The Commanders

by Bob Woodward

  BLUE SPOON was a plan for offensive U.S. military operations against the Noriega-controlled military, the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF). These would be conducted from Panama by the local U.S. Army commander, who would take command of a joint task force comprising units from all four services.

  • • •

  At the White House meeting the night of May 10, Crowe saw that Noriega’s decision to nullify the opposition victory was being perceived as a big setback to U.S. policy. President Bush was eager to do something to solve the Noriega problem. But he made what Crowe considered to be the key point: the U.S. could not run the risk of making Noriega an overnight martyr.

  If the harassment of U.S. servicemen were to escalate to physical attacks on Americans similar to the attacks on the Panamanian opposition leaders, the situation would be intolerable, Bush said. Television pictures of Americans being clubbed and fleeing with blood-encrusted shirts would require immediate action.

  Crowe said that he wanted to make sure the military forces were in a better posture to respond.

  Knowing that Jim Baker had the most influence with Bush, Crowe watched to see where the Secretary of State now stood on Panama. As Reagan’s Treasury Secretary, Baker had argued that Noriega wasn’t worth so much attention. But later, Baker had been Bush’s campaign manager when candidate Bush took a tough, public anti-Noriega line, opposing a plea-bargained deal. This had given a new high profile to the Noriega issue, and had implied a promise that, as President, Bush would find a solution.

  “If we had known we would win the election by so much,” Baker said now, only half-jokingly, “we would not have dug such a deep hole for ourselves.”

  While Baker was not yet anything like Elliott Abrams, Crowe could see he was taking on the activist coloring of his department, where, it seemed to Crowe, military solutions were too often viewed as the first resort rather than the last.

  Bush said that he wanted to exploit the obvious anti-Noriega sentiment that was on the rise in Panama, and also wanted to see if the videos of Billy Ford being beaten up could not be used to build some anti-Noriega support within Latin America.

  The tenor of the meeting was that the administration should find some measured, symbolic step.

  That night Marlin Fitzwater, Bush’s press secretary, read a mild public statement from Bush condemning the violence.

  Over the next 24 hours Crowe and Cheney attempted to formulate a military recommendation to the President.

  Like so many military plans, the carefully drafted, four-part PRAYER BOOK series did not apply to the situation at hand: the canal was not in danger, a full evacuation of civilians was not called for, there was no new government to assist, and an offensive operation against the Panamanian Defense Forces would be too extreme.

  Crowe suggested to Cheney that they propose augmenting the U.S. forces in Panama with a brigade-size reinforcement of 2,000 to 3,000 troops. This could be done with some fanfare, sending an important psychological message to Noriega and the PDF. Cheney agreed.

  Crowe called Woerner on the secure line. He first asked if Woerner needed or wanted some supplement to the rules of engagement—the guidelines for combat, dictating when force could be used and how much—so he could put his troops in a more aggressive posture.

  No, Woerner said, adding that he had not had a single serious incident of undue use of force by his 12,000 troops and he wanted to keep the rules simple.

  Crowe proposed sending the brigade-size reinforcement, but Woerner said he did not need it. When Crowe attempted to explain that they had to send some message, Woerner said an influx of thousands of troops could be an unneeded burden.

  Things were moving pretty fast, Crowe said, and Woerner might have to accept some kind of force package for political reasons.

  • • •

  Crowe decided there was one more step that could be taken to prepare. A secret deployment of a small, super-elite special operations task force could be ordered. Soon after the failed Iranian hostage rescue operation of 1980, Desert I, the Department of Defense had created the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC (“J-sock”), to conduct counterterrorist operations. Headed by an Army major general, JSOC was based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and had several tiers of operators. The top tier consisted of three elite Army Delta squadrons and the Navy’s SEAL (sea-air-land) teams.

  Each Delta squadron had 120 to 130 people with enough firepower to make any battle seem like a nonnuclear version of World War III. Delta assignments were for five years, and the average age of a member was about 30. Each was experienced and capable of moving covertly in most countries. Abroad, Delta members might dress as civilians, speak the local language, wear their hair long, do whatever else was necessary to blend into the culture or neighborhood. One squadron was always on alert, ready to travel within four hours.

  SEAL Team 6, the Navy equivalent of Delta, was the most elite of the three formidable SEAL teams—the best of the best. Team members had an average age of about 20 and had to be in top physical shape because they might have to swim for hours before fighting on land. Based in Norfolk, SEAL Team 6 had hundreds of members divided into 30-man units; platoons of 14 could be deployed individually. Equipped with everything from advanced underwater breathing devices that make no bubbles to the latest high-tech surveillance equipment, SEAL Team 6 would add another dimension to the capabilities available to the United States as it poised to await Noriega’s next move.

  Dispatching these special forces to Panama would give the President considerable flexibility, and would put the military’s best hostage rescue team on the scene. Crowe called the JSOC commander on the secure phone and alerted him that some of his forces might be needed.

  Cheney approved Crowe’s suggestion to recommend to the President that they dispatch a Delta team and part of SEAL Team 6 to Panama.

  Crowe then called Fred Woerner in Panama. Once again, the general said he did not desire the new deployment the Pentagon wanted to send him. It was one of the few times in his career that Crowe had encountered a commander who resisted additional forces. Crowe indicated that a force package of some 2,000 troops plus a Delta team and a SEAL unit were likely to be coming, if the President approved.

  Woerner was troubled by the push from Washington. The BLUE SPOON contingency plan called for a Delta unit to capture Noriega, and now a Delta unit was coming down. The United States would be one step closer to executing an armed intervention, a move Woerner still strongly opposed. He made it clear that he felt a snatch operation—conducted either as part of BLUE SPOON or independently—was just too risky. If it failed, it would represent a major escalation, putting all the U.S. citizens in Panama in jeopardy.

  The likelihood of pulling off a snatch was remote, in Woerner’s view. Noriega was hard for U.S. intelligence to track. Woerner only occasionally knew where Noriega had been, knew only rarely where he was at any given time, and never knew where he was going to be—a prerequisite to capturing him.

  Through a secret source, Colonel Guillermo Wong, Noriega’s military intelligence chief, the Southern Command had learned that Noriega had two plans to put into effect if he was attacked personally or sought by U.S. forces. One was to go to the hills and conduct guerrilla operations; the second was to take American hostages. Aware that an unsuccessful snatch operation could trigger the ultimate nightmare of hostage taking, Woerner thought to himself that the snatch option, in any form, was “Looney Tunes.”

  • • •

  Although he had doubts about the wisdom of abducting Noriega, Crowe knew he had to consider that possibility. But before he reached his own conclusion, he needed to get a better idea of what would be acceptable to Cheney. Crowe felt he had not closed the loop with Cheney, had not come to know the man beneath the unrevealing surface. One day during a private discussion, Cheney had dropped his guard. “You know,” he said to Crowe, “the President has got a long history of vindictive political actions.” Cross Bush and you pay, he said, supplying the names o
f a few victims and adding: Bush remembers and you have to be careful.

  What an important notion, Crowe reflected. Bush remembers and you have to be careful. Cheney’s mask had momentarily slipped. Was it intentional—a warning to Crowe? Or a reminder for Cheney himself? Crowe was not at all sure. But apparently Cheney was afraid of Bush.

  The new Secretary did not appear to be squeamish about the kinds of aggressive actions now under consideration for Panama. In his first two months in the Pentagon, he had insisted on being briefed about possible retaliation for the December 21 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which had exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Libya, Syria and Iran were all suspected of involvement. He had approved plans for retaliation in the event the bombing could be traced directly to any of the suspect countries. Despite this early indication of Cheney’s willingness to use force, Crowe couldn’t be sure of the Secretary’s views on a Noriega snatch.

  In one session, Crowe mentioned the possibility to Cheney, saying it would be very risky and not necessarily wise. Cheney explored the details of this option, and said he favored it if an opportunity arose—if there was good intelligence on Noriega’s whereabouts or if he did something openly provocative. But not, Cheney said, if such a snatch was going to have any political negatives.

  On Thursday, May 11, Cheney and Crowe finished work on their recommendation to Bush: an announced troop deployment, plus a secret dispatch of a Delta squadron and part of SEAL Team 6. Bush agreed.

  That afternoon, the President appeared briefly in the White House press room to announce that over the next several days he was sending an additional 1,881 American troops to Panama. Asked if the United States would look favorably on a coup attempt against Noriega, Bush sidestepped. “I’ve asserted what my interest is at this point. It is democracy in Panama; it is protection of the life of Americans in Panama.”

  At a news briefing later, Scowcroft was asked what the new forces were going to do about the election fraud. He said, “I don’t remember the President saying the troops are there to restore democracy.” The deployment was simply “a precautionary, prudent step.”

  The operation was code-named NIMROD DANCER and would consist of 1,716 Army troops and 165 Marines.

  The next day, Friday, May 12, Cheney formally authorized the secret part of the deployment.

  Most people cleared for access to details of this special operations deployment were told the units were being sent there for possible hostage rescue. Since Noriega and his Dignity Battalions might do anything to the Americans in Panama, it was considered a wise precaution to have the forces on hand to carry off a sophisticated rescue.

  But there was another mission for the Delta squadron. A month before, a CIA operative named Kurt Muse had been arrested by the PDF for running a clandestine radio network which was part of the agency’s covert operation to unseat Noriega. Intelligence reports said that a guard with a submachine gun was stationed outside Muse’s cell with orders to kill him if there was any sign of hostilities by the Americans. The CIA was deeply concerned about Muse and wanted to avoid a repeat of the 1984 kidnapping and subsequent murder of their station chief in Beirut, William Buckley. In that episode, the agency’s inability to locate and rescue one of its own had made it appear weak. So CIA Director William H. Webster pressed Cheney to have the military draw up a rescue plan for Muse that would be ready for execution on short notice.

  Muse’s wife was a Department of Defense employee in Panama, making Muse a dependent entitled by treaty to regular visits from an American attorney and doctor. They reported that Muse, who was being held in Modelo Prison across from Noriega’s headquarters, known as the Comandancia, was being treated well. As Noriega’s American hostage, however, he was very vulnerable.

  A special plan, code-named ACID GAMBIT, was developed for a Delta team to rescue Muse in an operation that would take only nine minutes.

  In operational terms, using Delta or the SEAL team to free an American hostage or prisoner was not much different from taking the heavily guarded Noriega from his bodyguards.

  • • •

  Crowe saw that the President—former CIA Director Bush—was very worried about the agency’s captured operative. Bush also had made it clear that he wanted the military to be able to seize Noriega and bring him back to the United States for trial. The implications of going into a sovereign country and seizing its leader could be immense; but Crowe saw no sign that the consequences were being fully considered.

  “I can’t predict what the President will do,” the Chairman told the JSOC commander on the secure telephone, “but get ready.”

  • • •

  On Saturday, May 13, Bush boarded Air Force One to fly to Mississippi for a commencement address. He summoned the reporters traveling with him to his cabin to say that he had no quarrel with the Panamanian military, just with Noriega and his “thuggery.” In his strongest public comments so far, Bush called on the Panamanian people and military to overthrow Noriega. “They ought to do everything they can to get Mr. Noriega out of there,” he said. It was highly unusual for a president to call publicly for a coup, baldly declaring open season on a foreign ruler. When Bush was asked if there were any limits on what he meant, he said, “No, I would add no words of caution.”

  • • •

  Crowe sent General Woerner a personal secret message proposing a plan for the U.S. military to conduct new exercises in Panama that would aggressively assert U.S. rights under the Panama Canal treaties. On May 17, Woerner sent a message back saying he was ready.

  In a secure phone conversation, Crowe told Woerner that Bush had decided to authorize the exercises. “But understand you are to do nothing provocative,” Crowe added.

  Woerner had grown accustomed to executing a Panama policy that amounted to a sequence of subtleties and innuendos. He interpreted Crowe’s new instructions to mean that the command should be intimidating, show resolve, create doubts in Noriega’s mind about U.S. intentions, and act tough, but not pick a fight that would draw an armed response from the PDF. It seemed like a thin distinction.

  In the following days, Noriega drew back. Woerner received intelligence reports, including some from the secret source Colonel Wong, showing that Noriega was telling his forces to be very careful during any encounters with Americans. They were not to give the Americans an excuse for a military response. According to one such report, Noriega warned, “Don’t piss off the Americans.”

  • • •

  Cheney realized that Woerner was an expert on Panama—perhaps too much so. The Secretary did not like the subtext of the Southern Command’s reactions to events. When anything aggressive was proposed, such as new deployments or asserting the U.S. treaty rights, Woerner argued against it. The general always provided good reasons, but his heart didn’t seem to be in a timely solution to the Noriega problem.

  Cheney concluded that Woerner had gone native.

  For Cheney, if push came to shove in Panama, the United States had basically two options: execute the BLUE SPOON offensive operations against the PDF, or snatch Noriega. Woerner was keen on neither. Furthermore, there didn’t seem to be any circumstances when he would be.

  • • •

  Outgoing Army Secretary Jack Marsh had heard that there was going to be a game of musical chairs in the upper ranks of the military. Cheney was going to have to select a new JCS chairman. On May 30, when Cheney came over to join Marsh for one of the Army mess’s famous catfish lunches, Marsh wanted to make sure Cheney considered an Army general for the post. So Marsh spoke to Cheney in glowing terms about one of his favorites—General Maxwell Reid Thurman.

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  JUST BEFORE LUNCHTIME ON JUNE 13, a small-framed man of average height with a large head and thick glasses rushed down the third-floor E-Ring corridor. If it hadn’t been for his Army-green uniform and the four stars on each shoulder, he might have been taken for a Pentagon budget analyst.

>   A bachelor workaholic, he thought nothing of working himself, and his staff, nights and weekends. He spoke with piercing directness, and he did not accept excuses. There was perhaps no more intense man in the United States military.

  General Maxwell Thurman, 58, was stopping by for a private lunch with Jack Marsh and Cheney. Marsh had arranged the lunch. It was a rare opportunity for Thurman, as he neared the end of his career, to speak with the Secretary of Defense. Commanding general of the Training and Doctrine Command—the Army’s brain—since 1987, he had spent his life, 28 assignments in 36 years, as an Army officer, the last six as a four-star general.

  He was scheduled to retire in two months and, like most four-star officers, was going to leave without having risen to one of the high-visibility posts, such as service chief or CINC. If he lacked public notoriety, Thurman made up for it within the Army, where he was somewhat of a legend, known variously as Mad Max, Maxatollah and Emperor Maximilian.

  The Army Secretary’s office was as large as Cheney’s. In the center was the giant Lincoln Desk that had been built for Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert, when he served as Secretary of War from 1881 to 1885. Cheney took his seat at the small dining table, directly beneath a vast 19th-century painting called The Ragged Continentals, depicting General George Washington with his somber, bedraggled troops at Valley Forge. Marsh sat at the head looking out the window to Arlington National Cemetery. He had always thought it appropriate that the Army Secretary and the Navy Secretary—whose office was one floor above—had this view of seemingly endless rows of white tombstones, a reminder of the true, measurable price of war.

  As they began lunch, Thurman said right away that he would give his views “bark-off,” with no diplomatic couching or coloring. He described how he had organized the Army’s modern recruiting drive, building up the all-volunteer force and changing a hollow and dispirited army to a proud one.