U.S. Invades Panama to Capture Former CIA Asset Manuel Noriega

The United States launches Operation Just Cause, deploying nearly 26,000 combat troops in the largest and most complex military operation since the Vietnam War to capture Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. The invasion targets two dozen locations throughout Panama in a massive show of force designed to apprehend a former CIA asset turned liability who had been indicted by U.S. federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa on drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering charges in 1988.

The operation’s bitter irony lies in Noriega’s long history as a paid CIA informant, receiving upward of $100,000 per year from the 1960s through the 1980s, with his salary increased to $200,000 annually when George H.W. Bush served as CIA director (1976-77). Throughout this period, the U.S. ignored Noriega’s use of weapons-shipment networks to smuggle drugs into the U.S. in exchange for Panama’s support for Contra operations in Nicaragua. Although Noriega worked with the DEA to restrict some drug shipments, he simultaneously accepted substantial payments from drug dealers and facilitated money laundering operations.

Major military operations conclude within five days, though Noriega evades capture for four days before taking refuge in the Vatican Embassy. U.S. forces employ psychological warfare, blaring loud rock music 24 hours a day at the papal nunciature until Noriega surrenders on January 3, 1990. He is immediately transported to Miami where he is tried, convicted, and sentenced to U.S. prison.

The invasion demonstrates the cynical nature of U.S. drug war policy: the same government that paid Noriega to facilitate covert operations while tolerating his drug trafficking later invades a sovereign nation to prosecute him for those same crimes. The operation kills hundreds of Panamanian civilians and destroys entire neighborhoods, raising questions about whether the true objective was capturing a criminal or eliminating an intelligence asset who knew too much about U.S. covert operations.