, and avoid power lines, towers and other obstacles. To assist those wearing the goggles, there would be AC-130 gunship airplanes equipped with giant infrared searchlights. Circling quietly high above the ground, each could illuminate an area the size of several football fields.
“We’ll own the night,” Stiner told Vuono.
• • •
On Monday, October 30, Thurman signed a quarter-inch-thick document designated Commander in Chief Southern Command Operations Order 1–90 (BLUE SPOON). The plan was built around three principles—maximum surprise, minimum collateral damage (damage to nonmilitary targets) and minimum force.
That Wednesday, at 2 p.m., General Kelly and his J-3 planners went to Powell’s office and gave the Chairman a detailed BLUE SPOON briefing. It was Powell’s 30th day as Chairman.
Two days later, on Friday, November 3, Thurman, Stiner and Luck gave the BLUE SPOON briefing to the chiefs in the Tank, explaining how a light division-size force of about 11,000 additional troops could be brought to Panama quickly to help eliminate Noriega and his PDF. Luck said that since the ACID GAMBIT plan to rescue Kurt Muse was apparently not going to be carried out independently, he was going to incorporate it into the BLUE SPOON plan. If BLUE SPOON were executed, Luck explained, Muse would be in danger; accordingly, his rescue would have to be accomplished at the very instant of any offensive operations.
Also on November 3, the Justice Department issued a 28-page memorandum to Scowcroft which went well beyond the earlier ruling that the FBI could make arrests abroad. This new memo concluded that the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the military to make arrests in the United States, does not apply abroad. Thus the military could be used to arrest drug traffickers and fugitives overseas. The memo stated that such an interpretation “is necessary to enable certain criminal laws to be executed and to avoid unwarranted restraints on the President’s constitutional powers.”
An intelligence directive from the President also was issued around this time, authorizing the CIA to spend up to $3 million on a covert plan to recruit Panamanian military officers and exiles to topple Noriega. In effect, the CIA and the Pentagon were in competition to see who could first rid Bush of the Noriega problem.
The next week, Powell took the J-3 briefers up to Cheney to outline BLUE SPOON.
One of the targets was Rio Hato, a base 75 miles southwest of Panama City where Noriega’s fierce, Cuban-trained Macho de Monte forces, which had put down the October coup attempt, were located. The plan called for the Air Force’s new F-117A Stealth fighters to drop 2,000-pound bombs around the barracks, stunning and disorienting the PDF troops inside. Never before used in battle, the highly touted planes cost more than $100 million each. Employing the latest technological and design knowhow, they were built to be virtually invisible to enemy radar and had ultra-precise targeting capabilities.
“Come on, guys,” Cheney chuckled. “The Stealth—you’re going to use the Stealth?” Cheney was mindful of the criticisms of the 1983 Grenada operation, when each of the services had done its best to get a piece of the action; the Stealth could be a high-profile bid by the Air Force for a bigger role in BLUE SPOON. “Why the hell do you want to use the 117?” Cheney asked sharply. “The last time I checked there was no serious air defense threat.”
Stiner had requested it, Powell and the J-3 officers explained, because the F-117A would provide the best, most accurate nighttime bombing capability. It had the most advanced laser guidance system, which allowed the pilot to direct his bombs to their precise targets with nearly perfect, pinpoint accuracy.
The F-l 17A was also going to be used to bomb one of Noriega’s hangouts east of Panama City.
Cheney questioned them closely on this. If it ever came to execution, he asked, wouldn’t they at least know whether Noriega was on the eastern or western side of Panama? And if he wasn’t in the eastern part, then they wouldn’t need to hit the target, would they?
That target was later dropped from the list.
• • •
Thurman and Stiner wanted still more forces prepositioned in Panama. The failed coup had pointed up the fact that with in-place forces only, the United States had no ready way to attack the Comandancia with heavy fire, and no way to prevent Noriega’s Battalion 2000 from marching down ten miles from Fort Cimarron to rescue him at the Comandancia. In early November, Stiner requested a force package including:
• Four Sheridan tanks.
• An Airborne Armored platoon.
• Six versatile and powerful AH-64 Apache helicopters, which resembled flying spiders and had precision night-flying capability. Designed as a tank-killer, the Apache was heavily armed with Hellfire missiles, rockets and turreted 30mm chain guns (which use munitions that are fed in machine-gun style).
• Three OH-58 scout helicopters.
Thurman and Powell approved the request, and on November 7 Cheney signed the deployment order, which was given the code name ELOQUENT BANQUET.
• • •
Thurman was haunted by the criticism of the 1983 Grenada invasion, when communications had been so badly arranged that units could not talk with each other. The equipment, frequencies and procedures of each of the services had not matched, and there was no overall, joint communications plan. Now he personally examined the communications manuals, plans and orders in BLUE SPOON. The Communications-Electronic Operating Instructions (CEOI) made a stack three feet high.
“We’re not going to repeat any of that bullshit, so get it down,” Thurman ordered his planners, insisting on regular updates throughout the month. He wanted to be sure that the Air Force tankers, transports, and tactical aircraft were fully integrated for communication with the Army and the special operations units. When he was finished, he had examined and personally checked each page, and the CEOI was reduced to an inch-thick document.
Thurman also approved a plan to reduce the number of dependents in Panama to 500 families. Beginning November 16, all other dependents were to be shipped back to the United States.
• • •
During the week of November 20, Thanksgiving week, Stiner and a team of his planners flew down to Panama to check on the training and exercises. Once more they arrived at night wearing civilian clothes. Stiner wanted a detailed “backbrief”—an account of actions already taken—from every one of the U.S. commanders, covering what had happened each day since his last visit; no overall summaries would do. He listened patiently; no detail seemed to bore him. He was not satisfied with the aviation plan for night operations, a key part of BLUE SPOON.
Hoping to be back home at Fort Bragg for Thanksgiving dinner, Stiner had not even brought a uniform. But soon after he arrived, the U.S. Embassy in Panama City reported that a man had walked in at night claiming that by day he was working for the Medellin drug cartel. He said the cartel was fed up with U.S. support to the drug war in Colombia, where the cartel was getting hammered very badly, and was going to retaliate. His information was very precise: the cartel was in the process of planting or sending ten car bombs into U.S. installations. The bombs would be aimed at a full range of targets—officers, troops and dependents.
One target, the informant said, was the Gorgas U.S. Army Hospital, which was near Thurman’s Quarry Heights headquarters. Partly perched on stilts alongside a mountain, with a parking lot underneath, the hospital was vulnerable. A single car bomb could cause havoc.
The walk-in source was given a polygraph test to determine if he was telling the truth. The results were ambiguous. A second test was administered and he passed.
When Thurman received the information in his headquarters, he called Stiner.
“Look,” Thurman said, “what we’re going to do is we’re going to be ready now.”
“You’re stood up, my friend,” Thurman said, meaning he was activating Stiner’s Joint Task Force that instant, “so start operating.” Stiner was now the warfighting commander of all the forces. If something happened and Washington ordered a military response, Stiner would be postured to provide it.
“You’re in charge of everything,” Thurman said.
Yes, sir.
“There’s a single American killed,” Thurman said, “we’re going to blow him away. Mr. Noriega’s going to go away.”
Yes, sir.
Thurman sent off a message to Powell informing him of the emergency activation of the JTF.
Powell was not happy. Activation of a Joint Task Force was a decision for Cheney and Powell himself. Thurman commanded his troops in Panama and the rest of the Southern Command, but nowhere else. He could not unilaterally stand up Stiner, who was under the authority of Forces Command in the United States.
Powell called Thurman on the secure line.
“Very thoughtful,” Powell said sarcastically. “Why don’t you ask next time? And let me make the decision up here.”
Faced with the threat of multiple car bombs, activation of the task force was obvious, Thurman felt. After the failed coup, after all the press criticism, after all the congressional second-guessing just seven weeks before, the President would have to respond militarily if there was a bombing. What choice would he have?
“Listen, my friend,” Thurman told Powell, “if a bomb blows up down here, that is a trigger event.”
Powell said probably so, but it would be for the President and Secretary of Defense to decide.
“If a goddamn bomb goes off,” Thurman said, “we have ourselves a major problem, and particularly if Americans get killed.”
While it was nice to have an aggressive commander, Powell thought, he would have to keep very close tabs on Thurman.
Powell reported to Cheney. The Secretary was worried about another Beirut-like car bombing killing dozens or hundreds. With 13,000 troops in Panama, a permanent presence—all there to protect U.S. interests—there was much more at stake. How could you not take seriously a report of car bombs in Panama sponsored by the Medellin cartel, Cheney wondered. Yeah, Max was acting aggressive, but that’s probably what they needed, Cheney concluded. He decided to back Thurman fully. The Joint Task Force could continue to operate.
Thurman placed U.S. forces on maximum alert for a terrorist threat. The bases were virtually sealed. Everyone and everything coming through all the gates was subjected to what he called “rather fulsome inspections.”
Thurman also put in a request for nearly all the dog teams in the U.S. military that had been trained in bomb detection. He got most of them. Criminal Investigation Division agents and physical security experts were also sent to Southern Command. Cheney approved these security deployments that week under the codename POLE TAX.
Stiner took command of all this security. “Shit,” he said, trying to carry out Thurman’s request for dogs to be sent down, “it doesn’t have to be a trained dog. It can be any kind of dog.” He had all the communications channels checked, set up more intelligence gathering and intensified night rehearsals.
At the Gorgas Army Hospital, U.S. forces conducted rigorous car inspections. Members of Noriega’s Dignity Battalions turned out to protest, claiming that people were being obstructed from going to work. There was a big pushing and shoving match, but no shots were fired. U.S. troops had to be sent in to get the Dignity Battalions to leave.
Meanwhile, Powell and others began to wonder about the source who had appeared at the U.S. Embassy with these carbomb claims. Powell began applying one of his favorite epithets, “goofy,” to the whole situation. All week, night after night, the man had come to the embassy, insisting that he’d been in the cartel’s inner councils all day. Powell concluded that if it were true, the cartel would not let him run off into the night like that. It made no sense. The intelligence capability of the entire U.S. military had been cranked up and there was not the slightest confirmation of the things he was saying.
The source was “boxed” on the polygraph a third time and he flunked gloriously. All the agencies and departments involved concluded that either he had just been lying or it was an elaborate sting to confuse or scare the United States.
At the end of November, after consulting with Powell, Thurman dissolved the Joint Task Force and sent Stiner home.
• • •
The individual unit rehearsals under BLUE SPOON were going well, but Thurman decided that during December he would conduct a Joint Readiness Exercise which would amount to a full rehearsal of the plan. Special operations forces, the in-country forces and some other units could rehearse in Panama, but most of the reinforcement units would rehearse in the United States.
In addition, night-readiness exercises were conducted at regular intervals in Panama, a practice that Thurman felt would help mask any large force movement if an actual operation were ever to take place.
The Muse rescue plan, ACID GAMBIT, was played out on an isolated Florida key, using a mock-up three quarters the size of the Modelo Prison.
• • •
Back in Washington, General Kelly pondered the radical transformation of the Southern Command that had taken place over just two months. The departed General Woerner had seemed unable to imagine the use of military force in Panama. Maxwell Thurman seemed to see a war coming.