an excerpt from: Divorcing the Dictator Fredrick Kempe©1990 Putnam ISBN 0-399-13517-0 469 pps. - First Edition/only edition -- Out-of-print ----- --"The CIA made an honest case," said one of the meeting's attendees. "You cannot have a relationship with people for many, many years and suddenly sever it without repercussions. The U.S. was like a spider in a web, and every little move in the net had repercussions."-- --One call was to Lewis's banker, Jackson T. Stephens, in Little Rock, Arkansas, who was desperate to get his friend and client to safety. Jack Stephens had accumulated one of the world's biggest fortunes at his investment banking firm of Stephens, Inc. by quietly disregarding Wall Street. He provided special services to customers, but seldom of the kind he gave Lewis that day. Stephens phoned his former classmate at the Naval Academy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Crowe. Stephens asked Crowe to help get Lewis out of the jam. Crowe phoned the Southern Command, and within minutes General Woerner sent over a black-paneled truck with some plainclothes bodyguards to protect Lewis and help him escape Panama.-- Om K ----- As Noriega's power grew, Diaz Herrera came to believe that General Noriega's strength came partly from Ivan Trilha, his Brazilian psychic and mentalist, and partly from Noriega's broad mixture of beliefs ranging from Buddhism to the Afro-Caribbean black magic beliefs subscribed to by many Panamanian officers. How else could such a small and insigificant man have come so far? Consequently, in early October 1986 he went to Buenos Aires to find his own sorcerer. Friends put him in touch with an eighty-eight-year-old yogi named Indra Devi, whose powers convinced Diaz Herrera there was another way to take on Noriega—through Prana, the vital breath that sustains life and is issued as energy from pure substances such as fruit. She made him hold an apple in one outstretched, clenched fist and a cigarette in the other. The frail woman was unable to pull down the arm with the apple, but the fist with the cigarette fell easily. Diaz Herrera was converted. Through this elderly yogi, Diaz Herrera met a California psychic who would become his constant companion and secret weapon against Noriega. She was Shama Calhourn, whose exotic, brown-skinned beauty in a white sari and white fingernails captivated the colonel. She and the old woman were both disciplines of Satya Sai Baba, who they said was a human reincarnation of God who lived in the Indian desert near Bangalore. A cobra had entered his crib as a child, but never hurt him. Ever since then, the boy had performed miracles: making instruments play by themselves and food appear from nothing. Surely, thought Diaz Herrera, Noriega could do little to combat such power. Shama Calhourn read Diaz Herrera's future. She asked him to look at her third eye, located at the middle of her forehead, so she could read his aura. "Your mission in life is an historic one," she said. "Nothing can stop you from an inevitable battle. Don't expect to win right away, for you will be victorious in the end." The Californian, whom he affectionately called "La Gringa," didn't even know Noriega, but who else could she have meant? "So I started a metaphysical war with Noriega with the assistance of my psychic from California," Diaz Herrera laughed later. He set up a Sai Baba temple in his home, complete with lighted candles; he meditated; and he read. Shama Calhoum also put Diaz Herrera in touch with a spiritualist masseuse from Miami and a Los Angeles nutritionist, whom the chief of staff flew to Panama at government expense. Diaz Herrera hoped Noriega would see his enemy was now armed for spiritual warfare. By early 1987, Diaz Herrera all but forgot he was chief of staff. His passion was Sai Baba, whose color photograph-complete with crossed legs, long black hair, beads, and bare chest—he posted on his bedroom wall. Jose de Jesus Martinez ("Chuchu"), who gained world fame for being the central figure in Graham Greene's book Getting to Know the General, thought Diaz Herrera wanted to believe so badly he overlooked Shama Calhourn's mistakes. On a long-distance call, Diaz Herrera asked the Californian to tell Chuchu what his ailments were. "You are having problems with your eyes." "She's brilliant, isn't she?" asked Diaz Herrera. Chuchu, who had nothing wrong with his eyes, remained silent. He understood the attraction when Calhourn arrived in Panama for personal service. "She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, with skin so soft that it should only have been touched by a blind man," Chuchu would say later. Yet the crazier Diaz Herrera acted, the less Noriega worried about him. Noriega knew his plot was working when he heard that Chuchu, long a friend to Diaz Herrera, alleged that he had been chained like a dog in Diaz Herrera's basement and made to bark. Noriega's own psychic, Ivan Trilha, also told him that Diaz Herrera's astrological chart showed he was in trouble with his balance. Trilha showed Noriega on an astrological map that, as an Aquarius, he had a strong field of protection and mental clarity that Diaz Herrera lacked. Some of Diaz Herrera's allies, fearing their friend's psychological decay, wanted to help. Martin Torrijos, the former dictator's son, and Dominican Republic politician Pefia Gomez, a key player in the international socialist movement, tried to broker a deal with Noriega. Pena Gomez told Noriega not to underestimate the problems Diaz Herrera could cause him, and in mid-May of 1987, Gomez actually drew up a solution negotiated with Noriega that would make Diaz Herrera ambassador to Japan and chief of the Yokohama and Kobe consulates—the most lucrative positions in the Panamanian foreign service. Diaz Herrera would keep his rank, which would increase his prestige in protocol-conscious Japan, but he would resign from the general staff and renounce all claims to Noriega's throne. Initially, Noriega liked the idea, and he profusely hugged and thanked Gomez as he walked him to his car. Diaz Herrera accepted the agreement as well, although he worried that his inability to speak English would handicap him in the diplomatic world. Pena delivered the final papers to Noriega on Friday, May 29, but by Monday, June 1, the General had changed his mind. He rejected the agreement, fearing the Tokyo job would give Diaz Herrera too much money and power, and retired Diaz Herrera the next day without offering him any substitute. For the next three days, Diaz Herrera tried in vain to reach Noriega. On June 4, he finally scrawled Noriega a note in his childlike writing. Diaz Herrera wouldn't even write "General" on the letter, but instead addressed it to "Sefior Manuel Antonio Noriega." "You want to begin a total war with me, and I am trying to avoid it, for Lorena, Sandra, and Thais," the letter said, mentioning Noriega's daughters, who went to school with Diaz Herrera's own daughter. "But I am not afraid of you. If you don't talk to me, you are going to confront a total war on my behalf. Don't run away from me. Call me. I can't locate you.,, Noriega, however, never dealt with his messiest problems directly. Colonel Marcos Justine, his new chief of staff, told Diaz Herrera to stay calm until they could find him an embassy in Europe and some "financial assistance." He spoke of a million dollars in a suitcase. One senior officer, though, told Diaz Herrera that nothing good would come of his confrontation with Noriega. The friend had heard that the General was thinking of arresting Diaz Herrera and charging him with high treason, an executionable charge. "Be patient, and everything will sort itself out," said Justine. But Diaz Herrera feared for his life. He had to act. "Stick it up your ass," he replied. On Friday, June 5, 1987, Diaz Herrera began a desperate war against his oldest enemy through public revelations, some true and some false, about Noriega's crimes against the country. His words would set off a storm of public protests—the biggest demonstrations the country had ever seen—that would begin a political landslide against Noriega. Diaz Herrera's motivation to attack Noriega, however, wouldn't be anything as noble as democracy or justice, two concepts he'd vanquished as PDF chief of staff. His motives were survival and revenge. The irony was that it was a perceived enemy of the CIA, Diaz Herrera, whose charges would in the end prompt the agency to sever its contractual ties to Noriega. In fact, Noriega's problems with Washington in the weeks that followed didn't come at the hands of longtime warriors for democracy. Rather, three of the men most instrumental in shifting policy in Washington in the second half of 1987 came from the military's inner circle. Diaz Herrera was the trigger, but the anti-Noriega strategy in Washington was developed by Ambassador Gabriel Lewis, the entrepreneur who had worked closely with Panama's military dictatorship for years; Jose Blandon, the military's political strategist; and Joel McCleary, the colorful North Carolinian consultant who had once been the Noriega regime's political adviser. They were enemies Noriega never needed to make. Noriega turned these men against him through his most fatal flaws: greed and paranoia. He was jealous of the positions each had gained, and he wanted to block their continuing influence. He also feared, at first unjustly, that they were conspiring against him. "This was a crisis of our own making," said McCleary months later. The General's opponents had seized a concept hard for congressmen to oppose—the removal of a drug-dealing dictator and the promotion of democracy—and along with the congressmen, U.S. policymakers were shifted into a confrontation they had long tried to avoid. The General's opponents also showed how easily resourceful individuals, seizing the right political issue at the correct moment, could shift debate in Washington and push an administration into a conflict for which it was ill-prepared. "This was a war of conspirators and Panama was the loser," said former President Nicholas Ardito Barletta. In June 1987, this circle of regime collaborators first began more seriously to turn on Noriega when the hot-tempered Diaz Herrera, who had no troops to command, launched a media offensive. First came confession. Diaz Herrera said he had bought his house, in the ritzy Altos del Golf neighborhood, with profits from his illegal sale of visas to Cubans. And yes, Diaz Herrera had carried out Noriega's orders to fix the 1984 elections. The final touches had been applied in his own home. Then he turned to Noriega. He said the General was responsible for Spadafora's murder and for the plane crash that had taken Torrijos's life, in which the CIA was involved as well. He claimed that Southern Command chief Wallace Nutting had planned the Torrijos murder together with Noriega and Colonel Alberto Purcell, the head of the air force. Diaz Herrera also said that Noriega had stolen $12 million the Shah of Iran had given to Torrijos for giving him refuge. Diaz Herrera threw out the charges so quickly that reporters couldn't keep up. The Godfather's second-in-command was ratting on the Mafia. "I attacked Noriega with information, disinformation, and misinformation," he said. "When you are being mugged by a gang of hoodlums in a dead-end street, you're not going to count how many punches you're landing or whether all of them are entirely fair." Diaz Herrera's former enemies came to his house to pay their respects and try to rally opposition to Noriega. The first was Winston Spadafora, the brother of the beheaded Hugo. In gossip-mad Panama, however, the initial crowds outside came less for a revolution than out of curiosity. Diaz Herrera lived among the country's wealthier class, and most of them had only a short walk or drive to find out what was happening. Diaz Herrera loved the attention, and he dubbed his home "the headquarters of dignity." He stood outside, handing out photocopied handbills with his latest charges against Noriega. Some were written as epistles, likening his war with Noriega to the story of Cain and Abel. Others were in verse. Others couldn't be understood at all. The Panamanians that gathered, however, were surprised when a force most of them had never seen before arrived on the scene. They were riot troops who demonically called themselves "the Dobermans." They looked like characters off the cutting-room floor of a bad B-movie. A Doberman pincher's head was the insignia on their black trucks, and visored helmets gave them a Darth Vader look. They toted plastic shields, tear-gas bombs, shotguns, and rubber hoses. When the Dobermans attacked the crowd outside Diaz Herrera's home, the surprised protesters dispersed, and then came back for more, so the Dobermans fired bird shot and tear gas. The people retreated again. They weren't accustomed to such open violence in placid Panama, where Noriega's dirty deeds had so long been hidden from public view. This was their political baptism. The Dobermans stumbled forward, some having trouble seeing through their fogged-up gas masks, the result of the midday heat and their own sweat. They were new at this, too. Diaz Herrera's revelations also helped give birth to the Civic Crusade, the nonpartisan group that would lead protests against Noriega in the weeks that came. Chamber of Commerce president Aurelio Barria organized the first meeting, inspired by a trip earlier that year to the Philippines that had been arranged by the National Democratic Institute, the Democratic party's international arm. When he'd returned in April, he'd begun organizing a vote-monitoring organization for the May 1989 elections. However, events forced him to move more quickly than he had planned. He brought together 200 professional, business, and civic organizations, in a coalition that would bring more Panamanians to the street in protest than ever before. The Civic Crusade grew out of a movement that had banded together to oppose the general decay of public morality under the Noriega rule. One of the original members of this movement, the president of the Rotary Club, had been found dead with both wrists cut to the bone. Somehow, police reports said, he had committed suicide in this fashion. At a press conference regarding the killing later, chief of investigations Nivaldo Madrinan was wearing the victim's distinctively designed ring. Madrinan would be formally charged with this murder after Noriega's ouster. However, Diaz Herrera had given these businessmen new courage. Barria wanted to organize Manila-like street demonstrations that might force the dictator to resign or, as in the Philippines, prompt a coup that could speed his ouster. But Panama was no Philippines. Indeed, the protests all seemed a little civilized to reporters accustomed to war zones and peoples' revolutions elsewhere. With the enthusiastic honking of horns and waving of white handkerchiefs, the Panamanian middle class was going after a drug-financed thug, but the demonstrations were usually at lunchtime or just before cocktail hour. People got out of their cars or came down from their offices to join what journalists came to call the "clock-watching revolution." "Panama has the damnedest anti-government protestors," wrote Rolling Stone cor respondent P. J. O'Rourke, who had the right forum and style to describe the bizarre scenes. "They're all dressed up in nice ties or linen dirndl skirts and driving around in BMWs and Jeep Wagoneers. . . . Opposition HQ is that infamous center of treachery and sedition worldwide, the Chamber of Commerce." Yet, for the first time the world saw that Panamanians were fed up. Noriega sent out his Dobermans regularly to pelt the demonstrators with water cannon and American-made tear gas. Sold to the PDF to douse communists, the U.S.-supplied riot equipment was now fighting democracy. The canisters read: TRIPLE CHASER GRENADE/FEDERAL LABORATORIES/SALTSBURG, PENN. Gabriel Lewis couldn't believe his luck. He had begun plotting against Noriega a few months earlier, but what he had lacked were street protests to convince his American friends that they couldn't continue to ignore Panama. In late 1986, Lewis had launched a furtive war on Noriega, after the General had begun to take contracts and business opportunities away from him. Lewis had warned other businessmen that Noriega was out to destroy the traditional oligarchy and build a new business class that was beholden only to him. Lewis was everything Noriega hated. He was bred by one of Panama's oldest oligarchic families, his great-grandfather had been part of the junta that ruled the country at independence, and streets were named after his grandfather, Samuel Lewis. Lewis had been born privileged, with all life's advantages. Light-complected and of noble Spanish descent, he considered Noriega a low-life whose rule of Panama was an international embarrassment. Lewis was a bulldog in appearance and approach. His short legs supported a hefty body and a large, round head. He also latched on to ideas and projects with unyielding teeth. That stubbornness and a gracious charm made him so successful as Panama's ambassador to Washington during the Panama Canal Treaties negotiations that to this day Senator Edward Kennedy believes the Treaties might have failed without him. Though he was born well-off, he had. an entrepreneurial bent that made him even richer. He saw too many Panamanian bananas were being damaged when shipped on their stems to U.S. markets, so he converted his father's soap box factory and launched what he calls "the package revolution of bananas"—corrugated banana boxes. The first shipment sank in Balboa harbor, spreading a cardboard slick for miles around, but Lewis stuck with it, and the idea made him a multimillionaire, with banana box plants in Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Surinam. Noriega, jealous of Lewis's economic power and political muscle, began to cut him down to size. The General's first target was Contadora Island. Lewis loved the tropical island, where he'd entertained senators and millionaires, like a child he'd raised from birth. He'd bought it in the 1960s for $6,000 from Panama's equivalent of two old ladies from Pasadena. In time Lewis bought ten other nearby islands at similarly cut-rate prices. Dictator Omar Torrijos had provided the soldiers and dynamite to blast away a huge boulder that stood in the way of a landing strip. Contadora began their famous friendship—the odd couple of the well-bred millionaire and the populist dictator. Torrijos dreamed of Contadora as a place "where French women would walk around without their tops," laughed Lewis years later. But Lewis's project to develop the island's tourism, promoted by Torrijos, flopped. The government swallowed the debt and much of the property, and Lewis kept some land and two small islands, one for himself and one for his wife. Noriega would have liked to sink Contadora, which he called "the oligarchy's luxury liner," but he settled for control of it. In 1984, Noriega named as his island manager Carlos Wittgreen, who had once been indicted in the U.S. on arms-smuggling charges and had grown rich helping the Cubans break the U.S. trade embargo. Noriega named drug trafficker Cesar Rodriguez as manager of the island's airline. Island residents feared they were watching a Mafia takeover. Waiters in tuxedos served champagne on Rodriguez's opening-day celebration. A huge photograph of Noriega in white uniform and gold braid decorated the wall, and shocking-pink rugs lined the floors. Rodriguez, who would later be killed by drug world assassins in Colombia, would fly planeloads of models to Contadora Island for parties. He bought endless rounds of drinks for hangers-on at the hotel bar from a suitcase filled with $100 bills. For the first time, planes started landing on Contadora's airstrip in the middle of the night, refueling and sometimes off-loading large boxes, some filled with cash and others with drugs, and then flying on before dawn. In 1986 Lewis tried to arrange the island's sale to Japanese businessman John Aoki. The plan was that Aoki would develop the island, but that Contadora residents could buy up to 20 percent of the shares of the newly-created company. Noriega undermined the sale, however, announcing that an Arab buyer had emerged who would pay more. When that deal collapsed, Noriega's people came back to Aoki themselves, but they cut out Lewis and other Contadora residents. Noriega's move was part of a broader effort to separate Lewis from the Japanese, whom he considered Panama's new gold mine. At about the same time, he instructed his ambassador to Japan, Alberto Calvo, to tell Japanese businessmen to stop dealing with the traditional oligarchy. "Those names are dead," Noriega said one night. "Tell the Japanese I want them to deal with the new business class. People at this table." Sitting with him were business partners Carlos Duque, Carlos Wittgreen, Enrique Pretelt, and his mistress Vicky Amado. With drink, Noriega grew angrier about his lack of control over Far East trade. At one point, he threw to the side a bowl of fish soup Vicky had put before him. She cowered in a corner. Then he ordered that an aide phone his ambassador in Taiwan so he could issue him instructions. When told it was 3 A.M. there, he burped, "So wake the son of a bitch." After the call was put through, Noriega said he didn't want to talk to the envoy anymore. The more his position was threatened, the more he wanted to humiliate any who thought they influenced him. Noriega's second strike on Lewis came in early 1987. Lewis had bid for land on which he wanted to build an American military housing project, again with Aoki as one of his partners. Another partner was Roberto Eisenmann, the editor of the anti-Noriega paper La Prensa. The land would be a gold mine in the year 2000, when the housing could be sold on the open market. Noriega killed the project in March, before the bids could be opened. Lewis sent his son Sammy to protest to President Delvalle, who was Sammy's father-in-law. Relations were already strained between Lewis and Delvalle. The strains would worsen in the weeks to come, as Sammy divorced Delvalle's daughter while Lewis tried to bring down his government from Washington. Only over Noriega's dead body would he allow these homes to be built by his enemies, said Delvalle. Lewis sent back a message to Noriega through Delvalle. "This is the beginning of a fight. You are taking too much control of everything." Lewis's original aim was to undermine Noriega through the May 1989 elections. He, like Barria, had flown to the Philippines for schooling on how to overthrow a dictator and he thereafter organized several meetings with leading opposition members, who had long criticized his complicity with the military. One American official joined them: John Maisto, the U.S. embassy's deputy chief of mission in Panama and a State Department veteran of the Philippine experience, who had been one of the first American officials to turn on Marcos. Maisto coached Lewis and others about why Filipino protests had worked, always stressing that nothing could be accomplished without a greater outpouring of public opposition to Noriega. Lewis regarded his first big success as the lobbying of General Frederick F. Woerner, a soft-spoken, four-star general he'd known for years, who was about to take over the Southern Command in Panama. They had fished together often, and Woerner happily accepted Lewis's invitation to lunch at Maison Blanche, the expense-account watering hole for White House lobbyists. Lewis remembered Woerner, who fancied himself a soldierdiplomat, promising that he'd knock Noriega down to size. Woerner said later he'd never say such a thing, but he conceded Lewis had had "influence" on his June 5 change-of-command speech at Howard Air Force Base. It was the first time the U.S. military had distanced itself from Noriega, and the message to Panamanian society was immediate: the gringos were no longer protecting Noriega. Woerner carefully crafted the short speech, in both Spanish and English, to focus on "the proper role of the professional military in a democratic society." He disregarded protocol by not mentioning Noriega or complimenting him and after the speech, Noriega walked out in a huff without staying for the reception. One thousand prominent invitees spread the story around Panama the next day: the gringos were finally abandoning their pet, Noriega. Some, including Noriega, would see U.S. conspiracy in Colonel Diaz Herrera's revelations the next day. General Woerner, however, said Diaz Herrera's actions "were as much a surprise to me as I think they were to Diaz himself." Lewis now had the street demonstrations he needed. On Saturday, June 13, Lewis phoned U.S. senators and lobbyists from Panama to get the ball rolling against Noriega. The General, who was monitoring the calls, phoned Lewis and asked to discuss the crisis. Lewis consented, but warned Noriega he must be prepared to "make some personal sacrifices" to save Panama. He told Noriega to send someone senior enough to negotiate important matters. Before the meeting, Lewis drove to Banco del Istmo to talk over the situation with his brother, Samuel, chairman of the bank, which was jointly owned by the Lewis family, the Delvalles, and other partners. Shortly after Lewis left the bank, three trucks full of Dobermans rolled up for an attack—just missing Lewis. They broke through its one-story-high picture windows and tossed in a couple of tear-gas canisters to shake things up. They broke picture frames over antique prints of Panama Canal scenes, tellers' glass windows, and anything else that would shatter. The Dobermans focused immediate attention on the most attractive teller, Katya Poshol, who at twenty-nine was everything their class wanted to deflower: fair, shapely, elegantly dressed and coiffed. They beat her, and then threw her in the back of a paddy wagon with thirty Dobermans and a couple of other bank employes. One Doberman forcibly held her on his lap while telling her that she'd be put in a cell with 200 criminals who hadn't had sex in months. Another covered his hands with blood oozing from his gashed leg, and then rubbed it on her breasts. Still another took her hand and put it over his crotch and laughed. The bank's manager of operations, who was in the paddy wagon as well, tried to stop them. They beat him back. "You are the bank manager and we are just the cops," sneered one, "but who is beating whom?" The Dobermans stopped at a hospital to have their own wounds treated, and one of their number took pity on her. He released her. He wanted this pretty girl to like him. Katya Poshol needed a cast for her broken arm, but that was the least of her scars. A psychiatrist worked for months thereafter to heal her psychological bruises, and she still shakes whenever she sees a Doberman uniform. It was a typical Noriega act, to weaken his negotiating partner before beginning talks. Lewis angrily phoned Noriega. "You want to have a dialogue, but then you break into my bank," said Lewis. "But I will put my feelings aside if you send people here to talk." Noriega's business partner, Carlos Duque, arrived twenty minutes later with a small delegation led by Colonel Alberto Purcell. Lewis sat with three opposition figures. Purcell reminded them of Idi Amin: fat, six feet tall, black, and wearing a camouflage-colored uniform and a .45-caliber pistol at his side. Lewis told Purcell that the only solution was Noriega's resignation. Idi Amin sneered. "There is nothing to discuss with you. Noriega is not negotiable," he said. After the meeting, Noriega ordered an intelligence officer to phone Lewis. "You have become Enemy Number One of the defense forces," he said. Lewis knew it was time to get out of the country. He had underestimated Noriega's strength, and officers were rallying around their General. But Noriega had also underestimated Lewis. The former ambassador worked the phone like a machine gun, firing off pleas for help to his powerful international friends. One call was to Lewis's banker, Jackson T. Stephens, in Little Rock, Arkansas, who was desperate to get his friend and client to safety. Jack Stephens had accumulated one of the world's biggest fortunes at his investment banking firm of Stephens, Inc. by quietly disregarding Wall Street. He provided special services to customers, but seldom of the kind he gave Lewis that day. Stephens phoned his former classmate at the Naval Academy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Crowe. Stephens asked Crowe to help get Lewis out of the jam. Crowe phoned the Southern Command, and within minutes General Woerner sent over a black-paneled truck with some plainclothes bodyguards to protect Lewis and help him escape Panama. They brought a secure mobile phone, over which Lewis worked out with Woerner the logistics of his escape. When two PDF helicopters hovered over Lewis's home, two of the American soldiers came out, so that Noriega would see what he was facing. And the Costa Rican ambassador held a huge national flag from his country, like a crucifix intended to ward off the vampires overhead. Lewis sped away in the ambassador's car to the city's Paitilla airport, where an American businessman had provided his plane to Lewis for his departure to Costa Rica. Seymour Millstein, another friend and the former head of United Brands, sent his Gulfstream II to Costa Rica to pick up Lewis and bring him to the United States. Lewis had moved his war to Washington, with the help of a Pentagon military escort and American businessmen's private planes. In Washington, Lewis hit the ground running. He called lobbyist and friend John "Riverboat" Campbell to put together a strategy to bring down Noriega. Campbell, a retired army colonel, was well connected from his years as the Pentagon's liaison to Congress, and he also knew the military after three tours of Vietnam and service as an instructor of psychological warfare at West Point. Lewis saw his character as a combination of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. "He was helping me like a brother," said Lewis. The Reagan administration, however, wasn't yet ready for war on Noriega. National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci wouldn't even meet with Lewis. The meeting Lewis and opposition activist Roberto Eisenmann had with the NSC's Latin American specialist, Jose Sorzano, was disastrous. Sorzano suggested that the opposition ought first to take on Noriega itself before involving Washington. "Why don't you solve your own problems first?" he said, reflecting the view of some others that Lewis was carrying out a personal vendetta. Lewis blew up, saying that so long as Noriega was on the CIA payroll, Panamanians alone couldn't unseat him. "You are the source of his power," argued Lewis. "You have to cut yourselves off from Noriega." Lewis and Campbell thereafter focused on the Senate. Lewis had longstanding ties to Democrats who backed the Panama Canal Treaties; most prominent among them was Edward Kennedy. He had also grown close to Senator Alfonse D'Amato through a business friend. D'Amato would rally the Republican right behind him and keep the issue alive. With Lewis's help, Kennedy aide Gregory Craig drew up a resolution that would begin the political landslide against Noriega. Campbell lined up a series of conservative Republicans who had been Lewis's opponents on the Treaties, but whom he now needed as allies. Lewis would say later that Campbell had personally lined up at least forty votes. Kennedy submitted the resolution, but he also found sponsors ranging from North Carolina's Jesse Helms and Senator D'Amato on the right to John Kerry of Massachusetts on the left. Kerry was quickly becoming the most active Democratic campaigner against Noriega, as his narcotics subcommittee continued to find more traces of Noriega's drug dealings. The resolution noted that demonstrations had been set off by charges that the Panamanian Defense Forces and its commander were involved in the murder of Spadafora, the stealing of 1984 presidential elections, drug trafficking, and money laundering. It called for a "public accounting" of the allegations. It even asked the U.S. government to "direct the current commander of the Panama Defense Forces and any other implicated officials to relinquish their duties pending the outcome of the independent investigation." Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who was one of the Senate's leading experts on Latin America, thought Lewis and his allies on Capitol Hill had gone too far, and that the resolution, by personalizing the problem as Noriega, overlooked deeper problems in Panama. He also believed that singling out Noriega restricted U.S. and Panamanian room for maneuver and negotiation with the General. Dodd, a Spanish-speaking senator, knew Noriega better than anyone on the Hill. He had spent several long sessions with Noriega in the past, uncharacteristically sending away his aides during these meetings, and he flew to Panama now for some damage control, with a draft of the amendment in his hand. During a three-and-a-half-day stay, he talked with more than 150 people. Noriega liked and trusted this senator, who had taken the controversial position of defending him when other senators had wanted Panama decertified as being uncooperative in America's war on drugs in March 1987. That would have cut off some aid to the country. Dodd had succeeded in getting the Senate to table the amendment by a vote of 49-48. However, Dodd felt that Noriega had misunderstood what was a pragmatic position, aimed at preserving national interests, as political sympathy. Noriega was oddly jovial when Dodd arrived at his headquarters with Washington's ambassador to Panama, Arthur H. Davis. The General complained that Americans misunderstood Panama because they spent too much time with the opposition. Dodd protested that his schedule was also packed with government meetings. "In fact, General," said Davis, "he's seen everyone here except Miss Panama." Noriega snapped his fingers. Within a couple of minutes, a stunningly beautiful woman, the former Miss Panama, walked in. She worked in his office. "Talk about oneupsmanship," Ambassador Davis said later. They all laughed. Dodd told Noriega the Senate resolution was a serious matter. He told Noriega he needed something to take back to Washington to turn the resolution around: this was a tactic that Congress had used with some success in moving Marcos toward reform and elections. Isn't there something you can give me? Dodd asked. But Delvalle and Noriega weren't convinced the Senate would act. They underestimated the depth of emotion emerging against Noriega. They also miscalculated the lobbying power of Gabriel Lewis. Dodd told Noriega that turning Lewis against him had been a grave error. "He knows more senators than I do," he said, only half in jest. When Dodd returned to Washington empty-handed, he nevertheless fought to erase Noriega's name from the resolution. "If we make the General the sole and absolute target of this resolution, we run the risk of denying those other elements, both civilian and military, in Panama the room to maneuver," he said. His staffers felt Lewis was using the Senate as his private battlefield. But Lewis had lined up his ducks. "I think it is important that we not let General Noriega set the agenda for debate and discussion in terms of this particular resolution," Senator Kennedy countered, taking a swipe at Dodd. "Mr. President, I think that to leave General Noriega out would be like going to the North Pole and not talking about the ice and snow." The resolution passed 75-13, with Dodd casting one of the baker's dozen votes against it. Four days after the Senate resolution, Noriega struck back. His puppet legislature rescinded his State of Emergency, aimed at stopping opposition demonstrations, in order to clear the way for anti-American protests. When Ambassador Davis arrived at the embassy at 7:15 A.M. on June 30, riot policeman stood about four or five feet apart from each other around the entire embassy complex. All but a handful disappeared, however, when demonstrators arrived, along with a load of rocks that had been conveniently moved from a construction site at a nearby hospital. At 10:45 A.m., a couple of dozen demonstrators began to stone the embassy and to destroy and overturn employees' cars. Policemen merely looked on. Davis fumed from his second-floor vantage point. He wanted to order the marines to fire. Davis was an eccentric political ambassador, whose first try at diplomacy had come at age sixty-four after President Reagan's 1980 election. He was a self-made man, who'd made millions in Colorado supermarket developments and who'd gained his first ambassadorial posting in Paraguay, he imagined, through his friendship with Joe and Holly Coors of the conservative beer-making family. Yet his only Latin experience had been as an armed services weatherman in Chile after World War II. He certainly had never prepared for this. The ambassador turned to John Maisto, his deputy chief of mission. "If those sons of bitches come onto the yard, I want the marines to kill those bastards," Davis said. At another point, he shouted at Maisto, "Give me the goddamned gun. I want to shoot these suckers." Maisto calmly apprised the ambassador of the embassy's engagement rules. The marines couldn't fire until demonstrators had entered the building. Maisto's experience in the Philippines had prepared him for such violence. "But, John, they are destroying public property," the ambassador protested. "That's not enough, Mr. Ambassador," Maisto replied, repeating the rules. Davis smiled. "John, I'm glad you're her&." Davis conceded later that he would have ordered the marines to shoot if Maisto hadn't intervened. The embassy's military attache tried without luck to call someone at the PDF to call off the attack or protect the embassy. Davis called President Delvalle and Foreign Minister Jorge Abadia. "Send the bill to the U.S. Senate," said Delvalle. "It is their resolution that caused all this." Foreign Minister Jorge Abadia was more measured, offering to pay the bill once the problem was over. "The bill is going to be higher than you think," Davis fumed. Without any instructions from the State Department, he suspended all economic and military assistance on behalf of the president. It was a highly unusual move for an ambassador: in fact, it hadn't ever been done before. Many thought it was illegal. When Secretary of State Shultz called, however, Ambassador Davis was only encouraged. "Tell Delvalle this has happened in only one other place," Shultz said. "That was Iran. If that's the kind of relationship they want, that's the kind of relationship they'll get." Davis demanded a meeting with Noriega the next day. The General blamed the attack on a leftist faction of the ruling party. "They were very angry at the U.S. Senate resolution and the difficulty it was causing the country," he said. By then Davis knew from his intelligence staff that the G-2 had organized the attack on Noriega's orders. "I had an embassy shattered, people under great strain, under attack, and you gave us no protection at all," he complained. Noriega insisted the police hadn't been removed intentionally. "There was some trouble at the demonstration in the city and they had to leave," he said. Davis saw he wasn't getting anywhere, so he tried another approach. He told Noriega his problems with the U.S. would end if he would seriously work toward democracy. "We are working toward a firm democracy, a solid democracy that will last," said Noriega. "The Reagan administration and Elliott Abrams don't know what kind of democracy it will have to be. Only we do." Noriega told Davis that of the Latin American democracies that then existed, most of them would soon disappear. "They are weak democracies," he said. "They will be replaced by the military." Unlike Iran's Ayatollah, Noriega had been on the CIA payroll when he ordered the attack on the American embassy. Senior officials, who had been discussing whether to cut off the CIA-Noriega relationship, now knew the payments had to end before they became an embarrassment through press leaks. However, the CIA didn't like the idea of ending a "liaison" relationship with an intelligence service that had provided valuable data on Nicaragua, Cuba, and other countries, as well as passports for undercover work. The setting for the CIA's divorce proceedings was a "PRG" meeting—a Policy Review Group made up of sub-cabinet officials in the situation room in the White House basement. Deputy National Security Adviser Colin Powell sat under the presidential seal. He asked the CIA representative about Noriega's contractual relationship with the U.S. The CIA representative said the General had been on the U.S. payroll for years. His G-2 was paid by two U.S. intelligence services, the DIA and CIA, to "defray the costs" of joint operations. The CIA man said the G-2 was an "inactive account," and that payments hadn't been made for about a year. He said Noriega wasn't paid personally anyway. But what he didn't say was that the money was put into a private account at the Bank for Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI, that only the General controlled. The CIA official didn't discuss Noriega's price, but others in the room knew it to be about $200,000 annually—equal to the president's salary. It wasn't an unusual arrangement, the CIA's man said. The U.S. was paying military intelligence groups all over the world. Panama was one of the most valuable as a base for CIA and DIA regional operations, including an important electronic listening post. The CIA official was then asked to outline the consequences of cutting ties. First, Noriega might disrupt use of military and intelligence facilities. Second, the U.S. would lose access to information Noriega had provided. Other military leaders with arrangements similar to that of Noriega might also now balk at helping the CIA. "The CIA made an honest case," said one of the meeting's attendees. "You cannot have a relationship with people for many, many years and suddenly sever it without repercussions. The U.S. was like a spider in a web, and every little move in the net had repercussions." Despite that, everyone at the meeting agreed that the relationship wasn't politically sustainable. Powell directed the CIA to cut Noriega off. No one protested. However, the CIA official warned them, "This is going to be a lot more difficult than is assumed in this room. Don't underestimate this guy. This man is a tough son of a bitch." A few days later, Noriega displayed his personal rage in a crackdown that became known as "Black Friday" the single worst day of repression the country had known. Noriega no longer felt constrained. The U.S. had cut him off, and the Civic Crusade was growing too bold. It had scheduled its planned July 10 demonstration one day ahead of the wedding of Noriega's daughter, and the General was convinced the timing was intentional. Felicidad had orchestrated the grand event in the country's most elegant hotel, the Caesar Park Marriott. A chartered jet would bring the bridegroom and his family from Santo Domingo, where his father had been a general. Moet & Chandon had prepared the wedding invitations for 3,000 guests as a label on bottles of its best French champagne, delivered to the doors of the invitees with a Baccarat crystal champagne glass engraved with the couple's initials. Now, however, the Marriott was filled with journalists covering the anti-Noriega rallies. It was no place or time for a wedding. Noriega moved his daughter's wedding forward to July 8; it was celebrated with only a couple of dozen guests at the Fort Amador chapel, where security was more certain. At a reception afterward, Noriega was morose and drunk when he complained to a friend that Diaz Herrera "and his Indian guru" had ruined his life. Just look at this wedding. Is this the sort of wedding the daughter of a Comandante should be having? But that wasn't the only humiliation. At the same time, the opposition had taken to hanging pineapples from telephone poles, fruity effigies of "Pineapple Face" Noriega. When restaurant owner Sarah Simpson complained to her supplier a few days later that there were still no pineapples, despite the fact that all of them had been removed from Panamanian streets, he explained that Noriega's troops had bought out the whole market-thus disarming his opponents. Two days after the humiliation of his daughter's wedding, Noriega lashed out with all his anger. What followed was the most drastic and longest-lasting suspension of constitutional guarantees in Panamanian history, including the closing of opposition press and radio. Over 1,500 protesters were arrested, dozens were tortured, and between 500 to 1,000 suffered bullet or bird-shot wounds. Then on July 27, after six weeks of indecision, Noriega's Israeli-trained shock troops stormed into Diaz Herrera's mansion with hand grenades, tear-gas bombs, and Uzi submachine guns. Military helicopters hovered overhead. Diaz Herrera was on his bedroom floor with his wife, Maigualida, under a half-smiling color photograph of Sai Baba, his Indian guru, in saffron robes. Noriega's Benedict Arnold was under arrest. Fear spread through Panama like tropical heat. Noriega was back in control, and the war moved back to Washington. pps. 209-226 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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