The Commanders

by Bob Woodward

  The F-117As arriving from their Nevada base would be bombing at Rio Hato, a key PDF base, one minute before the Ranger drop there. That was very close. Late 117As or early Rangers would mean disaster. The AC-130 gunships would have only ten minutes to “prepare”—demolish—the Comandancia before infantry attacked it. Powell wondered if the SEAL teams were wired together properly and fully integrated with the rest of the plan.

  And where was Noriega? Did he know? Would he suspect anything? Would he find out?

  * * *

  15

  * * *

  WHEN POWELL WENT INTO THE pentagon very early Monday, December 18, he felt uneasy. He went upstairs to bring Cheney up to speed. Cheney himself did not feel much in the way of jitters. He knew when he had accepted the job as Secretary that it might entail using force, and sending men to die. When he had arrived at the Pentagon, he had asked for and read the classified after-action reports of the major uses of the U.S. military since Vietnam. He had been in the Ford White House during the 1975 evacuation of Southeast Asia, and during the Mayaguez incident that same year, when a U.S. merchant ship was seized by Cambodians and Marines were sent in to rescue the crew. By the time of the invasion the crew had already been set free. Forty-one Americans had been killed in the operation. He had seen firsthand the tendency of the people at the top—the President, the national security adviser, the Secretary of Defense—to meddle needlessly and counterproductively in military operations.

  In the reports on the 1983 Beirut bombing and the Grenada operation, he had read about more of this same tendency. The one remedy, Cheney had decided, was a clean, clear-cut chain of command—as short as possible. And no meddling from the top. Stay out of their hair.

  As the chief intermediary between the uniformed military and the White House, Cheney felt he could do as much as anyone to reduce interference, and keep the chain of command short. But he was not going to sit it out. He would make sure he understood and approved of the plan, so he could answer any questions that might come from the White House.

  That morning, Cheney asked a lot of questions. It seemed to Powell that Cheney wanted to know all the details, right down to the squad level.

  Later, Powell called in Kelly and began his own interrogation. He wanted to review each element, every single event of the plan.

  “Why are you doing this?” Powell asked in a very confrontational way, referring to one of the special operations targets.

  Kelly thought to himself: well, shit, I ain’t doing it, for one thing—it’s the guy down there, Thurman or Stiner. But Kelly gave the best answer he could to that question and to a whole series of others as Powell went through the plan.

  Powell was concerned that they might be doing some things just for show. After preaching the importance of a sufficient force or “mass” during the operation, the Chairman was now looking for excesses. He spoke of reducing risks and damage.

  In Kelly’s opinion, it was as if Powell had reached into his desk and brought out a wire brush—and he was now scrubbing everything and everyone, including himself. Necessary and inevitable, Kelly concluded; there was a lot at stake. The leader’s great fear before battle was not just a personal fear or fear of failure, but a larger, moral kind of fear. Kelly could see this in Powell, the Custer Syndrome or something like that. Powell was afraid that he was going to get a bunch of people killed because of stupidity.

  Kelly had his own worries. He was thinking about his retirement, and didn’t want to leave in disgrace.

  Powell’s wire brush found several excesses. As Cheney had suggested during an earlier review of the plan, there was no need to attack a Noriega hideout on the coast of Panama because there was no indication he was going to be using it.

  Powell wanted to know more about the F-117A Stealth fighters and their planned use at the Rio Hato PDF barracks.

  Two 2,000-pound bombs were going to be dropped about 50 yards from the barracks, Kelly said. This “offset” bombing might break a few windows, stun the troops in the barracks, and perhaps cause some electrical fires, but not do a great deal more.

  Who says? Powell wanted to know.

  That’s what the weapons effects experts claimed anyhow, Kelly said, knowing that those people wouldn’t be held responsible for the results. Kelly had talked with Carl Stiner about the offset bombing, and he knew that Stiner was having his own little crisis of confidence in the F-117As, which had not yet been combattested. Fifty yards was not much of a margin for error.

  Powell realized that the United States had to put Panama back together as quickly as possible after the invasion. This would require popular support from the Panamanians, which meant killing as few as possible of the kinds of people—PDF privates—who would be asleep in the barracks and who Powell hoped would surrender. He ordered the offset distance be increased dramatically. The bomb targets were moved to points about 200 yards away from one barracks and 250 yards from another.

  As Powell went through this process, he felt somewhat more comfortable. He knew that he was just following the lessons of his military experience. As a new major in 1966 he had taught precisely this subject—operations and planning—at the Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia.

  By that evening Powell felt a momentary sense of contentment.

  • • •

  Stiner had arrived in Panama that Monday night dressed as usual in civilian clothes. At 10 p.m. he gathered all his commanders down to the battalion level, 30 officers in all, and stood up before them. “This is it,” he said. “This is a go.” Security, he said, is of the greatest importance. They could tell their own operations and intelligence officers, in other words only those with top-secret clearance.

  Stiner was worried about leaks. U.S. servicemen and servicewomen lived all over the place in Panama; some even lived at the same installations as PDF troops. Stiner asked for recommendations on when, in light of the need for opsec, the lower-ranking officers and the troops should be told. It was agreed to wait until the next night—8 p.m. for the officers, just five hours before H-Hour, and 10 p.m. for the troops. The troops would be brought in, briefed and then sequestered so they could load ammunition and get ready to go. None would be allowed access to telephones. Stiner ordered that there was to be no increased level of activity, no signal of any kind.

  • • •

  Cheney was also worried about leaks. He decided that he would not have Pete Williams notify the media pool, the small group of reporters who would cover the invasion for all the news oganizations, until after the evening television news shows the next night. This would be less than six hours before H-Hour, making it impossible for reporters to make it to Panama in time for the start of JUST CAUSE.

  The Secretary raised his worries with Powell. Almost everything leaks, he remarked. What happens if the cover is blown? If it becomes public? Does Max have, on the ground in Panama, the capability to go ahead and start the operation? If on Tuesday night we turn on the tube and there’s word that the Americans are coming, can Max go ahead early with what he’s already got on hand?

  Powell checked and then assured Cheney they could go early.

  Later that night, after the Monday evening news shows, Tom Kelly sat at his large desk in his windowless office. Too quiet, he concluded. H-Hour was still some 30 hours away. It was too silky. Things weren’t going wrong. With each minute passing he felt a sense of foreboding. Something was supposed to go wrong. Though all the training, planning, all the money, all the worrying each detail into the ground was designed to prevent the misstep, a misstep was expected. He realized that he was counting on a fuckup. Then he could throw himself into the fray, straighten things out, fix it. Instead, all his energy was going into waiting. He preferred the fixing.

  • • •

  At 7 a.m. the next day, Tuesday, December 19, Powell called in his chief public affairs aide, Army Colonel Bill Smullen, told him the operation was going to occur and pledged him to secrecy.

  “I want to maintain as much n
ormalcy as possible,” Powell said. Looking at his schedule for the day, he saw he had a noon lunch with Naval Academy midshipman Tom Daily. At the Army-Navy football game several weeks before, Daily had approached the Chairman with a friendly wager on the outcome. Powell had accepted and Navy had won. Daily’s prize was lunch with the Chairman at the Pentagon, which was set for this worst of all possible days, just before the largest U.S. military operation in years. Okay, Powell said, I’m going to go through with the lunch. It lasted 45 minutes.

  Later that day, Powell had another nonessential appointment on his schedule, this one with Tiffani Starks, the teen-aged daughter of an Air Force lieutenant colonel Powell knew. Tiffani had chosen Powell as the subject of a high school paper she’d been assigned to write on a famous person. Powell decided to keep the meeting, which was scheduled to last 15 minutes. When Tiffani and her father showed up at the Chairman’s office at 4:30 p.m., Powell’s time was becoming tight. I can’t give 15 minutes, he told the staff. Cut it to five. Tiffani came in and Powell answered her questions about what had motivated him to stay in the Army, and whether he ever had thought he’d make general.

  The day was otherwise filled with pre-invasion meetings and briefings. Cheney and Powell went to the White House to update Bush. On the question of whether to use the F-117A Stealth fighter, Bush replied, “If that’s the best plane, use it.”

  Cheney wanted more and more information. When he’d taken over from Crowe, Powell had noticed that Kelly and the key operations staff regularly used to go to Cheney’s office to brief military assistant Bill Owens on various matters. Powell had cut this off, making it clear that he would provide the Secretary and his staff with operational and other information. Now, just hours away from H-Hour, Powell found himself too busy to be tending constantly to Cheney’s every need. The operation now mattered more than his desire to be the lone channel to the Secretary.

  “Go up there and tell him anything he wants to know,” Powell told his operations people.

  • • •

  Around 5 p.m. Powell had the chiefs into his office for a final runthrough. Cheney came down to join them. For Cheney, it was a satisfying symbolic moment. It showed he was keeping the chiefs involved. He felt that the chain of command was just right, running as it did from him to Powell, rather than to the chiefs as a committee.

  “Don’t worry about initial reports,” Marine Commandant Gray told Cheney. “It’s a night-time operation and things will always go wrong. Things will happen. But by morning, you’ll have a successful operation.”

  Powell was glad they had finally stopped messing with the plan. He turned his attention to worries about the news media. Word had come that reporters for CBS and NBC had stories that some kind of operation was about to happen, but neither had any idea of its dimensions. On CBS, Dan Rather led off the news saying, “U.S. military transport planes have left Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne paratroopers. The Pentagon declines to say whether or not they are bound for Panama. It will say only that the Bragg-based 18th Airborne Corps has been conducting what the Army calls an ‘airborne readiness exercise.’ ”

  NBC reporter Ed Rabel said, “United States C-141 Starlifters flew into Panama this afternoon, one landing every ten minutes. At the same time these aircraft were arriving, security was tightened around the airbase. U.S. soldiers could be seen in full combat gear on roads around the base.” At the end of his brief report, Rabel noted, “No one here could confirm that these aircraft were part of a U.S. invasion group. But tensions on both sides are high this evening over the possibility of a U.S. strike.”

  Powell watched the television reports. Mighty close but no compromise. He realized he would wind up having to thank some reporters.

  Kelly was still astonished that it had not leaked. There was already a lot of aluminum flying through the air to Panama.

  Powell, home for dinner, told Alma he was going back to the Pentagon and didn’t know when he would return. He knew she had noticed all the movement and the phone calls, but he hadn’t told her what was happening; he never did. The Powell family policy was to keep their home life as separate from military business as possible.

  Powell returned to the Pentagon after dinner and took a nap.

  The building was eerily quiet. In the Crisis Situation Room at the National Military Command Center, there were about 15 people working in an atmosphere of hushed excitement and tension. Secure phone lines to the Southern Command had been activated. The television set was tuned to the three networks and CNN. On a screen on one wall were the latest data on the status of JUST CAUSE.

  Kelly and Sheafer sat at the center of the room’s long table. Kelly was running things, checking periodically with Thurman, whose twangy voice would issue from a loudspeaker so everyone in the room could hear. Kelly was pounding hard on the key question of Noriega’s whereabouts. They had lost him at around 6 p.m. Goddammit, we want him, Kelly was saying. Where is he? The United States had been working on tracking Noriega for more than a year. There were three to four dozen people in Panama specifically designated as the Noriega Tracking Team. And yet he’d slipped away.

  At 11:30, Thurman reported over the loudspeaker that Noriega was possibly in the city of Colon, which was the last place he’d been spotted by his trackers.

  Up from his nap, Powell arrived at the Crisis Situation Room at 11:52. He was wearing a black sweater with four stars sewn on each shoulder, and his green Army pants. His shirt was open at the neck, where his white T-shirt showed.

  • • •

  Down in Panama, two U.S. soldiers who had somehow found their way outside of Stiner’s lock-up were overheard mentioning H-Hour by a PDF eavesdropper, who reported up the chain to Noriega.

  “The Americans aren’t coming,” Noriega said. “They wouldn’t do a thing like that.” He arranged to have a meeting at the Comandancia the next morning at eight o’clock to review the situation.

  U.S. listeners picked up part of a conversation in which someone from the PDF said, “The ballgame starts at one.”

  Stiner was convinced that this referred to the H-Hour, and that the operation had been compromised. He picked up the direct line to Thurman.

  “We need to advance the timing,” Stiner said, explaining that it looked as if some of the PDF knew.

  “How much advance do you want?” Thurman asked.

  “How about thirty minutes?”

  “Okay, do it,” Thurman said, passing the information to Washington, not asking approval.

  But there were complications. The rescue of Muse and the attack on the Comandancia had to be precisely coordinated. A swing bridge had to be placed over the canal so four Sheridan tanks could be moved onto a hill where they could hit the Comandancia with direct fire. There was a ship in one of the canal locks and it had to be cleared out before the swing bridge could be moved into place.

  Stiner picked up the phone again to Thurman.

  “I can’t do it in thirty minutes,” Stiner reported. “How about fifteen?”

  “Fifteen’s okay too,” Thurman said.

  At 12:07 a.m. Thurman officially sent out the order to JSOC that it should execute its Muse rescue mission at H minus 15, or 12:45. At 12:18 he directed the same execution time for the attack on the Comandancia and for the Navy SEALs’ mission at Puenta Paitilla Airport, where they were to come ashore and disable Noriega’s private jet, a possible escape vehicle.

  A report of a female U.S. dependent wounded by the PDF at the U.S.-controlled Albrook Air Force Station in Panama City came in to Powell and the others over the speaker in the Crisis Situation Room at 12:29. In the next five minutes they listened to reports from Thurman about gunfire at Fort Amador, and machine-gun fire at the strategically located Bridge of the Americas across the canal, as well as at Albrook.

  President Bush had informed Cheney and Powell that the point of no return would be achieved once Endara agreed to be sworn in as president of Panama and to request U.S. interventi
on. If Endara would not play, they had to check with him personally, Bush said.

  Thurman was heard from again at 12:39. The swearing in of Endara as the new president of Panama had been completed.

  Although some units had moved into place in advance, official execution of JUST CAUSE took place at H minus 15. At exactly the moment of execution, Thurman’s voice came over the speaker, reporting a gunfire exchange in the vicinity of the Comandancia. The PDF was firing at the helicopters coming in for Muse at the nearby Modelo Prison.

  Divided into task forces with names like Task Force Red, Task Force Bayonet and Task Force Semper Fi, the troops so carefully prepared for this moment by Thurman and Stiner were swinging into action at spots in and all around Panama. Task Force Bayonet, for example, was assigned the job of securing Fort Amador, the Comandancia and PDF sites throughout Panama City. Task Force Red was responsible for the adjacent Torrijos and Tocumen airports and for Rio Hato.

  Around the time the operation began, President Bush arrived in the Oval Office wearing a dark blue sweater over his shirt and tie. He signed a short order authorizing the armed forces to apprehend and arrest Noriega and other persons in Panama currently under indictment in the United States for drug-related offenses.

  At 12:57, gunfire was reported on the Atlantic side of Panama.

  At 1 a.m., the military officially moved up to the highest defense readiness condition, called DEFCON 1, signifying that hostilities were under way. At the same time, a report came in to the Crisis Situation Room that the commander of the PDF’s military Zone 3, one of seven military zones, was staying out of the fight.