1 looked him in the eye. “Did you bring along clean underwear and a shaving kit?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“Then I hope the ones you’re wearing are clean, because if you don’t unblock my plane, you arc getting ready to take a free ride to the United States—with me.”
He looked at me for a moment, smiled, and then said, “Good luck, my friend.”
Moments later, on his order, the construction equipment that blocked my plane was removed, and we took off, following the C-141 carrying the hostages.
It was a new day, Saturday, October 12, 1985.
FOR all of us in the JSOTF, as well as the Navy participants (Rear Admiral Dave Jeremiah, his staff, and all the crews of the USS Saratoga), things had gone very well. They had all done an outstanding job, with utmost proficiency and professional competence. We had been able to bring about a successful conclusion to a very complex and high-stakes situation.
When we landed back at Pope Air Force Base, my aide handed me a card, which indicated that although this was only the twelfth of October, we had already been on the road for 154 days that year, had been in fifteen different countries, and had flown 197,000 miles. Some of these missions had gone well, others had been frustrating; but all of them had been rewarding learning experiences in the war against terrorism, and many close relationships had been developed with our allies.
I was amused to learn later that warrants for my arrest had been issued by both Italy and Egypt. However, for the next two years I continued to travel on missions through both countries, usually in a plain flight suit, without ever being questioned or delayed.
In fact, forty-one days after the Achille Lauro incident, we found ourselves back in Sigonella again to deal with an Egyptian Air flight that had been hijacked to Malta.
On this mission I remained in constant radio contact with Major General Robert Weigand, who was stationed in Egypt and was accompanying the Egyptian 777 Force on an Egyptian C-130 to Malta to undertake a rescue operation for the hostages on the Egypt airliner. Bob had told me that the Egyptians had requested our assistance in breaching the airliner.
While we were readying our helicopters for assisting the Egyptians, Captain Bill Spearman showed up and said, “Your friends want to see you down at the airfield VIP lounge.”
“What friends?” I said.
“Your Italian friends.”
“Bill,” 1 told him, “I don’t have time to fool with them. We’ve got a hijacking to contend with, and the Egyptians need our assistance.”
“You’ve got to go meet with them,” he insisted.
We went back and forth for a few more minutes, until I finally consented to go with him, but only for ten minutes.
And since I was uncertain about their mood, 1 decided to take along a couple Special Forces escorts for company.
When I walked into the lounge, four or five Italian senior officers (though not my three-star friend) jumped up and said, “Welcome back! We knew you were coming!”
“How did you know that?”
“Because your plane used the same call sign as last time,” they said, smiling.
My concerns turned out to be far misplaced. The get-together was very jovial.
And then, as I was leaving, the Italians announced, “We thought the operation with the ship went well; it was the politicians that screwed things up.”
Unfortunately, after readying a Blackhawk and two of our best breachers for the flight to Malta, it turned out we were not able to assist the Egyptians.
We learned later that a Libyan employee in the control tower at Malta had convinced the Maltese to stipulate that assistance could only be flown in by an Italian helicopter, knowing full well the time it would take to get clearance for such a mission from Rome. The Egyptians, meanwhile, went ahead with the operation. In the process, they used far more explosives than were necessary, resulting in the death of sixty passengers, making it the bloodiest hijacking up to that time.
CONSEQUENCES
My earlier fears about the capacity and responsiveness of the Italian judicial system proved to be misplaced. The Italian judicial authorities not only quickly brought the hijackers to trial, they widened their investigation, and were able to identify many others involved in the conspiracy that led to the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. The investigation was completed in record time and the cases were brought to trial before the Genoa Assize Court in 1986.
The following received sentences as indicated.
PLO officials deemed ultimately responsible:Abu Abbas: life in absentia
Ozzudin Badrakham (a PLO accomplice): life in absentia
Ziad el-Omar (a PLO accomplice): life in absentia
HIJACKERS
Magied al-Molqi: thirty years
Ibrahim Abdel Atif: twenty-four years
Ahmed al-Hassan: fifteen years
Abdullah Ali-Hammad: charges dropped; he was a minor at the time
ACCOMPLICES
Youssef Saad: six years (for furnishing funds and weapons)
Abdul Rahim Khalid: seven years (for furnishing funds and weapons)
Mohammed Issa Abbas: six months, added to an existing seven years (for possession of weapons and explosives)
Said Candura: eight months (for possession of forged passports)
Some years later, before I left active duty as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command, my wife, Sue, and I were invited to Egypt by the Egyptian Minister of Defense on behalf of President Mubarak. They invited me to review Egyptian special-operations capabilities and the assistance the United States could provide Egyptian forces in dealing with the terrorist threat then causing internal problems—terrorist attacks on tourist buses, bombings, and the like.
We could not have been treated better, and the follow-up to that visit has been beneficial to both countries.
X
PANAMA: OPERATION BLUE SPOON
From JSOTF, Carl Stiner moved on to command the 82d Airborne Division, and from there, now a lieutenant general, he moved up to command the XVIII Airborne Corps—the Army’s quick response force: Its lead elements could be “wheels-up” within eighteen hours to go anywhere in the world. At the time, the Corps contained four divisions, two separate combat brigades, and an armored cavalry regiment: The 82nd Airborne Division, 101st Air Assault Division, 10th Mountain Division, 24th Mechanized Division, the 194th Armor Brigade, the 197th Infantry Brigade, and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
On August 5, 1989, while evaluating the 28th Infantry Division at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, during the division’s annual summer training, Stiner took an afternoon off to fly to Fort Monroe, Virginia, for General Max Thurman’s change-of-command and retirement ceremony. High-ranking officers from every service would be there, as well as key people from the Department of Defense and Congress.
Thurman, the TRADOC commander, was known as a man who got things done—who could successfully take on the toughest jobs. Some years earlier, when Thurman had been a two-star, the Army’s recruiting program had been on the rocks, and a number of recruiters were facing courts-martial for untoward activities. General Shy Meyer, the Army Chief of Staff, had picked Thurman to straighten the mess out, and he had, in spades.
Since Stiner had to rush directly from the field to the aircraft, he had no chance to change out of his fatigues. This was just as well; he had to be back in Pennsylvania later that evening to supervise live-fire activities, which would prevent him from attending the evening reception; but he did not want to miss the ceremony itself, and the chance to celebrate his old friend’s accomplishments. The two men had known each other since 1973, when Thurman had been the Commander of Division Artillery and Stiner the G-3 Operations Officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. They had served together again from August 1979 to March 1980, this time in the Pentagon, working for General Meyer (Thurman had been the Director for Program Analysis and Evaluation for the Army, while Stiner was the Exec for Staff Action Control).
 
; After the ceremony ended, Stiner stood at the rear of the reviewing stand to greet General Thurman and apologize for missing the reception. “Let’s step over here for a minute,” Thurman replied. “I have something I want to tell you. But let me get rid of these people.” He turned to other well-wishers waiting to shake his hand. “I’ll see you all over at the reception,” he told them, shooing them off. “I have to talk to Carl Stiner for a couple of minutes. ”
He led Stiner to a quiet spot about thirty feet from the reviewing stand. “What 1 am about to tell you is close-hold, he said. After a quick nod from Stiner, he went on. ”I am not retiring. The Noriega regime in Panama has got the President very worried. For that reason, I’m being retained on active duty to take command of SOUTHCOM“—the United States Southern Command. SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility included Central and South America, and its mission was mainly security assistance and counterdrug activities. ”Though I’m not the CINC yet, I have already talked to Carl Vuono and Admiral Crowe“—Vuono was the Army Chief of Staff and Crowe was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—”and you are my man in Panama. I’m holding you responsible for contingency planning and combat operations that may have to be executed there. I want you to go down and take a look at the staff, the training readiness, and whatever else needs it.”
“What about the joint task force already down there?” Stiner asked. U.S. Army South (USARSO), commanded by Army Major General Bernie Loefke, included all the forces already stationed in Panama.
“You absorb it,” Thurman answered. “I’m going to hold you responsible for everything. All forces will be under your control.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The reason I want you is that in XVIII Airborne Corps you’ve got a headquarters twice the size of SOUTHCOM’s, and the best communications, equipment, and trained forces in the Army for conducting contingency opcrations.” 24 By that he meant that XVIII Airborne Corps was a warfighting-capable headquarters, while SOUTHCOM, by the nature of its mission, was not.
“Here is how it is going to work. You remember Admiral McCain”—the CINCPAC from 1968 to 1972, who’d operated from Hawaii. Stincr nodded yes. “There was a man in Vietnam by the name of Westmoreland, who was doing the fighting from Saigon.” He gave Stiner a hard look. “Me McCain, you Westmoreland. 1 can’t give you detailed instructions now, but when I am confirmed by Congress, that is the way it is going to be. Now get with it.”
“Yes, sir,” Stiner answered. There wasn’t much else to say. He understood Thurman’s guidance. He knew exactly what had to be done, and how to go about it.
HISTORY
The isthmus of Panama is one of the world’s most strategically important pieces of real estate. At its narrowest, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are barely fifty miles apart, making a link between them feasible. The economic, political, and military ramifications of this fact arc incalculable.
Once part of Colombia, Panama won its independence in 1903—with help from the United States, which was eager to build a canal across the isthmus on terms Colombia had opposed. That same year, the new nation signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty, which allowed the United States to build the canal. The United States also gained control over a “canal zone,” extending five miles on either side of the fifty-two-mile-long waterway. The canal project was completed in 1914.
As the years passed, the Panamanian people increasingly resented U.S. control of the Canal. Eventually, the United States recognized their concerns, and President Carter negotiated an agreement whereby the United States promised to cede control by the year 2000 and, until that date, to share many U.S. military installations in Panama with Panamanian defense forces. After the handover, the United States would withdraw its troops, and revert all military installations to the Panamanian government.
None of the treaty provisions pleased the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Treaty or no, the Canal remained strategically vital to the United States.
The U.S. Senate shared many of the Joint Chiefs’ concerns. In ratifying the treaty, it inserted a provision that permitted the United States to continue to defend the Panama Canal after 1999.
NORIEGA
Manuel Antonio Noriega rose to power as an intelligence officer for the dictator , Brigadier General Omar Torrijos. After Torrijos’s 1983 death in a plane crash, Noriega took over the Panamanian Defense Force (PDF), an organization that included that country’s armed forces, police, customs, and investigative services. During his rise to power, Noriega had cultivated friends and patrons within the U.S. intelligence community. After Torrijos’s death, he continued this practice, but broadened it, to include clients within Colombia’s Medellín drug cartel and arms traffickers.
By 1985, Noriega was in total control of the country.
The first confrontation between Noriega and the United States took place in June 1987, after the former PDF chief of staff, Colonel Roberto Diaz-Herrera, had publicly accused Noriega of involvement not only in the death of Torrijos, but also in the 1985 murder of an opposition leader, Doctor Hugo Spadafora, and in electoral fraud. The Panamanian people, who had never supported Noriega, took to the streets, but Noriega’s riot police ruthlessly put down the unarmed demonstrations.
The U.S. Senate promptly passed a resolution calling for the dictator to step down. After a Noriega-inflamed mob attacked the U.S. Embassy, the State Department cut off economic and military aid to Panama. Later, on February 5, 1988, federal judges in Miami and Tampa indicted Noriega and assorted henchmen on numerous counts of drug trafficking. Noriega counterattacked by organizing a harassment campaign against U.S. citizens, setting up obstructions to U.S. rights under the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, and turning to other outlaw states—such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Libya—for economic and military assistance. Cuba and Nicaragua provided weapons and instructors to help develop “civilian defense committees,” which became known as “Dignity Battalions,” for intelligence collection and control of the population, while in 1989, Libya contributed $20 million in return for use of Panama as a base to coordinate terrorist activities and insurgent groups in Latin America.
As a result of this military and economic assistance, the PDF grew to a well-equipped and -armed force numbering some 14,000 men.
CONTINGENCY PLANNING: FEBRUARY-NOVEMBER 1988
After the U.S. federal indictments against Noriega, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed General Frederick F. Woerner, Jr., the Commander in Chief of U.S. Southern Command (USCINCSO), to revise existing contingency plans according to the following guidelines: to protect U.S. lives and propcrty; to keep the canal open; to provide for noncombatant evacuation operations in either peaceful or hostile environments; and to develop a plan to assist the government that would eventually replace the Noriega regime.
A series of new plans followed—collectively known as ELABORATE MAZE—which would be executed by Major General Loefke, commander of U.S. Army South (USARSO), as Commander of the Joint Task Force, Panama (JTFP).
These plans envisioned a massive buildup of forces within U.S. bases in Panama. These forces would either intimidate the PDF leaders and cause them to overthrow Noriega, or failing that, invade Panamanian territory and overthrow the PDF.
Though General Woerner’s mass approach offered several serious drawbacks, he favored it over the surprise strategy preferred by some planners, which was that, after a period of buildup, forces from the United States, in concert with Special Operations Forces and General Woerner’s troops, would conduct a quick, hard, deliberate attack against Noriega and the PDF.
The most serious drawback to the Woerner approach: It was too slow. It gave the bad guys time to recover and respond. Thus, if Noriega escaped capture during the initial assault, he could flee to the hills and organize guerrilla warfare. The nearly 30,000 U.S. citizens living in Panama were also vulnerable to hostage-taking-or worse—not to mention the likelihood of heavy civilian casualties and property damage.
ON March 16, 1988, a PDF faction staged a coup attempt at La Comandanc
ia (the PDF headquarters), which Noriega ruthlessly suppressed. Afterward, he purged from the PDF anyone he considered undependable, declared a state of national emergency, cracked down on political opposition, and stepped up anti-U.S. harassment, in the form of severe travel restrictions, searches, and roadblocks.
AFTER reviewing Woerner’s plans, the JCS Chairman, Admiral Crowe, asked Woerner to break OPLAN ELABORATE MAZE into four separate operations orders to facilitate execution. General Woerner’s staff named these collectively, PRAYER BOOK. The first, KLONDIKE KEY, covered noncombatant evacuation operations. U.S. citizens located throughout Panama would be escorted to assembly areas in Panama City and Colon for evacuation to the United States (Panama City, on the Pacific side of the Canal, is the capital of the country. Colon is the Caribbean gateway).
According to the second, POST TIME, the Panama-stationed 193rd Infantry Brigade and forces deploying from the continental United States and the U.S. Atlantic Command would defend U.S. citizens and installations, and the Panama Canal. The forces from the United States would include a brigade from the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, a mechanized infantry battalion from the 5th Mechanized Division, the 6th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, and a carrier battle group. These would constitute the bulk of the force that would implement the other two operations orders in the PRAYER BOOK series—BLUE SPOON and BLIND LOGIC.
BLUE SPOON called for a joint offensive operation to defeat and dismantle the PDF. It would begin with operations conducted by nearly 12,000 troops already in Panama, and would last up to eight days. During the next two weeks, they would be joined by approximately 10,000 more troops from the United States. Meanwhile, a carrier battle group would interdict air and sea routes to Cuba and provide close air support, while an amphibious task force would provide additional ground troops. In addition to U.S.-based forces listed for POST TIME, the SOUTHCOM Commander would employ a joint task force of special operations forces from SOCOM for operations against the PDF leadership, command-and-control facilities, and airfields. The special operations forces would also rescue hostages, conduct reconnaissance, and locate and seize Manuel Noriega.