Stiner could not attend, but he was represented by his deputy commander, Major General Will Roosma. That night, when Roosma laid out for him the substance of the briefings, along with Thurman's questions and comments, Stiner started getting inklings of what Thurman would tell him directly the next day.
BACK TO PANAMA
After his August 5 meeting with Thurman, Stiner wrapped up his duties with the 28th lnfantry Division, but kept his new role in Panama uppermost in his mind. Getting up to speed on BLUE SPOON was an early priority; so far he had not personally reviewed it.
But his first priority was to get down to Panama and SOUTHCOM.
His last visit there had been a couple of years earlier, as the JSOTF Commander. This one would be very different: He was now totally responsible for the major operation that was shaping up.
His overriding concern was the 30,000 Americans, about 5,000 of whom were U.S. dependents living alongside PDF soldiers on joint military installations. This was a ready-made recipe for mass hostage-taking-or even massacre.
Back at Fort Bragg, he put together the team he would take with him-his chief of staff, Brigadier General Ed Scholes; his G-2 and G-3, Colonels Walters and Needham; and six officers from the intelligence and operations directorates who had taken part in the initial plan review process. He hoped to leave four of them in Panama (with SATCOM capabilities), so he could have daily reports.
The next night, Stiner and his team, dressed as civilians, left Pope Air Force Base in an unmarked special mission aircraft (a C-20 Gulf Stream), and landed around 9:00 P.M. at Howard Air Force Base, across the Canal from Panama City. He was met by Brigadier General Bill Hartzog, who had replaced Marc Cisneros as the SOUTHCOM J-3. Cisneros had moved over to replace Major General Bernie Loefke as commander of U.S. Army South. They spent most of the rest of the night with Bill I lartzog in Quarry Heights, in the tunnel that housed the SOUTHCOM operations center, receiving briefings on BLUE SPOON revisions. Although General Woerner still commanded SOUTHCOM, I lartzog was aware of General Thurman's and Washington's concerns, and had begun rewriting the blue SPOON operations order.
Stiner also learned many necessary details.
On the minus side, the tactical communications facilities in Panama were not nearly adequate for a major contingency operation. On the plus side, there was a combat service support capability — including a major hospital. Somewhat augmented, this capability would do for the initial stages of combat.
The next morning, Stiner and his party, still in civilian clothes, moved a short distance to Fort Clayton, U.S. Army South headquarters. There he linked up with Brigadier General Cisneros; Colonel Mike Snell, the commander of the 193rd brigade; and Colonel Keith Kellogg, the brigade commander who had come in with the 7th Infantry Division contingent during President Bush's May buildup, and who was now operating in the Colon area.
For the next two days, Stiner learned everything he could, about Noriega and the PDF on the one hand, and about the training and readiness of forces in Panama on the other.
Noriega had recently stepped up provocations aimed at disrupting what were called "Sand Flea" exercises — training activities allowed by the treaty. IIe then used the media reports of those confrontations to spread his hostile message. Though the U.S. troops involved had performed with exemplary professionalism so far, this kind of thing was a potential flash point for larger conflict and had to be closely watched.
Before Stiner and his team left Panama, Cisneros okayed the installation of Stiner's cell of four smart majors — planners — in the operations center.
His final business was to give Hartzog his assessment:
The revised blue SPOON, Stiner knew, was going to be considerably changed from General Woerner's original plan. In Stiner's view, any successful operation required surprise, overwhelming combat power, and the cover of darkness, to take advantage of the U.S. Army's unequaled night-fighting capabilities. It would not be a slow buildup, but a short, sharp, overwhelming shock.
Even though the commanders he'd met had shown an invaluable knowledge of the PDF and the local environment, Stiner had discovered holes that needed filling. Units in Panama were not as ready and proficient in urban live-fire operations at night as the forces coming in from the United States. This would require an intensified training program. Additionally, the aviation unit was short on pilots, and the majority of crews were not sufficiently proficient in nighttime battalion-size combat air assaults — though in a crunch, Stincr knew that, if he had to, he could make up for it with trained and ready crews already available in the XVIII Airborne Corps aviation battalions.
Back at Fort Bragg, Stiner reviewed his visit to Panama with General Thurman — an experience that had left Stiner particularly unimpressed with the centerpiece of BLUE SPOON, the gradual buildup. The recent buildup in May hadn't deterred Noriega one bit, and there was no guarantee that BLUE SPOON would have more than a fifty-fifty chance of success.
"My people at Bragg," Stiner told his boss, "will get to work on a plan to neutralize Noriega's power base. We plan to take out the PDF and the national police in one fell swoop, and in one night.
"With your blessing, sir, he continued, "I hope to visit Panama again in about two weeks, together with the leaders of the units that I will most likely select for this operation, and I plan to continue visiting Panama frequently until all this is over"
"Drive on," Thurman said. "And keep me informed."
On August 10, 1989, the President nominated General Colin Powell to be the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to take office on October 1. Earlier, General Powell had taken over the United States Forces Command from General Palastra, which had made him Stiner's immediate boss; but he already knew General Powell well from his days at JSOTF, when Powell had been the Executive Assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.
While General Powell was still at FORSCOM, he scheduled a one-day trip to Bragg to get a firsthand look at the XVIII Corps's readiness and planning initiatives for Panama. Though his visit was scheduled for only one day, bad weather kept him at Bragg, and Stiner took advantage of the opportunity to point out the revisions he had in mind for BLUE SPOON.
Powell agreed with Stiner — and Thurman — that the force buildup originally envisaged for BLUE SPOON took too long (twenty-two days) especially if a crisis hit. A quick-strike, one-night operation using the capabilities of the XVIII Airborne Corps and the Special Operations Command was the way to go. Stiner, of course, knew the capabilities of both commands better than anybody else, and he also knew how to meld them together as one fighting team.
"Continue revising the plan," Powell told Stiner.
Later that month, Thurman, Stiner, Hartzog, and Gary Luck, the JSOTF commander, met to get up-to-date. Since April 1988, they concluded, when BLUE SPOON had been published, Noriega had grown increasingly defiant and his forces better equipped and trained. A twenty-two-day buildup could result in prolonged fighting, more casualties, and more opportunities for Noriega to take hostages or escape to the hills to lead a guerrilla war. Stiner wanted a quick strike that would lead to decisive victory.
During September, as the staffs of the XVIII Airborne Corps, SOUTHCOM, and SOCOM continued to revise the plan in that direction, Stiner made another visit to Panama, this time with the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, the Assistant Division Commander of the 7th Infantry Division, the Ranger Regimental Commander, and Gary Luck, along with their operations and intelligence officers — including another of his best planners, to augment the four he'd already left there. Again, they traveled at night in civilian clothes, and in the same C-20 used for the first trip. At Howard AFB, they were met by Hartzog and Cisneros, and went directly to Fort Clayton for briefings.