WHEN POWELL WENT INTO THE pentagon very early Monday, December 18, he felt uneasy. He went upstairs to bring Cheney up to speed. Cheney himself did not feel much in the way of jitters. He knew when he had accepted the job as Secretary that it might entail using force, and sending men to die. When he had arrived at the Pentagon, he had asked for and read the classified after-action reports of the major uses of the U.S. military since Vietnam. He had been in the Ford White House during the 1975 evacuation of Southeast Asia, and during the Mayaguez incident that same year, when a U.S. merchant ship was seized by Cambodians and Marines were sent in to rescue the crew. By the time of the invasion the crew had already been set free. Forty-one Americans had been killed in the operation. He had seen firsthand the tendency of the people at the top—the President, the national security adviser, the Secretary of Defense—to meddle needlessly and counterproductively in military operations.
In the reports on the 1983 Beirut bombing and the Grenada operation, he had read about more of this same tendency. The one remedy, Cheney had decided, was a clean, clear-cut chain of command—as short as possible. And no meddling from the top. Stay out of their hair.
As the chief intermediary between the uniformed military and the White House, Cheney felt he could do as much as anyone to reduce interference, and keep the chain of command short. But he was not going to sit it out. He would make sure he understood and approved of the plan, so he could answer any questions that might come from the White House.
That morning, Cheney asked a lot of questions. It seemed to Powell that Cheney wanted to know all the details, right down to the squad level.
Later, Powell called in Kelly and began his own interrogation. He wanted to review each element, every single event of the plan.
“Why are you doing this?” Powell asked in a very confrontational way, referring to one of the special operations targets.
Kelly thought to himself: well, shit, I ain’t doing it, for one thing—it’s the guy down there, Thurman or Stiner. But Kelly gave the best answer he could to that question and to a whole series of others as Powell went through the plan.
Powell was concerned that they might be doing some things just for show. After preaching the importance of a sufficient force or “mass” during the operation, the Chairman was now looking for excesses. He spoke of reducing risks and damage.
In Kelly’s opinion, it was as if Powell had reached into his desk and brought out a wire brush—and he was now scrubbing everything and everyone, including himself. Necessary and inevitable, Kelly concluded; there was a lot at stake. The leader’s great fear before battle was not just a personal fear or fear of failure, but a larger, moral kind of fear. Kelly could see this in Powell, the Custer Syndrome or something like that. Powell was afraid that he was going to get a bunch of people killed because of stupidity.
Kelly had his own worries. He was thinking about his retirement, and didn’t want to leave in disgrace.
Powell’s wire brush found several excesses. As Cheney had suggested during an earlier review of the plan, there was no need to attack a Noriega hideout on the coast of Panama because there was no indication he was going to be using it.
Powell wanted to know more about the F-117A Stealth fighters and their planned use at the Rio Hato PDF barracks.
Two 2,000-pound bombs were going to be dropped about 50 yards from the barracks, Kelly said. This “offset” bombing might break a few windows, stun the troops in the barracks, and perhaps cause some electrical fires, but not do a great deal more.
Who says? Powell wanted to know.
That’s what the weapons effects experts claimed anyhow, Kelly said, knowing that those people wouldn’t be held responsible for the results. Kelly had talked with Carl Stiner about the offset bombing, and he knew that Stiner was having his own little crisis of confidence in the F-117As, which had not yet been combattested. Fifty yards was not much of a margin for error.
Powell realized that the United States had to put Panama back together as quickly as possible after the invasion. This would require popular support from the Panamanians, which meant killing as few as possible of the kinds of people—PDF privates—who would be asleep in the barracks and who Powell hoped would surrender. He ordered the offset distance be increased dramatically. The bomb targets were moved to points about 200 yards away from one barracks and 250 yards from another.
As Powell went through this process, he felt somewhat more comfortable. He knew that he was just following the lessons of his military experience. As a new major in 1966 he had taught precisely this subject—operations and planning—at the Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia.
By that evening Powell felt a momentary sense of contentment.
• • •
Stiner had arrived in Panama that Monday night dressed as usual in civilian clothes. At 10 p.m. he gathered all his commanders down to the battalion level, 30 officers in all, and stood up before them. “This is it,” he said. “This is a go.” Security, he said, is of the greatest importance. They could tell their own operations and intelligence officers, in other words only those with top-secret clearance.
Stiner was worried about leaks. U.S. servicemen and servicewomen lived all over the place in Panama; some even lived at the same installations as PDF troops. Stiner asked for recommendations on when, in light of the need for opsec, the lower-ranking officers and the troops should be told. It was agreed to wait until the next night—8 p.m. for the officers, just five hours before H-Hour, and 10 p.m. for the troops. The troops would be brought in, briefed and then sequestered so they could load ammunition and get ready to go. None would be allowed access to telephones. Stiner ordered that there was to be no increased level of activity, no signal of any kind.
• • •
Cheney was also worried about leaks. He decided that he would not have Pete Williams notify the media pool, the small group of reporters who would cover the invasion for all the news oganizations, until after the evening television news shows the next night. This would be less than six hours before H-Hour, making it impossible for reporters to make it to Panama in time for the start of JUST CAUSE.
The Secretary raised his worries with Powell. Almost everything leaks, he remarked. What happens if the cover is blown? If it becomes public? Does Max have, on the ground in Panama, the capability to go ahead and start the operation? If on Tuesday night we turn on the tube and there’s word that the Americans are coming, can Max go ahead early with what he’s already got on hand?
Powell checked and then assured Cheney they could go early.
Later that night, after the Monday evening news shows, Tom Kelly sat at his large desk in his windowless office. Too quiet, he concluded. H-Hour was still some 30 hours away. It was too silky. Things weren’t going wrong. With each minute passing he felt a sense of foreboding. Something was supposed to go wrong. Though all the training, planning, all the money, all the worrying each detail into the ground was designed to prevent the misstep, a misstep was expected. He realized that he was counting on a fuckup. Then he could throw himself into the fray, straighten things out, fix it. Instead, all his energy was going into waiting. He preferred the fixing.
• • •
At 7 a.m. the next day, Tuesday, December 19, Powell called in his chief public affairs aide, Army Colonel Bill Smullen, told him the operation was going to occur and pledged him to secrecy.
“I want to maintain as much normalcy as possible,” Powell said. Looking at his schedule for the day, he saw he had a noon lunch with Naval Academy midshipman Tom Daily. At the Army-Navy football game several weeks before, Daily had approached the Chairman with a friendly wager on the outcome. Powell had accepted and Navy had won. Daily’s prize was lunch with the Chairman at the Pentagon, which was set for this worst of all possible days, just before the largest U.S. military operation in years. Okay, Powell said, I’m going to go through with the lunch. It lasted 45 minutes.
Later that day, Powell had another nonessential appointment on his schedule, this one with Tiffani Starks, the teen-aged daughter of an Air Force lieutenant colonel Powell knew. Tiffani had chosen Powell as the subject of a high school paper she’d been assigned to write on a famous person. Powell decided to keep the meeting, which was scheduled to last 15 minutes. When Tiffani and her father showed up at the Chairman’s office at 4:30 p.m., Powell’s time was becoming tight. I can’t give 15 minutes, he told the staff. Cut it to five. Tiffani came in and Powell answered her questions about what had motivated him to stay in the Army, and whether he ever had thought he’d make general.
The day was otherwise filled with pre-invasion meetings and briefings. Cheney and Powell went to the White House to update Bush. On the question of whether to use the F-117A Stealth fighter, Bush replied, “If that’s the best plane, use it.”
Cheney wanted more and more information. When he’d taken over from Crowe, Powell had noticed that Kelly and the key operations staff regularly used to go to Cheney’s office to brief military assistant Bill Owens on various matters. Powell had cut this off, making it clear that he would provide the Secretary and his staff with operational and other information. Now, just hours away from H-Hour, Powell found himself too busy to be tending constantly to Cheney’s every need. The operation now mattered more than his desire to be the lone channel to the Secretary.
“Go up there and tell him anything he wants to know,” Powell told his operations people.
• • •
Around 5 p.m. Powell had the chiefs into his office for a final runthrough. Cheney came down to join them. For Cheney, it was a satisfying symbolic moment. It showed he was keeping the chiefs involved. He felt that the chain of command was just right, running as it did from him to Powell, rather than to the chiefs as a committee.
“Don’t worry about initial reports,” Marine Commandant Gray told Cheney. “It’s a night-time operation and things will always go wrong. Things will happen. But by morning, you’ll have a successful operation.”
Powell was glad they had finally stopped messing with the plan. He turned his attention to worries about the news media. Word had come that reporters for CBS and NBC had stories that some kind of operation was about to happen, but neither had any idea of its dimensions. On CBS, Dan Rather led off the news saying, “U.S. military transport planes have left Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne paratroopers. The Pentagon declines to say whether or not they are bound for Panama. It will say only that the Bragg-based 18th Airborne Corps has been conducting what the Army calls an ‘airborne readiness exercise.’ ”
NBC reporter Ed Rabel said, “United States C-141 Starlifters flew into Panama this afternoon, one landing every ten minutes. At the same time these aircraft were arriving, security was tightened around the airbase. U.S. soldiers could be seen in full combat gear on roads around the base.” At the end of his brief report, Rabel noted, “No one here could confirm that these aircraft were part of a U.S. invasion group. But tensions on both sides are high this evening over the possibility of a U.S. strike.”
Powell watched the television reports. Mighty close but no compromise. He realized he would wind up having to thank some reporters.
Kelly was still astonished that it had not leaked. There was already a lot of aluminum flying through the air to Panama.
Powell, home for dinner, told Alma he was going back to the Pentagon and didn’t know when he would return. He knew she had noticed all the movement and the phone calls, but he hadn’t told her what was happening; he never did. The Powell family policy was to keep their home life as separate from military business as possible.
Powell returned to the Pentagon after dinner and took a nap.
The building was eerily quiet. In the Crisis Situation Room at the National Military Command Center, there were about 15 people working in an atmosphere of hushed excitement and tension. Secure phone lines to the Southern Command had been activated. The television set was tuned to the three networks and CNN. On a screen on one wall were the latest data on the status of JUST CAUSE.
Kelly and Sheafer sat at the center of the room’s long table. Kelly was running things, checking periodically with Thurman, whose twangy voice would issue from a loudspeaker so everyone in the room could hear. Kelly was pounding hard on the key question of Noriega’s whereabouts. They had lost him at around 6 p.m. Goddammit, we want him, Kelly was saying. Where is he? The United States had been working on tracking Noriega for more than a year. There were three to four dozen people in Panama specifically designated as the Noriega Tracking Team. And yet he’d slipped away.
At 11:30, Thurman reported over the loudspeaker that Noriega was possibly in the city of Colon, which was the last place he’d been spotted by his trackers.
Up from his nap, Powell arrived at the Crisis Situation Room at 11:52. He was wearing a black sweater with four stars sewn on each shoulder, and his green Army pants. His shirt was open at the neck, where his white T-shirt showed.
• • •
Down in Panama, two U.S. soldiers who had somehow found their way outside of Stiner’s lock-up were overheard mentioning H-Hour by a PDF eavesdropper, who reported up the chain to Noriega.
“The Americans aren’t coming,” Noriega said. “They wouldn’t do a thing like that.” He arranged to have a meeting at the Comandancia the next morning at eight o’clock to review the situation.
U.S. listeners picked up part of a conversation in which someone from the PDF said, “The ballgame starts at one.”
Stiner was convinced that this referred to the H-Hour, and that the operation had been compromised. He picked up the direct line to Thurman.
“We need to advance the timing,” Stiner said, explaining that it looked as if some of the PDF knew.
“How much advance do you want?” Thurman asked.
“How about thirty minutes?”
“Okay, do it,” Thurman said, passing the information to Washington, not asking approval.
But there were complications. The rescue of Muse and the attack on the Comandancia had to be precisely coordinated. A swing bridge had to be placed over the canal so four Sheridan tanks could be moved onto a hill where they could hit the Comandancia with direct fire. There was a ship in one of the canal locks and it had to be cleared out before the swing bridge could be moved into place.
Stiner picked up the phone again to Thurman.
“I can’t do it in thirty minutes,” Stiner reported. “How about fifteen?”
“Fifteen’s okay too,” Thurman said.
At 12:07 a.m. Thurman officially sent out the order to JSOC that it should execute its Muse rescue mission at H minus 15, or 12:45. At 12:18 he directed the same execution time for the attack on the Comandancia and for the Navy SEALs’ mission at Puenta Paitilla Airport, where they were to come ashore and disable Noriega’s private jet, a possible escape vehicle.
A report of a female U.S. dependent wounded by the PDF at the U.S.-controlled Albrook Air Force Station in Panama City came in to Powell and the others over the speaker in the Crisis Situation Room at 12:29. In the next five minutes they listened to reports from Thurman about gunfire at Fort Amador, and machine-gun fire at the strategically located Bridge of the Americas across the canal, as well as at Albrook.
President Bush had informed Cheney and Powell that the point of no return would be achieved once Endara agreed to be sworn in as president of Panama and to request U.S. intervention. If Endara would not play, they had to check with him personally, Bush said.
Thurman was heard from again at 12:39. The swearing in of Endara as the new president of Panama had been completed.
Although some units had moved into place in advance, official execution of JUST CAUSE took place at H minus 15. At exactly the moment of execution, Thurman’s voice came over the speaker, reporting a gunfire exchange in the vicinity of the Comandancia. The PDF was firing at the helicopters coming in for Muse at the nearby Modelo Prison.
Divided into task forces with names like Task Force Red, Task Force Bayonet and Task Force Semper Fi, the troops so carefully prepared for this moment by Thurman and Stiner were swinging into action at spots in and all around Panama. Task Force Bayonet, for example, was assigned the job of securing Fort Amador, the Comandancia and PDF sites throughout Panama City. Task Force Red was responsible for the adjacent Torrijos and Tocumen airports and for Rio Hato.
Around the time the operation began, President Bush arrived in the Oval Office wearing a dark blue sweater over his shirt and tie. He signed a short order authorizing the armed forces to apprehend and arrest Noriega and other persons in Panama currently under indictment in the United States for drug-related offenses.
At 12:57, gunfire was reported on the Atlantic side of Panama.
At 1 a.m., the military officially moved up to the highest defense readiness condition, called DEFCON 1, signifying that hostilities were under way. At the same time, a report came in to the Crisis Situation Room that the commander of the PDF’s military Zone 3, one of seven military zones, was staying out of the fight.
• • •
From his experience in the Ford White House, Cheney knew the human reaction to this kind of crisis. The situation would build and everyone would stay up all night to hear the latest news on events they could do nothing about. Then, when the moment of action or decision arrived, they would all be exhausted and in the worst possible shape to make judgments. So Cheney had gone up to his office after dinner and fallen asleep in a small bunk room there. After several hours, he rose. For the first time, he used his office shower.
He then went down to the Crisis Situation Room, where he saw that Powell, Kelly and Sheafer were already set up. It was two minutes after one o’clock. He moved in next to Powell at the center of the long table.
Almost immediately, a second report came in from SOUTHCOM concerning the PDF Zone 3 commander. Great news: the commander had ordered his unit to stand down. This was significant, as it meant several companies were out of action on the PDF side.
At 1:07 there was a report that U.S. troops using a loudspeaker to order the PDF troops in the Comandancia to lay down their arms had been met instead with return fire. Just two minutes later. CNN reported that U.S. troops had attacked Noriega’s headquarters.
At 1:11 Powell and Cheney listened as the news came over the loudspeaker that the Delta team was on the roof of the Modelo Prison. Two minutes later, word came that Muse was out.
At 1:14 the PDF was reported to be retreating at one of the areas of battle, Albrook Air Force Station.
At 1:17 SOUTHCOM said the Comandancia was calling for reinforcements.
At 1:19 the Rangers were reported to be parachuting into the key target area of Rio Hato.
The PDF commander of the 5th Company at Balboa had shut down his operation, Thurman reported at 1:23.
The next report said the Marines at the U.S. Embassy were taking fire from rocket-propelled grenades.
Just before 1:30 SOUTHCOM issued a few positive reports. All the Rangers had dropped onto Rio Hato, and the Bridge of the Americas was secure.
There was a report that the helicopter carrying Muse away from the Modelo Prison had crashed, and it looked as if the crew and Muse might be dead. Disappointment was written all over Powell’s face. Muse was the guy they were going to rescue for the President, and now his helicopter had gone down.
At about the same time, word came that U.S. troops had broken into Noriega’s most likely hideout, a beach house, and found it empty. This intensified the pessimism in the room. They’d reached a real low—no Muse, no Noriega.
Powell knew there was an apartment near Colon that was another Noriega hangout. He felt too much time had elapsed between hitting the beach house and the apartment, and he called Thurman to let him know.
“When are we going to take down the apartment?” Powell snapped.
“We’re working on it,” Thurman replied.
Soon Thurman was back with the news that they’d taken down the apartment and it too was a blank. A third downer in a very short period.
• • •
Over at the White House, Bush turned on the television set in his study. At 1:40 Marlin Fitzwater appeared on the screen. “The President has directed United States forces to execute at one a.m. this morning pre-planned missions in Panama to protect American lives, restore the democratic process, preserve the integrity of the Panama Canal treaties and apprehend Manuel Noriega.
“Last Friday,” Fitzwater told the reporters gathered before him, “Noriega declared a state of war with the United States.”
“Has General Noriega been captured yet, Marlin?” a reporter asked.
“We don’t know how long it will take, but that is our ultimate objective,” Fitzwater said. “It has not happened at this time.”
“Marlin,” another reporter asked, “can you tell us who’s got operational control?”
“Operational control is in the Pentagon.”
• • •
Just before 2 a.m., Powell and Cheney received word from Thurman that all was quiet at the U.S. Embassy, and that everything was going okay at Tocumen Airport. The mission at Tocumen was to seize the airport and neutralize a PDF company based there. An hour before, AC-130s and AH-6s had opened fire on the infantry company’s compound, and three minutes later, Rangers had parachuted in to eliminate PDF resistance.
Minutes later there was a report that the commander of the PDF’s Zone 6 had ordered his troops to abandon posts before the Americans arrived.
At 2:20 a.m. word came that Muse had survived the crash and was safe. Instantly, the atmosphere became buoyant, almost joyful. Powell and Cheney knew they’d accomplished a main objective.
Powell picked up the phone and called CIA Director Webster. “Just wanted you to know we got your man out and he’s safe,” Powell said, now bursting with optimism.
Cheney called the White House. In his first call across the river shortly after arriving at the Crisis Situation Room that night, he had talked to Scowcroft. After that, at the President’s request, Cheney’s calls were all put through directly to the President, about one every half hour. Now he told Bush that Muse was out and safe. What’s more, the Delta team had done the job in record time, even better than the best practice time.
SOUTHCOM reported at 2:40 that the Comandancia was in flames.
A sour note was struck at 2:49, when Cheney and Powell listened to Thurman report that Noriega was still at large. Except for this large problem, the operation generally seemed to be going well and was on track. Shortly after 3:00 they learned that PDF forces at Colon, Tocumen Airport and near the Costa Rican border had fallen. The PDF was surrendering left and right, without a fight. Within a half hour, the Comandancia fires were out.
Powell listened, made notes and talked quietly to Cheney. Neither was trying personally to manage the operation. Both felt they had to let Thurman and the others do their jobs. Although he was glad about all the reports of success, Powell knew that war—particularly war fought in darkness—is a funny thing. It was likely that bad news, especially really bad news, would be the slowest to work its way up the chain to him. He was also aware that the first information to reach him was liable to be wrong.
More bad news did come. Three platoons of Navy SEALs who had moved into Puenta Paitilla Airport before H-Hour to disable Noriega’s private jet had met heavy PDF resistance. Of the attacking platoon of 15 men, four had been killed by PDF fire, and seven were wounded. Although the SEALs had succeeded in disabling the aircraft, the deaths of these elite fighters shocked those gathered in the Crisis Situation Room.
The Noriega question tugged at Powell throughout the night. At 3:39, they received a signals intelligence report that the dictator had fled and was still safe. The report was based on an intercepted phone conversation. An hour and a half later, SOUTHCOM said another intercept indicated that Noriega was hiding in a reinforced house, location unknown.
Cheney continued to give the President half-hour updates. The Comandancia had been reduced to rubble. The key military targets had been overrun, and much of the organized PDF resistance had been eliminated. At 4 a.m. Bush went to bed.
About 4:30 a.m. Powell started to prepare his end—all the military details—of a public briefing that he and Cheney would be giving in a few hours. He looked over the large operational maps they were using in the NMCC. The maps had far too much detail for a simple show-and-tell—the language of monks, he called it. And the special operations missions, which shouldn’t be revealed to the public, were identifiable. He knew his briefing had to be good, and these graphics weren’t going to cut it. Powell called in the Pentagon’s expert mapmaker and ordered up some instant simplifications.
He took his notes and went into a little room off to the side of the Crisis Situation Room which had a map of Panama on the wall. Army Brigadier General Tom White, Powell’s executive assistant, brought him a cup of coffee. The Chairman sat there for 15 or 20 minutes, in a kind of trance, alternately making notes and studying the map. He remarked to an aide that the American public’s opinion of the operation would start its rise or fall on the basis of his and Cheney’s presentation. When Powell was done, he went down to his office bathroom, took off his sweater and put on a tie and Army jacket.
One advantage of the post-midnight H-Hour was that the administration would be able to take an early time slot on morning television and provide its own description of the operation before the news day began. Given the massive influx of U.S. troops, there was a virtual guarantee that some early successes could be reported.
The plan called for the President to address the nation at about 7 a.m., followed by a briefing and press conference at the Pentagon by Cheney and Powell.
• • •
At 6:30 a.m. Bush returned to the Oval Office. An 11-paragraph speech had been prepared. There was not enough time to put it on the TelePrompTer. He would have to read from a typed version with his own notes written in the margin. By 7:20 Bush was before the cameras. He gave a very broad overview of the situation. “General Noriega’s reckless threats and attacks upon Americans in Panama created an imminent danger to the thirty-five thousand American citizens in Panama,” he said.
“The United States intends to withdraw the forces newly deployed to Panama as quickly as possible.”
He reminded his audience of “those horrible pictures of newly elected [Panamanian] Vice President Ford, covered head to toe with blood, beaten mercilessly.”
Bush said, “I took this action only after reaching the conclusion that every other avenue was closed.”
Immediately afterwards, Cheney and Powell appeared at the Pentagon press room to brief reporters and answer questions. Cheney delivered a seven-paragraph statement that echoed the President’s.
Powell took the podium as Kelly stood by the newly drawn maps.
“There will be details that I cannot get into for purposes of operational security,” Powell said. Speaking without notes and taking much more time than Cheney had, he moved confidently over the geography of Panama and the details of the operation, matching units to missions and locations. He preserved enough of the language of monks to show he knew his forces—the 193rd Infantry Brigade, 7th Infantry Division, 82nd Airborne Division, the 16th Military Police Brigade, etc.—making no less than 16 references to various units.
He began with a report of success. U.S. forces had taken the prison at Gamboa, “within which there are some PDF personnel who had been put in jail as a result of the coup attempt earlier in the fall, and we now have some forty-seven, forty-eight very happy prisoners who have been released.” The electrical distribution center was secure, he said, as was Madden Dam. A PDF infantry company on the north side had been neutralized. The Bridge of the Americas across the canal had been taken, and the area around Howard Air Force Base was secure. The same with Rio Hato, the Comandancia, and the Torrijos international airport. “We also took special actions to immobilize the PDF Navy,” Powell said. Reports of U.S. hostages were being checked.
“We have not yet located the General,” Powell said, tight-jawed. “But, as a practical matter, we have decapitated him from the dictatorship of this country and he is now a fugitive and will be treated as such.”
The American Embassy had taken some fire but nobody was injured.
So far, he said, preliminary information indicated that nine Americans had been killed in action and 39 wounded.
Most of the questions were addressed to Powell.
To one on Noriega, he replied: “He’s demonstrated incredible ability to survive catastrophe. And we’ll see over time whether he survives this catastrophe.”
“This reign of terror is over,” Powell also said.
“For the most part, organized resistance is over,” he went on, declaring that many of those still out in the street “are just thugs and rabble rousers.”
There were more questions on Noriega.
“We’re looking for him. He’s not running anything, because we own all of the bases he owned eight hours ago.”
At the end of the session, when the questioning was over, Powell stepped to the microphone and said: “Could I just say that I hope you recognize how complicated an operation this was, and how competently it was carried out by the Armed Forces of the United States. We all, the Secretary and I, all of our associates, deeply regret the loss of American life. But that’s sometimes necessary in pursuit of our national interests and in the fight for democracy.”
• • •
Alma Powell had not known her husband was going to be on television that morning, but a family member had called to alert her. Normally very critical of his performances, she called him later that day at the Pentagon. “That was good,” she said.
• • •
Powell began receiving calls from Army commanders from all over, offering their forces, pledging their readiness and enthusiasm.
Among those who called was the commander of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, which had been put on secret alert to move into Nicaragua if the Sandinistas tried a military move. Powell would have had early warning of such a move, thanks to a program called TENCAP—Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities—which harnessed the latest intelligence for immediate use in Panama. Using satellite and ground intercepts of radio and other communications, U.S. intelligence officers were able to monitor Cuban and Nicaraguan reaction to JUST CAUSE, to determine if those countries might somehow come to Noriega’s aid.
In addition, satellite imagery and photos gathered by reconnaissance aircraft were sent from Fort Bragg via satellite to terminals at Southern Command. This link provided Thurman and Stiner with reconnaissance photos of Tocumen Airport, for example, and imagery reports on other critical sites in Panama, including the Comandancia, Fort Cimarron and Rio Hato.
By December 21—D-Day plus 1, as it was called in Pentagonese—almost all of the key goals of the operation had been achieved. The various task forces had done their assigned work, securing the key target sites. The JCS ordered the execution of BLIND LOGIC, the operations plan from the original PRAYER BOOK series to help run the new civilian government of Panama. The canal, closed down during the battle, was reopened for daylight operations. A snag that received heavy media attention, the PDF’s holding of U.S. hostages—among them some journalists—at the Marriott Hotel, was resolved on this second day of the operation when the hotel was taken by U.S. soldiers and the hostages were evacuated.
There was international grumbling about the United States going into Panama. At a press conference on Thursday, the day after the operation, Bush was asked about tough Soviet condemnation of JUST CAUSE. The President said he wanted to send a wire or telegram to Gorbachev saying, “Look, if they kill an American Marine, that’s real bad. And if they threaten and brutalize the wife of an American citizen, sexually threatening the lieutenant’s wife while kicking him in the groin over and over again, then, Mr. Gorbachev, please understand this President is going to do something about it.”
• • •
The failure to capture Noriega, along with other problems, including an outbreak of looting in Panama City, resulted in some bad press for the operation on Thursday and Friday. These days were the low point for Powell, but by the time he went home on Friday night, D plus 2, things were looking up. Noriega still hadn’t been found, but the situation otherwise seemed to be under control. He wasn’t surprised to find that many of the newspaper stories he saw that weekend, especially Saturday, were a little outdated and downbeat. Over years of media watching, Powell had learned that newspapers generally lagged 12 hours behind events. He read one article that fingered him by name as the man who’d recommended the Panama invasion.
I’m being set up, he said to himself, both disturbed and amused. Someone at the White House or State was trying to dump Panama off on him, Powell thought.
On Sunday, when more positive stories appeared, Bush visited the Pentagon. “Boy, Colin,” he said to Powell, “things sure were grim yesterday. But now they sure look better.”
• • •
The elusive Noriega, still at large, was the most serious stain on the operation. The United States announced that it had put a $1 million bounty on him, hoping that a PDF member or some other Panamanian anxious to end the Noriega era would step forward. Powell began referring to the capture of Noriega as “this last little irritant,” and continued to emphasize that Noriega had been eliminated as a leader. He had come to view the hunt for the fugitive general as a kind of crusade.
There were reports that large stashes of drugs and strange religious paraphernalia had been found in Noriega’s home, and Powell took to calling Noriega “a dope-sniffing, voodoo-loving thug.” (The alleged drugs found in Noriega’s hangout turned out to be tamales containing slips of paper with the names of Noriega’s enemies written on them. This was apparently part of a ritual to neutralize foes and had nothing to do with drugs.)
Prior to the operation, the conventional wisdom in the Pentagon was that Noriega would go down shooting rather than let himself be captured. Now just finding him was turning into an obsession.
“We will destroy his Robin Hood image,” Powell declared in his office on December 23. To a reporter who persisted with questions about the importance of capturing Noriega, Powell retorted, “Stick it.”
The next day, Sunday, December 24, at about 3:30 p.m., a car drove up to the residence of the Vatican’s representative in Panama, the Papal Nuncio. General Noriega, wearing a T-shirt and carrying two AK-47 semiautomatic rifles over his shoulder, emerged from the car, went inside the nunciature building and requested political asylum.
Powell knew this did not solve the problem at all. Noriega could stay in the residence indefinitely, creating a diplomatic standoff.
The Chairman expected Thurman and Stiner would come up with some ideas. He warned them to be careful, but determined that it would be best if he did not know what they might concoct.
Stiner knew he would have to respect the double sanctity of the Papal Nuncio’s residence as both embassy and Church property. But there were ways to put pressure on the Church. A visiting archbishop was taken on a tour of Noriega’s former house and office. He was shown some of the things that U.S. soldiers had found there: witchcraft materials, a library of books on Hitler, albums of pornographic and torture photos and a large poster of all the Catholic priests in Panama and other high Catholic officials in Central America that suggested they were on a hit list.
The Nuncio, the Reverend Sebastian Laboa, met with Thurman and Stiner. He gave them a handwritten note that said if shooting started inside the nunciature, they were authorized to conduct an emergency assault to rescue as many people as possible and to minimize death and suffering.
Stiner went to his headquarters and picked up the hotline to Kelly at the Pentagon. He asked Kelly for new rules of engagement that would permit his forces to enter the Nuncio’s residence if requested or if shooting started.
The request was passed to Powell and Cheney, who approved, and within an hour Stiner had his new authority.
The next day, Wednesday, December 27, Thurman and Stiner ordered the troops to blast the nunciature with ear-splitting heavy-metal and other music, to prevent anyone from eavesdropping on SOUTHCOM’s negotiations with the Papal Nuncio. It could be heard for several blocks.
Other troops acted as if they were preparing the building for an assault. Tall grass and brush in the neighborhood was cut down to improve the view; street lights were shot out; barbed wire was laid in the streets; patrols of a dozen men paraded around the embassy walls; other soldiers took up posts in a parking garage some 50 feet from the back of the embassy; an Army Black Hawk helicopter landed several times nearby to unload troops and equipment; light tanks and armored personnel carriers blocked all the streets in the area.
Still, Noriega did not budge.
On Friday, December 29, Powell was watching a CNN report that U.S. troops had entered the residence of the Nicaraguan ambassador to Panama. The camera revealed a sign the size of a manhole cover showing unmistakably that it was the ambassador’s residence. On the sidewalk outside the house, Powell spotted the distinctive cracks made by U.S. armored personnel carriers. He was furious. Invading an embassy was out of bounds. International convention made such buildings absolutely immune; they were the equivalent of national property. The Iranian students had done this kind of thing in 1979 when they had invaded the U.S. Embassy in Teheran.
Powell called Thurman for some answers.
When there was no immediate reply, Powell knew there had been a screw-up. He raised the issue with Cheney.
“Well, okay, let’s get it worked out,” Cheney replied calmly, “but let’s not come down hard on our guys.”
When Thurman at last called back, he explained that they had intelligence that indicated the residence was full of weapons. The search had yielded four Uzi submachine guns, 12 AK-47s, six grenade launchers—the rocket-propelled type—and 17 bayonets. And, Thurman added, it was not clear it was a diplomatic residence.
“It’s undeniable,” Powell snapped. “I just saw it on CNN. Stop bullshitting me. We did it.”
Well aware that Thurman was spring-loaded, Powell had been able to live with some of the CINCSOUTH’s excesses. But now things were going out of control. Powell had a heart-to-heart talk with his commander about the need to make sure that they did not tarnish a brilliant operation through some minor incident in the aftermath. Powell now started to pull back some authority to Washington.
• • •
At 8:44 p.m. on Wednesday, January 3, 1990, Noriega walked out of the nunciature in his military uniform and surrendered to members of Delta Force. When he was handcuffed, he shouted and cursed at the Nuncio, who was standing nearby. Apparently, Noriega had expected to be treated as a head of state, or a prisoner of war, and now he blamed the Nuncio for misleading him. The Nuncio blessed Noriega, who was taken by helicopter to Howard Air Force Base, where a DEA agent arrested him.
At 9 p.m. Cheney called Bush. Forty minutes later, Bush walked into the White House briefing room to read a six-paragraph statement announcing the arrest.
“The return of General Noriega marks a significant milestone in Operation JUST CAUSE. The U.S. used its resources in a manner consistent with political, diplomatic and moral principle. . . .
“I want to express the special thanks of our nation to those servicemen who were wounded and to the families of those who gave their lives. Their sacrifice has been a noble cause and will never be forgotten.”
The smoke eventually cleared concerning Noriega’s movements before he gave himself up. The U.S. trackers had lost the general around 6 p.m. in Colon. At the start of JUST CAUSE, Powell learned, the general had been at a brothel at Tocumen. When Noriega heard gunshots, he climbed into his trousers and jumped into an escape vehicle. Taking a well-traveled highway into Panama City, he disappeared into the city, where he moved from one hiding place to another, to houses of various friends and associates.
On January 5, Powell flew down to Panama to visit the commanders and the troops. The next day, in a meeting there with reporters, he emphasized the political result of the operation. “The most important mission we accomplished is that we gave the country back to its people.”
Why such a large force? he was asked.
“I’m always a great believer in making sure you get there with what you need to accomplish the mission and don’t go in on the cheap side.”
What do you think the impact of the operation will be on the debate on the cuts in the defense budget?
“Thank you for the question,” Powell boomed. “I hope it has a great effect. I hope it has enormous effect. . . . And as we start to go down in dollars and as we see the world changing, don’t bust this apart. . . . Don’t think that this is the time to demobilize the armed force of the United States, because it isn’t. There are still dangers in the world.”
He knew this statement would attract little or no attention. Nonetheless, he felt, Panama was truly manna from heaven.
He flew home glad that the operation didn’t look any different on the ground than it had from the Pentagon. There was no sign of buried secrets. The politicians and the media would have little alternative but to declare it a success. A CBS poll released that day showed that 92 percent of Panamanians supported the U.S. military action.
The next day, Saturday, Powell was out in the garage behind Quarters 6, immersed in one of his favorite pastimes: fixing up an old Volvo.
In the weeks and months after the operation, Panama resurfaced now and then in the news, often in reports of previously unrevealed flaws.
After complaints from reporters who were shut out of covering JUST CAUSE as the operation was under way, the Defense Department’s public affairs staff admitted it had botched its handling of the press pool. In a memo to the CINCs on this subject, Powell wrote that “otherwise successful operations are not total successes unless the media aspects are properly handled.”
An Army paratrooper was charged with unpremeditated murder for killing an unarmed Panamanian civilian at a roadblock on the fourth day of the operation, but was acquitted in a military court.
SOUTHCOM’s initial death counts for the operation, released in mid-January, were 314 Panamanian military fatalities, 202 Panamanian civilians and 23 U.S. troops. The CBS News show “60 Minutes” ran a report that as many as 4,000 Panamanian civilians had died in the conflict. Investigations by other organizations in Panama and the United States indicated SOUTHCOM wasn’t far off the mark, although it probably had overestimated Panamanian military deaths while underestimating the civilian total. The SOUTHCOM numbers were generally accepted.
When Newsweek magazine reported that as many as 60 percent of U.S. casualties may have resulted from “friendly fire” from U.S. forces, the Pentagon announced for the first time that friendly fire accounted for two of the 23 U.S. deaths and 19 of 324 U.S. injuries.
• • •
Powell settled back into a peacetime rhythm. Panama, the largest U.S. military action since Vietnam, was behind him. Now the focus was back on the military needs of the post—Cold War era. He spent many hours in his office, being briefed, working the phones, trying to come up with a strategy for change. He was sure that the best way to proceed was to trust his gut instincts, but he also had a collection of rules and maxims he used as a practical roadmap for each day of decisions. Many were on a list he’d drawn up, which he both handed out to visitors and kept in the center of his desktop, on display beneath the glass cover:
COLIN POWELL’S RULES
1. It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
2. Get mad, then get over it.
3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
4. It can be done!
5. Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
6. Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
7. You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let some one else make yours.
9. Share credit.
10. Remain calm. Be kind.
11. Have a vision. Be demanding.
12. Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
13. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
To the left of that list was an aphorism not for public consumption that the Chairman had written out by hand on a piece of paper: SOMETIMES BEING RESPONSIBLE MEANS PISSING PEOPLE OFF.
There was yet another axiom Powell tried to live by, especially in his professional life. He occasionally confided it, but it wasn’t written down. Powell didn’t need to remind himself of that one: “You never know what you can get away with, unless you try.”