Essentially, his headquarters would handle them, under his public affairs officer, an Air Force colonel; and I provided my public affairs officer, Jake Dye, an Army colonel, to SOUTIICOM, which established a media center in a large tent just outside the headquarters. There would be two daily press briefings — one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
From the beginning the operation had been kept secret, but on the night of the twentieth, there were enough media already in Panama to cover a good part of the activities in the vicinity of the Comandancia. TVs are common in Panama; which meant civilians could watch the battles taking place live on their home screens.
On the night of the twenty-third, Panama's airspace was still closed to everything but military traffic. A call came in from Pete Kemph at Howard Air Force Base. A Lockheed L-1011 was overhead, asking permission to land.
'Who's on it?' 1 asked.
Kemph called back, 'It's a load of media; they've been cleared from Washington.'
'We have no alternative but to let them land,' I said.
They were met on the ground by Thurman and taken to Quarry Heights, where they were given a complete briefing. Afterward, Thurman announced that the plan was to put them out in groups of three or four with each rifle company so they could get front-line coverage. Company commanders would be responsible for their security, food, and protection. Every day they would select a small number to travel around in a helicopter and pick up their 'take,' which they'd have time to file for the evening news.
The media found this arrangement totally unacceptable. Each media team wanted helicopters of its own, so they could immediately get to the action (one team had a satellite communications set it would take a Chinook to carry).
'I'm sorry,' Thurman told them, 'but I can't accommodate you on that. We're still involved in security operations and don't have enough helicopters to support the troops, much less give you dedicated helicopters.'
They reluctantly agreed to this arrangement, but that didn't last long. Many of them began to slip away and rent cars; pretty soon they were running around all over the place.
It didn't take the press long to find out that Noriega was in the Nunciatore. Not long after that, they took over the Holiday Inn, about a hundred yards away and were out on the balconies with their pinpoint microphones, trying to pick up what was going on.
This worried me. 'We've got very sensitive negotiations going on outside the Nunciatore between Downing, Cisneros, Michael Kuzack,' the U.S. Embassy representative, 'and Laboa,' I told Thurman, 'and we have to find a way to block these microphones listening in. What I'd like to do is bring in some psychological operations loudspeakers and play music.'
'Good idea,' Thurman said. 'Set it up.'
And that's what we did.
Pretty soon, the press got teed off and started calling directly to the White House, claiming we were violating their first amendment rights by blasting them with rock music. That was not, in fact, true. It wasn't all rock music. We had also selected some good country-and-western songs, like Johnny Cash's 'Ring of Fire,' and 'Nowhere to Run To,' and 'In the Jailhouse Now.'
We didn't forget Noriega in all this. We wanted to send him a clear message that the ball game was over. During the afternoons, we hooked up the loudspeakers to U.S. Southern Command radio so he could also hear about the surrenders of his PDF commanders and the freezing of his overseas bank accounts.
The loudspeaker campaign didn't last long.
The White House put pressure on General Powell, who called General Thurman and demanded an explanation. General Thurman did that, but it apparently did not satisfy the White I louse, and we were ordered to stop the music.
As we wrestled with the problem of prying Noriega out of the Nunciatore, operations were going on throughout western Panama to bring security and stability, and great progress had been made (looting had practically ceased), owing in large measure to the signal sent by combat activities at H-hour. Also contributing to the success was the surrender of Lieutenant Colonel Del Cid. Word of his surrender had also almost certainly reached Noriega before he'd entered the Nunciatore; this would not have lifted his mood.
All the while, intelligence reports were coming in that Noriega supporters were planning rescue attempts.
One report claimed that rescuers planned to land a small helicopter inside the Nunciatore grounds and fly him out. In response, Downing positioned Ranger stinger-missile teams on every nearby high-rise building. There was no way a helicopter was going to get into the Nunciatorc.
Another report claimed Noriega was going to slip away out the back and down an irrigation ditch. Infantry troops were brought in to secure the ditch, and surveillance cameras with infrared capability were installed for all- around security.
Meanwhile, progress was slow on the Noriega problem — though matters were far from a standstill. Washington had been negotiating with the Vatican, and those negotiations continued. We had made suggestions to Monsignor Laboa about keeping Noriega's misery level as high as possible, and Laboa was cooperating. Noriega was not getting special privileges. Laboa had ordered his room's air-conditioning to be turned off, and Noriega, a vegetarian, was served the same food as everyone else. Of course, Laboa had also been a major factor in getting the women and children out.
At the same time, General Thurman was pursuing initiatives with Panama's Catholic leadership. Archbishop Marcus McGrath, the senior Catholic prelate, took a witchcraft-and-voodoo tour of the residence and 'dollhouse'; and he also had laid out for him the pornography, the torture photos, and the poster listing several of the Catholic priests in Panama and Central America, with 'X' s marked next to names.
Afterward, the archbishop convened a bishops' conference, resulting in a letter from the bishops to the Pope, asking for an order to release Noriega to U.S. custody.
Movement from that direction came on December 29, when the Vatican newspaper reported: 'The Vatican had never intended to hinder justice by granting Noriega refuge.' On New Year's Day, Monsignor Berlocco, the Vatican's expert on Central America, arrived to help Laboa with Noriega. The next day, he confided to Cisncros that he hoped for a speedy and just resolution to the problem.
About that time, I had an idea: Back at the October 3 coup, when Noriega was being held in the Comandancia, we had pretty good evidence that he'd called Miss Vicki and asked her to get hold of the troop commanders who'd come in to rescue him.
If she was useful then, why wouldn't she be useful now?
I told Downing to have Miss Vicki brought in so we could talk to her. We picked her up that night, then sat her down and told her how she could help save her lover's life.
Vicki was a very strong woman and at first refused to cooperate, but as the night wore on, she began to talk about her thirteen-year-old daughter. The girl had a mild heart condition (it required medication, but was not life- threatening). It was obvious Vicki loved the girl very much, and had somehow gotten the impression that we 'had' her; we didn't tell her any different. In fact, during the night we were able to locate her daughter — and ensure her safety.
At daybreak, Miss Vicki agreed to cooperate — with the condition that we let her see her daughter. We brought the daughter in, along with clean clothing for Vicki, and then let her take a shower and have a nice breakfast with her daughter.
After that, we gave her our message for Noriega: He had only two options. One was to come out feet first. The other was to come out with dignity — wearing his general's uniform — and surrender.
In the meantime, we were setting up for her a special phone link to the Nunciatore, which of course Wayne Downing could monitor.
We gained a tremendous amount of intelligence listening to these conversations. The lady turned out to be better informed than we thought, and laid things out straight.
She led off by explaining to Noriega that his support infrastructure had totally crumbled, the people were
