United States invasion of Panama

• 1. Introduction

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  The United States invasion of Panama began at 12:46 a.m. local time on the 20th of December 1989. Over the following hours, 27,684 American troops and more than 300 aircraft went into action. Washington's stated aim was to remove General Manuel Noriega, the de facto ruler of Panama, who was wanted by American authorities for racketeering and drug trafficking. Yet only a few years earlier, the same general had been a valued friend of American intelligence. How did a partner become a target? What pushed the president to give the final order? How many people died, and does anyone agree on the number? Did the United States have any legal right to attack? Few of these questions have tidy answers, and some are still argued in Panama today.

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• 2. An Informant on the Payroll

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  Noriega had been a paid informant for the Central Intelligence Agency since 1967. That span included 1976-77, when George H. W. Bush directed the agency. The CIA paid him upward of $100,000 a year from the 1960s, and in the 1980s his salary rose to $200,000. In return, he took Washington's side in Central America's Cold War struggles. He worked to sabotage the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front revolutionaries in El Salvador.

  His record on drugs cut both ways. He cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration to restrict illegal shipments. At the same time, he accepted significant financial support from drug dealers and helped launder their money. His special relationship with the CIA shielded those dealers from DEA investigations.

  The Panama Canal supplied the other half of the story. On the 7th of September 1977, President Jimmy Carter and Panama's de facto leader, General Omar Torrijos, signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties. They set in motion the handover of the canal to Panamanian control by the year 2000. American military bases stayed in place, and the canal had to remain open to American shipping. Noriega succeeded Torrijos, and by the early 1980s he had consolidated power as Panama's de facto dictator. Then, in 1986, a newspaper article began to unravel the arrangement.

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• 3. The Slide Toward War

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  Seymour Hersh exposed Noriega's criminal activities in The New York Times in 1986, and President Ronald Reagan responded by opening negotiations. Reagan asked the general to step down and backed the request with several drug-related indictments in American courts. Extradition arrangements between Panama and the United States were weak, however. Noriega judged the threat empty and refused.

  In 1988, Elliot Abrams and others at the Pentagon began pushing for an invasion. Reagan said no, because Bush's earlier CIA positions tied him to Noriega and could damage his presidential campaign. Later talks even involved dropping the drug indictments. In March 1988, Noriega's forces resisted an attempted coup. He then appeared to shift toward the Soviet bloc, soliciting and receiving military aid from Cuba, Nicaragua and Libya. American planners began preparing contingency plans to invade.

  In September 1988, Panamanian authorities said they had arrested 16 people over another suspected coup plot. Twelve of them were alleged to belong to the National Patriotic Committee, a guerrilla group backed by the United States. The Panamanian newspaper Critica claimed that Washington had financed the plot.

  The election of May 1989 broke the stalemate. An alliance of opposition parties counted results at the precincts before the tallies went to the district centers. Their count showed Guillermo Endara beating Carlos Duque, the pro-Noriega candidate, by nearly 3-1. The next day, Noriega supporters physically assaulted Endara in his motorcade. Noriega declared the election null and held power by force, which made him unpopular with Panamanians. His regime insisted it had won and blamed irregularities on the American-backed opposition. Bush called on Noriega to honor the will of the Panamanian people and reinforced the garrison in the Canal Zone.

  Quieter diplomacy was also under way. Oscar Arias and Daniel Oduber of Costa Rica, Carlos Andrés Pérez of Venezuela, Alfonso López Michelsen of Colombia and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González each met Noriega in secret on different occasions. They hoped to persuade him to resign and live in exile in Spain. None of them succeeded.

  In October 1989, Noriega foiled yet another coup attempt, this one led by Major Moisés Giroldi of the Panama Defense Forces. On the 15th of December, Panama's general assembly passed a resolution declaring a state of war between Panama and the United States. Noriega later insisted in his memoirs that the resolution described a war the Americans were already waging. He pointed to harsh economic sanctions and to provocative military maneuvers called Operations Purple Storm and Sand Flea.

  The following night, at about 9:00 p.m., four American servicemen were stopped at a Panama Defense Forces roadblock outside headquarters in the El Chorrillo neighborhood of Panama City. They were Marine Captain Richard E. Hadded, Navy Lieutenant Michael J. Wilson, Army Captain Barry L. Rainwater and Marine First Lieutenant Robert Paz. They had left the base at Fort Clayton for dinner at the Marriott Caesar Park Hotel. The Pentagon said the men were unarmed, in a private car, and tried to flee only after an angry crowd and Panamanian troops surrounded them. The Panamanian side later claimed the Americans were armed and on a reconnaissance mission. Soldiers opened fire, and a round entering the rear of the car struck Paz in the back. Hadded, who was driving, was wounded in the foot. Paz died at Gorgas Army Hospital and received the Purple Heart posthumously.

  According to American military sources, Navy SEAL Lieutenant Adam Curtis and his wife, Bonnie, witnessed the incident and were detained by Panamanian troops. In custody, Curtis was beaten and his wife was threatened with sexual assault. He spent two weeks in the hospital recovering. On the 16th of December, Bush ordered the invasion plan carried out, with H-Hour set for 0100 on the 20th of December, four days away.

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• 4. A Just Cause

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  On the morning of the 20th of December, a few hours after the first assaults, Bush explained his decision to the public. He cited Panama's declaration of a state of war and the attacks on American troops. He then listed four objectives. The first was safeguarding the roughly 35,000 American citizens living in Panama, whose lives he said Noriega had threatened. The second was defending democracy and human rights. The third was combating drug trafficking, since Panama had become a center for money laundering and a transit point for drugs bound for the United States and Europe. The fourth was protecting the integrity of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, because members of Congress and others claimed Noriega endangered the canal's neutrality.

  A less public part of the preparation involved deliberate pressure. American forces were told to ignore Panamanian roadblocks and to run short-notice "Category Three" exercises at security-sensitive targets. These stayed within the limits of the treaties, and their express goal was to provoke Panamanian soldiers. While those orders stood, the U.S. Southern Command kept a list of abuses committed against American servicemen and civilians.

  Congress put up little resistance. Bush's four reasons were enough to win bipartisan approval and support. Secrecy before the attack, the speed and success of the operation, and public approval of 80% left Democratic lawmakers almost no room to object. One contemporary study argues that Bush instead acted for domestic political reasons. It notes the scarce strategic logic of invading and then withdrawing without building any structure to enforce the interests he had cited.

  The invasion plan grew out of earlier plans for defending the canal, and those became more aggressive as relations soured. The Prayer Book series included rehearsals for a possible clash and missions to secure American sites. The troop deployment of early 1989 was called Operation Nimrod Dancer. The invasion itself was first Operation Blue Spoon, until the Pentagon renamed it Operation Just Cause to sustain a perception of legitimacy. General Colin Powell said he liked the name because "even our severest critics would have to utter 'Just Cause' while denouncing us." Critics answered with their own version, Operation "Just 'Cuz," arguing that it had been launched just because Bush felt like it.

  The stabilization effort planned for afterward had its own name change. It was Operation Blind Logic until the Pentagon renamed it Operation Promote Liberty on the eve of the invasion.

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• 5. The Night Assault

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  The Panama Defense Forces had 16,000 members, and the invaders arrived with new equipment to meet them. The invasion was the first combat deployment of the AH-64 Apache helicopter, the HMMWV vehicle and the F-117A Nighthawk stealth aircraft. Two EF-111A electronic warfare aircraft jammed Panamanian radar. The air fleet also included AC-130 Spectre gunships, C-130 Hercules transports, C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxy transports.

  The first blows fell on strategic installations. These included the civilian Punta Paitilla Airport in Panama City and a Panamanian garrison and airfield at Rio Hato, where Noriega kept a residence. The entire 75th Ranger Regiment made simultaneous parachute drops, one group onto Rio Hato airfield and another onto Omar Torrijos Airport. About 45 minutes after the Rangers landed at Omar Torrijos, the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division began parachuting onto the same airfield.

  The fight at La Comandancia, the central Panamanian headquarters, was the most destructive. C Company of the 1st Battalion, 508th Airborne Infantry was assigned to secure it. The attack touched off several fires, and one of them destroyed most of the adjoining, heavily populated El Chorrillo neighborhood. Panamanian fire downed two special operations helicopters and forced an MH-6 Little Bird to crash-land in the Panama Canal.

  M551 Sheridan tanks of the 82nd Airborne Division supported that assault. It was the first and only time they were air dropped into a combat zone. Four had been flown in secretly to Howard Air Force Base aboard a C-5 Galaxy in November. The other ten were parachuted by a C-141 to Torrijos-Tocumen Airport several hours into the invasion.

  Elsewhere in the capital, a special operations raid called Operation Acid Gambit struck the Carcel Modelo prison. Its purpose was to free Kurt Muse, an American citizen whom Noriega's government had convicted of espionage. Special Forces troops also fast-roped from MH-60 helicopters onto the roof of the 20-story Panama National Radio building and destroyed its FM broadcast capability. A second raid, ordered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff with only 15 minutes of warning, destroyed the Radio Panama AM transmission tower. That cut Noriega's final link to his supporters.

  Fort Amador mattered because it sat near the oil farms beside the canal, the Bridge of the Americas and the canal's Pacific entrance. It also held key Panamanian command elements and a large American housing district that had to be protected from hostage-taking. A night air assault secured it in the early hours. Military police from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, flew into Howard Air Force Base the next morning. They secured key government buildings in Panama City and seized weapons, vehicles and supplies in house-to-house searches. For about a week afterward, they fought snipers and Dignity Battalion holdouts.

  Guillermo Endara, the presumed winner of the spring election, was sworn in at Fort Clayton a few hours after the invasion began. A platoon of the 1138th Military Police Company, Missouri Army National Guard, was on a routine two-week rotation in Panama. It was called on to build a detainee camp at Empire Range for the flood of civilian and military detainees. This was the first National Guard unit called into active service since the Vietnam War.

  About 600 women were part of the American force, an unprecedented number for an invasion. They did not serve in direct combat roles or combat arms units. They worked as military police, truck drivers, helicopter pilots and logisticians, among other jobs. Captain Linda L. Bray, commander of the 988th Military Police Company from Fort Benning, Georgia, led her troops in a three-hour firefight with Panamanian soldiers who refused to surrender a dog kennel. It was later discovered that they were using the kennel to store weapons. Bray was said to be the first woman to lead American troops in battle, and the episode set off controversy in the media and Congress. She requested and received a discharge in 1991.

  First Lieutenant Lisa Kutschera and Warrant Officer Debra Mann flew UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters carrying infantry troops. Their aircraft came under fire, and both received Air Medals, as their male counterparts did. Female journalists also covered the invasion extensively, bringing international attention to Panama and helping to shape public perception of the operation.

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• 6. Hunt for Noriega

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  Operation Nifty Package was designed to stop Noriega from escaping. Navy SEALs and Delta Force troops set out to capture him or to destroy his two escape routes. They destroyed his private jet at Paitilla Airfield and sank his gunboat, which was docked in a canal. The cost was four SEALs killed and nine wounded.

  Noriega nevertheless remained at large for several days. Facing a massive manhunt and a $1 million reward for his capture, he saw that his options were few. On the 24th of December, he took refuge in the Apostolic Nunciature, the Holy See's diplomatic mission in Panama City.

  Outside, American psychological pressure was relentless. Loud rock-and-roll was reportedly played day and night in the densely populated area around the mission. A report from the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff offered a different explanation. It said the music was used mainly to stop parabolic microphones from eavesdropping on negotiations, and not as a weapon aimed at Noriega's supposed dislike of rock.

  Noriega surrendered to American forces on the 3rd of January 1990. He was immediately put aboard an MC-130E Combat Talon I aircraft and flown to the United States. There he was convicted on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison, and the sentence was later reduced to 30 years. He died in Panama City on the 29th of May 2017, at the age of 83.

  Operation Just Cause itself formally ended on the 31st of January 1990, when Operation Promote Liberty began. That second operation, aimed at rebuilding the Panamanian military and the country's civilian infrastructure, ran until September 1994.

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• 7. Counting the Dead

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  The official Pentagon figure was 516 Panamanians killed, made up of 314 soldiers and 202 civilians. An internal Army memo put the number at 1,000. The United Nations estimated 500 civilian deaths, and Americas Watch estimated 300. President Endara said fewer than 600 Panamanians died during the entire invasion. The Roman Catholic Church counted 673 dead in total. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark estimated 3,000 civilian deaths. Physicians for Human Rights reported more than 100 civilian deaths missing from the military's estimate, but found no evidence of several thousand. According to The New York Times, figures in the thousands were widely rejected in Panama.

  Human Rights Watch argued in 1991 that even the uncertain figures were "still troublesome." Its report concluded that American tactics and weapons caused an inordinate number of civilian victims, in violation of obligations under the Geneva Conventions. By its calculation, civilian deaths were at least four-and-a-half times higher than enemy military deaths. They were also twelve or thirteen times higher than American losses. The group said the manner of death mattered as much as the count.

  American forces lost 23 killed and 325 wounded. In June 1990, the military announced that 2 of the dead and 19 of the wounded were victims of friendly fire. Civilian dead included Kandi Helin and Ray Dragseth, two American schoolteachers working in Panama for the Department of Defense Schools. The adult son of another teacher, Rick Paul, was killed by friendly fire as he ran toward an American roadblock.

  Juan Antonio Rodriguez Moreno, a Spanish freelance photographer on assignment for El País, was killed outside the Marriott Caesar Park Hotel early on the 21st of December. His family filed a wrongful death claim in June 1990, and the American government rejected it in 1992. Spain then sent a Note Verbale extending diplomatic protection to him and demanding compensation. The United States rejected the claim again, disputing its liability for war-zone deaths and doubting that American gunfire killed him.

  About 20,000 people lost their homes and became refugees because of the urban warfare. Roughly 2,700 families displaced by the El Chorrillo fire received $6,500 each from the United States to build new homes. Numerous problems with the new construction were reported just two years later. On the 19th of July 1990, a group of sixty companies sued the American government in federal court in New York City. They alleged the invasion was carried out in a tortious, careless and negligent manner. Most had insurance, but the insurers either went bankrupt or refused to pay, saying acts of war were not covered.

  On the 10th of February 1990, the Endara government abolished the Panama Defense Forces and created the Panamanian Public Forces. A constitutional amendment in 1994 abolished Panama's military permanently. Panama's GDP recovered by 1993, though very high unemployment remained a serious problem. As late as 2001, the Panamanian press still faced numerous restrictions. Endara later staged a hunger strike to call attention to the poverty and homelessness left by the Noriega years and by the invasion's destruction.

  Endara's government named the first anniversary a national day of reflection. Hundreds of Panamanians marked it with a black march through Panama City, denouncing the invasion and Endara's economic policies. On the 20th of December 2015, Vice President Isabel De Saint Malo de Alvarado announced a special independent commission to identify victims so reparations could be paid to their families. Victims' families have claimed that earlier investigations were funded by American authorities and were therefore biased.

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• 8. Law and Judgment

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  The American government invoked self-defense as its legal justification for the invasion. Several scholars and observers argued that it was illegal under international law. Article 2 of the United Nations Charter prohibits member states from using force to settle disputes, except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization. Articles 18 and 20 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, written partly in reaction to the history of American interventions in Central America, go further. They state that "no state or group of states has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal affairs of any other state." Other international law experts called the invasion a "gross violation" of international law.

  The American Constitution raised separate objections. Article I, Section 8 gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the president. The Bush administration answered that Panama's own assembly had declared the state of war. It supported the argument with the Federal Convention, where James Madison moved to replace "make" with "declare" in "make war," leaving the executive the power to repel sudden attacks. Observers also said the invasion broke the War Powers Resolution, because Bush did not consult Congress beforehand.

  The Washington Post disclosed several Office of Legal Counsel rulings issued shortly before the invasion. One read an executive order against assassinating foreign leaders as implying that accidental killings would be acceptable policy. Another held that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 applies only inside the United States. Under that reading, the military could act as a police force abroad to enforce a federal court warrant against Noriega.

  On the 22nd of December, the Organization of American States passed a resolution denouncing the invasion and calling for the withdrawal of American troops. It passed a second resolution condemning American Special Forces for violating the diplomatic status of the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama. Seven nations drafted a Security Council resolution demanding immediate withdrawal. The United States, the United Kingdom and France vetoed it on the 23rd of December, citing a right of self-defense. On the 29th of December, the United Nations General Assembly voted 75-20, with 40 abstentions, to condemn the invasion as a "flagrant violation of international law." Peru recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest. In Romania, President Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was then being overthrown in a violent revolution, called the invasion "brutal aggression."

  Inside Panama, the polling pointed the other way. A CBS News poll found that 92% of Panamanian adults supported the invasion, and 76% wished American forces had invaded in October during the second coup attempt. It was conducted in 158 randomly selected areas covering about 75 percent of the adult population, with a sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. Human Rights Watch described the civilian reaction as generally sympathetic. According to former national security advisor Robert Pastor, 74% of Americans polled approved. Some researchers have argued that this was the first major American military action since 1945 unrelated to the Cold War. They see it as an early precursor of later unilateral interventions that stressed public opinion, international legitimacy and regime change.

  The invasion has left a trail in popular culture. The 1992 documentary The Panama Deception won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, but PBS refused to broadcast it because of its criticism of the American government. The 2006 video game Just Cause, about a CIA-backed operative attempting regime change on a fictional Latin American island, took its name from the operation. The invasion is the backdrop for the 1989 timeline of Call of Duty: Black Ops II. A 2019 Panamanian film, Operation Just Cause, shows events through Panamanian civilians and soldiers. The 2022 action film Panama, starring Mel Gibson and Cole Hauser, follows CIA agents trying to broker an arms deal shortly before the invasion.

  Eighteen years after the invasion, Panama's National Assembly unanimously declared the 20th of December 2007 a day of national mourning. President Martin Torrijos vetoed the resolution. On the 19th of December 2019, the Panamanian government declared the 20th of December a National Day of Mourning, called Día de duelo nacional. Each year, the national flag is lowered to half-staff.

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