[PLEASE NOTE THIS BLOG IS STILL IN A BETA PHASE. THIS POST WILL BE REPUBLISHED ON THE CORRECT DATE NEXT MONTH]
Two weeks after American paratroopers had filled the night sky over Panama, General Manuel Noriega had run out of options. Since the start of Operation Just Cause, Noriega had been on the run from more than 20,000 U.S. forces hunting for the dictator. Since Christmas Eve, he had received asylum at the Papal Nuciature in Panama City, occupying the same bare bedroom with no air-conditioning and a broken television set in which so many of his victims had sought refuge. After a week spent receiving reports of his loyalists' surrenders throughout the country and hearing the taunts of Panamanian mobs outside the Vatican's Embassy, Noriega finally agreed with Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa that surrender was his best option. ("Do you really want to spend the rest of your life having nuns wash your underwear?" the wily priest asked).
Just before 9PM, January 3, Noriega emerged from the Nunciature wearing a wrinkled tan uniform with four stars on each shoulder board. Carrying a Bible and a toothbrush, he looked stunned and submissive in the glare of the television camera lights. He was met at the gate by Major General Marc Cisneros, Commander of the U.S. Army South.
“Yo soy el General Noriega. Me rindo a las fuerza de los Estados Unidos.” (I am General Noriega, and I am surrendering to U.S. forces).
“Su rendicion es aceptada.” (Your surrender is accepted).
The ex-dictator was quickly seized by Delta Force operators and hustled aboard a helicopter. Minutes later, at Howard Air Force Base, he was formally placed under arrest by DEA agents and read his Miranda rights in Spanish. The agents made him trade his uniform for a prisoner’s flight suit and escorted him aboard a C-130. Within two hours the man who had controlled a tropical paradise as the “Maximum Leader” was on the ground in the United States, heading to a Miami jail cell as Prisoner #41586.
Ironically, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment pilot who flew the Blackhawk helicopter from the Nunciature to Howard Air Force Base was Chief Warrant Officer Cliff Wolcott, who would three years later would play a critical, yet tragic role, in America's hunt for Muhammad Farah Aideed.
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