TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/102389/10238900.051

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 6KB | 116 lines

NATION, Page 39

Who Lost Noriega?

Mainly the coup's muddled leaders, but there is plenty of blame

to go around


    What kind of rebel officers risk their lives to storm the lair
of a hated military dictator, capture him at gunpoint, decline
either to kill him or to turn him over to U.S. forces standing by
to receive him, then let him contact his mistress, who calls loyal
troops to his rescue?

    That credulity-stretching scenario was among the fresh
revelations that spilled out last week in Washington during
recriminations over the botched rebellion against Panamanian
strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega. Those most to blame for the
coup's collapse seemed to be the brave but muddled men who staged
it. But congressional critics from both parties lambasted George
Bush for failing to dispatch American troops to snatch the dictator
and spirit him back to the U.S., where he is wanted on
drug-trafficking charges. The White House in turn scolded Congress
for trying to micromanage a fast-moving crisis and for
hypocritically turning hawkish after earlier rejecting
Administration plans for covert action against the strongman. There
is plenty of blame to go around:

    The Rebels

    Their first big mistake was trying to persuade Noriega to
retire peacefully instead of killing him or handing him over to the
U.S. Their second was counting on Major Francisco Olechea,
commander of the elite Battalion 2000, to be neutral; instead, he
brought his troops to Noriega's rescue. The widow of the slain coup
leader Major Moises Giroldi called Olechea a turncoat. Some U.S.
officials, however, suspect that Olechea switched sides because he
did not get timely assurances that Giroldi and his troops had
succeeded in capturing Noriega. He waited for more than two hours
after he knew the coup attempt had begun, and then, under pressure
from loyalist commanders to come to Noriega's aid, Olechea and his
troops moved out from their base at Fort Cimarron at about 10 a.m.
Not until an hour later did the rebels manage to seize a state
radio station and begin broadcasting their capture of Noriega.

    The Administration

    Bush believed, correctly, that U.S. participation in the coup
attempt would discredit the Panamanian opposition and anger Latin
American countries in which the U.S. has more important interests.
The President, however, has sent confusing signals by using macho
rhetoric about U.S. military options. Such tough talk, designed to
quiet right-wing critics, raised expectations in both the U.S. and
Panama of American intervention.

    Despite the long-standing contacts between the U.S. and
Panamanian military and intelligence communities, the U.S.
apparently did not learn of the coup until Giroldi spilled his
story. Compounding that failure, the CIA officers whom Giroldi
informed of the coup failed to arrange for reliable communication
with him. "The first, the absolute first thing you do in this case
is put somebody with a radio next to him," says a former CIA
director.

    Communications back in Washington were not much better, in part
because the Bush Administration did not follow a crisis-management
practice from the Reagan era: immediately convene the senior
deputies of the Defense and State Departments, the CIA and the
National Security Council to compare information. Moreover, Bush,
a former CIA director who loves to pore over undigested
intelligence cables, insisted on receiving three streams of often
conflicting reports from the CIA, Defense and State.

    Congress

    While the coup was under way, Senator Jesse Helms and other
lawmakers were contacting sources at State, the CIA, the Pentagon,
the White House -- and even the U.S. embassy and military bases in
Panama. Those contacts yielded buckets of criticism from mid-level
officials who considered the Bush response to the coup too limp.
"This creates all kinds of problems," says Defense Secretary Dick
Cheney. "You cannot have every member of Congress involved . . .
while it is still unfolding."

    The U.S. ban on political assassinations may also have reduced
Bush's options. In July 1988 the Reagan Administration proposed
helping one of Noriega's former cronies, Lieut. Colonel Eduardo
Herrera, overthrow him. The idea was rejected by the Senate
Intelligence Committee out of fear that Noriega, who is always
armed and heavily guarded, might have to be killed. Some of the
Senators who have sniped publicly at Bush's failure to abduct
Noriega were among those who privately opposed the Reagan proposal.

    In a session with the President last week, Oklahoma Democrat
David Boren, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
conceded that the assassination ban should be reinterpreted. The
committee's ranking Republican, William Cohen of Maine, questioned
whether U.S. officials might be allowed to "provide information or
assistance to groups seeking to overthrow dictatorial governments
and establish democracies."

    In Panama, meanwhile, Noriega and his terror squads admit to
jailing 77 opponents, and have beaten up scores of others on the
street. U.S. officials say that some suspected coup leaders have
been tortured and executed. Noriega also banned unauthorized
assemblies and froze salaries of civilian government employees.
Some of them had celebrated a bit prematurely when they heard news
of the Oct. 3 coup attempt, cheering and ripping posters of Noriega
from their office walls.

    The Bush Administration hopes that Noriega's crackdown will
radicalize his opposition, perhaps leading to another attempt to
remove him. If such an effort is mounted, its organizers would be
wise to pay more attention to security than those who took part in
the recent fiasco. Consider the case of "Comandante Romano," a
rebel officer who managed to escape from Panama to Miami, where
government and church leaders hid him in a hotel in which he would
be safe from Noriega's spies. Last week the comandante was granting
television interviews, unaware that a brochure identifying his
whereabouts (the Chateaubleau Inn) was cheerfully poking out of his
breast pocket.