Date: Mon Jan  4 03:49:45 est 1993
From: "John Covici" <covici@ccs.covici.com>
Message-Id: <2b47fa31.ccs@ccs.covici.com>
Reply-To: "John Covici" <covici@ccs.covici.com>
Organization: Covici Computer Systems
To: uunet!css.itd.umich.edu!pauls@uunet.UU.NET
Subject: Unauthorized Biography of George Bush: Part 32
Status: O
{XXIV: The End of
History} 


One of the defining moments in the
first year of the Bush presidency was
his reaction to the Tiananmen massacre
of June 4, 1989. No one can forget the
magnificent movement of the
antitotalitarian Chinese students, who
used the occasion of the funeral of Hu
Yaobang in the spring of 1989 to launch
a movement of protest and reform
against the monstrous dictatorship of
Deng Xiaoping, Yang Shankun, and Prime
Minister Li Peng. As the portrait of
the old butcher Mao Zedong looked down
from the former imperial palace, the
students erected a statue of liberty
and filled the square with the Ode to
Joy from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. By
the end of May, it was clear that the
Deng regime was attempting to pull
itself together to attempt a convulsive
massacre of its political opposition.
At this point, it is likely that a
pointed and unequivocal public warning
from the U.S. government might
have avoided the looming bloody
crackdown against the students. Even a
warning through secret diplomatic
channels might have sufficed. Bush
undertook neither, and he must bear
responsibility for this blatant
omission. 
   The nonviolent protest of the
students was then crushed by the
martial law troops of the hated and
discredited Communist regime. Untold
thousands of students were killed
outright, and thousands more died in
the merciless death hunt against
political dissidents which followed.
Mankind was horrified. For Bush,
however, the main considerations were
that Deng Xiaoping was part of his own
personal network, with whom Bush had
maintained close contact since at least
1975. Bush's devotion to the immoral
British doctrine of ``geopolitics''
further dictated that, unless and until
the U.S.S.R. had totally collapsed as a
military power, the U.S. alliance with
China as the second-strongest land
power must be maintained at all costs.
Additionally, Bush was acutely
sensitive to the views on China policy
held by his mentor, Henry Kissinger,
whose paw-prints were still to be found
all over U.S. relations with Deng. 
   In the pre-1911 imperial court of
China, the etiquette of the Forbidden
City required that a person approaching
the throne of the ``Son of Heaven''
must prostrate himself before that
living deity, touching both hands and
the forehead to the floor three times.
This is the celebrated ``kow-tow.'' And
it was ``kow-tow'' which sprang to the
lips and pens of commentators all over
the world as they observed Bush's
elaborate propitiation of the Deng
regime. Even cynics were astounded that
Bush could be so deferential to a
regime that was obviously so hated by
its own population that it had to be
considered as being on its last legs. 
   In a press conference held on June
9, in the immediate wake of the
massacre, Bush astounded even the
meretricious White House press corps by
his mild and obsequious tone toward
Deng and his cohorts. Bush limited his
retaliation to a momentary cutoff of
some military sales. That would be all:
``I'm one who lived in China; I
understand the importance of the
relationship with the Chinese people
and with the government. It is in the
interest of the United States to have
good relations....''@s1@s4 
   This was the wimp with a
vengeance, groveling and scraping like
Neville Chamberlain before the
dictators, but there was more to come.
As part of his meek and pathetic
response, Bush had pledged to terminate
all ``high-level exchanges'' with the
Deng crowd. With this public promise,
Bush had cynically lied to the American
people. Shortly before Bush's invasion
of Panama in December, it became known
that Bush had dispatched the two most
prominent Kissinger clones in his
retinue, NSC Chairman Brent Scowcroft
and Undersecretary of State Lawrence
Eagleburger, on a secret mission to
Beijing over the July 4th weekend, less
than a month after the massacre in
Tiananmen. The story about Scowcroft
and Eagleburger, both veterans of
Kissinger Associates, spending the
glorious Fourth toasting the butchers
of Beijing was itself leaked in the
wake of a high-profile public mission
to China involving the same
Kissingerian duo that started December
7, 1989. Bush's cover story for the
second trip was that he wanted to get a
briefing to Deng on the results of the
Bush-Gorbachov Malta summit, which had
just concluded. The second trip was
supposed to lead to the quick release
of Chinese physicist and dissident Fang
Lizhi, who had taken refuge in the U.S.
embassy in Beijing during the massacre;
this did not occur until some time
later. 
   The news of Bush's secret
diplomacy in favor of Deng caused a
widespread wave of sincere and healthy
public disgust with Bush, but this was
shortly overwhelmed by the jingoist
hysteria that accompanied Bush's
invasion of Panama. 
   Bush's handling of the issue of
the immigration status of the Chinese
students who had enrolled at U.S.
universities also illuminated Bush's
character in the wake of Tiananmen. In
Bush's pronouncements in the immediate
wake of the massacre, he absurdly
asserted that there were no Chinese
students who wanted political asylum
here, but also promised that the visas
of these (non-existent) students would
be extended so that they would not be
forced to return to political
persecution and possible death in
mainland China. It later turned out
that Bush had neglected to promulgate
the executive orders that would have
been necessary. In response to Bush's
prevarication about the lives and
well-being of the Chinese students, the
Congress subsequently passed
legislation that would have waived the
requirement that holders of J-visas,
the type commonly obtained by Chinese
students, be required to return to
their home country for two years before
being able to apply for permanent
residence in the U.S. Bush, in an act
of loathsome cynicism, vetoed this
bill. The House voted to override by a
majority of 390 to 25, but Bush
Democrats in the Senate allowed Bush's
veto to be sustained by a vote of 62 to
37. Bush, squirming under the broad
public obloquy brought on by his
despicable behavior, finally issued
regulations that would temporarily
waive the requirement of returning home
for most of the students. 

   Noriega and the Thornburgh
Doctrine
 
   George Bush's involvement with
Panama goes back to operations
conducted in Central America and the
Caribbean by Senator Prescott Bush's
Jupiter Island Harrimanite cabal. For
the Bush clan, the cathexis of Panama
is very deep, since it is bound up with
the exploits of Theodore Roosevelt, the
founder of twentieth-century U.S.
imperialism, which the Bush family is
determined to defend to the farthest
corners of the planet. For it was
Theodore Roosevelt who had used the
U.S.S. {Nashville} and other U.S. naval
forces to prevent the Colombian
military from repressing the
U.S.-fomented revolt of Panamanian
soldiers in November 1903, thus setting
the stage for the creation of an
independent Panama and for the signing
of the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which
created a Panama Canal Zone under U.S.
control. Roosevelt's ``cowboy
diplomacy'' had been excoriated in the
U.S. press of those days as ``piracy.'' 
   Theodore Roosevelt had in December
1904 expounded his so-called
``Roosevelt Corollary'' to the Monroe
Doctrine, in reality a complete
repudiation and perversion of the
anticolonial essence of John Quincy
Adams's original warning to the British
and other imperialists. The
self-righteous Teddy Roosevelt had
stated, ``Chronic wrongdoing ... may in
America, as elsewhere, ultimately
require intervention by some civilized
nation, and in the Western Hemisphere
the adherence of the United States to
the Monroe Doctrine may force the
United States, however reluctantly, in
flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise of an
international police power.''@s1@s8 
   The old imperialist idea of
Theodore Roosevelt was quickly revived
by the Bush administration during 1989.
Through a series of actions by Attorney
General Richard Thornburgh, the U.S.
Supreme Court, and CIA Director William
Webster, the Bush regime arrogated to
itself a sweeping carte blanche for
extraterritorial interference in the
internal affairs of sovereign states,
all in open defiance of the norms of
international law. These illegal
innovations can be summarized under the
heading of the ``Thornburgh Doctrine.''
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
arrogated to itself the ``right'' to
search premises outside of U.S.
territory and to arrest and kidnap
foreign citizens outside of U.S.
jurisdiction, all without the
concurrence of the judicial process of
the other countries whose territory was
thus subject to violation. U.S. armed
forces were endowed with the ``right''
to take police measures against
civilians. The CIA demanded that an
Executive Order prohibiting the
participation of U.S. government
officials and military personnel in the
assassination of foreign political
leaders, which had been issued by
President Ford in October 1976, be
rescinded. There is every indication
that this presidential ban on
assassinations of foreign officials and
politicians, which had been promulgated
in response to the Church and Pike
Committees' investigations of CIA
abuses, has indeed been abrogated. To
round out this lawless package, an
opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court
issued on February 28, 1990 permitted
U.S. officials abroad to arrest (or
kidnap) and search foreign citizens
without regard to the laws or policy of
the foreign nation subject to this
interference. Through these actions,
the Bush regime effectively staked its
claim to universal extraterritorial
jurisdiction, the classic posture of an
empire seeking to assert universal
police power. The Bush regime aspired
to the status of a world power {legibus
solutus,} a superpower exempted from
all legal restrictions.@s1@s9 
   The hostility of the U.S.
government against General Noriega was
occasioned first of all by Noriega's
refusal to be subservient to the U.S.
policy of waging war against the
Sandinista regime. This was explained
by Noriega in an interview with CBS
journalist Mike Wallace on February 4,
1988, in which General Noriega
described the U.S. campaign against him
as a ``political conspiracy of the
Department of Justice.'' General
Noriega described a visit to Panama on
December 17, 1985 by Admiral John
Poindexter, then the chief of the U.S.
National Security Council, who demanded
that General Noriega join in acts of
war against Nicaragua, and then
threatened Panama with economic warfare
and political destabilization when
Noriega refused to go along with
Poindexter's plans: ``Noriega: Poindexter said
he came in the name of President
Reagan. He said that Panama and Mexico
were acting against U.S. policy in
Central America because we were saying
that the Nicaragua conflict must be
settled peacefully. And that wasn't
good enough for the plans of the Reagan
administration. The single thing that
will protect us from being economically
and politically attacked by the United
States is that we allow the Contras to
be trained in Panama for the fight
against Nicaragua. 
   ``Wallace: He told you that you
would be economically attacked if you
didn't do that? 
   ``Noriega: It was stated, Panama
must expect economic consequences. Your
interest was that we should aid the
Contras, and we said `no' to that.'' 
   Poindexter outlined plans for a
U.S. invasion of Nicaragua that would
require the fig leaf of participation
of troops from other countries in the
region: 
   ``Noriega: Yes, they wanted to
attack Nicaragua and the only reason it
hadn't already happened was that Panama
was in the way, and all they wanted was
that Panama would open the way and make
it possible for them to continue their
plans.'' 
   According to Noriega's adviser,
Panamanian Defense Forces Captain
Cortiso, ``[the U.S.] wanted that
Panamanian forces attack first. Then we
would receive support from U.S.
troops.''@s3@s7 
   It was in this same December 1985
period that Bush and Don Gregg met with
Ambassador Briggs to discuss Noriega's
refusal to follow dictation from
Washington. According to Gregg in his
deposition in the Christic Institute
lawsuit, ``I think we [i.e., Bush and
Gregg] came away from the meeting with
Ambassador Briggs with the sense that
Noriega was a growing problem,
politically, militarily, and possibly
in the drug area.'' When pressed to
comment about Noriega's alleged
relations to drug trafficking, Gregg
could only add: ``It would have been
part of the general picture of Noriega
as a political problem, corruption, and
a general policy problem.... I don't
recall any specific discussion of
Noriega's involvement in drugs,'' Gregg
testified.@s2@s2 
   In this case it is quite possible
that Don Gregg is for once providing
accurate testimony: The U.S. government
decision to begin interference in
Panama's internal affairs for the
overthrow of Noriega had nothing to do
with questions of drug trafficking. It
was predicated on Noriega's rejection
of Poindexter's ultimatum demanding
support for the Nicaraguan Contras,
themselves a notorious gang of
drug-pushers enjoying the full support
of Bush and the U.S. government. 
   In addition to the question of
Contra aid, another rationale for
official U.S. rage against Noriega had
emerged during 1985. Panamanian
President Nicky Barletta, a darling of
the State Department and a former vice
president of the genocidal World Bank,
attempted to impose a package of
conditionalities and economic
adjustment measures dictated by the
International Monetary Fund. This was a
package of brutal austerity, and riots
soon erupted in protest against
Barletta. Noriega refused to comply
with Barletta's request to use the
Panamanian military forces to put down
these anti-austerity riots, and the IMF
austerity package was thus compromised.
Barletta was shortly forced out as
President. 
   During 1986-87, Noriega cooperated
with U.S. law enforcement officials in
a number of highly effective antidrug
operations. This successful joint
effort was documented by letters of
commendation sent to Noriega by John C.
Lawn, at that time head of the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration. On
February 13, 1987, Lawn wrote to
Noriega: ``Your longstanding support of
the Drug Enforcement Administration is
greatly appreciated. International
police cooperation and vigorous pursuit
of drug traffickers are our common
goal.'' Later in the same year, Lawn
wrote to Noriega to commend the
latter's contributions to Operation
Pisces, a joint U.S.-Panamanian effort
against drug-smuggling and drug money
laundering. Panamanian participation
was facilitated by a tough new law,
called Law 23, which contained tough
new provisions against drug money
laundering. Lawn's letter to Noriega of
May 27, 1987 includes the following: 
   ``As you know, the recently
concluded Operation Pisces was
enormously successful: many millions of
dollars and many thousands of pounds of
drugs have been taken from the drug
traffickers and international money
launderers.... 
   ``Again, the DEA and officials of
Panama have together dealt an effective
blow against drug dealers and
international money launderers. Your
personal commitment to Operation Pisces
and the competent, professional, and
tireless efforts of other officials in
the Republic of Panama were essential
to the final positive outcome of this
investigation. Drug dealers throughout
the world now know that the profits of
their illegal operations are not
welcome in Panama. The operation of May
6 led to the freezing of millions of
dollars in the bank accounts of drug
dealers. Simultaneously, bank papers
were confiscated that gave officials
important insights into the drug trade
and the laundering operations of the
drug trade. The DEA has always valued
close cooperation, and we are prepared
to proceed together against
international drug dealers whenever the
opportunity presents itself.''@s2@s4 
   By a striking coincidence, it was
in June 1987, just one month after this
glowing tribute had been written, that
the U.S. government declared war
against Panama, initiating a campaign
to destabilize Noriega on the pretexts
of lack of democracy and corruption. On
June 30, 1987, the U.S. State
Department demanded the ouster of
General Noriega. Elliott Abrams, the
assistant secretary of state for Latin
American affairs, later indicted for
perjury in 1991 for his role in the
Iran-Contra scandal and coverup, to
which he pled guilty, made the
announcement. Abrams took note of a
resolution passed on June 23 by the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
demanding the creation of a
``democratic government'' in Panama,
and officially concurred, thus making
the toppling of Noriega the official
U.S. policy. Abrams also demanded that
the Panamanian military be freed of
``political corruption.'' 
   These were precisely the
destabilization measures which
Poindexter had threatened 18 months
earlier. The actual timing of the U.S.
demand for the ouster of Noriega
appears to have been dictated by
resentment in the U.S. financial
community over Noriega's apparent
violation of certain taboos in his
measures against drug money laundering.
As the {New York Times} commented on
August 10, 1987: ``The political crisis
follows closely what bankers here saw
as a serious breach of bank secrecy
regulations. Earlier this year, as part
of an American campaign against the
laundering of drug money, the
Panamanian government froze a few
suspect accounts here in a manner that
bankers and lawyers regarded as
arbitrary.'' These were precisely the
actions lauded by the DEA's John Lawn. 
   On August 12, 1987, Noriega
responded to the opposition campaigns
fomented by the U.S. inside Panama by
declaring that the aim of Washington
and its Panamanian minions was ``to
smash Panama as a free and independent
nation. It is a repetition of what
Teddy Roosevelt did when he militarily
attacked following the separation of
Panama from Colombia.'' 
    On August 13, 1987, the {Los
Angeles Times} reported that U.S.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen
Trott, who had headed up the Department
of Justice ``Get Noriega'' Task Force
for more than a year, had sent out
orders to ``pull together everything
that we have on him [Noriega] in order
to see if he is prosecutable.'' This
classic enemies-list operation was
clearly aimed at fabricating drug
charges against Noriega, since that was
the political spin which the U.S.
regime wished to impart to its attack
on Panama. In February 1988, Noriega
was indicted on U.S. drug charges,
despite a lack of evidence and an even
more compelling lack of jurisdiction.
This indictment was quickly followed by
economic sanctions, an embargo on trade
and other economic warfare measures
that were invoked by Washington on
March 2, 1988. All of these measures
were timed to coincide with the ``Super
Tuesday'' presidential preference
primaries in the southern states. 
   During the spring of 1988, the
Reagan administration conducted a
negotiation with Noriega with the
declared aim of convincing him to
relinquish power in exchange for having
the drug charges against him dropped.
In May, Michael G. Kozak, the deputy
assistant secretary of state for
inter-American affairs, had been sent
to Panama to meet with Noriega. Bush
had come under attack from other
presidential candidates, especially
Dukakis, for being soft on Noriega and
seeking a plea bargain with the
Panamanian leader. Bush first took the
floor during the course of an
administration policy-making meeting to
advocate an end of the bargaining with
Noriega. According to press reports,
this proposal was ``hotly contested.''
Then, in a speech in Los Angeles, Bush
made one of his exceedingly rare
departures from the Reagan line, by
announcing with a straight face that a
Bush administration would not ``bargain
with drug dealers'' at home or
abroad.@s2@s5 
   Bush's interest in Noriega
continued after he had assumed the
presidency. On April 6, 1989, Bush
formally declared that the government
of Panama represented an ``unusual and
extraordinary threat'' to U.S. national
security and foreign policy. He invoked
the National Emergencies Act and the
International Emergency Act to declare
a state of ``national emergency'' in
this country to meet the menace
allegedly posed by the nationalists of
little Panama. The May 1, 1989 issue of
{U.S. News and World Report} revealed
that Bush had authorized the
expenditure of $10 million in CIA funds
for operations against the Panamanian
government. These funds were obviously
to be employed to influence the
Panamanian elections, which were
scheduled for early May. The money was
delivered to Panama by CIA bagman
Carlos Eleta Almaran, who had just been
arrested in Georgia on charges of drug
trafficking. On May 2, with one eye on
those elections, Bush attempted to
refurbish his wimp image with a
blustering tirade delivered to the
David Rockefeller-controlled Council of
the Americas in which he stated: ``Let
me say one thing clearly. The U.S.A.
will not accept the results of
fraudulent elections that serve to keep
the supreme commander of the Panamanian
armed forces in power.'' This made
clear that Bush intended to declare the
elections undemocratic if the
pro-Noriega candidates were not
defeated. 
   The CIA's $10 million and other
monies were used to finance an
extensive covert operation which aimed
at stealing the elections on May 7. The
U.S.-supported Civic Democratic
Alliance, whose candidate was Guillermo
Endara, purchased votes, bribed the
election officials, and finally
physically absconded with the official
vote tallies. Because of the massive
pattern of fraud and irregularities,
the Panamanian government annulled the
election. Somewhere along the line, the
usual U.S.-staged ``people power''
upsurge had failed to materialize. The
inability of Bush to force through a
victory by the anti-Noriega opposition
was a first moment of humiliation for
the would-be Rough Rider. 
   Speaking at the commencement
ceremonies of Mississippi State
University in Starkville, Mississippi,
Bush issued a formal call to the
citizens and soldiers of Panama to
overthrow Noriega, asserting that
``they ought to do everything they can
to get Mr. Noriega out of there.''
Asked whether this was a call for a
military coup against Noriega, Bush
replied: ``I would love to see them get
him out of there. Not just the PDF--the
will of the people of Panama.'' Bush
elaborated that his was a call for ``a
revolution....'' 
   During this period, Admiral
William Crowe, the chairman of the U.S.
Joint Chiefs of Staff, attempted to
convince the U.S. commander in Panama,
Gen. Frederick F. Woerner, to accept a
brigade-sized reinforcement of 3,000
troops in addition to the 12,000 men
already stationed in Panama. Woerner
declined the additional men, which the
Pentagon had intended to dispatch with
great fanfare in an attempt to
intimidate Noriega and his triumphant
supporters. 

   Operation Blue Spoon
 
   At this point, the Pentagon
activated preparations for Operation
Blue Spoon, which included a
contingency plan to kidnap Noriega with
the help of a Delta Force unit. There
were discussions about whether an
attempt could be made to abduct Noriega
with any likelihood of success; it was
concluded that Noriega was very wily
and exceedingly difficult to track. It
was in the course of these
deliberations that Defense Secretary
Cheney is reported to have told Crowe,
``You know, the President has got a
long history of vindictive political
actions. Cross Bush and you pay,'' he
said, supplying the names of a few
victims and adding: ``Bush remembers
and you have to be careful.''@s2@s6
Thus intimidated by Bush, the military
commanders concurred in Bush's
announcement of a brigade-sized
reinforcement for Woerner, plus the
secret dispatch of Delta Forces and
Navy Seals. On July 17, Bush approved a
plan to ``assert U.S. treaty rights''
by undertaking demonstrative military
provocations in violation of the
treaty. Woerner was soon replaced by
Gen. Maxwell Reid ``Mad Max'' Thurman,
who would bring no qualms to his
assignment of aggression. Thurman took
over at the Southern Command on
September 30. 
   In the wake of this tirade, the
U.S. forces in Panama began a
systematic campaign of military
provocations. In July, the U.S. forces
began practicing how to seize control
of important Panamanian military
installations and civilian objectives,
all in flagrant violation of the Panama
Canal Treaty. On July 1, for example,
the town of Gamboa was seized and held
for 24 hours by U.S. troops, tanks, and
helicopters. The mayor of the town and
30 other persons were illegally
detained during this ``maneuver.'' In
Chilibre, the U.S. forces occupied the
key water purification plant serving
Panama City and Colon. On August 15,
Bush escalated the rhetoric still
further by proclaiming that he had the
obligation ``to kidnap Noriega.'' Then,
during the first days of October, there
came an abortive U.S.-sponsored coup
attempt, followed by the public
humiliation of George Bush, who had
failed to measure up to the standards
of efficacy set by Theodore Roosevelt. 
   The provocations continued all the
way up to the December 20 invasion. 
   In his speech delivered at 7:20
a.m. on December 21, 1989 announcing
the U.S. invasion, Bush said: ``Many attempts have been
made to resolve this crisis through
diplomacy and negotiations. All were
rejected by the dictator of Panama,
Gen. Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug
trafficker. 
   ``Last Friday, Noriega declared his
military dictatorship to be in a state
of war with the United States and
publicly threatened the lives of
Americans in Panama. The very next day
forces under his command shot and
killed an unarmed American serviceman,
wounded another, arrested and brutally
beat a third American serviceman and
then brutally interrogated his wife,
threatening her with sexual abuse. That
was enough.''@s2@s7

   Bush Orders Holocaust
 
   The U.S. military operations,
which got under way just after midnight
on Tuesday, were conducted with unusual
ferocity. Mad Max Thurman sent in the
new Stealth and A-7 fighter-bombers,
and AC-13 gunships. The neighborhood
around Noriega's Comandancia, called El
Chorillo, was bombarded with a
vengeance and virtually razed, as was
the working-class district of San
Miguelito, and large parts of the city
of Colon. 
   U.S. commanders had been
instructed that Bush wished to avoid
U.S. casualties at all costs, and that
any hostile fire was to be answered by
overwhelming U.S. firepower, without
regard to the number of civilian
casualties that this might produce
among the Panamanians. Many of the
Panamanian civilian dead were secretly
buried in unmarked mass graves during
the dead of night by the U.S. forces;
many other bodies were consumed in the
holocaust of fires that leveled El
Chorillo. The Institute of Seismology
counted 417 bomb bursts in Panama City
alone during the first 14 hours of the
U.S. invasion. For many days there were
no U.S. estimates of the civilian dead
(or ``collateral damage''), and
eventually the Bush regime set the
death toll for Panamanian noncombatants
at slightly over 200. In reality, as
{Executive Intelligence Review} and
former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey
Clark pointed out, there had been
approximately 5,000 innocent civilian
victims, including large numbers of
women and children. 
   U.S. forces rounded up 10,000
suspected political opponents of
``democracy'' and incarcerated them in
concentration camps, calling many of
them prisoners of war. Many political
prisoners were held for months after
the invasion without being charged with
any specific offense, a clear violation
of the norms of {habeas corpus.} The
combined economic devastation caused by
30 months of U.S. sanctions and
economic warfare, plus the results of
bombardments, firefights and torchings,
had taken an estimated $7 billion out
of the Panamanian economy, in which
severe poverty was the lot of most of
the population, apart from the
{rabiblanco} bankers who were the main
support for Bush's intervention. The
bombing left 15,000 homeless. The
Endara government purged several
thousand government officials and civil
servants under the pretext that they
had been tainted by their association
with Noriega. 
   Perhaps not by accident, the new
U.S. puppet regime could only be
described as a congeries of drug
pushers and drug money launderers. The
most succinct summary was provided by
the {International Herald Tribune} on
February 7, 1990, which reported: ``The
nation's new President Guillermo Endara
has for years been a director of one of
the Panamanian banks used by Colombia's
drug traffickers. Guillermo Ford, the
Second Vice President and chairman of
the banking commission, is a part owner
of the Dadeland Bank of Florida, which
was named in a court case two years ago
as a central financial institution for
one of the biggest Medelli@aan money
launderers, Gonzalo Mora. Rogelio Cruz,
the new Attorney General, has been a
director of the First Interamericas
Bank, owned by Rodriguez Orejuela, one
of the bosses of the Cali Cartel gang
in Colombia.'' 
   The portly Guillermo Endara was
also the business partner and corporate
attorney of Carlos Eleta Almaran, the
CIA bagman already mentioned. Eleta
Almaran, the owner of the Panamanian
branch of Philip Morris Tobacco was
arraigned in Bibb County, Georgia in
April 1989 by DEA officials, who
accused him of conspiracy to import 600
kilos of cocaine per month into the
U.S., and to set up dummy corporations
to launder the estimated $300 million
in profits this project was expected to
produce. Eleta was first freed on $8
million bail; after the ``successful''
U.S. invasion of Panama, all charges
against him were ordered dropped by
Bush and Thornburgh.
   As for Endara's first vice
president, Ricardo Arias Calderon, his
brother, Jaime Arias Calderon, was
president of the First Interamericas
Bank when that bank was controlled by
the Cali Cartel. Jaime Arias Calderon
was also the co-owner of the Banco
Continental, which laundered $40
million in drug money, part of which
was used to finance the activities of
the anti-Noriega opposition. Thus, all
of Bush's most important newly
installed puppets were implicated in
drug-dealing. 
   The invasion presented some very
difficult moments for Bush. From the
beginning of the operation late on
December 20, until Christmas Eve, the
imposing U.S. martial apparatus had
proven incapable of locating and
capturing Noriega. The U.S. Southern
Command was terrorized when a few
Noriega loyalists launched a surprise
attack on U.S. headquarters with
mortars, scattering the media personnel
who had been grinding out their
propaganda. 
   There was great fear through the
U.S. command that Noriega had
successfully implemented a plan for the
PDF to melt away to arms caches and
secret bases in the Panamanian jungle
for a prolonged guerrilla warfare
effort. As it turned out, Noriega had
failed to give the order to disperse. 

   At War With the Vatican

   Then, on the evening of December
24, it was reported that Noriega, armed
with an Uzi machine gun, had made his
way unchallenged and undetected to the
Papal Nunciature in Panama City where
he had asked for and obtained political
asylum. 
   The standoff that then developed
encapsulated the hereditary war of the
Bush family with the Holy See and the
Roman Catholic Church. For eight days,
U.S. troops surrounded the Nunciature,
which they proceeded to bombard with
deafening decibels of explicitly
satanic heavy metal and other hard rock
music, which, according to some reports,
had been personally chosen by Mad Max
Thurman in order to ``unnerve Noriega
and the Nuncio,'' Monsignor LaBoa. 
   At the same time, Bush ordered the
State Department to carry out real acts
of thuggery in making threatening
representations to the Holy See. It
became clear that Roman Catholic
priests, nuns, monks and prelates would
soon be in danger in many countries of
Ibero-America. Nevertheless, the
Vatican declined to expel Noriega from
the Nunciature in accordance with U.S.
demands. Bush's forces in Panama had
shown they were ready to play fast and
loose with diplomatic immunity. A
number of foreign embassies were broken
into by U.S. troops while they were
frantically searching for Noriega, and
the Cuban and Nicaraguan embassies were
ringed with tanks and troops in a
ham-handed gesture of intimidation. It
is clear that in this context, Bush
contemplated the storming of the
Nunciature by U.S. forces. 
   In Panama City, the
Endara-Ford-Arias Calderon forces
mobilized their BMW base and hired
hundreds of those who had nothing to
eat for militant demonstrations outside
of the Nunciature. These were liberally
seeded with U.S. special forces and
other commandos in civilian clothes. As
the demonstrations grew more menacing,
and the U.S. troops and tanks made no
move to restrain them, it was clear
that the U.S. forces were preparing to
stage a violent but ``spontaneous''
assault by the masses on the Nunciature
that would include the assassination of
Noriega and the small group of his
co-workers who had accompanied him into
that building. At about this time,
Monsignor LaBoa warned Noriega, ``you
could be lynched like Mussolini.''
Noriega appears to have concluded that
remaining in the Nunciature meant
certain death for himself and his
subordinates at the hands of the U.S.
commandos operating under the cover of
the mob. LaBoa and the others 
on the staff of the Nunciature would
also be in grave danger. On January 3,
1990, after thanking LaBoa and giving
him a letter to the Pope, Noriega,
dressed in his general's uniform, left
the Nunciature and surrendered to
General Cisneros. 

   A Crime and a Failure
 
   In Bush's speech of December 20 he
had offered the following justification
for his act of war, Operation Just
Cause: ``The goals of the United States
have been to safeguard the lives of
Americans, to defend democracy in
Panama, to combat drug trafficking, and
to protect the integrity of the Panama
Canal Treaty.'' 
   If these were the goals, then
Bush's invasion of Panama must be
counted not only a crime, but also a
failure. 
   On April 5, 1991, newspapers all
over Ibero-America carried details of a
new report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration confirming that the
U.S.-installed puppet President of
Panama, Guillermo Endara, had been an
officer of at least six companies which
had been demonstrably implicated in
laundering drug money. These were the
Banco General, the Banco de Colombia,
the Union Bank of Switzerland, the
Banco Aleman, the Primer Banco de
Ahorros, Sudameris, Banaico and the
Banco del Istmo. The money laundered
came from a drug-smuggling ring headed
up by Augusto Falcon and Salvador
Magluta of Colombia, who are reported
to have smuggled an average of one ton
of cocaine per month into Florida
during the decade 1977-87, including
many of the years during which Bush's
much-touted South Florida Task Force
and related operations were in
operation. 
   With the puppet President so
heavily implicated in the activity of
the international drug mafia, it can be
no surprise that the plague of illegal
drugs has markedly worsened in the wake
of Bush's invasion. According to the
London {Independent} of March 5, 1991,
``statistics now indicate that since
General Noriega's departure, cocaine
trafficking has, in fact, prospered''
in the country. On March 1, the State
Department had conceded that the
turnover of drug money laundered in
Panama had at least regained the levels
attained before the 1989 invasion.
According to the {Los Angeles Times} of
April 28, 1991, current levels of
drug-trafficking in Panama ``in some
cases exceed'' what existed before the
December 20 invasion, and U.S.
officials ``say the trend is sharply
upward and includes serious movements
by the Colombian cartels into areas
largely ignored under Noriega.'' 
   Bush's invasion of Panama has done
nothing to fight the scourge of illegal
narcotics. Rather, the fact that so
many of Bush's hand-picked puppets can
be shown to be top figures in the drug
mafia suggests that drug-trafficking
through Panama toward the United States
has increased after the ouster of
Noriega. If drug shipments to the
United States have increased, this
exposes Bush's pledge to ``protect the
lives of Americans'' as a lie. 
   As far as the promise of democracy
is concerned, it must be stressed that
Panama has remained under direct U.S.
military dictatorship and virtual
martial law until this writing in the
late autumn of 1991, two years after
Bush's adventure was launched. The
congressional and local elections that
were conducted during early 1991 were
thoroughly orchestrated by the U.S.
occupation forces. Army intelligence
units interrogated potential voters,
and medical battalions handed out
vaccines and medicines to urban and
rural populations to encourage them to
vote. Every important official in the
Panamanian government from Endara on
down has U.S. military ``liaison
officers'' assigned on a permanent
basis. These officers are from the
Defense Department's Civic
Action-Country Area Team (or CA-CAT), a
counterinsurgency apparatus that
parallels the ``civic action'' teams
unleashed during the Vietnam War.
CA-CAT officers supervise all
government ministries and even
supervise police precincts in Panama
City. The Panamanian Defense Forces
have been dissolved, and the CA-CAT
officers are busily creating a new
constabulary, the Fuerza Publica. 
   Radio station and newspaper
editors who spoke out against the U.S.
invasion or criticized the puppet
regime were jailed or intimidated, as
in the case of the publisher
Escolastico Calvo, who was held in
concentration camps and jails for some
months after the invasion without an
arrest warrant and without specific
charges. 
   Trade union rights are
non-existent: After a demonstration by
100,000 persons in December 1990 had
protested growing unemployment and
Endara's plans to ``privatize'' the
state sector by selling it off for a
song to the {rabiblanco} bankers, all
of the labor leaders who had organized
the march were fired from their jobs,
and arrest warrants were issued against
100 union officials by the government. 
   In the wake of Bush's invasion,
the economy of Panama has not been
rebuilt, but has rather collapsed
further into misery. The Bush
administration has set as the first
imperative for the puppet regime the
maintenance of debt service on Panama's
$6 billion in international debt. Debt
service payments take precedence over
spending on public works, public health,
and all other categories. Bush had
promised Panama $2 billion for
post-invasion reconstruction, but he
later reduced this to $1 billion. What
was finally forthcoming was just $460
million, most of which was simply
transferred to the Wall Street banks in
order to defray the debt service owed
by Panama. The figure of $460 million
scarcely exceeds the $400 million in
Panamanian holdings that were
supposedly frozen by the United States
during the period of economic warfare
against Noriega, but which were then
given to the New York banks, also for
debt service payments. 
   As far as the integrity of the
Panama Canal Treaty signed by Torrijos
and Carter, and ratified by the U.S.    
Senate, is concerned, on February 7,
1989, Rep. Philip Crane (R-Il.)
introduced a House Joint Resolution,
with 26 co-sponsors, to express ``the
sense of the Congress that the
President or the Congress should
abrogate the Panama Canal Treaties of
1977 and the Neutrality Treaty.'' Then
on March 21, 1991, Senator Larry Craig
(R-Id.), together with Rep. Philip
Crane on the House side, introduced a
concurrent resolution, calling on
George Bush to renegotiate the Canal
Treaties ``to permit the United States
Armed Forces to remain in Panama beyond
Dec. 31, 1999, and to permit the U.S.
to act independently to continue to
protect the Panama Canal''--i.e., for
the United States to keep a military presence in
Panama indefinitely. These resolutions
are still pending before the Congress. 
   Thus, on every point enumerated by
Bush as basic to his policy--the lives
of Americans, Panamanian democracy,
anti-drug operations, and the integrity
of the treaty--Bush has obtained a
fiasco. Bush's invasion of Panama will
stand as a chapter of shame and infamy
in the recent history of the United
States. 

Notes for Chapter XXIV
 
      
   14.
 Transcript of President Bush's
press conference, {Washington Post,}
June 9, 1989.
 
   18.
 {Congressional Record,} 58th
Congress, 3rd session, p. 19.
 
   19.
 See ``Police State and Global
Gendarme: The United States under the
Thornburgh Doctrine,'' {American
Leviathan: Administrative Fascism under
the Bush Regime,} (Wiesbaden: EIR News
Service, 1990), pp. 61-102.
 
   21.
 ``Panama: Atrocities of the
`Big Stick,'|'' in {American
Leviathan}, pp. 39-40.
 
   22.
 For Gregg's testimony on
Bush-Noriega relations, see ``Testimony
on Bush Meeting With Panama
Ambassador,'' {New York Times,} May 21,
1988.
 
   24.
 {American Leviathan,} pp.
41-42.
 
   25.
 ``Bush Presses to Cut Off
Talks with Noriega,'' {Washington
Post,} May 20, 1988.
 
   26.
 Bob Woodward, {The Commanders}
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991),
p. 89.
 
   27.
 Text of President Bush's
Address, {Washington Post,} Dec. 21,
1989.
 
----         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com