Panama and the United States: The End of the Alliance

9. The Noriega Crisis and Bush's Ordeal

The Noriega Crisis and Bush's Ordeal The discovery of Hugo Spadafora's decapitated, mutilated body in September 1985 horrifiedobservers and set into motion events that led four years later to the most dangerous crisis in the history of U.S.-Panamanian relations. For many Panamanians, the bnital murder was the first indisputable evidence that Noriega was a psychopath and murderer. For Americans, it raised the specter of a monster created by naive U.S. policies designed to safeguard the Panama Canal. From that date, efforts by Panamanians and Americansto curb Noriega's power and force his removal merely fortified his resolve to stay in office and exercise dictatorial power, When the White House finally decided that he should step down, Noriega retrenched, convinced that his only hope for survival lay in preserving his command over the PDF. Finally, it took twenty-four thousand American troops to drive him from office, and in the process Panama became an occupied country, much as it had been in the early years of this century. The Making of a Dictator Nicky Barletta's decision to investigate the Spadafora murder prompted Noriega to replace him with vice-president Eric Delvalle, The technocrat departed Panama for the safety of the United States, Washington looked on with a certain distaste but acquiesced, mostly because Barletta had made such a mess of things and Noriega had seemed trustworthy during his long years of association with U.S. authorities , (Noriega had attended seven military training programs in the old Canal Zone.) He also kept the peace, paramount for the security of the canal, and held decorations from a dozen countries around 154 9 155 The Noriega Crisis and Bush's Ordeal the world. Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams led the group pledged to keep Noriega in power, Not everyone concurred with the U.S. decision to support Noriega, however. Panamanian students, journalists, and politicians began to protest the illegal regime, and Noriega applied the usual pressure to silence them. Miguel Antonio Bernal, an impassioned patriot and democrat, tried to mount an opposition movement in Panama City during the summer of 1986 using the radio and opposition press. Military authorities warned Bernal that he was risking his own life and that of his young son, so friends and relatives the following year convinced him to leave the country. For the next three years he published an underground weekly, Alternativa, in which he attacked Noriega incessantly. In Panama, censorship and progovernrnent propaganda invaded the media. A pall fell over U,S,-Panamanian relations.1 In mid-1986 a few U.S. public officials and the New York Times publicly accused General Noriega of criminal activities, In part this was due to the June 1986 decision by Congress to allow the CIA to resume arms supplies to the Nicaraguan Contras. Noriega's help was no longer critical; indeed, his activities had become an embarrassment to the Reagan administration.In several articlesin the New York Times, Seymour Hersch detailed allegations of the dictator's role in drug trafficking, gunrunning, spying, and money laundering, Afterward, Noriega's support among U.S. officials rapidly declined. Congress, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the White House favored removal of Noriega; the CIA, Department of Defense, and the Drug Enforcement Agency wanted to keep him in power. A former analyst for the State Department intelligence service described the Noriega dilemma, "It's been my ,, .experience with [Panama]that one of the major problems that we have is ... mixed signals/'2 Still, it was one thing for some officials to voice their belief that Noriega should be removed from power; it was quite another to mobilize enough force to accomplish that goal. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolinacreated the worst trouble for General Noriega by using his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate and publicize all of the accusations against 156 PANAMA AND THE UNITED STATES the Panamanian strongman. In the UnitedStates, this attack seriously damaged Noriega's image and made it uncomfortable for any government official to defend him. These charges reverberated for months in the world press, generating pressure on the Reagan administration to "do something" about Noriega? In Panama, however, Noriega labeled the attacks a ploy whose ultimate goal was to abrogate the 1977 treaties and prevent the turnover of the canal He staged patriotic demonstrations against U.S. meddling in Panama's internal affairs and posed...