TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/101689/10168900.064

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NATION, Page 24

The Yanquis Stayed Home

Did the U.S. fumble its best chance against Noriega -- or avoid

an ill-planned blunder?

By Jill Smolowe


    About the timetable, at least, there were few arguments: at 8
a.m. last Tuesday, a line of jeeps and canvas-covered military
trucks roared up Avenue A in Panama City and disgorged armed troops
at the headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces. The soldiers
joined 200 others stationed there, and gunfire soon erupted inside
and outside the building. Within 90 minutes, the rebels had seized
the Comandancia, as it is known locally, and trapped Panamanian
strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega in a small part of the compound.
At 11:30, the insurgents issued a statement on national radio
proclaiming their coup a success.

    But the sounds of battle soon erupted again, this time mortar
and grenade explosions and gunfire from forces loyal to Noriega.
The firefight claimed the lives of ten rebels and wounded 18
loyalist troops and five civilians. By 2 that afternoon, Noriega's
supporters were rounding up the last of the rebels. It was all over
but the pompous pronouncements in Panama -- and the recriminations
in Washington.

    For more than two years, the U.S. Government has encouraged
the Panamanian military to overthrow its corrupt commander and turn
him over to American authorities to stand trial on drug charges.
Last week, after a group of rebellious officers actually had
Noriega under their guns, debate raged in Washington about whether
the characteristically cautious Bush Administration could have --
and should have -- done more to help the coup's leaders. Senators,
senior officials and military officers alike wondered: Had the U.S.
fumbled its best opportunity to seize Noriega? Or had it
sidestepped a diplomatically dangerous and probably ineffective
intervention?

    Bush and his deputies replied, with considerable justification,
that it would have been irresponsible to implicate the U.S. fully
in a fuzzy coup scheme that would have riled much of Latin America.
Still, their tangled and tentative reaction to the uprising raised
disturbing questions about the Administration's ability to respond
to a crisis. In the three days leading up to and during the coup,
the U.S. was hobbled by a breakdown of communications, a
distressing lack of reliable intelligence and an obvious dearth of
contingency plans should the call for a revolt against Noriega
finally be answered.

    At the least, the Administration was caught in embarrassing
contradictions about its role. Two hours after the coup collapsed,
Noriega offered his version of events. "This is part of the
continuing aggression and penetration of the P.D.F. by the U.S.,"
he charged on national television. As evidence, the general's
supporters pointed to U.S. Army helicopters that passed close to
the Comandancia during the fighting and the hundreds of troops who
were deployed, within areas under U.S. jurisdiction, in positions
blocking two of the roads leading into the city. That forced
Noriega's allies to use alternate routes to transport loyal units
from the elite Battalion 2000 to the fighting.

    At first, the U.S. retorted that its limited maneuvers were
intended only to safeguard American lives and property, as
permitted under the Panama Canal treaties. "There were rumors
around that this was some sort of an American operation," President
Bush said on Tuesday. "I can tell you that is not true." Two days
later senior officials acknowledged that they had acted at the
request of the rebels.

    Bush's deputies had difficulty answering congressional
questions concerning what they knew about the attempted coup, when
they knew it, and why they opted for such a muted response. White
House chief of staff John Sununu ordered an investigation of the
Administration's handling of the failed coup, as did two
congressional committees. Conceded a senior White House official:
"You could make a good case that we had something of an
intelligence failure." Said another: "There's no excuse. We've had
a big presence in Panama and close ties with its military for a
long time."

    The first intimations of a plot came on Sunday, when Major
Moises Giroldi Vera, leader of the failed attempt, told U.S.
officials in Panama that an uprising was imminent. The news was
surprising, since Giroldi was a Noriega loyalist who played a key
role in quelling the previous military revolt in March 1988.
"Giroldi's a bastard, a sort of mini-Noriega," says a Pentagon
official. "Warning signs went up. We feared a Noriega trap."
Fueling that suspicion was the fact that two principal U.S. players
-- General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
General Maxwell Thurman, chief of the U.S. Southern Command in
Panama -- had taken up their posts just that weekend. The timing
of the coup seemed calculated to take advantage of their greenness.

    Discussion went up the line to the President's top advisers.
By Sunday night, according to a senior Defense Department official,
"the basic conclusion was that if (Giroldi) was going to do it, he
would have to do it largely alone." At 2:30 a.m. Monday, Powell
was awakened by a phone call from a U.S. military officer in
Panama. The rebel soldiers, Powell was told, wanted Southcom to
assist the uprising by blocking two access roads near Fort Amador
and the Bridge of the Americas, but otherwise wanted no U.S.
involvement that might discredit them. Through Monday, as they
waited in vain for news of Giroldi's move, Bush and his aides
decided that if a coup were mounted, they would honor the blockade
request.

    When Thurman called Tuesday morning to say fighting had broken
out, Powell promptly asked, "Where's Noriega?" That seemingly
obvious question produced a host of answers that further muddied
events. The roadblocks were ordered and the 12,000 troops attached
to the U.S. Southern Command were put on Delta alert, a
battle-ready status that calls for American forces to secure U.S.
facilities. At about 11:45 p.m. two rebel lieutenants appeared at
the gate of Fort Clayton, the main U.S. Army base in the canal
zone, and were ushered into an office to meet with Southcom's
deputy commander, Army South Brigadier General Mark Cisneros. The
rebels insisted they were holding Noriega.

    For reasons that are still unclear, Bush was not told of this
for almost an hour. At that point, Washington passed word to the
rebel officers that the U.S. "was prepared to lift this burden from
their hands." The rebels refused. "They were clearly not of a mind
to turn (Noriega) over to us," Defense Secretary Richard Cheney
said later. "They were not willing to have him extradited to the
U.S." Soon after, word arrived in Washington that the coup attempt
had collapsed.

    The rebels' refusal to turn over Noriega was relayed via
military channels to the White House. But the Administration claims
that the same communication, dispatched to the U.S. embassy in
Panama City and on to the State Department and CIA, was garbled in
transmission. According to a senior White House official, the
message should have read the rebels "won't" turn over Noriega but
instead stated the rebels "want" to surrender him. This mistaken
communication quickly made its way to Capitol Hill, where
Congressmen lined up to denounce the Administration for passing up
such a prime opportunity.

    If the rebels held Noriega for as long as four hours, as U.S.
and Panamanian officials claim, why did they not take him at
gunpoint from the compound or perhaps even kill him? Instead, they
let him go under circumstances that seem macabre by all accounts
of what happened. Noriega insists he was not armed. "My pistol, my
machine gun is the righteousness of my resistance to U.S.
interference," he told Spanish TV. Less grandiose accounts from
P.D.F. headquarters say the general was actually never placed under
arrest but was trapped inside his offices, protected only by two
bodyguards with submachine guns.

    Noriega's opponents claim that the dictator secured his release
by radioing orders to aides to take hostage the families of the
coup leaders. Another version, circulated by sources close to
Noriega, had the dictator holding off his attackers until he was
confident that loyalist troops had surrounded the building. Then
he confronted Giroldi and barked, "To be a commander, you have to
have balls. You don't have balls." By that account, Giroldi
surrendered and was killed soon afterward.

    The weakness of the rebels' resolve underscored the limited
nature of their goals. Although the revolt involved high-level
military officials close to Noriega, the attacking force was led
primarily by mid-level officers frustrated by their failure to
secure pay raises and promotions. Giroldi made no pretension to
acting out of patriotic motives. The single rebel communique issued
during the coup stated, "This is strictly a military movement.
There is no politics involved." The dissidents even offered to
recognize Francisco Rodriguez as President. Rodriguez is the man
Noriega designated provisional President in September, four months
after nullifying sham elections that blatantly and bloodily
snatched victory from opposition candidate Guillermo Endara.
Giroldi had "no program, no civilian connections, nothing we could
latch onto," said an aide to Cheney.

    The plotters' intentions were further thrown into question by
the amateurishness of their operation. After Giroldi and his
co-conspirators alerted Washington that 1,000 troops would take
part in the coup, fewer than 300 turned out for the fireworks. In
particularly unprofessional fashion, the coup planners made little
attempt to keep their operation secret. Not only did the Americans
know about the plot but so did at least one Panamanian exile in
Miami. There were even reports in Panama that Noriega knew of the
plot but not when the coup would be attempted.

    Yet as details of the botched coup emerge, it seems clear that
the rebel force had potential that Washington underestimated.
Noriega's subsequent roundup of plotters showed that the effort
reached deep into the dictator's circle. Among the 37 arrested were
three of the general's closest and most trusted associates: Colonel
Guillermo Wong, head of military intelligence, Colonel Julio Ow
Young, who oversees personnel for the dreaded Doberman militias
that have repeatedly been turned on opposition rallies, and Lieut.
Colonel Armando Palacios Gondola, head of an organization that
supervised joint military operations with U.S. troops.

    The helter-skelter quality of the plan was hardly enough to
coax the U.S. into precipitate action. Instead, the
Administration's prudent response was in keeping with the policy
it has been enunciating for months. Bush, while he has repeatedly
urged the P.D.F. to overthrow Noriega, has also maintained that the
Panamanians must solve their own problems, with Latin leaders
applying diplomatic pressure and the U.S. providing moral support.

    Notably, none of the region's leaders stepped forward to
criticize Washington's inaction, a reflection of continuing Latin
sensitivity about Yanqui intervention anywhere in the hemisphere.
Says a Bush aide: "The U.S. has always underestimated the
nationalistic instincts of Latin American leaders and publics."

    The Administration's caution may have been reinforced by the
presence of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico, who was
in the White House Tuesday morning to meet with Bush. As the coup
unfolded, Bush briefed Salinas on the developments; not
surprisingly, the President did not do the same for General Dmitri
Yazov, the Soviet Defense Minister, who visited the Oval Office
Tuesday afternoon.

    Still, Bush's forceful calls for Noriega's ouster have created
expectations in some quarters that the U.S. would intervene at some
critical juncture to assist a coup attempt. The President's
unwillingness to back tough talk with forceful action did not go
unnoticed on Capitol Hill. No sooner had the shooting stopped in
Panama than the shouting began in congressional chambers, resulting
in some of the oddest political couplings in recent memory.

    As could be expected, ultra-conservative Senator Jesse Helms
of North Carolina lambasted the Administration's timidity, deriding
Bush's entourage as the "Keystone Kops" and denouncing a "total
lack of planning." More surprising were the Democrats who lined up
to criticize the Administration's caution: in the past, many of
them had espoused anti-interventionist sentiments in Nicaragua and
toward the Navy escorts of Kuwaiti oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq
war. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts called the episode "a
black mark on our diplomacy and our values." Congressman Les Aspin
of Wisconsin declared, "We should go in and capture Noriega." Aspin
differentiated between military intervention and "a snatch. All I
want is Noriega." In the face of such belligerence, Republican
Senator Robert Dole cracked, "Suddenly the place is filled with
hawks. They were all doves during the Persian Gulf."

    In only a few instances did calmer heads prevail. "It's not
our business to use military force to change governments we don't
like," said Democratic Senator Alan Cranston of California. Said
Ambler Moss, former U.S. Ambassador to Panama: "What is needed now
is patience and diplomacy."

    In Panama, where civilian opponents of the regime are
noticeably more pro-interventionist than their neighbors in the
region, there was also considerable grumbling. "The U.S. is like
a dog that barks a lot but bites not at all," said opposition
leader Ricardo Arias Calderon. On Thursday, Noriega ordered a
crackdown to weed out traitors. That night, P.D.F. troops attacked
the opposition headquarters and hauled away several people,
including Endara. The opposition leader was later released and at
week's end was holed up inside the Vatican embassy.

    Through it all, the Bush Administration defended its actions
without apology. "It's easy to be an armchair general," Secretary
of State James Baker said with evident irritation to his Capitol
Hill critics. "You don't (risk American lives) on the basis of
someone else's plans and in response to rapidly changing
circumstances."

    Moreover, the steady U.S. pressure is having its effect. So is
Noriega's behavior. Leaders throughout the hemisphere have made
clear their disdain for the Panamanian regime. Following the sham
elections in May, many countries withdrew their ambassadors from
Panama, and they have yet to send them back. "Noriega is dividing
the Latin community over what to do about him, but everyone is
upset with the situation," says a Latin leader. "Even the Cubans
don't want him there."

    The confrontation between Panama City and Washington may soon
shift to a dispute over implementation of the treaty under which
Panama is due to gain control of the Panama Canal by 1999. At
year's end administration of the Canal Commission is supposed to
be turned over to a Panamanian official. But some Congressmen, led
by Helms, are demanding that the new administrator be confirmed by
the Senate. One name has been floated -- and Helms has already shot
it down.

    For all his triumphant fist waving, Noriega could hardly feel
reassured by last week's events. The rebellion was the second
failed attempt against him by the Panamanian military in the past
18 months, raising questions about whom the general can trust among
his forces. Although a housecleaning of the P.D.F. will follow,
Noriega can no longer count on even his inner circle. "This was no
gringo plot," says a source close to Noriega. "This came from the
general's inner core." That much, at least, can give Panamanians
-- and Washington -- hope that Noriega's days are numbered.


-- Dan Goodgame and Bruce van Voorst/Washington and John
   Moody/Panama City