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 he's in a very dangerous situation, and as far as we're concerned, he violated the Nunciatore's immunities when he went out and fetched an indicted criminal, then brought him inside and provided refuge.
"Advise the Nuncio that he's living in a bed of snakes who could care less about him and could kill him at any time."
We then talked about the best way to get the women and children out of there, in order to simplify the situation.
Downing met Laboa in the elementary school.
"I'll do what I can to help," Laboa said nervously when Downing gave him my message. It had scared him badly.
Then Downing asked, "Will you authorize a rescue operation if we hear shots from inside? We believe Noriega has weapons."
"I can do that," Laboa answered.
"Will you put that in writing?"
"Yes," the Nuncio responded.
"I have two other questions," Downing said: "Will you help us to get the women and children out?"
"Yes, of course."
"And will you and your staff leave after that?"
"No, we can't do that," Laboa replied, then went back inside the Nunciatore.
Thirty minutes later, a priest delivered an envelope with a note typed on Vatican parchment and signed by Laboa that authorized a rescue operation if shots were fired inside the Nunciatore. This was a "get out of jail free" card for Laboa if anything beyond his control happened, but it was also our trump card. If anything did happen, we had authority to conduct an immediate assault. And we had a plan to accomplish it.
I quickly called General Thurman to give him an update. At the same time, I asked him for a change in his rules of engagement to allow an assault if the lives of those inside were in danger. This was approved by SECDEF.
Meanwhile, Downing went to work getting the women and children out, and it turned out they were not the only ones who were eager to leave; several men wanted out as well — all demanding to be flown to Nicaragua, Cuba, or Venezuela.
"We'll see about that," Downing said.
Toward evening. Downing's old yellow Panzer Gruppe school bus rolled up, and about ten men and women and twelve children came out. They were then loaded and taken to a secure location, where they were segregated. The women and children were taken to their homes, and the men were sent to our detention camp.
"I didn't offer them asylum," Downing said when he called me. "I didn't have the authority. I just told them we'd work on it. But what I had to do is get the women and children out; it was a very dangerous situation."
Still inside were Noriega, five of his henchmen, and the five Basque separatists — all bad people, except possibly for the chaplain, who may have stayed inside out of hope to take care of Noriega's spiritual needs.
In the meantime, while we tried to figure out how to get Noriega out of there, we'd begun to discover just how bad Noriega and his crew really were. Downing's task force had added ever more fascinating evidence to what Marc Cisneros had come up with after we captured the PDF side of Fort Amador.
On Christmas Eve, I received a call from Jim Johnson: "We have secured Noriega's main residence in downtown Panama City," he said, "and found things you need to take a look at. I would recommend that you come out tomorrow."
"What did you find?"
"He's heavily involved in witchcraft, for one thing. But that's only a beginning." That caught my attention.
"I'll try to get out there tomorrow morning," 1 told him.
When I dropped all this on my staff at a meeting that night, the J-2 spoke up: "You won't believe this," he announced, "but 1 ran into a warrant officer in the MI Battalion with a master's degree in witchcraft. You need to take him along."
"I didn't even know there was such a degree," I said. "But get him ready to go, and we'll leave tomorrow about eight-thirty."
The next morning, I flew out and linked up with Johnson at Paitilla airfield. From there we were escorted to Noriega's house. When we got there, I had a hard time believing my eyes.
The house was lavishly furnished with gaudy "objets d'art." Large silver pelicans — estimated at about $25,000 each — were all over the place. In the main study was probably the biggest collection of ceramic frogs in the world. In the office was a world-class collection of busts of Hitler; he had at least twenty-five of them. Also in the office was a large poster board containing the pictures of the Catholic Church's representatives in each of the Central American countries with "X" s marked beside several names. Presumably, an "X" meant future elimination.
Behind the house was a patio, connecting the residence to what was called the "girls' dollhouse," built for his daughters when they were children; it was as large as most people's homes. On each end of the patio were two large altars set up for voodoo worship and witchcraft. Noriega had brought to Panama two "high-powered witches from Brazil. One of them was reputed to be the world's leading witch; he lived on the causeway to Fort Amador in a house where at H-hour the SEALs had established a roadblock (I don't know what became of him).