The Panama Deception | 1992 Documentary [EN Subtitles]
This 1993 Academy Award-winning documentary
takes a critical look at Operation Just Cause,
the December 20, 1989
U.S. Invasion of Panama.
The film details the consequences for civilians
of using military force in a densely populated urban area,
and argues that U.S. media coverage of the invasion
accepted The Pentagon’s version of events.
Main Credits
produced by Barbara Trent, Joanne Doroshow, Nico Panigutti, and David Kasper; directed by Barbara Trent; written and edited by David Kasper; co-producers, Eric Castillo, Alison Trinkl, Louise Hogarth, and Saryl T. Radwin
The shooting began at midnight,
and everyone ran toward their homes.
People started hollering.
Children began crying.
It was a complex operation. 27 targets were hit simultaneously.
I heard my family, some of my family get shot, and I don't know nothing that's happening.
I just was keep going because I was frightened to death. I was frightened to death.
The Goal was not to level the place, but
to minimize damage to property,
and most important of all,
to minimize casualties, and
that was accomplished.
My daughter did not belong to any group.
She had nothing to do with Noriega.
She was innocent. She had nothing to do
with all of this, and they killed her.
If I had to do it again, I would do it again
because the cost was high. It was men, women,
civilians, and military that gave their lives.
Not for us. They gave their lives for Democracy,
for Liberty, For Freedom, and I don't mind
paying any price under the sun to be free.
On December 19, 1989, while Panamanians were
getting ready for the Christmas holidays,
The United States was secretly mobilising
26,000 troops for a midnight attack.
I saw helicopters approaching. They were close.
The lights went out and the helicopters began to shoot.
People were running left and right without direction,
without knowing where they were going.
It wasn't just machine gunfire. They were bombs.
The noise was frightening.
You could hear gunfire
coming from all directions
and a strange noise that
we had never heard before.
People were frightened, running,
wondering what was going on.
The sky was completely red and there was
a tremor you could feel throughout the city.
The invasion was swift, intense, and merciless.
When it was over, thousands lay dead and wounded,
and the country was in shambles.
Millions of U.S. tax dollars were
swallowed up in three
days of brutal violence.
The strategy was considered a stunning
military and political success.
In many ways, The Invasion served as
a testing ground for The Persian Gulf War
one year later. It is also an indication
of the kinds of intervention
the United States may undertake
in the years to come.
But still, big questions remain.
What exactly happened during
The Invasion of Panama and why?
This is the CBS Evening News. Dan Raddle
reported. As the invasion unfolded, Americans stayed glued to their TVs and newspapers for
coverage. But how much of the real picture did the media give them? The performance of the
mainstream news media in the coverage of Panama has been just about total collaboration with
the administration. Not a critical murmur, not a critical perspective, not a second thought. The
story that the White House was pushing was getting this so-called narco-terrorist in a net. And that
was the thrust of all of the coverage. When are we going to get Noriega? Have they let Noriega get
away? By late today, they had taken control of much of the country, but their chief target,
General Manuel Noriega, escaped. Manuel Noriega belongs to that special fraternity of international
villains, men like Qaddafi, Idi Amin, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom Americans just love to
hate. The White House announced a $1 million reward for his capture. And today, the Justice Department set up a hotline to take in tips on Noriega's possible whereabouts. They focused
on Noriega to the exclusion of what was happening to the Panamanian people, to the exclusion of the bodies in the street, to the exclusion of the number of dead, to the exclusion of what happened
to the women and children in that country during this midnight invasion. In some ways, the 1989 U.S.
invasion of Panama was no surprise, given the history of relations between these two countries.
The United States refused to recognize Panama's independence movement throughout the 1800s. But
when the U.S. proposal to build a canal across the Isthmus was turned down by Colombia, U.S.
policy abruptly changed. In 1903, the United States provided military backup, enabling Panama
to secede from Colombia. By doing so, the United States secured the rights to take over the canal
project that had been abandoned by the French. In a treaty that was negotiated between the French
canal investors and the United States, the Americans were granted sovereign control in
perpetuity of a 10-mile-wide strip of land they called the Canal Zone. Panamanians were not
included in the negotiations, and no Panamanians signed the treaty. The United States immediately
placed the Canal Zone under military control. Teddy Roosevelt was asked by what right he acquired
possession of the canal. At least in the honest words of a thief, he said, I took it. That gives
you no right in law, never has, and hopefully never will. The canal project had a dramatic impact on
Panama. The U.S. imported cheap labor from the Caribbean, India, and Asia, changing the racial
makeup of the country. Thousands of these workers died, and those who remained lived as part of a
new racial underclass. They created an apartheid system in Panama, a system that obeys a racial
segregation, where black people could not live in the same homes, where black people could not
even use the same water fountain. The Jim Crow's law that was practiced in the southern part of
the United States was implemented in Panama by the United States government. After the canal was
completed in 1913, the United States continued to expand its military presence and tighten its grip
on Panamanian politics. Violent confrontations between Panamanians and the U.S. military grew
in the decades that followed. Tensions peaked in 1964 when students tried to exercise Panama's
right to fly its flag in the canal zone. 21 Panamanians were killed and hundreds were wounded
in the confrontation. In 1968, Panama's government was overthrown in a military coup. Omar Terrios,
a colonel in the National Guard, emerged as the new leader of Panama. Although he used repressive
measures to consolidate his power, he became immensely popular. Terrios introduced an unexpected
period of social reform that benefited Panama's majority population of blacks, Indians, and
mestizos. It created what some people call a populist reformist process. Umberto Brown,
an administrator at the State University of New York, served as a Panamanian diplomat to
the United Nations. He was educated in Panama during the Terrios period. We're for first time
in Panama yet a participation of the non-oligarchical people of the nation. Where people like myself get
opportunity to go to university, get a degree, where the peasants were people from the mestizo,
where all the people were deprived an opportunity for once in our life were playing important roles
in our nation. In 1978, relations between the United States and Panama reached a high point.
Jimmy Carter and Omar Terrios negotiated treaties that abolished the 1903 treaty,
establishing a new relationship between the two countries. The Carter-Terrios treaties
required the United States to vacate its military bases and withdraw its troops by the year 2000.
Full control of the canal and the canal zone would be turned over to Panama. Although these
new treaties were a source of pride for Panamanians, many conservatives in the United States had vehemently opposed them. The Panama Canal zone is sovereign United
States territory just as much as Alaska is, as well as the states carved from the Louisiana purchase.
We bought it, we paid for it, and General Terrio should be told we're going to keep it. In November
1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in a landslide election victory.
Eight months later, on the night of July 31st, 1981, Omar Terrios was killed in a fiery plane
crash. The circumstances of the incident are unclear. Authorities said that his plane crashed
into the side of a mountain, but witnesses said that the plane exploded in flight. Although his
death was officially declared an accident, many suspect that he was assassinated. Some
think that Manuel Noriega may have been involved, but many are convinced it was the CIA that was
responsible. I'm quite convinced that the CIA killed Torrijos, and this I know quite well because
I work with Torrijos. Jose Chuchu Martinez was one of Torrijos' closest aides for many years. They
killed him precisely at the moment they had to kill him, at the moment that Torrijos was having a big influence over over Central America, especially among the revolutionary movements.
They killed Torrijos because Torrijos represented precisely the political solution of the whole
Central American problem. Waiting in the wings for his chance to take power was Colonel Manuel
Noriega, the CIA's primary contact in Panama. Noriega was head of Panama's military intelligence
and had a long-standing relationship with the United States. He had been on the CIA payroll since
the 60s. When George Bush became director of the CIA in 1976, under President Ford, he inherited
Noriega as a contact. Despite evidence that Noriega was involved in drug trafficking, Bush kept Noriega
on the payroll. In fact, he increased Noriega's salary to more than $100,000 a year and eliminated
a requirement that intelligence reports on Panama include information on drug trafficking. Over the
last 20 years, since Manuel Noriega was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to be an asset,
he has obviously provided many, many important pieces of information to U.S. intelligence.
Peter Kornbluh is senior analyst at the National Security Archive. The Archive has assembled
hundreds of previously classified government documents revealing the details of Noriega's relationship to U.S. intelligence. They've paid him an incredible amount of money, of American
taxpayers' money, and obviously decided that his value to them was so important that his drug
smuggling and other illegal activity could simply be ignored. I, George Herbert Walker Bush, do
solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That I will
After George Bush became vice president under Ronald Reagan in 1981, he was named head of the
administration's anti-drug campaign and once again took responsibility for monitoring Noriega's
intelligence activities. Bush, in fact, seems to have been instrumental, even according to the
documented evidence the administration itself has made available, in seeing to it that Noriega was
well taken care of, and in fact Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former director of the CIA under Carter,
claims that he cut Noriega off, that he removed him from the U.S. payroll. Bush put him back on
and in fact gave him a raise and developed an even closer relationship than it existed before.
With support from the CIA, Noriega was able to outmaneuver his rivals and in August of
1983 he became commander of the Panamanian military.
As the Reagan administration expanded its covert war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua,
Noriega became increasingly helpful. Working with the CIA and with Israeli arms dealers,
Noriega helped coordinate an arms supply network to provide weapons to contra bases in northern
Costa Rica. It is by now undeniable that the same planes that were carrying arms from Panama into
Costa Rica were also carrying drugs and in fact the people who were the pilots flying those arms
to the contras and flying drugs on up, eventually reaching the United States, have been indicted and
are now serving time. This operation essentially gave Manuel Noriega the assurance that they would
turn a blind eye to his continued brokering of cocaine deals in return for using his network
to get the arms to the contras in northern Costa Rica. Noriega's involvement in the drug traffic
really increased his importance as a source for the CIA and as someone who was able to conduct
dirty tricks in the region for the CIA. So it's no accident that the CIA became the most
prominent defenders of Noriega against the drug charges because that's the sort of thing which
CIA clients tend to do. Time after time when we install strong men in the third world,
because we want them to be strong, we want to see them involved with the strongest local economic
forces which time after time are the drug traffic. Music
Despite Noriega's collaboration with many U.S. covert operations, he was becoming increasingly uncooperative with U.S. objectives in Central America.
In 1984, he angered the Reagan administration by hosting Latin American leaders at the Contadora
peace talks. The talks called for an end to U.S. intervention in Central American affairs.
Noriega was not the yes man that the United States wanted him to be. He simply didn't like to be pushed around. He certainly didn't like people like John
Poindexter or even William Casey coming down to his villa and telling him what he should do or
what he shouldn't do. Then in 1986, the Iran-Contra scandal erupted. Noriega's primary contacts in
the administration were now under intense scrutiny. Oliver North was fired, Poindexter
was forced to resign, and William Casey fell ill with a brain tumor. So all three of Noriega's
major protectors were out of government, and that led quickly to a shift in U.S. policy.
The
sentiments within Panama were turning against Noriega as well. For three years,
Noriega worked with the DEA in a sting operation codenamed Operation Pisces. In 1987,
with Noriega's assistance, authorities arrested hundreds of suspects and froze millions of
dollars in Panama's banks, severely disrupting the money laundering business.
The financial community was outraged, and Noriega's opponents mobilized against him.
Back in Washington, Noriega's opponents lobbied and testified against him, accusing him of murder, corruption, and drug running. The U.S. media quickly turned it into
a major story. But relations with Panama are under a new cloud tonight because of news reports.
Senator Jesse Helms charged today that the military strongman of Panama, Manuel Noriega, is the number one drug trafficker in the Americas. Helms said, depending on how the situation with
Noriega evolved, the reports from U.S. intelligence have also led to new investigations on Capitol Hill.
Faced with increased pressure, both in the U.S. and Panama, Noriega introduced a wave of brutal repression,
attacking protesters in the streets and jailing hundreds of opponents. The Reagan administration now openly called for his removal.
We do want Noriega out of there and a return to a civilian democratic government.
But behind the scenes, the administration was secretly negotiating with Noriega, promising not to indict him on drug charges if he would cooperate with U.S. objectives in Central
America. Gabrielle Gemma, director of the U.S. Department of Justice, was the first person to
speak. Gabrielle Gemma, director of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the U.S. invasion of Panama, spoke to Noriega about his negotiations with the U.S.
Gerald Noriega told us that there were a number of demands placed on him directly, both through
Poindexter and other meetings, where the State Department pressured him to change the Panamanian
government's policy on several issues. He said that by far the most pressing was a demand by
the United States that Noriega and the Panamanian government allow the U.S. to expand their military
presence in Panama and to renegotiate the treaties to allow them to keep control over the 14 bases,
military bases that presently exist in Panama. Noriega refused to agree to the U.S. demands
or to relinquish his power in Panama. In February 1988, two U.S. federal grand juries in Florida
indicted Noriega, accusing him of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering.
It was the first time a foreign head of state had ever been indicted in the United States.
The U.S. now undertook a systematic effort to overthrow Noriega. Economic sanctions were
stepped up and additional troops were dispatched to Panama. The United States tonight declared in
effect that Panama's General Manuel Noriega is a threat to this country's national security.
Mr. Noriega, the drug-indicted, drug-related, indicted dictator of Panama, we want to bring
him to justice, we want to get him out, and we want to restore democracy to Panama. And so when
you read these outrageous charges by a drug-related, indicted dictator, discount them. They are total
lies. Still unable to force Noriega from power, the United States turned its efforts to influencing
the upcoming 1989 Panamanian national elections. The Bush administration working through the CIA
and the National Endowment for Democracy funneled more than 10 million dollars into the opposition
slate of candidates. Presidential candidate Guillermo Endara, a wealthy corporate lawyer educated
in the United States, and his vice presidential running mates Guillermo Billy Ford and Ricardo
Arias Calderon. If the same scenario that those elections occurred in had taken place in the
United States, they would have been illegal. In the United States, accepting money from a foreign
government for the purpose of influencing a domestic election is illegal. Those elections
were irregular from the beginning. How can you call it a fair election? The strategy
is it was applied in Panama, they applied in Nicaragua, and they were applied to every government who disagree with the U.S. foreign policy. They use economical sanction to starve
people, then to impose a vote on these people because people vote to get bread when they're
hungry, and they don't think that's democracy. The elections were held, the counting of the
votes began, it became clear that the PRD would lose the election, and at that point,
and not for the first time in the history of Panama or many other countries in Central America,
the military rulers halted the electoral process. The country erupted in violence as ballot boxes
were seized. The U.S.-supported candidates who had been leading in vote tallies were brutally
beaten on the streets of Panama City in front of rolling TV cameras.
The assailants were alleged to be Noriega's dignity battalions, although none were ever
identified. It was a photo opportunity that crystallized world public opinion against Noriega.
Good evening. The violence in Panama escalated sharply this evening when government goons attacked candidates opposed to General Manuel Noriega were attacked and beaten up on the streets of Panama
City. Guillermo Endara and one of the opposition presidential candidate was beaten and injured
during the day by backers of military. Later, the presidential candidate Endara was released from
the hospital. It has been confirmed that he was attacked by goons. The following day, President
Bush ordered 2,000 additional troops into Panama. I will do what is necessary to protect the lives
of American citizens and we will not be intimidated by the bullying tactics, brutal though they may be,
of the dictator Noriega. After the election fiasco, the Panamanian National Assembly
declared a state of emergency and appointed Noriega head of state.
George Bush now openly encouraged the Panamanian military to revolt against Noriega.
But we'd love to see him get him out. We'd like to see him out of there.
With support and encouragement from the United States, a group of officers from the Panamanian
Defense Forces, the PDF, began planning a military coup to overthrow Noriega.
They secretly met several times with the U.S. Southern Command to coordinate support for the
overthrow. The role to be played by the United States Army was to block certain roads, make sure
that certain airfields were not made available for use by elements loyal to or potentially loyal to
General Noriega. With these assurances, the insurgent troops launched the coup attempt.
They quickly overpowered Noriega's guards, seized the PDF headquarters, and captured Noriega.
But the Americans did not carry through on their promises. Forces loyal to Noriega were allowed to gain entrance and crush the rebellion, freeing General
Noriega. President Bush later denied any U.S. involvement in the operation.
And this was some American operation, and I can tell you that is not true.
So I would repeat in the hopes that it be made instantly to Panama, we have no argument with the
Panamanian Defense Forces. We have no argument with them. We've had good relations with the
Panamanian Defense Forces. But investigative journalist Doug Vaughn, who was in Panama
during the failed coup attempt, disputes Bush's claims. The idea, at least on the American side,
was to lead these coup plotters along, to seduce them into believing that they had the support of
the United States, and then at a critical moment abandon them so that then the excuse could be made
that we had to smash the PDF completely, that we couldn't rely anymore on disgruntled officers
inside the Panamanian Army to rise up against Noriega, and we would have to do this job ourselves.
After the October coup attempt, 1300 additional U.S. troops were flown into Panama,
and offensive military equipment was secretly deployed.
The U.S. military stepped up its campaign of intimidation and provocation, setting up roadblocks,
confronting PDF forces, and conducting offensive military maneuvers outside of U.S. jurisdiction.
They have blocked passage here, calling it a security problem. What security? The Panamanian people would never threaten them. They are the ones threatening.
They are the ones who charge at us with their weapons. What's wrong with them? They charge the bayonets at us. They charge us with their bayonets in order to scare us.
They said not to step onto that area, but they're on our side. It's Panama's jurisdiction.
So what the hell's with them? It came to an inch that that day the killing didn't start,
because the tanks and everything were ready to go in to kill the Panamanian people.
In the final months before the invasion, the Army Special Operations Command sent a highly secret
Delta Force team to Panama. There were numerous actions undertaken by that Delta team which were
reported in the United States press as provocations undertaken by Panamanians against the United States.
Infiltrations of United States positions, shots fired in the direction of
United States perimeters and positions, roughing up of United States citizens in the streets.
Sabina Virgo, a national labor organizer, was in Panama just weeks before the invasion.
Provocations against the Panamanian people by United States military troops were very frequent
in Panama, and they had several results, and in my opinion probably a couple of different intents.
One, I think, was to create an international incident, was to have United States troops just
hassle the Panamanian people until an incident resulted. And from that incident, the United
States could then say that they were going into Panama for the protection of American life, which is in fact exactly what happened. On the night of December 16th, a group of
U.S. Marines ran a military roadblock in front of PDF headquarters and were fired on by Panamanian
guards. Lieutenant Robert Bolivar Paz, a U.S. Marine intelligence officer, was killed.
The Marines were reported to be part of a group called the Hard Chargers, known for provoking confrontations with PDF forces. The Pentagon claimed the Marines were
unarmed and lost, but local witnesses said that they were armed and exchanged fire with the PDF
headquarters, wounding a soldier and two civilians. An American serviceman has been killed in a weekend shooting incident. Another U.S. official called an example of General Noriega's
cruelty and brutality. ...shooting death of an American officer, which President Bush condemned today as an outrage.
And in another incident, a Navy officer and his wife were detained. He beaten and threatened with death. She threatened sexually. Another American serviceman also threatening that man's
wife. Strong public support for a reprisal was all but guaranteed. Four days later, on December 20th, U.S. troops invaded Panaman.
The invasion was codenamed Operation Just Cause. Shortly after midnight, U.S. troops simultaneously attacked 27 targets,
many of which were in densely populated areas. One of the primary targets in Panama City
was the headquarters of the Panamanian Defense Forces, located in the crowded neighborhood of El Chorillo. U.S. troops shelled the area for four hours before moving in and calling for surrender.
Get prepared to assemble in every building. Surrender now.
About 10 minutes after they've been speaking this surrender surrender, we start to hear the
helicopters start to bomb the quartel and start to use their their laser ray and things like that.
So we hit we hit the ground.
It soon became clear that the objectives were not limited only to military targets.
According to witnesses, many of the surrounding residential neighborhoods were deliberately attacked and destroyed. The helicopters were heavily armed, firing powerful machine guns
and rockets and they were firing indiscriminately. They were just looking for military targets.
They were firing at many civilians. People were running all over trying to escape.
They shot at everything that moved. Without mercy and without thinking whether they were children or women or people fighting. Instead everything that moved they shot.
We all thought that they would just take Noriega. They said that's what they wanted.
They would take him and would respect everyone else.
After the bombing, the bombing been started, been going on for a few, few hours.
The soldiers say tell everybody to come out with their hand on their head and they direct us to the
church. When we were in the church about six o'clock in the morning, all of a sudden the
buildings start to burn in front of the church. The people as they know they have the only thing
they have was inside that place. They try to run out to get water to halt it and the American
soldiers say that's what they want. They say that's what they want. They say that's what they want.
They try to run out to get water to halt it and the American soldiers tell them to get out.
Some people you know stubborn they try to go in and American soldiers is shot at up in the air and the people that get scared and they run back.
"We saw that the North Americans were denying
people access to their homes.
They sent people back and threatened
them with their machine guns
and forbid anyone to get close to the houses or
walk in or around the alleys leading to the houses.
Then they began to set the houses on fire.
The Panamanian soldiers then know each alley,
how to go in and how to come out and where to go
and come through you know from
one street to another street, climb up
and go to a balcony and things.
So the only way I think the American
soldiers could get rid of that that danger
was to burn down the building then.
That way the Panamanian soldier couldn't
have nowhere to hide."
The Pentagon :
"I'm unaware of any operations by US military to go
through and systematically burn down buildings.
You get fires that that are started by weapons
but I [haven't] seen any reports of
US military folks going through and
setting buildings on fire."
"The North Americans began burning down
El Chorrio at about 6:30 in the morning.
They would throw a small device into
a house and it would catch on fire.
They would burn a house and then move
to another and begin the process all over again.
They burned from one street to the next.
They coordinated the burning through walkie-talkies.
And from there the whole of Chorrio went to nothing."
Narrator :
So the Pentagon used Panama as
a testing ground for newly-developed
high-tech weapons such as
The Stealth Fighter,
The Apache attack-helicopter,
and laser-guided missiles.
There are also reports that can't be explained
indicating the use of experimental
and unknown weaponry.
"We have testimony about combatants who died
literally melted with their guns
as a result of a laser.
We know of automobiles that were cut in half
by these lasers, of atrocities committed
by weapons that fire poison darts,
which produce massive bleeding.
I think there's a high probability that
there was a use of sophisticated
weaponry merely to test it."
Ramsey Clark, former
US Attorney General
has conducted extensive
research into The Invasion.
Ramsey Clark :
"Above all though there was a use
beyond any conceivable necessity
of just sheer firepower.
Just an excessive use of force
beyond any possible justification.
President Bush wanted to make certain
that this was going to be a success.
This was going to be his vindication,
denial of The Wimp Factor in spades.
So they sent down a force that wasn't going
to encounter any effective resistance,
would simply overwhelm the opposition
and the fact that it would cause
tremendous peripheral damage,
damage to innocent civilians and
on a wide scale was not
of concern in the planning."
What we intended to do was to
reduce collateral damage. I don't know what that means. Collateral damage that means if the target
is right here you're trying not to have damage to other places you're trying to have damage to a
specific target because that's a military target you're trying to minimize damage outside of the military target and they worked. My god we were sending in artillery and airstrikes against a very
heavily populated urban area. There was absolutely no question that there were going to be immense
numbers of civilian casualties. We walked among the dead and saw the tanks run over and crush our
dead. We saw a great number of civilian cars with whole families inside. Kids, women and the driver
torn to pieces and crushed by the tanks. The soldiers passed the tanks over the people's bodies
some of them dead some of them wounded and there are cases that we know for example
the case of Manuel Carrot, the case of Alexander Hubert and some others whose bodies were totally
destroyed. During the days and weeks following the invasion the U.S. policy of applying
overwhelming deadly force continued. There were many reports of indiscriminate killings and
executions of unarmed civilians. We have eyewitness accounts on the part of a number of Panamanians
where soldiers took Panamanians who had been captured after the invasion and executed them
on the street. I have seen no reports of U.S. soldiers executing anyone in Panama. We have
carefully checked out every such report and if we think there is evidence that a U.S. soldier
murdered a Panamanian we will court-martial that soldier. That sort of behavior would be absolutely
unprofessional, totally unacceptable and illegal. Rafael Olabardia, a community leader from El
Chorrillo, was taken to the Balboa High School detention camp the morning after the attack.
There were many Panamanian troops at the Balboa concentration camp. They didn't seem to know what
was going on. They were sitting on the grass with their arms and feet tied with plastic bands. I,
along with many other people from El Chorrillo, witnessed their execution right in front of us.
Eight of the soldiers at the entrance were executed by U.S. troops.
There were many reports of unprovoked killings at U.S. roadblocks. One woman told human rights investigators how her brother and four friends were killed at a roadblock
on December 23rd, three days after the initial attack. All five of the passengers were forced
out of the car and put face down on the ground. They were riddled with bullets. They were simply
going to visit family members when they were detained and killed in the street.
Although 19 cases of homicide and alleged executions were filed with the Southern Command,
all but two of these cases were internally reviewed and dismissed.
During the invasion and throughout the days and weeks that followed, access by the news media was tightly controlled. The Pentagon flew in a 16-person press pool
from the major U.S. media. The pool did not reach Panama, however, until after the crucial
first four hours of the attack and were restricted to U.S. military bases for the next day and a half.
Our regret is that we were not able to use the media pool more effectively. The goal was to get reporters down there so that they could see for themselves the early
hours of the operation. Now once they got there, we had a breakdown in our ability to move them
around. Helicopters that we thought were going to be available had to be pulled off and were needed for the operation itself. The press pool that went down there was managed from the day they arrived.
They were only taken to see what the government, what the military, wanted them to see and there
has been continuous suppression and denial of the extent of damage which was inflicted during that
invasion. Many journalists who tried to investigate on their own were stopped by
U.S. troops from entering areas that were attacked. One of the few journalists who was able to
penetrate the military's restrictions was Panamanian photographer Julio Guerra.
I had already taken photographs in the Chorillo area.
I'd also taken photos of some dead bodies in the street. When a North American soldier told me I
couldn't walk any further, they wanted to take my camera away, but I didn't let them.
So they made me open the camera and expose the roll of film with the shots of the dead bodies I had taken.
Military folks shouldn't be taking film out of cameras. You get young guys in combat, they get concerned, they do that sometimes. I don't think that was the norm.
Another Panamanian journalist, Manuel Becker, a cameraman for a London-based news service,
was covering the attack on the night of the invasion when he was stopped by U.S. troops.
We almost got to the edge of El Chorillo. As soon as we were able to, we started videotaping.
We started videotaping, but the North American troops took our tapes
and placed us virtually under arrest until the bombing was over.
A Spanish news photographer who in the early moments was able to get a picture of bodies
lined up in the morgue was subsequently shot under very strange circumstances.
There was not a conflict, but according to the reports of colleagues,
an American soldier just took aim and shot him down.
The U.S. military also targeted the Panamanian media. Radio stations were immediately taken
over and destroyed. U.S. forces occupied TV stations and began transmitting their own signal.
Many journalists were either arrested or fired. One of Panama's largest daily newspapers,
La Republica, was raided, ransacked, and closed down by American troops.
The U.S. military's control over all of the media was so effective that there was almost no video
footage of the first three days of the invasion other than what was shot by the military's own camera crews. It's so ironic that the kind of very tight press control that you used to see in
Russia under Stalin and under Brezhnev and which was finally ending under Gorbachev with Glasnost,
that we've seen in the United States exactly the opposite phenomenon, a new degree of press
control which we never had in Vietnam, so that the American people didn't really know what had
happened until it was all over and it was too late.
During the week of the invasion, more than 18,000 people who fled from the areas of attack
were forced into temporary detention centers created by the U.S. forces.
They're walking side by side. It's dangerous. Please hurry up to the camp. Now we're in a dangerous area.
It was a war. It was a battle and the way you get it over with is to find the people who are most
likely to keep shooting at you and try to detain them and that was the goal of that operation.
We arrived at the concentration camp of Balboa, a school. It was surrounded by a barbed wire fence
and full of heavily armed soldiers. When we arrived, they picked all the men between the ages of 15 and
55 and put us on an army truck. The women were crying, shouting. They were pushing us around and
we didn't know where they were taking us. They took us to a secret place and we were submitted
to an intense interrogation. Then they put a card in front of us and took our picture.
So all men between 15 and 55 had this card with their ID number and their refugee number.
As part of the invasion, the U.S. forces worked with newly installed Panamanian officials
to institute repressive measures that continue in Panama today.
American forces took control of the public buildings, government ministries, and the university. Almost every organization opposed to United States policy had its offices raided and
destroyed. Thousands of individuals were arrested.
Arias Calderon, Endara, and the Attorney General Rogelio Cruz effectively wrote down the names
of their political enemies, gave them to U.S. military personnel who, going around like storm
troopers, would break down doors, drag people out of their houses, take them to detention centers,
only because their name was given by one of these officials and that there was no
legal case against these people whatsoever.
Government officials had to go underground, many of them, in order not to be arrested,
including university professors. There were former government and diplomatic officials that
were arrested and interned at refugee camps and some of them in prisons. The list runs into the
thousands.
Why aren't they after him? Why aren't they after Bush instead? He's the one who's killing people all over the place. Why are they harassing a worker who's defending other workers?
26 times the U.S. troops were here searching my house. They would surround everything with
tanks and would take books, personal documents, photos of torrillos. They would search it whenever
they felt like it. Balbina Herrera de Perignon was the mayor of San Miguelito and a member of
the National Assembly. After the invasion, she was subjected to a relentless campaign of slander
and harassment. The Southern Command put up wanted posters with my photo. If you see her, please call
such and such a number at Southern Command. They interrogated my children, my three little ones.
They would ask them where their mother was, where their father was. They would ask them for information about us.
Escolastico Calvo, the editor of La Republica newspaper, had been openly critical of the new
government and the U.S. invasion. What I don't understand is that they've been holding me here
30 days and no one has talked to me about my case, about my charge. This is what we wanted a decision on. Is there justice here or not? Calvo was imprisoned for 18 months. No charges
were ever filed against him. They arrested close to 7,000 Panamanian individuals. They arrested
almost every trade union leader, the leaders of the nationalist parties, of progressive parties,
of left parties in Panama. They arrested people who were cultural leaders. There are still
hundreds of Panamanians who remain in jail with no due process, with no formal charges against them.
As a result of the U.S. invasion, an estimated 20,000 Panamanians lost their homes.
Hardest hit were residents in the poor neighborhoods of San Miguelito, Colon, Panama Viejo, and El Chorillo.
The survivors of the invasion received little assistance from either the newly installed
Panamanian government or the United States. Many moved into bombed out buildings and makeshift
shelters. Several thousand were moved to Albrook Airfield and housed in two large airplane hangars
where many languished for more than a year. In hangar number one, we constructed 506 cubicles.
It's a 10 by 10 foot cubicle which holds each of the families, and in each cubicle we can put as
much as four carts and a small mattresses for the kids. Although the Albrook refugee camp was
administered by the Panamanian Red Cross and the United States Agency for International Development,
U.S. military police would frequently enter the grounds, restrict access and make arrests.
With explicit permission from the directors of the camp, our camera crew entered to interview
refugees about their experience of the invasion and its aftermath.
But even though we had authorization, U.S. military police and the Criminal Investigation
Division of the U.S. Army tried to stop our crew from videotaping.
That's just what I've been told. I don't think that's right. I think the world have the right to know the truth. Sir, please. We are the victims. We are the victims. We lose
everything. We lose our family. So why the world not supposed to know the truth, sir?
Until a public affairs official gets here, I cannot allow you to film. We are the victims, sir. We are the victims and we want the world to know the truth.
I do too. I live there. Why are you against this? Come in and arrest me, but we have the right to be here. We're shooting. We're on Panamanian
project and we have the right of the director. I'm not stopping and we're not slowing down.
So if you have to bring someone in to forcefully do that, that's your business.
Why do they want to throw out the reporters? They came to talk to us. They want to know the truth and they won't let them interview us. Why? Why?
Hundreds of angry refugees surrounded the camera crew, forcing the military to withdraw.
Finally, the refugees were able to tell their stories.
We're tired of being stuck inside this hangar, sleeping on a cot. Many old people are sick.
There's no medical attention. And the children? When? When are they going to put an end to this?
We are the victims of Endara's presidency. Why did it have to be us? Why didn't they choose
the rich neighborhood? If they had picked 50th street, it would have been repaired by now.
Since it was El Chorrillo, they have forgotten about us.
The people are in bad shape. They have no clothes, nothing to wear. I buy them clothes
sometimes and sometimes food out of my own pocket. But one can't do that every day.
We need to avoid a problem with the Chorrilleros. In the state they're in, they're liable to start a riot. There could be more shootings and more thefts because the
people of El Chorrillo are very riled up. If they want us to close up all the streets in the country,
we're going to do it. But we won't answer. We want to get out of this goddamn place.
We are tired of this. This is not no democracy. They say to get rid of Noriega and they're worse
of Noriega. They're plenty worse because with Noriega we used to eat our three meals a day.
Now we're not even eating one.
More than 60 Panamanians are reported to have died in that day. Panamanians were killed. A doctor at a government hospital in Panama City.
But we've only had really one report on them throughout the day so we don't know how extensive.
There's no reason to doubt the reports obviously that we are getting from the Pentagon and yet all the information that we are getting from the Pentagon seems to conflict with
all the eyewitness information that we're able to get out of Panama City. How many people were killed in Panama and who were they? These questions may never be answered
because the United States military undertook elaborate efforts to conceal the number of dead,
how they died, and the location of their bodies.
Children died, pregnant women died, seniors died, adolescents died, soldiers died,
victims who had nothing to do with politics, the invasion of the Noriega regime.
What happened in Panama is a hidden horror. Many of the bodies were bulldozed into piles
and immolated in the slums where they were collected. Other bodies were left in the garbage
chutes of the poor projects in which they died from the shooting, from the artillery, from the
machine guns, from the airborne attacks. Others were said to have been pushed into the ocean.
When we went down to El Chorrillo, there were still dead bodies inside cars. There was a man
and a woman with a child. All of them burnt up inside a car. People from El Chorrillo never
thought they would see so many dead bodies. See them being burned on the beach? Right on the beach they're being burned. In the early hours of the invasion, U.S. troops took control of the hospitals
and morgues. Many of the doctors and hospital personnel were detained and thousands of official
documents were confiscated. The truth of the matter is that we don't even know how many
Panamanians we have killed, but we should have more information on what happened. How many
civilians were killed? The National Human Rights Commission of Panama interviewed hundreds of
people in an effort to determine how many had died. What we have is different testimonies
that help us to arrive to the conclusion that for sure there were more than 4,000 people who died.
You have the U.N. Human Rights Commission estimating 2,500 deaths. You have the two major
independent human rights organizations in the region estimating 2,500, 3,000, 3,500.
You have Isabel Cordero and her organization estimating probably about 4,000.
That's an enormous human toll. The U.S. military said 250 civilians were killed.
There isn't a credible source in Panama that believes that's true, whether it's ambulance
drivers, human rights monitors, doctors who worked in hospitals, neighbors of bombed out blocks.
It's just clearly false. That story would be so easy to tell for any journalist
worth his or her salt, but they're not telling it. I made a point of reading the European press as well as the American press
when the invasion occurred and immediately I could see that whereas the American press was
talking about maybe a couple of hundred civilian casualties, from the very beginning the European
press was talking about a thousand civilians dead or two thousand civilians dead.
So the real facts are that the American people didn't really know what had happened in Panama.
You would think from the video clips that we had seen that this whole thing was just a Mardi Gras,
that the people in Panama were just jumping up and down with glee and that our forces are just
moved in there and without taking any lives at all have brought liberty and freedom to these
oppressed people.
When they interviewed people in Panama about what they thought of it, they invariably were interviewing white middle class people who could speak English. They didn't really go
into the poor neighborhoods where people had been bombed. Did you see one media actually go into the bombed areas and talk to people who had lost a family or lost everything they had in
the bombings? They focused totally on the invasion as a tactical event. Was it effective? Did it work
well? Are we losing many American lives? Another unit moved in by helicopter. 15 American servicemen
have died in the combat today. But not all the news is good. American casualties are now put at
15 dead. They also announced that one American civilian has been killed. That would make a total of 16. A school teacher apparently hit by stray gunfire. Gertrude Candy Halen from
Dixon, Illinois is the 20th American to die. They focused with utter ethnocentrism only on
American lives. The only life that was precious, the only life that one could report on, the only
life that one could consider as a serious loss was an American life. Tonight as we end this program
we hear from President Bush on the high price these young men paid and we say goodbye to them.
Every human life is precious and and yet I have to answer yes it has been worth it.
In the months following the invasion, Panamanians were shocked to discover the existence of mass
graves where hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies were hastily dumped into pits and buried by U.S.
troops. There was a report of what some were calling a mass grave, which I think is a term
that is imprecise. No I didn't say we had any mass burials.
There was one case of some number but I cannot quote to you that number.
Today there have been 15 mass graves that have been identified throughout Panama.
The United States military was directly responsible for the killings of the men,
women and children that are in these mass graves and for their burial. These mass graves exist
throughout Panama and some are believed to be on U.S. military bases which creates a
difficulty in terms of access to these mass graves. Among these corpses we found many young people,
15, 16, 18 years old. We found people in their 60s and in their 70s.
We found people killed by a shot to the back of their heads, dead with their hands tied,
dead with casts on their legs or arms. Although the Pentagon insists that no more than 516
Panamanians were killed, they do concede that over 75 percent of those killed were civilians.
Families of the victims continue to demand a full accounting of the missing and the dead.
Who has the right to determine how many people should be killed in an invasion? I think if one person got killed
in an invasion that is illegal, that it violates all principles of human rights,
the number of people, the quantity, the figures, if it's 10,000 or if it's one,
it's irrelevant. The issue that innocent people were killed.
A lot of people die. Too many people die.
Although the U.S. media created a perception of support for the invasion within the United States,
the invasion was overwhelmingly condemned in the international community. If you look at any document in international law, any of numerous treaties, it's clear that
this invasion was illegal. It's not debatable. The Panama invasion violates the U.N. Charter
and the OAS Charter, which have specific prohibitions against invasions of a sovereign
country and invasions of the territorial integrity of other countries. These prohibitions are very
strict and clear under international law. The United States' actions in violation of human
rights also violates the Geneva Conventions, which protect civilians from indiscriminate acts
of violence as had occurred against civilian victims in Panama. The four biggest, most
important papers in this country all endorsed the rightness of the Panama invasion. That's
the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, strong endorsements, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, every one of them. Now, a little body known as the United Nations had a vote about
this. On December 29th, they voted by an overwhelming majority to condemn the invasion as, in their
words, a flagrant violation of international law. So I was interested to see that night on the NBC
Nightly News with that great newscaster, Deborah Norville, absolutely no mention whatsoever of this
vote. Turning to CBS, the bastion of responsible broadcasting, I found a full 10 seconds lavished
on that story. At the United Nations today, the General Assembly adopted a resolution deploring the U.S. invasion of Panama as a, quote, flagrant violation of international law. The vote, 75 to
20, with 40 abstentions. The media was so cooperative with the government because the
media are owned by the same interests that are being defended in Central America by that government
policy. The media are not close to corporate America. They're not favorable to corporate America.
They are corporate America. They're an integral part of corporate America. We are a plutocracy.
We ought to face it. A country in which wealth controls. It may be true of all countries, more or less, but it's uniquely true of ours because of our materialism and the concentration
of wealth here. Even our democratic processes are hardly that because money dominates politics and
we know it. And through politics, it dominates government and it dominates the media. We really
need desperately to find new ways to hear independent voices and points of view.
It's the only way we're going to find the truth. The truth about the invasion of Panama remains
hidden from most Americans. Those who have studied the official accounts have discovered
many contradictions and have arrived at disturbing conclusions. I have studied everything that the
president has said as to reasons why he ordered the invasion and none of those things, singularly
or collectively, makes any legal, moral, or constitutional sense. One of the reasons for
the invasion was to take the wimp image off President George Bush. He had had the, what now
seems to be the necessary, blooding of a United States president to show his forcefulness and his
machismo. This was a chance for the military to show what it could do. If they kill an American
Marine, that's real bad. And if they threaten and brutalize the wife of an American citizen,
sexually threatening the lieutenant's wife while kicking him in the groin over and over again,
this president is going to do something about it. When he would say that the loss of American life
was the last straw, sure there must be something we could have done. Certainly there must have been
papers we could have filed. We could have gone to the world court. We could have gone to the United
Nations or maybe the organizations of American states, but invade a country because of this?
It's absolutely ridiculous. The excuse that the invasion was to protect American lives is the one
that's always given. The fact is there are 35,000 American citizens there and none of them were in
any danger. I was there three weeks before the invasion. There's simply no evidence and I don't
think the administration has ever bothered to even give any evidence to that statement.
The goals of the United States have been to safeguard the lives of Americans,
to defend democracy in Panama. Then President Bush said we had to go to restore democracy
in Panama. How in the world do you restore that which has never existed? Panama has
never been a democracy since we created Panama for our own purposes in 1903
and all we did was go down to restore American control and dominance in Panama.
The new government installed by the invasion was headed by the U.S.-backed candidates from
the aborted national election, Andara, Calderon, and Ford. Hours before the invasion they were
taken to a U.S. military base where they were sworn in as the president and vice presidents.
But the new government has enjoyed little popular support within Panama.
Anti-government demonstrations occur regularly and there have been numerous attempts from within
the Panamanian police force to seize military control of the government.
U.S. troops were mobilized several times to crush these insurrections.
Every time there's a crisis the U.S. military takes over. They give orders,
they subordinate that military because they don't trust that military force. The conflict is still
there. The oligarchy knows that if the United States were not there they could not rule this
country. But President Andara minimizes the significance of America's military occupation
in Panama. I think we are very, very normalized now. We practically have no occupation at all.
Practically. You don't see them in the streets. I don't see them in Panama. However, there are a
few here and there, but it's not really an occupation. Of course he's not going to say that
that Panama is occupied. In fact he might not even call it an invasion. His cousin is kind
that were killed or massacred. He lives in the nicer area, in the oligarchical area,
and you know his interest was protected. He's not running Panama. He's a puppet
of the U.S. government. The U.S. government is running Panama. They're running all of the ministries in Panama. He's only abiding by what he's told to do.
The Bush administration claimed that another reason for the invasion was to remove Noriega in order to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.
But according to a U.S. General Accounting Office report, cocaine traffic through Panama may have
doubled in the two years following the invasion. There is also considerable evidence that key
members of Panama's new government, including President Andara, have been tied to the drug trade through banks and front companies that launder drug money. The involvement of the
Panamanian economy as a whole in drug trafficking, arms running, various questionable banking
practices, in fact involve most of the Panamanian elite, involve most of the people who now run
this new U.S. approved Panamanian government. Andara and Ford, we all know and Panamanians know
that they are the real drug traffickers. They have been, because Panama have had an history
of the oligarchy being involved in drug trafficking.
In the years preceding and throughout the invasion, the U.S. government and the major media consistently portrayed Manuel Noriega as America's most hated and evil enemy.
General Noriega became a mythic figure. There was an attempt to personify in Noriega all that was
evil. It was very interesting that when General Noriega, when his office was captured,
we discovered the red pajamas, the voodoo equipment and the alleged cocaine that he was using
and the pornographic pictures in his desk. Now I happened to have been in Chile with the United
Nations at the time of the overthrow of President Allende and it's interesting that that same desk
appeared in Chile with the pornographic pictures, the red pajamas and the cocaine.
The whole propaganda against him was to build up a pretext in order to invade Panama and to say
we invaded Panama because of Noriega. I don't know how, I don't know how any, I don't know how
Americans can be so stupid to believe this. I mean how can you be so stupid? Like for example,
at one time they had Noriega at gunpoint. They could have taken Noriega then but the Americans
didn't want Noriega. What they really wanted is to destroy the Panamanian army in order to do with
the treaties what they wanted, which is what's happening now. Although the U.S. government's
reasons for the invasion made no mention of eliminating the Panamanian defense forces,
U.S. officials later admitted that destroying the PDF was a central part of the plan.
It was not only Mr. Noriega but his accomplices and underlings who stood for a reprehensible
government at the time and therefore you had to take down not only Mr. Noriega but take down
the elements of his supporting entity in order to reduce the PDF to nothing.
One of the objectives of the invasion, the main objective,
was to destroy the PDF. Why? The treaty, the Panama Canal Treaty, it stated clearly
that the year 2000 Panama would be responsible for the security, the safety of the canal.
To be responsible for the safety of a nation you need to have an army.
The elimination, the liquidation of the PDF means the extension, the continuity of the United States
present as the only military force in our nation which historically is the United States position.
What they really want is to stay in Panama after the year 2000 and that is what they have achieved,
to destroy the Panamanian defense forces, to impose a government complacent with U.S. interests,
and to make Panama the control center for all of Latin America. The invasion sets the stage for the wars of the 21st century in South America. The 2000 mile
invasion from Washington to Panama City took place primarily with bases from the United States.
The essential value of the southern command is to give another 2000 miles of intervention capability
which takes us right into the heart of the Andean coca producing region where the wars of the next decade are entirely likely to take place. Panama is another example
of destroying a country to save it and it's another case of how the United States has exercised
a might-make-right doctrine among the smaller countries of the third world. It has long been
U.S. practice to invade these countries, get what we want, and leave the people that live there to
kind of rot. Our country has been ruined, our homes have been destroyed, and we still have no
real answers. So what's left but to take to the streets? Since we didn't lose our lives in the war we're willing to risk them fighting for our rights. George Bush, may his children be spared
what my daughter is being subjected to, my daughter who doesn't want to live. May his generation be spared what our generation is living through. He should ask God for forgiveness for all
the damage caused to many families down here. One year ago the people of Panama lived in fear
under the thumb of a dictator. Today democracy is restored. Panama is free.
In March 1991 President Guillermo Endara proposed a constitutional amendment that would forever
abolish Panama's right to have an army. Later that year a law was passed by the United States
Congress to renegotiate the Panama Canal treaties to ensure continued U.S. military presence in
Panama on the grounds that Panama was no longer capable of defending the canal.
Until I go down
Till I go down
Till I go down
I'm not gonna shut my eyes till I go down
Till I go down
I'm not gonna shut my eyes I've already seen the lights on the faces of the men of war
leading people to the killing floor till I go down Till I go down
Till I go down
Till I go down
I'm not gonna shut my eyes
Till I go down Till I go down
Till I go down Till the world stops spinning
Till I go Till I'm six feet under Till I go
Till I go down Till I go
Till I go I'm gonna swing this chain Till I go
Till the world stops Till I go down Till I
Till I go down Till I go down
Till I go down
Till I go down
Till I go down Till I
Till I go down Till I
Till I go down Till I
Till I go down Till I Till I go down
Till I, till I, till I go down, till I, till I, till I go down, till I go down.
