WITH MUSE SAFE, the remaining missions in Operation Just Cause were a go. The force arrayed against Manuel Noriega swept across Panama, seizing his every strategic and tactical asset. Delta alone launched forty-two raids over the next seventy-two hours, turning inside out every known or suspected safe house where Noriega could hide. The hangar at Howard AFB buzzed like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with tips and intel on Noriega’s location pouring into the comm center in a constant stream. The instant we received any scrap of reliable information, Pete and I scrambled the element leaders. Clustering around our display of maps and reconnaissance photos, we lightning-planned an assault, hustled out to the flight-line, and launched. Thirty minutes from tip to takeoff.
Across the city, black-hooded Delta elements struck without warning, kicking down safe-house doors, pouring in through windows, and forcing Noriega’s cronies to the floor at gunpoint: “¡En el piso! En el piso!”
Prisoners were flex-cuffed and questioned. Those with intel value were arrested; those with none were released. Often, one raid led to another as captives suddenly became helpful: “¡El General no está aqui! Esta en la casa de la otra mujer!” (The General’s not here! He’s at his mistress’s house!)
Coordinating these operations from a Black Hawk, I could see Panama City and the surrounding countryside bristling with military activity as U.S. forces swept away Noriega’s defenses. As Operation Just Cause unfolded, the 82nd Airborne, the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces, and other Joint Task Force sea, air, and land units seized Torrijos-Tocumen Airport and military airfield, as well as the Pacora River Bridge, the national television station, and a major PDF base near the village of Rio Hato. SEALs and their Special Boat assets destroyed PDF patrol boats, and seized Noriega’s yachts and beach house.
Delta pressed forward, taking down Noriega friendly townhomes, village huts, and even his mountain retreat. In many hideouts, operators confiscated money, passports, weapons, maps, and intel. But the most interesting find occurred at Altos del Golfo, one of Noriega’s Panama City homes.
I was circling overhead in the Black Hawk when Lieutenant Colonel John Noe’s squadron reported they had uncovered stacks of hardcore pornography, $8 million in American cash, and two religious altars, one at each end of the house. One was a Christian altar. The other was an altar to Satan, decorated with jars containing human internal organs.
I knew from intelligence reports that Noriega met regularly with a spiritualist and dabbled in some form of dark religion. I’d even heard he wore red underwear because the spiritualist told him it would protect him from his enemies. Now it looked like he was playing both spiritual ends against the middle.
While none of our forty-two raids bagged the Pineapple, the speed and frequency of our door-busting drove the dictator like a hunted animal. By the fourth day after the American invasion, Noriega had no place left to hide. He also knew none of the foreign embassies located in the capital would side with him against the Panamanian people and grant him asylum. Ironically, as a last resort, he threw himself on the mercy of the church.