Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Thus, while Torrijos had been an international icon for justice and equality, Noriega became a symbol of corruption and decadence. His notoriety in this regard was assured when, on June 12, 1986, the New York Times ran a front-page article with the headline, “Panama Strongman Said to Trade in Drugs and Illicit Money.” The exposé, written by a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, alleged that the general was a secret and illegal partner in several Latin American businesses; that he had spied on and for both the United States and Cuba, acting as a sort of double agent; that G-2, under his orders, had in fact beheaded Hugo Spadafora; and that Noriega had personally directed “the most significant drug running in Panama.” This article was accompanied by an unflattering portrait of the general, and a follow-up the next day included more details.³

Compounding his other problems, Noriega was also saddled with a U.S. president who suffered from an image problem, what journalists referred to as George H. W. Bush’s “wimp factor.”⁴ This took on special significance when Noriega adamantly refused to consider a fifteen-year extension for the School of the Americas. The general’s memoirs provide an interesting insight:

As determined and proud as we were to follow through with Torrijos’s legacy, the United States didn’t want any of this to happen. They wanted an extension or a renegotiation for the installation [School of the Americas], saying that with their growing war preparations in Central America, they still needed it. But that School of the Americas was an embarrassment to us. We didn’t want a training ground for death squads and repressive right-wing militaries on our soil.⁵

Perhaps, therefore, the world should have anticipated it, but in fact the world was stunned when, on December 20, 1989, the United States attacked Panama with what was reported to be the largest airborne assault on a city since World War II.⁶ It was an unprovoked attack on a civilian population. Panama and her people posed absolutely no threat to the United States or to any other country. Politicians, governments, and press around the world denounced the unilateral U.S. action as a clear violation of international law.

Had this military operation been directed against a country that had committed mass murder or other human rights crimes—Pinochet’s Chile, Stroessner’s Paraguay, Somosa’s Nicaragua, D’Aubuisson’s El Salvador, or Saddam’s Iraq, for example—the world might have understood. But Panama had done nothing of the sort; it had merely dared to defy the wishes of a handful of powerful politicians and corporate executives. It had insisted that the Canal Treaty be honored, it had held discussions with social reformers, and it had explored the possibility of building a new canal with Japanese financing and construction companies. As a result, it suffered devastating consequences. As Noriega puts it:

I want to make it very clear: the destabilization campaign launched by the United States in 1986, ending with the 1989 Panama invasion, was a result of the U.S. rejection of any scenario in which future control of the Panama Canal might be in the hands of an independent, sovereign Panama—supported by Japan… Shultz and Weinberger, meanwhile, masquerading as officials operating in the public interest and basking in popular ignorance about the powerful economic interests they represented, were building a propaganda campaign to shoot me down.⁷

Washington’s stated justification for the attack was based on one man. The United States’ sole rationale for sending its young men and women to risk their lives and consciences killing innocent people, including untold numbers of children, and setting fire to huge sections of Panama City, was Noriega. He was characterized as evil, as the enemy of the people, as a drug-trafficking monster, and as such he provided the administration with an excuse for the massive invasion of a country with two million inhabitants—which coincidentally happened to sit on one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world.

I found the invasion disturbing to the point of driving me into a depression that lasted many days. I knew that Noriega had bodyguards, yet I could not help believing that the jackals could have taken him out, as they had Roldós and Torrijos. Most of his bodyguards, I suspected, had been trained by U.S. military personnel and probably could have been paid either to look the other way or to carry out an assassination themselves.