Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

apartments and houses scattered throughout Panama. Task Force Green operated within Panama City. Task Force Blue was assigned the Colon area and western Panama.

Wayne Downing continues:

Rolling up the infrastructure accomplished two goals: The Noriega gang was all bad; we had to bring them to justice. And we needed to deny Noriega options. We wanted him to have nowhere to lay his head: And so we went after every Noriega crony and hangout we could find, and we rolled them up.

These people were incredible. There are so many tales, people walking around with thousands of dollars in hundred-dollar bills in their pockets — drug money. And mistresses, girlfriends — we ran into just about anything you can think of. These were dirty people.

Here is an example of how we did it — though it's not exactly typical.

There was one guy that everyone in the neighborhood feared, rich and ruthless, the baddest of the bad; no one dared to speak against him. So our guys went to his place to pick him up.

It was like a movie. They came up and the door was very heavy, very fancy, with a gold doorknob, and locked. So they put a door charge on it, to blow the door open.

Inside, the bad guy was in his living room, where he had built an enormous, 5,000-gallon aquarium; it took up an entire wall and was filled with all kinds of exotic fish. When he heard our troops outside, he panicked and started to run, crouched down and bent over, with his arms protecting his head. That was when they blew the door. The doorknob shot out across the room, drove up into his rectum, and got wedged up there.

Meanwhile, shards from the blown-down door were flying around, and some of them shattered the aquarium. So when our troops came in, they found this bad guy hopping around with a gold doorknob up his rear, and fish flopping all over the floor and stuck to the ceiling. This wasn't intentional — we were sorry for the fish — but it made a story our guys will tell their grandchildren.

A few minutes after all this, the local people were out in the street cheering. Because this guy was so bad.

After a lot of operations like this (most of them not so vivid), the SEALs and Special Forces from the special missions units broke Noriega's infrastructure. And he could not escape. Every place he went, he ran into where we had been. We'd covered every possible safe haven.

Downing's people worked day and night, and they were amazingly successful.

Raids on Noriega's offices and houses had captured almost $8 million in U.S. currency, a briefcase containing a list of bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, and diaries laying out his involvement in witchcraft and voodoo worship. The money and documents were temporarily turned over to SOUTHCOM until a proper place could be found for securing them.

Two days after H-hour, nearly everyone on the most wanted list had been picked up and interrogated. Most of them — looking out for their own skin — cooperated with the interrogators and provided names of other key people in Noriega's infrastructure who had not yet been identified. A list of about a hundred people was developed from this information, and Downing's forces immediately set out to find them.

And yet, by the morning of December 23, Noriega was still missing.

Carl Stiner continues:

The first break came midmorning on December 23 when one of Noriega's inner circle of bodyguards appeared at the main gate at Fort Clayton with a proposition for Marc Cisneros: He had information about Noriega that he would exchange for protection for himself and his family. Though these guys were all real thugs, he got his guarantee, and it was his information that filled in the details of Noriega's movements on the evening before H-hour — his diversion on the way back from Colon, his rendezvous with the prostitute at the Ceremi rest camp, his escape from the Ranger's roadblock.

This was good news. It meant Noriega was still in Panama City; we would continue relentless pressure until he could be cornered. Part of the pressure involved our watching embassies where he might find asylum.

At 8:30 the next morning, another Noriega bodyguard showed up with the same proposition. When he met Cisneros, he said, 'I just now slipped away from Noriega and his other bodyguards. He's at the end of his rope, he's taking drugs and alcohol, and he's crazy as hell. He'll kill us all.

'I can tell you where he is, but you have to hurry. They're about to move on. When 1 left, bags were packed. They're driving a blue Montero SUV'

Within minutes, Downing was on the scene with his Panzer Gruppe.

They found the place abandoned, but the coffeepot was still hot, and cigarettes were still burning in the ashtrays. A call to all units was immediately put out to watch for the Montero.

Marc Cisneros and I spent most of the day checking on stability operations, but arranged to return to headquarters at 3:00 P.M. At 3:00, I went directly to my operations center, and Cisneros went to his office on the second floor of the same building. When he got there, he learned he had an urgent phone call from Monsignor Laboa, the Papal Nuncio. This was Laboa's second call; he had something important on his mind. Cisneros took the phone.

'Noriega is here,' Laboa whispered, 'in the Papal Nunciatore. I called you earlier, hoping you could intercept him. Come over here. I need to talk to you.' The Papal Nunciatore was the Vatican's Embassy in Panama City, and had the same immunities as any other embassy recognized by the U.S. government.

Cisneros hurried to me with the news.

'Go ahead and see Laboa,' 1 told him. 'Call me as soon as you have details. I'll tell General Thurman and Downing.'

I immediately called Downing: 'We've got a problem,' I said. 'Noriega's in the Nunciatore — a sanctuary. Get over there right away and take charge of the situation. Secure it.'

Then I called Thurman.

Within minutes, Downing had surrounded the Nunciatore with his troops.

The Nunciatore, located in one of the wealthier parts of the city, was a two-story stucco building with a pleasant, well-groomed yard, all surrounded by a seven-foot-high concrete wall.

Meanwhile, I was thinking. 'Why the Nunciatore?' I asked myself. 'We have been watching the Nicaraguan Embassy, the Cuban Embassy, the Peruvian Embassy, and all the others where we thought he might hole up; but we never considered the Nunciatore. All the same, now we have him; it's just a matter of how to get him out.'

Shortly, Cisneros phoned with the Nuncio's story:

Noriega and Captain Guitan, his aide, had called to ask for refuge. 'What we want you to do,' Noriega demanded, 'is pick us up at an ice-cream stand,' which he named, 'and bring us to the Nunciatore. If you don't, we'll go to the mountains and start a guerrilla war.'

Laboa felt he had no choice. He sent a car to pick them up.

'My earlier call,' he explained to Cisneros, 'was to let you know about the car. I'd hoped U.S. forces would intercept it before it returned to the Nunciatore — and you'd do me a favor if you took your soldiers right now and dragged him out; but unfortunately, that's impossible. We both have to recognize the diplomatic protocols.'

'That's fine,' I told Cisneros. 'Now what I want you to do is find out from Laboa if anyone else has taken asylum in the Nunciatorc, and if they have weapons. And tell him that Downing is establishing a security perimeter around the Nunciatore and will be our man on the scene.'

Forty-five minutes later, Cisneros returned to headquarters. 'The Nuncio doesn't think Noriega brought weapons with him,' he told me, 'but he's not sure.' We were fairly certain he had weapons, and this complicated matters: We were in a potential hostage situation. 'Several others in Noriega's inner circle are also there,' Cisneros continued, 'as well as a few women, and eight to ten children.'

The others turned out to be: Captain Guitan; Colonel Castergen, the Navy Commander; Lieutenant Colonel Velarde, a chaplain; Captain Castillo, Noriega's personal bodyguard; and Colonel Madrinan, Chief of the Department of National Investigation. Five Basque separatist terrorists had also come in with the Noriega gang, on the reasonable assumption that we'd want to pick them up.

By then, Downing had secured the area with Colonel 'Pete' and his forces from Task Force Green, and had established his operational center in the elementary school across the street. I called him there: 'Tell Laboa that