by Bob Woodward
Two days later, on Friday, November 3, Thurman, Stiner and Luck gave the BLUE SPOON briefing to the chiefs in the Tank, explaining how a light division-size force of about 11,000 additional troops could be brought to Panama quickly to help eliminate Noriega and his PDF. Luck said that since the ACID GAMBIT plan to rescue Kurt Muse was apparently not going to be carried out independently, he was going to incorporate it into the BLUE SPOON plan. If BLUE SPOON were executed, Luck explained, Muse would be in danger; accordingly, his rescue would have to be accomplished at the very instant of any offensive operations.
Also on November 3, the Justice Department issued a 28-page memorandum to Scowcroft which went well beyond the earlier ruling that the FBI could make arrests abroad. This new memo concluded that the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the military to make arrests in the United States, does not apply abroad. Thus the military could be used to arrest drug traffickers and fugitives overseas. The memo stated that such an interpretation “is necessary to enable certain criminal laws to be executed and to avoid unwarranted restraints on the President’s constitutional powers.”
An intelligence directive from the President also was issued around this time, authorizing the CIA to spend up to $3 million on a covert plan to recruit Panamanian military officers and exiles to topple Noriega. In effect, the CIA and the Pentagon were in competition to see who could first rid Bush of the Noriega problem.
The next week, Powell took the J-3 briefers up to Cheney to outline BLUE SPOON.
One of the targets was Rio Hato, a base 75 miles southwest of Panama City where Noriega’s fierce, Cuban-trained Macho de Monte forces, which had put down the October coup attempt, were located. The plan called for the Air Force’s new F-117A Stealth fighters to drop 2,000-pound bombs around the barracks, stunning and disorienting the PDF troops inside. Never before used in battle, the highly touted planes cost more than $100 million each. Employing the latest technological and design knowhow, they were built to be virtually invisible to enemy radar and had ultra-precise targeting capabilities.
“Come on, guys,” Cheney chuckled. “The Stealth—you’re going to use the Stealth?” Cheney was mindful of the criticisms of the 1983 Grenada operation, when each of the services had done its best to get a piece of the action; the Stealth could be a high-profile bid by the Air Force for a bigger role in BLUE SPOON. “Why the hell do you want to use the 117?” Cheney asked sharply. “The last time I checked there was no serious air defense threat.”
Stiner had requested it, Powell and the J-3 officers explained, because the F-117A would provide the best, most accurate nighttime bombing capability. It had the most advanced laser guidance system, which allowed the pilot to direct his bombs to their precise targets with nearly perfect, pinpoint accuracy.
The F-l 17A was also going to be used to bomb one of Noriega’s hangouts east of Panama City.
Cheney questioned them closely on this. If it ever came to execution, he asked, wouldn’t they at least know whether Noriega was on the eastern or western side of Panama? And if he wasn’t in the eastern part, then they wouldn’t need to hit the target, would they?
That target was later dropped from the list.
• • •
Thurman and Stiner wanted still more forces prepositioned in Panama. The failed coup had pointed up the fact that with in-place forces only, the United States had no ready way to attack the Comandancia with heavy fire, and no way to prevent Noriega’s Battalion 2000 from marching down ten miles from Fort Cimarron to rescue him at the Comandancia. In early November, Stiner requested a force package including:
• Four Sheridan tanks.
• An Airborne Armored platoon.
• Six versatile and powerful AH-64 Apache helicopters, which resembled flying spiders and had precision night-flying capability. Designed as a tank-killer, the Apache was heavily armed with Hellfire missiles, rockets and turreted 30mm chain guns (which use munitions that are fed in machine-gun style).
• Three OH-58 scout helicopters.
Thurman and Powell approved the request, and on November 7 Cheney signed the deployment order, which was given the code name ELOQUENT BANQUET.
• • •
Thurman was haunted by the criticism of the 1983 Grenada invasion, when communications had been so badly arranged that units could not talk with each other. The equipment, frequencies and procedures of each of the services had not matched, and there was no overall, joint communications plan. Now he personally examined the communications manuals, plans and orders in BLUE SPOON. The Communications-Electronic Operating Instructions (CEOI) made a stack three feet high.
“We’re not going to repeat any of that bullshit, so get it down,” Thurman ordered his planners, insisting on regular updates throughout the month. He wanted to be sure that the Air Force tankers, transports, and tactical aircraft were fully integrated for communication with the Army and the special operations units. When he was finished, he had examined and personally checked each page, and the CEOI was reduced to an inch-thick document.
Thurman also approved a plan to reduce the number of dependents in Panama to 500 families. Beginning November 16, all other dependents were to be shipped back to the United States.
• • •
During the week of November 20, Thanksgiving week, Stiner and a team of his planners flew down to Panama to check on the training and exercises. Once more they arrived at night wearing civilian clothes. Stiner wanted a detailed “backbrief”—an account of actions already taken—from every one of the U.S. commanders, covering what had happened each day since his last visit; no overall summaries would do. He listened patiently; no detail seemed to bore him. He was not satisfied with the aviation plan for night operations, a key part of BLUE SPOON.
Hoping to be back home at Fort Bragg for Thanksgiving dinner, Stiner had not even brought a uniform. But soon after he arrived, the U.S. Embassy in Panama City reported that a man had walked in at night claiming that by day he was working for the Medellin drug cartel. He said the cartel was fed up with U.S. support to the drug war in Colombia, where the cartel was getting hammered very badly, and was going to retaliate. His information was very precise: the cartel was in the process of planting or sending ten car bombs into U.S. installations. The bombs would be aimed at a full range of targets—officers, troops and dependents.
One target, the informant said, was the Gorgas U.S. Army Hospital, which was near Thurman’s Quarry Heights headquarters. Partly perched on stilts alongside a mountain, with a parking lot underneath, the hospital was vulnerable. A single car bomb could cause havoc.
The walk-in source was given a polygraph test to determine if he was telling the truth. The results were ambiguous. A second test was administered and he passed.
When Thurman received the information in his headquarters, he called Stiner.
“Look,” Thurman said, “what we’re going to do is we’re going to be ready now.”
Yes, sir.
“You’re stood up, my friend,” Thurman said, meaning he was activating Stiner’s Joint Task Force that instant, “so start operating.” Stiner was now the warfighting commander of all the forces. If something happened and Washington ordered a military response, Stiner would be postured to provide it.
“You’re in charge of everything,” Thurman said.
Yes, sir.
“There’s a single American killed,” Thurman said, “we’re going to blow him away. Mr. Noriega’s going to go away.”
Yes, sir.
Thurman sent off a message to Powell informing him of the emergency activation of the JTF.
Powell was not happy. Activation of a Joint Task Force was a decision for Cheney and Powell himself. Thurman commanded his troops in Panama and the rest of the Southern Command, but nowhere else. He could not unilaterally stand up Stiner, who was under the authority of Forces Command in the United States.
Powell called Thurman on the secure line.
“Very thoughtful,” Powell said
sarcastically. “Why don’t you ask next time? And let me make the decision up here.”
Faced with the threat of multiple car bombs, activation of the task force was obvious, Thurman felt. After the failed coup, after all the press criticism, after all the congressional second-guessing just seven weeks before, the President would have to respond militarily if there was a bombing. What choice would he have?
“Listen, my friend,” Thurman told Powell, “if a bomb blows up down here, that is a trigger event.”
Powell said probably so, but it would be for the President and Secretary of Defense to decide.
“If a goddamn bomb goes off,” Thurman said, “we have ourselves a major problem, and particularly if Americans get killed.”
While it was nice to have an aggressive commander, Powell thought, he would have to keep very close tabs on Thurman.
Powell reported to Cheney. The Secretary was worried about another Beirut-like car bombing killing dozens or hundreds. With 13,000 troops in Panama, a permanent presence—all there to protect U.S. interests—there was much more at stake. How could you not take seriously a report of car bombs in Panama sponsored by the Medellin cartel, Cheney wondered. Yeah, Max was acting aggressive, but that’s probably what they needed, Cheney concluded. He decided to back Thurman fully. The Joint Task Force could continue to operate.
Thurman placed U.S. forces on maximum alert for a terrorist threat. The bases were virtually sealed. Everyone and everything coming through all the gates was subjected to what he called “rather fulsome inspections.”
Thurman also put in a request for nearly all the dog teams in the U.S. military that had been trained in bomb detection. He got most of them. Criminal Investigation Division agents and physical security experts were also sent to Southern Command. Cheney approved these security deployments that week under the codename POLE TAX.
Stiner took command of all this security. “Shit,” he said, trying to carry out Thurman’s request for dogs to be sent down, “it doesn’t have to be a trained dog. It can be any kind of dog.” He had all the communications channels checked, set up more intelligence gathering and intensified night rehearsals.
At the Gorgas Army Hospital, U.S. forces conducted rigorous car inspections. Members of Noriega’s Dignity Battalions turned out to protest, claiming that people were being obstructed from going to work. There was a big pushing and shoving match, but no shots were fired. U.S. troops had to be sent in to get the Dignity Battalions to leave.
Meanwhile, Powell and others began to wonder about the source who had appeared at the U.S. Embassy with these carbomb claims. Powell began applying one of his favorite epithets, “goofy,” to the whole situation. All week, night after night, the man had come to the embassy, insisting that he’d been in the cartel’s inner councils all day. Powell concluded that if it were true, the cartel would not let him run off into the night like that. It made no sense. The intelligence capability of the entire U.S. military had been cranked up and there was not the slightest confirmation of the things he was saying.
The source was “boxed” on the polygraph a third time and he flunked gloriously. All the agencies and departments involved concluded that either he had just been lying or it was an elaborate sting to confuse or scare the United States.
At the end of November, after consulting with Powell, Thurman dissolved the Joint Task Force and sent Stiner home.
• • •
The individual unit rehearsals under BLUE SPOON were going well, but Thurman decided that during December he would conduct a Joint Readiness Exercise which would amount to a full rehearsal of the plan. Special operations forces, the in-country forces and some other units could rehearse in Panama, but most of the reinforcement units would rehearse in the United States.
In addition, night-readiness exercises were conducted at regular intervals in Panama, a practice that Thurman felt would help mask any large force movement if an actual operation were ever to take place.
The Muse rescue plan, ACID GAMBIT, was played out on an isolated Florida key, using a mock-up three quarters the size of the Modelo Prison.
• • •
Back in Washington, General Kelly pondered the radical transformation of the Southern Command that had taken place over just two months. The departed General Woerner had seemed unable to imagine the use of military force in Panama. Maxwell Thurman seemed to see a war coming.
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13
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LATE IN THE DAY ON thursday, November 30, reliable reports came into the Pentagon that a 1,000-man rebel force had seized two air bases in the Philippines. Powell, who’d spent much of the day in budget sessions with the chiefs and the CINCs, was alarmed. There were constant rumors that someone was plotting a coup to end Philippine President Corazon Aquino’s shaky three-and-a-half-year rule, but now the rebels had aircraft.
Powell went up to Cheney’s office with maps and intelligence reports. The situation was murky, he told the Secretary. After reviewing the latest information, Powell went home for dinner.
Meanwhile, an interagency deputies’ committee meeting had begun at the White House, with Powell’s Vice Chairman, General Robert Herres, representing the JCS. The deputies continued to monitor the crisis as the evening wore on, breaking up their White House session but reconvening later by secure video hook-up. At one point, a request came in from the Filipino defense minister for U.S intervention.
Herres said that U.S. bases in the Philippines should not be used to intervene in civil strife, and Robert Gates, Scowcroft’s deputy, was also reluctant about U.S. military involvement.
Shortly after 11 p.m., Powell returned to the Pentagon to take part in a formal NSC meeting, also to be conducted by video. Vice President Dan Quayle was going to chair the NSC because the President, accompanied by Baker and Scowcroft, was airborne on the way to Malta for a summit meeting with Gorbachev.
As reports of rebel bombing started coming in, Powell took his seat in the Crisis Situation Room at the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center. Herres sat at his right. The CINC responsible for the Philippines and the rest of the Pacific region, Admiral Huntington Hardisty, in town for the budget discussions, was at Powell’s left.
Cheney, at home with a flu he had picked up on a long trip to Europe, was not participating in the video conference, but a phone link from the command center to his home was set up so Powell could keep him informed.
Over in the White House Situation Room, Quayle was at the head of the table. Robert Gates sat to Quayle’s right, and the Vice President’s chief of staff, William Kristol, was to the left. The large video screen in front of them was broken up into sections, one each for Powell; a CIA representative; a Justice Department lawyer; Henry S. Rowen, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; and the State Department representative, Deputy Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger.
“Look, we have no choice,” Eagleburger said. “We have to go in, in some form. This is a democratic government that we have sponsored. There really should be no debate. There can be no debate.” Eagleburger proposed that the Defense Department should figure out how to intervene, but there was no question something had to be done.
After about a half hour of discussion no one had seriously challenged Eagleburger’s central point. Given the major role the United States had played in ousting the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, it had an obligation to stand behind the Aquino regime.
The crisis seemed to be growing more serious. Powell received reports that Aquino’s presidential palace in Manila was being bombed and strafed. These were followed quickly by requests from the Philippine government that U.S. Air Force F-4s stationed at the nearby Clark Air Force Base bomb the two captured airfields, which the rebels were using to launch the attacks against the palace. The requests were accompanied by claims that intervention was required at once, and that it could tip the balance and save Aquino. Soon another request arrived, this one that the United States bomb a munitions depot t
hat the rebels were apparently using.
Powell was concerned that the requests lacked precision and crispness. They were all coming to the Pentagon secondhand through the U.S. ambassador in Manila, Nicholas Platt, attributed to Mrs. Aquino or her Defense Secretary, Fidel Ramos. Powell smelled panic on the Philippine end.
At around midnight, Quayle received confirmation from Ambassador Platt that the request for intervention was coming directly from Aquino.
Quayle said they had to give President Bush a recommendation, and indicated that he thought Mrs. Aquino’s request was legitimate and that the United States should comply with it. State and the CIA agreed.
Powell stressed the uncertainty of the situation, pointing out several times that they had reports but they could not be sure of anything.
What is our purpose? Powell asked. If we’re going to do this, I’ve got to tell my guys what the mission is.
State and the White House responded that it was to support Mrs. Aquino and keep her in power.
What is the immediate objective we seek in bombing the airfields? Powell asked. He answered his own question: to keep the rebel aircraft from taking off. These Philippine aircraft were T-28s, old World War II trainers with propellers, he noted. There were other ways to keep them on the ground. He had some advanced F-4 fighter-bomber jets that, without dropping any bombs, could scare any T-28 pilot into thinking twice before taking off. “I think we can do this without getting ourselves into more trouble,” he added.
The Filipino requests were too vague to translate into orders for the pilots of the U.S. F-4s, Powell said. He had no precise target information. “You don’t call up a twenty-two-year-old or twenty-three-year-old kid . . . and say just go bomb here.” Bombs are terrible things, he said, lethal and indiscriminate.
Powell had an Army officer’s natural distrust of airpower. The big bombs always promised great achievement, but he had seen them fail too often—in Vietnam, for example. But he kept these thoughts to himself.
