History Book: Toppling Noriega

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Up next, the World History Book: taking down a dictator.

The capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro has sparked comparison to another U.S. operation to capture a fugitive from justice: General Manuel Noriega, then the leader of Panama, back in 1989.

EICHER: Noriega, like Maduro, faced drug-trafficking charges in the U.S. And Noriega, like Maduro, was taken into custody January 3rd. Maduro this January 3rd, Noriega, 36 years ago. Here’s WORLD Reporter Mary Muncy.

MARY MUNCY: On December 17, 1989, 20-year-old Corporal Jeff Tiegs was getting ready to go home and marry his high school sweetheart.

JEFF TIEGS: That's when the phone call came.

The wedding would have to be postponed. Tiegs and his fellow Rangers had to get to base.

TIEGS: I had no idea where we were going. So, we were getting our kit together. You know, it's packing your bags, loading ammunition, getting all your gear put together.

The next day, they turned on the news.

TIEGS: It said, you know, ‘the 82nd airborne and the Ranger Regiment is preparing to invade Panama.’

To take General Manuel Noriega. 

He had worked with American intelligence forces under previous Panamanian leaders, but U.S. officials had warned for years about his monopoly on power and involvement in drug trafficking. In 1989, he annulled an election to keep himself in power. Then, his forces attacked his opponents.

From a White House press briefing about the operation:

C-SPAN: The situation in Panama under General Noriega has reached a crisis.

This, combined with the looming 1990 deadline to appoint a Panamanian to lead the Panama Canal, pushed leaders over the edge. The U.S. refused to hand such a strategic asset to a regime it no longer trusted.

Over the next few days, Tiegs’ safety briefings went from ‘they don’t know we’re coming, this is where you’ll land,’... to ‘they know we’re coming. Here’s how to get past the extra fortifications.’

Although Tiegs and his squad had gotten alerts before, they’d never actually deployed.

TIEGS: But once we got to the airfield and all of the ammunition was laid out was when I realized, ‘Oh, this is, this is real,’

They boarded a plane and got ready to jump into a massive operation.

AUDIO: [EXPLOSIONS AND GUN FIRE]

TIEGS: I jumped out of the aircraft, and there's like a A-10 jet right there. And I was like, ‘what the?’

Red and green tracers were flying through the air.

TIEGS: I had to remind myself, like, ‘what? What color are our tracers? Like, who's, who are the good guys?’

The good guys are red.

Tiegs hit the ground in the Panama airport. Then he and his team started clearing their targets. Some 20,000 other American troops were also involved.

A few hours later, President George H.W. Bush addressed the nation and told Americans why years of diplomacy had come to an end.

CBS NEWS, GEORGE BUSH: Last Friday, Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United States and publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama.

And the tensions had turned violent: just 24-hours after Noriega’s declaration, Panamanian forces killed a U.S. Marine and brutalized another American officer and his wife. Combined with Noriega’s federal drug trafficking indictments in Florida, the White House acted.

BUSH: Key military objectives have been achieved. Most organized resistance has been eliminated. But the operation is not over yet, General Noriega is in hiding.

For four days, Noriega eluded the manhunt, slipping through safe houses across Panama City. By Christmas Eve, he resurfaced, seeking asylum inside the Vatican’s embassy.

But the U.S. wasn’t about to storm the sovereign territory of the Holy See. So the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group used a different kind of pressure. They surrounded the compound with high-powered loudspeakers atop Humvees and began a musical assault.

VAN HALEN: PANAMA

ALICE COOPER NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY: No more mister nice guy.

RICK ASTLEY NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP: Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.

About ten days later, Noriega had heard enough.

CBS NEWS: Under cover of darkness, US helicopters take General Manuel Noriega from the Vatican embassy in Panama.

NBC NEW YORK: Less than 24 hours after he surrendered in Panama, Manuel Noriega has been arraigned in a Miami court on drug charges.

The president addressed the nation again.

AP ARCHIVE, BUSH: We are now engaged in the final stages of a process that includes the economic and political revitalization of this important friend and neighbor, Panama.

The U.S. reported that 23 Americans were killed in the invasion, and about 300 Panamanian civilians and combatants were also killed.

BUSH: And I want to express the special thanks of our nation to those servicemen who were wounded and to the families of those who gave their lives… A free and prosperous Panama will be an enduring tribute.

Corporal Tiegs spent a few more weeks helping to dismantle Noriega’s regime. Then he went home… and finally got to marry his high school sweetheart.

American officials installed the previously elected Panamanian leaders into office. Then US teams started streamlining the economic and political system.

ANDREW NATSIOS: We set up a displaced camp and started feeding people.

At the time, Andrew Natstios was part of the US Agency for International Development. He went to Panama right after the US took control.

Bush set aside about two billion dollars for the long-term reconstruction of the country.

NATSIOS: We had a very productive relationship there. The country had developed so much that it was a middle class democracy. There was no need for an aid mission. And so about 10 years ago they closed the aid mission.

The per capita income in Panama has tripled, and there have been elected officials running the country since Operation Just Cause was completed 36 years ago this month.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Mary Muncy.

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