Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

by Tom Clancy

  The SOUTHCOM Commander would not only exercise overall command of BLUE SPOON, he would be the tactical coordinating command. Together, he, with the Commanders of Joint Task Force Panama and of the Joint Special Operations Task Force, would conduct simultaneous but separate operations.

  Once the initial BLUE SPOON assaults had been completed, the joint task force would begin civil military operations under BLIND LOGIC, the fourth operations order in PRAYER BOOK. The civil affairs phase would help reestablish public safety and public health and restore other governmental services, followed by the transfer of control to civilians.

  In the longer range, U.S. civil affairs troops would work with a new Panamanian government to restructure the PDF and institutionalize its loyalty to civilian authority and democratic government.

  Lieutenant General Thomas W. Kelly, Director of Operations of the Joint Staff (J-3), had differences with SOUTHCOM from the beginning. He was not convinced that SOUTHCOM had enough command-and-control capability to manage, employ, and support all the forces contemplated for BLUE SPOON. Once additional forces from the United States deployed, a Corps Commander would be needed to command and control the whole operation. In his view, the XVIII Airborne Corps had the kind of staff and the rapid deployment capability needed.

  During the summer of 1988, General Woerner temporarily resolved this conflict by augmenting his staff with thirteen add-ons and a handful of special operations planners. As he saw it, his staff’s expertise and experience with Panama and the PDF made SOUTHCOM fully qualified to serve as the warfighting headquarters for BLUE SPOON, but he also realized that the Corps headquarters would be needed to run the overall operation if the JTFP had to be reinforced with additional major forces from the United States, and on July 5, 1988, he asked Admiral Crowe to include a Corps headquarters in the BLUE SPOON force list. In Woerner’s mind, however, the Corps Headquarters would not take over tactical command and control until after the operation began, and only if Woerner decided to deploy the U.S.-based forces on the POST TIME list.

  ADMIRAL Crowe approved the CINC’s request on October 19, 1988, and directed the Commander of U.S. Army Forces Command,25 General Joseph T. Palastra, Jr., to revise the force list accordingly. Nine days later, Palastra authorized Lieutenant General John Foss, who was at that time the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, to establish liaison with SOUTHCOM.

  Because he would not have operational control until after BLUE SPOON was under way, and possibly not even then, Foss initially delegated the planning responsibility back to the JTFP Headquarters, but for the next year, he monitored the JTFP planning for the operation.

  Meanwhile, Kelly remained unhappy with what he saw as an incremental and disjointed command arrangement, and in November 1988 met with the J-3s from SOUTHCOM and FORSCOM to resolve the issue. His own preference was to deploy the Corps headquarters as a complete package before all the combat forces had deployed, but he could not budge Woerner—even though the SOUTHCOM J-3, Brigadier General Marc Cisncros, agreed with Kelly. It seems that Admiral Crowe also agreed with him, but he did not overrule SOUTHCOM.

  ELECTIONS IN PANAMA

  On May 7, 1989, after six years of oppression, Panamanians turned out en masse to vote in Noriega-sanctioned elections. He evidently thought his candidates, led by his nominee for president, Carlos Duque, would win casily—especially with the help he’d organized from his friends.

  Despite the presence of high-level observers, such as former president Jimmy Carter, and lesser lights from the Catholic Church and the U.S. Congress, Noriega’s goon squads and Dignity Battalions did their best to intimidate voters. The people had other ideas, however. The opposition, led by Cuillermo Endara and his vice-presidential running mates, Ricardo Arias Calderon and Guillermo Ford, defeated Noriega’s candidates by three to one.

  When these results were announced, jubilant Panamanians took to the streets by the thousands.

  Noriega did not like what he saw, and on May 10, he annulled the election results—blaming them on foreign interference—then sent the PDF, the national police, and his Dignity Battalions into the streets to put down the demonstrations. Many people were killed, and the opposition leaders went into hiding-after getting dragged out of their victory car and beaten.

  All of this increased President Bush’s concerns about the safety of the thousands of U.S. citizens in Panama, and he ordered 1,900 additional combat troops to Panama-nearly 1,000 troops of the 7th Infantry Division, from Fort Ord, California; 165 Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; and 750 troops of the 5th Mechanized Division from Fort Polk, Louisiana. All the units arrived in Panama by May 19.

  GETTING TOUCHER

  Two months earlier, on March 21, former congressman Dick Cheney had become Secretary of Defense. Cheney immediately looked for new ways to pressure Noriega. Meanwhile, members of the National Security Council staff met to discuss other actions, which resulted in presidential approval of National Security Directive 17, issued on July 22, 1989, which ordered military actions in Panama to assert U.S. treaty rights and keep Noriega and his supporters off balance.

  Such actions were graded according to category, and ranged from what were called Category One (low risk/low visibility) through Categories Two and Three (low risk/high visibility and medium risk/high visibility) to Category Four (high risk/high visibility).

  Category One actions would include publicizing the evacuation of U.S. dependents, expanding anti-Noriega campaigns in the media and psychological operations, and placing PDF members under escort inside U.S. installations.

  In the remaining categories, U.S. troops in Panama would take more active roles.

  In Category Two, military police would increase their patrols between U.S. installations, battalion-sized forces would deploy to Panama for intensive exercises, and troops stationed in Panama would practice amphibious and night combat operations.

  In Category Three, U.S. forces in Panama would increase their reconnaissance and armed convoys near important PDF installations.

  In Category Four, U.S. troops would take full control of several key military facilities, such as Fort Amador, Quarry Heights, and Fort Espinar. Fort Amador is located on a peninsula just southwest of Panama City. SOUTHCOM’s headquarters were in Quarry Heights in Panama City, and its Operations Center was in a tunnel dug during Canal construction. Fort Espinar is in the north, near Colon. All of these were joint PDF-U.S. installations.

  The President’s get-tougher policy also had major policy consequences, since he had moved toward the kind of bolder strategy that General Woerner had resisted. He decided to replace General Woerner.

  On June 20, Admiral Crowe recommended General Thurman as Woerner’s replacement. Thurman had served in Vietnam and though he had somewhat limited warfighting experience or expertise, he was considered a man of action who could make things happen. With that in mind, Crowe asked Thurman to review the prayer BOOK operations orders-especially BLUE SPOON.

  On August 4, the day before his scheduled changc-of-command ceremony Thurman came to Fort Bragg for a pair of briefings on BLUE SPOON: one on the JTFP concept for conventional force operations, the other on the Joint Special Operations Task Force concept of special operations.

  Stiner could not attend, but he was represented by his deputy commander, Major General Will Roosma. That night, when Roosma laid out for him the substance of the briefings, along with Thurman’s questions and comments, Stiner started getting inklings of what Thurman would tell him directly the next day.

  BACK TO PANAMA

  After his August 5 meeting with Thurman, Stiner wrapped up his duties with the 28th lnfantry Division, but kept his new role in Panama uppermost in his mind. Getting up to speed on BLUE SPOON was an early priority; so far he had not personally reviewed it.

  But his first priority was to get down to Panama and SOUTHCOM.

  His last visit there had been a couple of years earlier, as the JSOTF Commander. This one would be very
different: He was now totally responsible for the major operation that was shaping up.

  His overriding concern was the 30,000 Americans, about 5,000 of whom were U.S. dependents living alongside PDF soldiers on joint military installations. This was a ready-made recipe for mass hostage-taking-or even massacre.

  Back at Fort Bragg, he put together the team he would take with him-his chief of staff, Brigadier General Ed Scholes; his G-2 and G-3, Colonels Walters and Needham; and six officers from the intelligence and operations directorates who had taken part in the initial plan review process. He hoped to leave four of them in Panama (with SATCOM capabilities), so he could have daily reports.

  The next night, Stiner and his team, dressed as civilians, left Pope Air Force Base in an unmarked special mission aircraft (a C-20 Gulf Stream), and landed around 9:00 P.M. at Howard Air Force Base, across the Canal from Panama City. He was met by Brigadier General Bill Hartzog, who had replaced Marc Cisneros as the SOUTHCOM J-3. Cisneros had moved over to replace Major General Bernie Loefke as commander of U.S. Army South. They spent most of the rest of the night with Bill I lartzog in Quarry Heights, in the tunnel that housed the SOUTHCOM operations center, receiving briefings on BLUE SPOON revisions. Although General Woerner still commanded SOUTHCOM, I lartzog was aware of General Thurman’s and Washington’s concerns, and had begun rewriting the blue SPOON operations order.

  Stiner also learned many necessary details.

  On the minus side, the tactical communications facilities in Panama were not nearly adequate for a major contingency operation. On the plus side, there was a combat service support capability—including a major hospital. Somewhat augmented, this capability would do for the initial stages of combat.

  The next morning, Stiner and his party, still in civilian clothes, moved a short distance to Fort Clayton, U.S. Army South headquarters. There he linked up with Brigadier General Cisneros; Colonel Mike Snell, the commander of the 193rd brigade; and Colonel Keith Kellogg, the brigade commander who had come in with the 7th Infantry Division contingent during President Bush’s May buildup, and who was now operating in the Colon area.

  For the next two days, Stiner learned everything he could, about Noriega and the PDF on the one hand, and about the training and readiness of forces in Panama on the other.

  Noriega had recently stepped up provocations aimed at disrupting what were called “Sand Flea” exercises—training activities allowed by the treaty. IIe then used the media reports of those confrontations to spread his hostile message. Though the U.S. troops involved had performed with exemplary professionalism so far, this kind of thing was a potential flash point for larger conflict and had to be closely watched.

  Before Stiner and his team left Panama, Cisneros okayed the installation of Stiner’s cell of four smart majors—planners—in the operations center.

  His final business was to give Hartzog his assessment:

  The revised blue SPOON, Stiner knew, was going to be considerably changed from General Woerner’s original plan. In Stiner’s view, any successful operation required surprise, overwhelming combat power, and the cover of darkness, to take advantage of the U.S. Army’s unequaled night-fighting capabilities. It would not be a slow buildup, but a short, sharp, overwhelming shock.

  Even though the commanders he’d met had shown an invaluable knowledge of the PDF and the local environment, Stiner had discovered holes that needed filling. Units in Panama were not as ready and proficient in urban live-fire operations at night as the forces coming in from the United States. This would require an intensified training program. Additionally, the aviation unit was short on pilots, and the majority of crews were not sufficiently proficient in nighttime battalion-size combat air assaults—though in a crunch, Stincr knew that, if he had to, he could make up for it with trained and ready crews already available in the XVIII Airborne Corps aviation battalions.

  BACK at Fort Bragg, Stiner reviewed his visit to Panama with General Thurman—an experience that had left Stiner particularly unimpressed with the centerpiece of BLUE SPOON, the gradual buildup. The recent buildup in May hadn’t deterred Noriega one bit, and there was no guarantee that BLUE SPOON would have more than a fifty-fifty chance of success.

  “My people at Bragg,” Stiner told his boss, “will get to work on a plan to neutralize Noriega’s power base. We plan to take out the PDF and the national police in one fell swoop, and in one night.

  “With your blessing, sir, he continued, ”I hope to visit Panama again in about two weeks, together with the leaders of the units that I will most likely select for this operation, and I plan to continue visiting Panama frequently until all this is over”

  “Drive on,” Thurman said. “And keep me informed.”

  ON August 10, 1989, the President nominated General Colin Powell to be the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to take office on October 1. Earlier, General Powell had taken over the United States Forces Command from General Palastra, which had made him Stiner’s immediate boss; but he already knew General Powell well from his days at JSOTF, when Powell had been the Executive Assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

  While General Powell was still at FORSCOM, he scheduled a one-day trip to Bragg to get a firsthand look at the XVIII Corps’s readiness and planning initiatives for Panama. Though his visit was scheduled for only one day, bad weather kept him at Bragg, and Stiner took advantage of the opportunity to point out the revisions he had in mind for BLUE SPOON.

  Powell agreed with Stiner—and Thurman—that the force buildup originally envisaged for BLUE SPOON took too long (twenty-two days) especially if a crisis hit. A quick-strike, one-night operation using the capabilities of the XVIII Airborne Corps and the Special Operations Command was the way to go. Stiner, of course, knew the capabilities of both commands better than anybody else, and he also knew how to meld them together as one fighting team.

  “Continue revising the plan,” Powell told Stiner.

  LATER that month, Thurman, Stiner, Hartzog, and Gary Luck, the JSOTF commander, met to get up-to-date. Since April 1988, they concluded, when BLUE SPOON had been published, Noriega had grown increasingly defiant and his forces better equipped and trained. A twenty-two-day buildup could result in prolonged fighting, more casualties, and more opportunities for Noriega to take hostages or escape to the hills to lead a guerrilla war. Stiner wanted a quick strike that would lead to decisive victory.

  During September, as the staffs of the XVIII Airborne Corps, SOUTHCOM, and SOCOM continued to revise the plan in that direction, Stiner made another visit to Panama, this time with the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, the Assistant Division Commander of the 7th Infantry Division, the Ranger Regimental Commander, and Gary Luck, along with their operations and intelligence officers—including another of his best planners, to augment the four he’d already left there. Again, they traveled at night in civilian clothes, and in the same C-20 used for the first trip. At Howard AFB, they were met by Hartzog and Cisneros, and went directly to Fort Clayton for briefings.

  The next day, the party broke into smaller groups and took off on clandestine reconnaissance missions, to get a better feel for the targets that had been selected, if a contingency operation was launched. Twenty-seven prime targets had been selected. Some key installations and facilities would have to be protected. Other targets would have to be “taken out”—or “neutralized.”

  Targets to be protected included the Pacora River Bridge, the three locks on the Canal, Madden Dam, the Bridge of Americas (crossing the Canal at Panama City), Howard Air Force Base, the U.S. Embassy, and all U.S. dependents living on military installations shared by the PDF.

  Targets to be taken out included the Comandancia and all PDF military installations.

  The reconnaissance gave the commanders awareness of what they would actually be facing—though no one knew yet which targets would be assigned to which commander. Stiner later made these decisions, based on his knowledge of unit capabilities. Some targets co
uld be taken only by SOF forces, while others were better suited for conventional units.

  Meanwhile, the Senate had confirmed General Thurman as CINC, and on Saturday, September 30, 1989, he took command from General Woerner at SOCOM headquarters in Panama. One day later, at midnight, Colin Powell took over as chairman of the JCS; his welcoming ceremony occurred the next day.

  THE OCTOBER 3 COUP ATTEMPT

  On Sunday evening, October 1, a woman phoned the CIA station chief in Panama City: “Can you meet me downtown where we can talk? 1 have something that you need to know about.” Though she refused to identify herself, the meeting was arranged.

  She turned out to be the wife of Major Moises Giroldi, the commander of Noriega’s security forces at the Comandancia.

  “My husband is very worried about what the Noriega regime is doing to our country,” she told the station chief, “and has decided to take action. Tomorrow morning at nine, as Noriega arrives at the Comandancia, my husband and others who oppose him will conduct a coup. We may need U.S. help to block PDF forces moving against the coup. We’ll be back in touch.”

  That night, when the meeting was reported to General Thurman, he immediately went to his command post in the tunnel at Quarry Heights, where he hoped to pick up more news.

  Sometime after midnight, a pair of CIA agents went straight from a meeting with Major Giroldi to Quarry Heights, where they confirmed to Thurman that the conspirators planned to grab Noriega at about nine that morning and take control of the Comandancia, thus cutting him off from communications with his field units. However, they might need U.S. help to block the major roads from the west, in case PDF units reacted to the coup.