The next day, the party broke into smaller groups and took off on clandestine reconnaissance missions, to get a better feel for the targets that had been selected, if a contingency operation was launched. Twenty-seven prime targets had been selected. Some key installations and facilities would have to be protected. Other targets would have to be "taken out" — or "neutralized."
Targets to be protected included the Pacora River Bridge, the three locks on the Canal, Madden Dam, the Bridge of Americas (crossing the Canal at Panama City), Howard Air Force Base, the U.S. Embassy, and all U.S. dependents living on military installations shared by the PDF.
Targets to be taken out included the Comandancia and all PDF military installations.
The reconnaissance gave the commanders awareness of what they would actually be facing — though no one knew yet which targets would be assigned to which commander. Stiner later made these decisions, based on his knowledge of unit capabilities. Some targets could be taken only by SOF forces, while others were better suited for conventional units.
Meanwhile, the Senate had confirmed General Thurman as CINC, and on Saturday, September 30, 1989, he took command from General Woerner at SOCOM headquarters in Panama. One day later, at midnight, Colin Powell took over as chairman of the JCS; his welcoming ceremony occurred the next day.
THE OCTOBER 3 COUP ATTEMPT
On Sunday evening, October 1, a woman phoned the CIA station chief in Panama City: "Can you meet me downtown where we can talk? 1 have something that you need to know about." Though she refused to identify herself, the meeting was arranged.
She turned out to be the wife of Major Moises Giroldi, the commander of Noriega's security forces at the Comandancia.
"My husband is very worried about what the Noriega regime is doing to our country," she told the station chief, "and has decided to take action. Tomorrow morning at nine, as Noriega arrives at the Comandancia, my husband and others who oppose him will conduct a coup. We may need U.S. help to block PDF forces moving against the coup. We'll be back in touch."
That night, when the meeting was reported to General Thurman, he immediately went to his command post in the tunnel at Quarry Heights, where he hoped to pick up more news.
Sometime after midnight, a pair of CIA agents went straight from a meeting with Major Giroldi to Quarry Heights, where they confirmed to Thurman that the conspirators planned to grab Noriega at about nine that morning and take control of the Comandancia, thus cutting him off from communications with his field units. However, they might need U.S. help to block the major roads from the west, in case PDF units reacted to the coup.
Once in control, Giroldi planned to talk Noriega into retiring to Chiriqui Province in western Panama, where Noriega had a country house — one of his many luxury homes.
The CIA agents went on to explain that Giroldi, who had played a large part in crushing the coup attempt eighteen months earlier (he'd identified the conspirators, who had then all been jailed and tortured), was not exactly a man of conspicuous integrity, and could not be totally trusted now.
Though he had a bad feeling about the entire CIA report, General Thurman decided to pass it up to the Pentagon, just in case, and at about 2:30 in the morning, he reached General Kelly at home on his secure phone. After Thurman described what was going on, Kelly asked for his thoughts. "My advice is to wait and see what happens," Thurman said.
Soon after that, Generals Kelly and Powell met in the Pentagon with Rear Admiral Ted Shafer, the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose analysts were already busy trying to check out the coup information. The immediate consensus was that the whole thing was likely a trick or a deception; but if not, the plan was ill-conceived and unlikely to succeed.
By this time, Secretary Cheney was in his office for a heads-up from Powell, followed by a further review by Kelly and Shafer. All four then went to the Oval Office to update the President, where Powell recommended holding off on a decision until there was further information. "If there's a coup," Powell told the President, "we need to watch it develop before we act." The President agreed.
That day, the coup did not go off. But Mrs. Giroldi reported it was on for the next morning, October 3.
That morning, Noriega arrived earlier than usual at the Comandancia; the ceremonial guard force met the entourage in the normal way, but then took the dictator into custody — sparking an immediate argument between Noriega and Giroldi. Shots were fired, which General Thurman could hear at his quarters in Quarry Heights about a mile from the Comandancia.
Thurman immediately called Powell with a report.
By 9:00, it was clear a coup was under way, but its outcome was still far from certain. By noon, Panamanian radio announced that a coup was in progress.
Meanwhile, under the guise of a routine exercise, U.S. forces blocked the road to Fort Amador, though the Panamanian 5th Infantry Company based there had not attempted to react. At about the same time, two PDF lieutenants, identified as coup liaison negotiators, arrived at the front gate of Fort Clayton and asked to see Cisneros (now a major general), who spoke fluent Spanish. Thurman told Cisneros to talk to them.
According to the lieutenants, the coup leaders had control of Noriega and his staff, and were now looking for an honorable way for the dictator to step down, yet remain in Panama; but when Cisneros offered to take him into custody at Fort Clayton, the lieutenants refused. They had no intention of turning him over to the United States. They still pressed for a U.S. roadblock at the Bridge of the Americas, however, to prevent Panamanian forces from coming up from Rio Hato.
Cisneros made no promises.
Talking Noriega into stepping down turned out to be a much more formidable undertaking than Giroldi had imagined. What the two men said to each other, we'll never know, but we do know that Noriega out-talked Giroldi. Rather than continue the conversation, Giroldi left Noriega in a locked room for a few minutes, then went off to regroup. It was a fatal mistake: The room had a telephone. Noriega (it was later learned) evidently got in touch with Vicki Amado, his number-one mistress, and asked her to contact the commanders of the 6th and 7th Companies at Rio Hato and the PDF Mechanized Battalion 2000 at Fort Cimarron, some twenty miles northeast of the city.
Soon, a 727 launched from Tocumen International Airport, ten miles east of Panama City, landed at Rio Hato and began shuttling the 6th and 7th Companies back to Tocumen. Meanwhile, Battalion 2000, ten miles farther east at Fort Cimarron, headed to Tocumen with a convoy of trucks and V- 150 and V-300 armored cars. There they picked up the 6th and 7th Companies and went on to the Comandancia.
The forces the coup leaders feared had merely flown over the Comandancia, linked up with other reinforcements, and entered the compound from the eastern side — actions that proved very enlightening to Stiner and his planners as they revised BLUE SPOON.
At this point, it was obvious the coup was over. Shots from inside the Comandancia could be heard — executions. Major Giroldi and his number two, a PDF captain, were taken to Tinajitas (five miles north of the city, and the home of the 1st Infantry Company), tortured until they identified the other coup leaders, and executed.
"The PDF's response to the coup seriously demonstrated considerable military capability and resourcefulness," Carl Stiner remarks. "That day's events made it very apparent to me that if democracy was ever going to succeed in Panama, we had to clean out the whole kit and caboodle, including Noriega, his PDF force, the command-and-control structure (specifically the Comandancia) — and the national police as well. That was not all — as we came to learn. Noriega had placed his disciples in control of every key position in every institution of government, and all of them were on the take in some form or other. They would all have to go."