by Tom Clancy
Meanwhile, I was thinking. “Why the Nunciatore?” I asked myself. “We have been watching the Nicaraguan Embassy, the Cuban Embassy, the Peruvian Embassy, and all the others where we thought he might hole up; but we never considered the Nunciatore. All the same, now we have him; it’s just a matter of how to get him out.”
Shortly, Cisneros phoned with the Nuncio’s story:
Noriega and Captain Guitan, his aide, had called to ask for refuge. “What we want you to do,” Noriega demanded, “is pick us up at an ice-cream stand,” which he named, “and bring us to the Nunciatore. If you don’t, we’ll go to the mountains and start a guerrilla war.”
Laboa felt he had no choice. He sent a car to pick them up.
“My earlier call,” he explained to Cisneros, “was to let you know about the car. I’d hoped U.S. forces would intercept it before it returned to the Nunciatore—and you’d do me a favor if you took your soldiers right now and dragged him out; but unfortunately, that’s impossible. We both have to recognize the diplomatic protocols.”
“That’s fine,” I told Cisneros. “Now what I want you to do is find out from Laboa if anyone else has taken asylum in the Nunciatorc, and if they have weapons. And tell him that Downing is establishing a security perimeter around the Nunciatore and will be our man on the scene.”
Forty-five minutes later, Cisneros returned to headquarters. “The Nuncio doesn’t think Noriega brought weapons with him,” he told me, “but he’s not sure.” We were fairly certain he had weapons, and this complicated matters: We were in a potential hostage situation. “Several others in Noriega’s inner circle are also there,” Cisneros continued, “as well as a few women, and eight to ten children.”
The others turned out to be: Captain Guitan; Colonel Castergen, the Navy Commander; Lieutenant Colonel Velarde, a chaplain; Captain Castillo, Noriega’s personal bodyguard; and Colonel Madrinan, Chief of the Department of National Investigation. Five Basque separatist terrorists had also come in with the Noriega gang, on the reasonable assumption that we’d want to pick them up.
By then, Downing had secured the area with Colonel “Pete” and his forces from Task Force Green, and had established his operational center in the elementary school across the street. I called him there: “Tell Laboa that he’s in a very dangerous situation, and as far as we’re concerned, he violated the Nunciatore’s immunities when he went out and fetched an indicted criminal, then brought him inside and provided refuge.
“Advise the Nuncio that he’s living in a bed of snakes who could care less about him and could kill him at any time.”
We then talked about the best way to get the women and children out of there, in order to simplify the situation.
DOWNING met Laboa in the elementary school.
“I’ll do what I can to help,” Laboa said nervously when Downing gave him my message. It had scared him badly.
Then Downing asked, “Will you authorize a rescue operation if we hear shots from inside? We believe Noriega has weapons.”
“I can do that,” Laboa answered.
“Will you put that in writing?”
“Yes,” the Nuncio responded.
“I have two other questions,” Downing said: “Will you help us to get the women and children out?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And will you and your staff leave after that?”
“No, we can’t do that,” Laboa replied, then went back inside the Nunciatore.
Thirty minutes later, a priest delivered an envelope with a note typed on Vatican parchment and signed by Laboa that authorized a rescue operation if shots were fired inside the Nunciatore. This was a “get out of jail free” card for Laboa if anything beyond his control happened, but it was also our trump card. If anything did happen, we had authority to conduct an immediate assault. And we had a plan to accomplish it.
I quickly called General Thurman to give him an update. At the same time, I asked him for a change in his rules of engagement to allow an assault if the lives of those inside were in danger. This was approved by SECDEF.
Meanwhile, Downing went to work getting the women and children out, and it turned out they were not the only ones who were eager to leave; several men wanted out as well—all demanding to be flown to Nicaragua, Cuba, or Venezuela.
“We’ll see about that,” Downing said.
Toward evening. Downing’s old yellow Panzer Gruppe school bus rolled up, and about ten men and women and twelve children came out. They were then loaded and taken to a secure location, where they were segregated. The women and children were taken to their homes, and the men were sent to our detention camp.
“I didn’t offer them asylum,” Downing said when he called me. “I didn’t have the authority. I just told them we’d work on it. But what I had to do is get the women and children out; it was a very dangerous situation.”
Still inside were Noriega, five of his henchmen, and the five Basque separatists—all bad people, except possibly for the chaplain, who may have stayed inside out of hope to take care of Noriega’s spiritual needs.
In the meantime, while we tried to figure out how to get Noriega out of there, we’d begun to discover just how bad Noriega and his crew really were. Downing’s task force had added ever more fascinating evidence to what Marc Cisneros had come up with after we captured the PDF side of Fort Amador.
On Christmas Eve, I received a call from Jim Johnson: “We have secured Noriega’s main residence in downtown Panama City,” he said, “and found things you need to take a look at. I would recommend that you come out tomorrow.”
“What did you find?”
“He’s heavily involved in witchcraft, for one thing. But that’s only a beginning.” That caught my attention.
“I’ll try to get out there tomorrow morning,” 1 told him.
When I dropped all this on my staff at a meeting that night, the J-2 spoke up: “You won’t believe this,” he announced, “but 1 ran into a warrant officer in the MI Battalion with a master’s degree in witchcraft. You need to take him along.”
“I didn’t even know there was such a degree,” I said. “But get him ready to go, and we’ll leave tomorrow about eight-thirty.”
The next morning, I flew out and linked up with Johnson at Paitilla airfield. From there we were escorted to Noriega’s house. When we got there, I had a hard time believing my eyes.
The house was lavishly furnished with gaudy “objets d’art.” Large silver pelicans—estimated at about $25,000 each—were all over the place. In the main study was probably the biggest collection of ceramic frogs in the world. In the office was a world-class collection of busts of Hitler; he had at least twenty-five of them. Also in the office was a large poster board containing the pictures of the Catholic Church’s representatives in each of the Central American countries with “X”s marked beside several names. Presumably, an “X” meant future elimination.
Behind the house was a patio, connecting the residence to what was called the “girls’ dollhouse,” built for his daughters when they were children; it was as large as most people’s homes. On each end of the patio were two large altars set up for voodoo worship and witchcraft. Noriega had brought to Panama two “high-powered witches from Brazil. One of them was reputed to be the world’s leading witch; he lived on the causeway to Fort Amador in a house where at H-hour the SEALs had established a roadblock (I don’t know what became of him).
The MI warrant officer explained each of the altars. On one was arranged containers of blood, a skull, crows’ feathers, and cars of corn with multicolored kernels. All of this, the warrant officer explained, puts the “worshiper” in the right frame of mind for some kind of atrocity or evil act.
On the other altar were arranged stuffed doves, pictures of babies, and other “nice” things. The “worshiper” would cleanse his soul here afterward.
In Noriega’s bedroom were several pairs of red silk bikini underwear—a Noriega trademark. We had found them just about everywhere Nor
iega showed his face. According to the warrant officer, the witch doctor had likely told Noriega they would protect him from physical harm.
“Maintain tight security here,” I told Johnson as I left. “I don’t want anything disturbed before we show it to the right people. After that, we’ll turn it over to Panamanian authority.” Among those whom I especially wanted to see all this—and what we had found at Fort Amador—were high-level officials of the Catholic Church. As soon as Noriega had himself brought to the Nunciatore, General Thurman started talking with the Catholic hierarchy, and of course with Washington, about ways to resolve the problem. When I got the chance, I suggested to Thurman that he invite some selected Catholic officials down to show them what we’d found.
It was an eyeful, that’s for sure; but it gave us real insights into the man Noriega. It also began to give me ideas about how to get Noriega out of the Nunciatore.
THE first thing I did after 1 left was meet with Downing. We were particularly interested in finding a use for Noriega’s red underwear. For all we knew, he was wearing a pair right then. If he ever had a need for the powers they gave, it was certainly then.
Our first idea was to hang a pair on a clothesline outside his window (Laboa had told us where it was) and shoot them full of holes to show him how empty their powers were.
“I can take care of that,” Downing said, and the demonstration was carried out later that afternoon.
Meanwhile, I’d picked up an interesting detail from the warrant officer: A goat was a very bad omen. That set me thinking.
This led to an instruction to my J-2 to come up with the ugliest, stinkingest billygoat he could find, and doctor him up for Noriega. The next day the J-2 produced a goat with really impressive horns and a beard that came down just short of his knees. They decked him out in a pair of red bikini underwear, rigged him up so a remote control signal sent smoke blowing out of his nostrils and ears, and tied him outside Noriega window.
We never knew how Noriega took all this, but it couldn’t have helped his digestion.
ON the night of December 23, the media was cleared into Panama.
Well before the operation was launched, Thurman and I agreed on how we would work media affairs. Essentially, his headquarters would handle them, under his public affairs officer, an Air Force colonel; and I provided my public affairs officer, Jake Dye, an Army colonel, to SOUTIICOM, which established a media center in a large tent just outside the headquarters. There would be two daily press briefings—one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
From the beginning the operation had been kept secret, but on the night of the twentieth, there were enough media already in Panama to cover a good part of the activities in the vicinity of the Comandancia. TVs are common in Panama; which meant civilians could watch the battles taking place live on their home screens.
On the night of the twenty-third, Panama’s airspace was still closed to everything but military traffic. A call came in from Pete Kemph at Howard Air Force Base. A Lockheed L-1011 was overhead, asking permission to land.
“Who’s on it?” 1 asked.
Kemph called back, “It’s a load of media; they’ve been cleared from Washington.”
“We have no alternative but to let them land,” I said.
They were met on the ground by Thurman and taken to Quarry Heights, where they were given a complete briefing. Afterward, Thurman announced that the plan was to put them out in groups of three or four with each rifle company so they could get front-line coverage. Company commanders would be responsible for their security, food, and protection. Every day they would select a small number to travel around in a helicopter and pick up their “take,” which they’d have time to file for the evening news.
The media found this arrangement totally unacceptable. Each media team wanted helicopters of its own, so they could immediately get to the action (one team had a satellite communications set it would take a Chinook to carry).
“I’m sorry,” Thurman told them, “but I can’t accommodate you on that. We’re still involved in security operations and don’t have enough helicopters to support the troops, much less give you dedicated helicopters.”
They reluctantly agreed to this arrangement, but that didn’t last long. Many of them began to slip away and rent cars; pretty soon they were running around all over the place.
It didn’t take the press long to find out that Noriega was in the Nunciatore. Not long after that, they took over the Holiday Inn, about a hundred yards away and were out on the balconies with their pinpoint microphones, trying to pick up what was going on.
This worried me. “We’ve got very sensitive negotiations going on outside the Nunciatore between Downing, Cisneros, Michael Kuzack,” the U.S. Embassy representative, “and Laboa,” I told Thurman, “and we have to find a way to block these microphones listening in. What I’d like to do is bring in some psychological operations loudspeakers and play music.”
“Good idea,” Thurman said. “Set it up.”
And that’s what we did.
Pretty soon, the press got teed off and started calling directly to the White House, claiming we were violating their first amendment rights by blasting them with rock music. That was not, in fact, true. It wasn’t all rock music. We had also selected some good country-and-western songs, like Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” and “Nowhere to Run To,” and “In the Jailhouse Now.”
We didn’t forget Noriega in all this. We wanted to send him a clear message that the ball game was over. During the afternoons, we hooked up the loudspeakers to U.S. Southern Command radio so he could also hear about the surrenders of his PDF commanders and the freezing of his overseas bank accounts.
The loudspeaker campaign didn’t last long.
The White House put pressure on General Powell, who called General Thurman and demanded an explanation. General Thurman did that, but it apparently did not satisfy the White I louse, and we were ordered to stop the music.
As we wrestled with the problem of prying Noriega out of the Nunciatore, operations were going on throughout western Panama to bring security and stability, and great progress had been made (looting had practically ceased), owing in large measure to the signal sent by combat activities at H-hour. Also contributing to the success was the surrender of Lieutenant Colonel Del Cid. Word of his surrender had also almost certainly reached Noriega before he’d entered the Nunciatore; this would not have lifted his mood.
All the while, intelligence reports were coming in that Noriega supporters were planning rescue attempts.
One report claimed that rescuers planned to land a small helicopter inside the Nunciatore grounds and fly him out. In response, Downing positioned Ranger stinger-missile teams on every nearby high-rise building. There was no way a helicopter was going to get into the Nunciatorc.
Another report claimed Noriega was going to slip away out the back and down an irrigation ditch. Infantry troops were brought in to secure the ditch, and surveillance cameras with infrared capability were installed for all-around security.
MEANWHILE, progress was slow on the Noriega problem—though matters were far from a standstill. Washington had been negotiating with the Vatican, and those negotiations continued. We had made suggestions to Monsignor Laboa about keeping Noriega’s misery level as high as possible, and Laboa was cooperating. Noriega was not getting special privileges. Laboa had ordered his room’s air-conditioning to be turned off, and Noriega, a vegetarian, was served the same food as everyone else. Of course, Laboa had also been a major factor in getting the women and children out.
At the same time, General Thurman was pursuing initiatives with Panama’s Catholic leadership. Archbishop Marcus McGrath, the senior Catholic prelate, took a witchcraft-and-voodoo tour of the residence and “dollhouse”; and he also had laid out for him the pornography, the torture photos, and the poster listing several of the Catholic priests in Panama and Central America, with “X”s marked next to names.
AFTERWARD, the archbis
hop convened a bishops’ conference, resulting in a letter from the bishops to the Pope, asking for an order to release Noriega to U.S. custody.
Movement from that direction came on December 29, when the Vatican newspaper reported: “The Vatican had never intended to hinder justice by granting Noriega refuge.” On New Year’s Day, Monsignor Berlocco, the Vatican’s expert on Central America, arrived to help Laboa with Noriega. The next day, he confided to Cisncros that he hoped for a speedy and just resolution to the problem.
ABOUT that time, I had an idea: Back at the October 3 coup, when Noriega was being held in the Comandancia, we had pretty good evidence that he’d called Miss Vicki and asked her to get hold of the troop commanders who’d come in to rescue him.
If she was useful then, why wouldn’t she be useful now?
I told Downing to have Miss Vicki brought in so we could talk to her. We picked her up that night, then sat her down and told her how she could help save her lover’s life.
Vicki was a very strong woman and at first refused to cooperate, but as the night wore on, she began to talk about her thirteen-year-old daughter. The girl had a mild heart condition (it required medication, but was not life-threatening). It was obvious Vicki loved the girl very much, and had somehow gotten the impression that we “had” her; we didn’t tell her any different. In fact, during the night we were able to locate her daughter—and ensure her safety.
At daybreak, Miss Vicki agreed to cooperate—with the condition that we let her see her daughter. We brought the daughter in, along with clean clothing for Vicki, and then let her take a shower and have a nice breakfast with her daughter.
After that, we gave her our message for Noriega: He had only two options. One was to come out feet first. The other was to come out with dignity—wearing his general’s uniform—and surrender.