The United States invades Panama in an attempt to overthrow military dictator Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges and was accused of suppressing democracy in Panama and endangering U.S. nationals. Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) were promptly crushed, forcing the dictator to seek asylum with the Vatican anuncio in Panama City, where he surrendered on January 3, 1990.
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In 1970, Noriega, a rising figure in the Panamanian military, was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to assist in the U.S. struggle against the spread of communism in Central America. Noriega became involved in drug trafficking and in 1977 was removed from the CIA payroll. After the Marxist Sandinista government came to power in 1979, Noriega was brought back into the CIA fold. In 1983, he become military dictator of Panama.
Noriega supported U.S. initiatives in Central America and in turn was praised by the White House, even though a Senate committee concluded in 1983 that Panama was a major center for drug trafficking. In 1984, Noriega committed fraud in Panama’s presidential election in favor of Nicolás Ardito Barletta, who became a puppet president. Still, Noriega enjoyed the continued support of the Reagan administration, which valued his aid in its efforts to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
In 1986, just months before the outbreak of the Iran-Contra affair, allegations arose concerning Noriega’s history as a drug trafficker, money launderer, and CIA employee. Most shocking, however, were reports that Noriega had acted as a double agent for Cuba’s intelligence agency and the Sandinistas. The U.S. government disowned Noriega, and in 1988 he was indicted by federal grand juries in Tampa and Miami on drug-smuggling and money-laundering charges.
Tensions between Americans in the Panama Canal Zone and Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces grew, and in 1989 the dictator annulled a presidential election that would have made Guillermo Endara president. President George H. Bush ordered additional U.S. troops to the Panama Canal Zone, and on December 16 an off-duty U.S. Marine was shot to death at a PDF roadblock. The next day, President Bush authorized “Operation Just Cause”–the U.S. invasion of Panama to overthrow Noriega.
On December 20, 9,000 U.S. troops joined the 12,000 U.S. military personnel already in Panama and were met with scattered resistance from the PDF. By December 24, the PDF was crushed, and the United States held most of the country. Endara was made president by U.S. forces, and he ordered the PDF dissolved. On January 3, Noriega was arrested by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents.
The U.S. invasion of Panama cost the lives of only 23 U.S. soldiers and three U.S. civilians. Some 150 PDF soldiers were killed along with an estimated 500 Panamanian civilians. The Organization of American States and the European Parliament both formally protested the invasion, which they condemned as a flagrant violation of international law.
In 1992, Noriega was found guilty on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, marking the first time in history that a U.S. jury convicted a foreign leader of criminal charges. He was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, but after extradition to and incarceration in Panama, died in a Panama City hospital on May 29, 2017.
Well crap, who invaded merika to rescue us from the drug pushers who flooded our cities with cocaine.
It seems to me that the whole Vietnam era CIA and military establishment could have been convicted of the same things…..Instead we invaded Panama…As a Bush41 insider said, international law, what’s that?
I love THIS part of the story ….
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2006
The Noriega Playlist
A Christmas story of how Billy Idol defeated Manuel Noriega and ended the 1980s.
Fifteen years ago, on Christmas Day 1989, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega sought refuge inside the Papal Nunciatura (the Vatican equivalent of an embassy) in Panama City. American troops quickly formed a perimeter outside. While the idea of the 75th Rangers going commando on the Vatican has a certain alt history elan, cooler heads prevailed and negotiations for Noriega’s surrender commenced.
President George H.W. Bush had initiated the invasion, styled Operation Just Cause, five days earlier. (Originally, the code name was “Operation Blue Spoon,” incorporating elements of “Operation Nifty Package” and “Operation Acid Gambit,” all derived from earlier Panama invasion plans maintained in the “Prayer Book,” including “Operation Purple Storm” and “Operation Bushmaster.” For an obsessively detailed studied of the peculiar etymology of Pentagon code names and what information is encrypted within them, check out William Arkin’s Code Names or his killer blog Early Warning at The Washington Post.)
(As dramatic as the invasion sounds, it had a lot of competition for 1989 holiday viewers’ attention. The Iron Curtain was dramatically crumbling, and the preceding week had also carried dramatic coverage of the revolution in Romania, which included amazing footage I vividly remember of a bunch of armed civilians taking over the live studio broadcast of the Romanian national television network, picked up real-time by CNN. Bush and Gorbachev declared the end of the Cold War, free elections were held in Mongolia, and the Simpsons premiered.)
On Christmas morning, U.S. Army General Maxwell “Mad Max” Thurman (a/k/a “The Maxatollah”) talked mano a mano with Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa at the gate of the Nunciatura. The compound was near several high-rise hotels. As Thurman turned to leave, a reporter hollered from an upper floor window of the Holiday Inn: “Hey, General Thurman, how ‘ya doin’? Merry Christmas!”
Fearing reporters could eavesdrop on his negotiations using parabolic microphones, Thurman ordered a music barrier be erected around the embassy. The 4th PSYOP Group rolled in a fleet of Hummers mounted with loudspeaker arrays. Conveniently, this being Panama, there was already an Armed Forces Radio station in the city under American command.
The first day, December 25, it was all Christmas music. By December 27, the PSYOP troops had taken over the Armed Forces Radio playlist, and they unleashed a barrage of the same tools of psychological warfare they deployed back home from the windows of their Chevy Novas: classic rock.
Noriega loved opera. He got Styx.
The station had been playing requests for the troops since the invasion began, as reported in a post-op memorandum:
“When the troops started coming in from the field, the requests became quite imaginative. Canine handlers called asking for Billy Idol, ‘Flesh for Fantasy,’ the Marine Corps Combat Security Company called saying they were going on a mission and needed a song to pump them up. The song was ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns and Roses, a song which had been requested many times already. The Special Forces Combat Divers Team asked for several songs by The Doors, ‘Strange Days,’ ‘People Are Strange,’ ‘The End’…We played a lot of songs with the word ‘jungle’ in it as well as such songs as ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’ by Lee Greenwood, and ‘We’re Not Going to Take It’ by Twisted Sister.”
Unsurprisingly, the whole thing took on its own manic momentum, the reporters delighting in the Col. Kilgore meme as the Zeitgeist injected itself into this minor historical moment, speaking volumes to the imminent spirit of the age.
The complete playlist is available at George Washington University’s National Security Archive. Among the highlights:
(You’ve Got) Another Thing Coming – Judas Priest
Blue Collar Man – Styx
Danger Zone – Kenny Loggins
Dead Man’s Party – Oingo Boingo
Don’t Look Back – Boston
Electric Spanking of War Babies – Funkadelic
Heaven’s On Fire – Kiss
If I Had A Rocket Launcher – Bruce Cockburn
In My Time of Dying – Led Zeppelin
Iron Man – Black Sabbath
Judgment Day – Whitesnake
Jungle Love – Steve Miller
No More Mister Nice Guy – Alice Cooper
Paradise City – Guns & Roses
Panama – Van Halen
Paranoid – Black Sabbath
Refugee – Tom Petty
Renegade – Styx
Run Like Hell – Pink Floyd
The Party’s Over – Journey
This Means War – Joan Jett
Wanted Dead or Alive – Bon Jovi
Wanted Man – Ratt
War Pigs – Black Sabbath
We’re Not Gonna Take It – Twisted Sister
You Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC
Your Time is Gonna Come – Led Zeppelin
Noriega surrendered on January 3. He is currently imprisoned in a federal correctional facility in Miami, scheduled for release next September. (Check out This American Life’s story of the 10-year-old girl from a small town in Michigan who became Noriega’s pen pal.)
The use of rock music as instrument of psychological warfare has evolved since then, as evidenced by the confirmed reports of enemy combatants being tortured with Metallica and the “Barney” theme in a shipping container on the Syrian border (as brilliantly explored by Jon Ronson in his excellent Men Who Stare at Goats). Though revolutionary at the time, and considered excessive by President Bush 41 and General Colin Powell, The Noriega Playlist now seems a kinder and gentler riff from a time when our geopolitical nihilism was young.
http://nofearofthefuture.blogspot.com/2006/12/noriega-playlist.html
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NOTE: I would give up my seester to cannibals if I had to listen to Metallica (or the Barney theme) all fucken day long.
You can listen to the complete playlist below.
nkit loves Welcome to the Jungle.
I suggest you play the list full blast when the screaming starts:
It was the seesters at the nunnery that suffered, the priest finally asking Noriega if he expected them to wash his shit-streaked underwear and listen to Styxx all day and night.
EC
” All the way”
There is nothing the US government (both worthless major parties included) hates more than foreign competition….especially when it comes to global drug smuggling and sound currencies like gold.
See chapter 23 in “George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography” by Webster Tarpley, which covers the relations between Bush, Noriega and the CIA during the period leading up to the Panama invasion.