Panama is a funny country," Harari said. "It's not really a country. It's more like a business. I know the . . . storekeeper."
-- Mike Harari, the Mossad operative whom Noriega called his "mentor"
On December 20, 21 years ago, George H. Bush ordered the US army to invade the small Central American country of Panama. Not many people know this history and probably not too many care, given the far more destructive invasions and wars that would follow in his son’s wake. But Bush’s little war in Panama reveal much about both the United States foreign policy establishment and its intelligence communities.
The ostensible reason for the invasion was Panama’s leader, Manuel Noriega’s drug dealing and election fraud in 1988. But this rationale is hardly credible. Why would the US object to election fraud in Central America? We practically invented it, and, of course, General Noriega had connections deep inside the CIA. For a long while he was a CIA asset, in fact. According to Howard Jones, he had allies in both the Drug Enforcement Agency and the State department. His drug dealing was well known within the intelligence community and had been for years. Under Reagan, the United States government supported Noriega as "a valuable asset" in the fight against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and other "Communist elements", paying him as much as 200,000 dollars a year for his services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
It was a sweet gig for Noriega, he could triangulate drug dealing, helping the Contras kill folks in Nicaragua by working with our intelligence community and our drug enforcement agency all the while pulling in nearly quarter of a million USD as an "asset".
Although he worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration to restrict illegal drug shipments, he was known to accept a very significant amount of financial support from drug dealers themselves simultaneously,because he facilitated the laundering of drug money, and through him they received protection from DEA investigations due to Noriega's special relationship with the CIA.
http://www.gwu.edu/...
But things began to unravel. For one, there was a publicity problem. It’s all well and good to be working with the DEA and the CIA to funnel drug money to an illegal operation designed to overthrow a Democratically elected government you don’t like in Central America. It’s quite another thing for this fact to be plastered on the front page of the New York Times. Especially if you happen to be President Ronald Reagan plugging away at an anti-drug campaign.
The intrepid investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story in the New York Times (Seymour M. Hersh, "Panama Strongman Said to Trade in Drugs, Arms, and Illicit Money," The New York Times, June 12, 1986, p. A18. ).
Hersh quoted U.S. government sources on Noriega's crimes. One of which was the murder of a nationalist named Spadafora who wanted to expose Noreiga’s cocaine dealings.
"The D.I.A. is known to have intelligence demonstrating that General Noriega ordered the killing."
At the time of Spadafora's death, the U.S. National Security Agency was intercepting Noriega's calls to Panama from France. One of the calls, between Noriega and Chiriqui commander Major Luis Cordoba, was thought to refer to Spadafora. It took place on the afternoon of September 13, 1985, the day Spadafora was killed.
"We have the rabid dog," Cordoba said according to the intercept.
"What do you do with a rabid dog?" Noriega was said to have replied.
Spadafora was murdered and he was decapitated; a common fate for rabid dogs whose brains are checked to see if the dog actually has rabies.
In summary, according to R.M. Koster writing in Escape Artist
[Noriega told his biographer that] the money for what we now call Iran-Contra moved through Panamanian banks and shell companies. Contras received training at a base called Panajungla in western Panama. And Noriega was a key figure in the CIA airlift of weapons to the Contras. Israeli stocks of captured PLO weapons went from Texas to clandestine airstrips Noriega had established in Honduras and Costa Rica during the 1970s when the PDF was smuggling weapons to the Sandinistas, the same strips later used for smuggling cocaine under $10 million per month general services contract between the PDF and the Medallin cartel.
The U.S. had two governments, a visible one headed by Ronald Reagan and an invisible one Ollie North took blame for running. The link was Bush.
Said Noriega: "Bush was handling the Contras business directly."
http://www.escapeartist.com/...
As George Bush assumed the Presidency, Noriega became increasingly reckless and embarrassing, Bush decided that he had to remove Noriega and crush the Panamanian Defense Forces' (PDF). The first action is understandable as a matter of personal and political survival, the second motivation however, crushing the PDF takes a bit of work to get—since the US essentially funded and provided logistical support for everything the PDF did.
So why destroy the PDF?
The US had foolishly provided millions in aid to the PDF. Carter had negotiated a treaty which would see Panama reassert its right to control over the canal in 2000. With a strong PDF, they could conceivably shut down the canal at a whim and disrupt international trade if the government was not sufficiently compliant to US will. Noreiga had gone from being an asset to an embarrassment. The public revelation of his drug dealings and the insinuation of a murder was beyond the pale, but more importantly, the PDF was completely under Noriega’s control. Manuel Noriega had merged all of Panama's armed forces under his command.... "Having set up a commando style group called the Dobermans he was able to survive various attempted coups."
If you wanted to remove his influence and make the zone once again a compliant area for US control, you also had to destroy the PDF.
We had to destroy the village, in order to save it.
But initially there was hope that simply removing Noriega would be sufficient. It wasn’t. The United States conducted no less than 5 covert operations in an attempt to remove Noriega. Most of these failed or were prematurely leaked. In one famous incident, The Washington Post published an article ironically titled "Covert Action on Noriega Is Cleared." The White House accused the Senate and House intelligence committees of leaking information about the plan. The committees, in turn, accused the White House of doing the same thing. Regardless of who leaked the information, the publication of the story killed the operation.
Thus, despite a series of attempts to overthrow General Manuel Noriega in the late 1980s, Noriega survived and even prospered. On 15 December 1989, the Panamanian National assembly appointed Noriega chief of the government and "maximum leader of national liberation." The assembly also declared Panama to be in a state of war with the United States.
In the days following the declaration there were several serious incidents between the PDF and the U.S. forces in Panama. On 15 December, PDF soldiers stopped a U.S. military patrol car and held the police officer at gunpoint. On the next day, they fired at an American vehicle in a checkpoint and killed Marine Corps Lieutenant Robert Paz. A Navy lieutenant and his wife who witnessed the shooting were arrested and beaten. The woman was also allegedly sexually assaulted. In a separate incident, other U.S. soldiers were detained at the airport and their weapons were taken. One day later, on the morning of 17 December, a U.S. officer shot a PDF policeman, thinking the Panamanian was reaching for his weapon.
These incidents were used as the rational for the invasion of Panama on December 20. Operation Just Cause, the Invasion of Panama which led to 23 U.S. casualties and over 3,000 Panamanian casualties, both military and civilian.
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/...
When the invasion occurred, Noriega fled to the residence of the Vatican's representative in Panama, the Papal Nuncio, where he requested and received political asylum. Since it was rumored that Noriega loathed rock music, US troops surrounded the residence set up loud speakers and began blasting "ear-splitting" heavy metal songs day and night.
Among the list of songs judged sufficiently aggressive for the likes of Noriega was Black Sabbath - Paranoid, Gun & Roses - Patience, and Jimi Hendrix - The Star Spangled Banner....
Finally, enough was enough. On January 3, 1990, Noriega surrendered, left the residence, and was immediately extradited to Miami where he was put on trial for drug charges. He was found guilty and sentenced to a whopping 30 years in prison. More importantly, the PDF was crushed and in its place was put the Panamanian Public Force.
On February 10, 1990 the government of then President Guillermo Endara abolished Panama's military and reformed the security apparatus by creating the Panamanian Public Forces. In October 1994, Panama's Legislative Assembly approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the creation of a standing military force, but allowing the establishment of a special temporary military to counter acts of "external aggression."
One other ancillary benefit, about 20,000 documents Noriega kept at his residence were captured by US forces. Did those documents contain incriminating evidence of Bush or Reagan’s involvement in the Iran Contra scandal? We’ll never know, of course, but one would suspect a dodgy figure like Noriega would have kept something like that handy for insurance purposes. He never got a chance to use them, if that was the idea.
The US confiscates thousands of boxes of Noriega government documents and refuses to hand over any of them to Panamanian investigators. "The United States is protecting robbers and thieves and obstructing justice. We are the owners of the documents. If I am to complete my work, I have to see the documents." Panama's chief prosecutor, Los Angeles Times, 6/23/90
From Bush’s perspective anyhow, Operation Just Cause was a smashing success. The PDF was crushed, the canal was again functioning under US control, an embarrassing ally was jailed, and any potential incriminating evidence of previous crimes suppressed. Incidentally, the justification of bringing a 'drug dealer' to justice rings a bit hollow when we consider who replaced Noriega: Panamanian president Guillermo Endara is a director of the bank used exclusively by the Medellin cartel, and vice president Guillermo Ford is part owner of Dadeland Bank of Florida, which stands accused of laundering South American drug money as well. Heh.
A mafia don couldn’t have fixed it up any better.