Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent (26 page)
In the time it took to observe this, a nun appeared on the other side of the wrought iron.
“
Quiero hablar a nuncio papal
,” I said.
I wanted to speak to the
papal nuncio
, the priest supervising the diplomatic mission.
She nodded, then turned and disappeared into the building. A couple of minutes passed before a priest appeared. He was not the
papal nuncio
.
“
Habla Ingles
?” I said.
“Yes.” He smiled. Friendly enough, but all business.
“We are looking for Manuel Noriega. Is he inside?”
“Yes, señor, he has taken asylum here in the
nunciatura
.”
“Father, Manuel Noriega is wanted by the United States government and the people of Panama. We’d like for you to turn him over to us.”
“I will have to speak to the
papal nuncio
.”
“That’s fine. We’re going to keep you surrounded here until we get Noriega.”
Smiling officially, the priest excused himself and went back inside.
While we waited for the
papal nuncio
, Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa, to make an appearance, more firepower rolled up. John Noe and his squadron had borrowed M-113s and a pair of two-and-a-half-ton trucks from the 5th Mech. I deployed the APCs around the
nunciatura
, their .50 cal guns aimed outward to guard against a rescue attempt by Noriega loyalists. Then I called the 82nd Airborne at Fort Clayton and asked for some engineers to come out and erect a barrier of concertina wire around the embassy. Within the hour, that was done.
During my initial meeting at the gates of the
nunciatura
, I noticed a rather large group of people observing our activities from the end of the street. I looked up at the Holiday Inn, and saw that the third-floor balcony was packed with reporters. Nearly every one of them had these long boom mikes pointed directly at us, trying to listen in on my discussion with the priest. They were less than a hundred yards away, and I thought they probably stood a pretty good chance of picking up our conversations.
I knew we had a loudspeaker team from the 5th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg. I sent someone to find them. In only a few minutes, two young soldiers approached me.
“Hey, can you guys point your speakers up to those boom mikes and block their reception with some kind of broadcast?” I asked.
“Sure,” one young soldier said. “What do you want us to play?”
“I don’t care what you play, just as long as those mikes can’t pick us up.”
Ten minutes later, being twenty-year-olds, the psy-ops guys started playing loud rock music.
Really
loud.
Be careful what you ask for
, I thought.
Not long after I noticed the reporters, I posted Delta snipers around the
nunciatura:
one team down by the water, another in the parking garage, and another on the sixth floor of the apartment building adjacent to the
nunciatura
.
An hour passed and I spoke again with the priest, who told me the Pineapple was resting. He had no other news.
Later that night as I patrolled the perimeter with Eldon, festive lights and decorations reminded me that it was Christmas Eve. Panamanians came out of their homes to greet us.
“Thank you so much for giving us our country back,” people said to us in English. They asked us earnestly to come in, eat Christmas dinner with them, or at least use their telephones to call our families. That was against policy, of course, and we couldn’t accept their generosity. But it was a wonderful Christmas present to know that the Panamanians were behind us.
ON THE SECOND DAY, Monsignor Laboa came out of the embassy, crossing the avenue to the Catholic School where we had set up our command center. By then, a fairly large group of officers had gathered there, including Wayne Downing and U.S. Army South Commander General Mark Cisneros.
A small, older gentleman with white hair and spectacles, Laboa wore black trousers and a black shirt with a clerical collar. With regard to Noriega, he said, his hands were tied: “I am obligated to discuss this situation with the Vatican. I’m not in a position to make a decision on my own.”
That sent us into a holding pattern, with the Pineapple holed up in the wire-wrapped, sniper-scoped
nunciatura
and several hundred American soldiers waiting for him outside. Several times a day, one of us would cross the street to chat with either the priest or the
papal nuncio
. They shared very little information, and showed no signs of wanting to give Noriega up.
In taking the dictator in, Laboa was upholding the Vatican tradition of offering sanctuary to anyone fleeing persecution. I wasn’t sure how Noriega, Panama’s chief persecutor, fit that definition. It wasn’t until later I learned Laboa was all the while gently pressuring Noriega to surrender. No country would give him refuge, the priest told the dictator. The Americans had him surrounded. A peaceful, formal surrender would be the most dignified option.
Also, I learned Laboa did not mean for the Pineapple to get too comfortable: The
nuncio
housed Noriega in a room barely larger than a closet, decorated only with a crucifix. The dictator’s amenities included a television that didn’t work, a window that didn’t open, and zero air-conditioning. Apparently, he didn’t have access to a washer and dryer, either: Every now and then, one of the snipers would report that they could see a pair of red briefs hanging outside on a clothes line.
One night, I was sitting around at the school with Major Darrell Poor, a task force doctor, shooting the breeze. “You know what, Doc?” I said. “There’s only one thing I want out of this whole operation.”
“What’s that?”
“Noriega’s red drawers.”
Poor burst out laughing.
THE PSY-OPS GUYS kept the rock music blasting day and night, keeping their speakers pointed directly at the Holiday Inn and, gradually, stirring up a political firestorm. Newscasters all over the world reported that we were trying to mess with Noriega’s mind, reduce him to a mass of quivering jelly with an overdose of Guns N’ Roses. On about day three of the operation, a directive sped down all the way from the Bush White House: turn the music off.
I’m not sure whether the constant noise bothered Noriega, but I’m pretty sure it was driving the
papal nuncio
crazy.
We did shut the music off, but substituted instead Spanish language news reports that carried the accurate story that Noriega’s troops had stopped fighting after he abandoned them. In fact, PDF soldiers began presenting themselves at Howard AFB daily to surrender. The loudspeaker newscasts also told Noriega that American officials were moving to freeze funds he had deposited in overseas accounts.
We wanted the Pineapple to realize that his situation was hopeless. Though Laboa was trying to talk Noriega into giving up, the Vatican continued to shield him, justifying its actions by arguing that the dictator was a political refugee. On December 26, Secretary of State James Baker sent a letter to the Vatican saying Noriega was not fleeing persecution, but prosecution. He was a common criminal, wanted by the U.S. for drug trafficking. Baker later assured the Vatican that if Noriega gave himself up, we wouldn’t shoot him—just arrest him.
The waiting game continued. Then on January 3, fifteen thousand Panamanians rallied on Avenida Balboa. Crowding around the
nunciatura
just outside the concertina barrier, thousands waved white handkerchiefs and chanted anti-Noriega slogans like “Kill the Hitler!” Some people skewered pineapples with long sticks and they pumped them up and down in the air, sneering, “Pineapple face! Pineapple face!”
To keep the situation under control, we posted soldiers between the crowd and the wire barrier. We didn’t want the crowd to storm the
nunciatura
and attempt to capture Noriega.
That evening, after the crowd dispersed, I was sitting at the school with Wayne Downing when I saw Monsignor Laboa walking across the street. When he reached us, he drew himself up very formally and said, “Noriega has decided to surrender.”
Elation surged through me. We had won. A complete victory.
“He wants to be able to surrender in uniform and only to a general officer,” Laboa said.
Clearly, Noriega was trying to set himself up as a prisoner of war who would be afforded Geneva Conventions rights. In that way, he hoped to keep himself out of the U.S. courts. I knew it wouldn’t work.
“That’s acceptable,” Downing said. “What time does he want to surrender?”
“At about 8 p.m.”
“That will be fine.”
Immediately, we began preparations. I posted guards at the gates of the
nunciatura
, and put out the order that there were to be no photographs. I walked a couple of Delta guys through the procedure, showing them the path along which they were to escort Noriega from the
nunciatura
gate across Avenida Balboa, and out to a school soccer field, which would be a helicopter landing zone. The school had an awning that ran from the entrance out to the sidewalk. I rustled up an American flag and hung it from the awning poles nearest the street. When Noriega walked out of the
nunciatura
, I wanted him to see it.
All right, I admit it—I was twisting the knife.
At 8:50 p.m., I saw Laboa and Noriega emerge from the front door of the
nunciatura
. Wearing his tan general’s uniform with his four stars, Noriega came alone through the gate. Four Delta Operators wearing camouflage stepped up, one man in front of Noriega, one behind, and one on each side. As our men escorted him across the dark avenue, Noriega tried to hold his head high, but he stumbled twice.
The surrender was simple, yet formal.
General Cisneros had every reason to hate Noriega. Prior to Just Cause, the dictator ordered his thugs to threaten and harass the Army general and his family for months. Still, Cisneros accepted the surrender without any extra dialogue.
Noriega:
“Yo soy el General Noriega. Me rindo a las fuerza de los Estados Unidos.”
I am General Noriega and I am surrendering to U.S. forces.
Cisneros: “
Su rendición es aceptada
.” Your surrender is accepted.
The Delta team then escorted Noriega to the soccer field where a Black Hawk waited, rotors already turning. The helo whisked him away to Howard AFB, where a C-130 was waiting to fly him to America, and his date with the U.S. justice system.
Ten days later, I was back in my office at Bragg when Darrell Poor walked in.
“Hey, Jerry, I’ve got something for you,” he said.
“Oh yeah? What you got?”
“Remember what you said you wanted out of the operation down in Panama?”
I shook my head, a slow smile spreading across my face. “You didn’t.”
“I did.” Darrell grinned, and held up a plastic bag with a pair of red briefs inside. “I got them when we strip searched Noriega at Howard. I had you in mind.”
Beginning in 1992, Manuel Noriega commenced a fifteen-year stint in a Miami federal prison. At the time of this writing, he is fighting extradition to France.
His underwear are still sitting in a display case at Fort Bragg.
Colombia and Waco 1992–1993
THE BLOODSTAINS ON THE FLOOR convinced me: The world would be better off without Pablo Escobar.
In July 1992, I toured
La Catedral
prison, where Escobar, head of the Medellin cocaine cartel, had been “incarcerated” until his “escape” that same month.
La Catedral
wasn’t really a prison. Escobar actually had the place custom built, and in a deal with the Colombian government to avoid extradition to the United States, agreed to confine himself there. In return, he promised to stop murdering the police and government officials who were trying to rein in his cartel’s multibillion-dollar cocaine business.
It was, almost literally, a deal with the devil. Not only did Escobar come and go from his lavishly appointed prison/resort largely as he pleased, but he also continued to rule his worldwide drug empire, estimated at its height to haul in $30 billion a year. He threw festive holiday parties, with food cooked to order by his personal chef. He hosted lavish orgies, providing young teenage girls for his friends’ pleasure.
Also, he kept on murdering.
The blood I saw splashed and dried on the floor at
La Catedral
may very well have belonged to Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada, the heads of two families who had been trusted inside players in the cartel. The two men had been put in charge of a large share of Escobar’s empire after his “incarceration.” Each family paid Escobar $200,000 a month for the privilege and still grew fabulously wealthy. But with his movements somewhat limited and monitored by the government, Escobar grew suspicious even of his closest lieutenants. Paranoid at their accumulation of wealth, he invited Galeano and Moncada to
La Catedral
, and had them killed.
1
Then he had their brothers tracked down and killed. Escobar the business executive, tying up loose ends.
The blood spatter at
La Catedral
represented only drops in a river that stretched back nearly two decades. It was through murder that Escobar, a street hoodlum and car thief growing up in Bogota’s Antioquia region, entered the cocaine trade in the first place. In 1975, he purchased fourteen kilos of cocaine from Fabio Restrepo, a well-known Medellin drug dealer. Then, apparently seeing a business opportunity, Escobar reportedly murdered Restrepo and commandeered his men. Charged with murder, Escobar was unable to bribe the judge. But he did succeed in having his two arresting officers whacked. The case was dropped and—bingo—Escobar’s philosophy was born:
Plata o plomo
—silver or lead. Accept a bribe and step aside, or face assassination.
2
Escobar’s ruthlessness and the seemingly bottomless U.S. demand for cocaine in the disco era combined to catapult him and his early partners into control of 80 percent of the world’s cocaine trade. Escobar built a fabulous ranch,
Hacienda Napoles
, featuring a private airport, helipads, and six different swimming pools. He bought the best of everything, including the best judges, police officials, and Colombian lawmakers. If they didn’t play, he had them killed.
