an excerpt from:
Divorcing the Dictator
Fredrick Kempe©1990
Putnam
ISBN 0-399-13517-0
469 pps. - First Edition/only edition -- Out-of-print
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--"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
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