Operation ‘Just Cause’
Forewords…
Panama is essential to U.S. interests because of the Canal's strategic role in global commerce, with U.S. influence in the country dating back to the early 20th century. By the late 1980s, tensions escalated as Manuel Antonio Noriega, Panama's military leader, faced allegations of drug trafficking and human rights violations. His authoritarian rule and manipulation of the 1989 elections caused widespread discontent and chaos. The assassination of U.S. officer Robert Paz and attacks on American citizens led the George H.W. Bush administration to launch Operation Just Cause, aimed at protecting American lives, dismantling drug trafficking, and securing the Panama Canal while honoring treaties.
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Have a wonderful day filled with good health, happiness, and love…
In December 2023, Energy Central recognized outstanding contributors within the Energy & Sustainability Network during the 'Top Voices' event. The recipients of this honor were highlighted in six articles, showcasing the acknowledgment from the community. The platform facilitates professionals in disseminating their work, engaging with peers, and collaborating with industry influencers. Congratulations are extended to the 2023 Top Voices: David Hunt, Germán Toro Ghio, Schalk Cloete, and Dan Yurman for their exemplary demonstration of expertise. - Matt Chester, Energy Central
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Image. Germán & Co
Operation ‘Just Cause’
By Germán Toro Ghio
This evening, we wish to in some exquisite jazz...
We had just arrived at our room on the top floor of a hotel in the centre of Panama City. It was a few minutes to midnight on Tuesday 19th December, 1989. Earlier, Isaac Abrahamsson, my wife’s cousins had invited us to Las Bóvedas, a jazz club in the old town, for around 8:15 PM.
We were picked up at the hotel. Slowly, we began to move to that side of the city. As we approached the perimeter of the old colonial district, we were stopped at a military checkpoint. After greeting the officer on duty, our host politely asked him:
‘What seems to be the issue, Lieutenant?
The uniformed man responded with a rigidity common to such ranks of the military:
‘The president is attending an official ceremony, sir’.
While the answer suggested nothing out of the ordinary, it meant we were unable to reach the jazz club and had to return to the modern part of the city, where we looked for a restaurant to have dinner. When we found one, I noticed that it was oddly crowded for a Tuesday.
As we made our way to the table the waiter had pointed to, Isaac Abrahamson, my wife’s cousin, greeted several people.
‘How are things?’, Isaac asked one of them.
‘Well, very well’, they replied.
As we sat down, Isaac told us about the people he had greeted.
‘Some of them are —paisanos—. Others are ministers…
Four ministers of General Manuel Antonio Noriega’s regime were at the restaurant, which meant that everything was calm. As the clock inched closer to midnight, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel.
We had been in Panama for about two weeks, and that night I felt tired. I lay in bed while my wife went through her bedtime routines. I was beginning to fall asleep when I experienced a loud explosion that resembled the sound of a bomb detonation. Morments later the phone rang. I answered immediately and recognised Isaac’s voice on the other end of the line.
‘They're invading’, he said in a desperate tone. Before he hung up, I heard another explosion. Then, there was the roar of another and another before the explosions continued unabated. It was real—Panama City was being bombed.
This is how Operation ‘Just Cause’ began, through which the Americans intended to remove General Noriega from power and imprison him. My wife and I huddled in fear on the highest floor of our hotel, the world outside a cacophony of chaos. The thunderous blasts of bombs echoed through the air, while helicopters sliced through the night with their ominous whirring. The sharp crack of machine guns punctuated the tension, and amidst it all, I could hear the eerie whistle of rockets soaring ominously in every direction.
The phone rang again, this time from the receptionist, who informed us that we were to be moved to a lower floor as a security measure. Almost as soon as I hung up, hotel staff arrived to gather our belongings and move us to another room.
In our new room, we heard helicopters fly past increasingly often, and we perceived the bombs and gunshots to be getting closer. Then, the power cut out, which made us panic out of fear. To protect ourselves, we took refuge in the bathroom, which seemed like the safest place. We lay on the ground in the dark, listening to exchanges of fire and the shudder of bombs. While at times there were moments of total silence, they were always broken again suddenly by the sound of weapons. Trapped by our uncertainty, every second seemed to be drawn out.
‘That shot was very close. I’m scared!’, my wife whispered after a thunderous bang.
I tried to calm her down, but the frequent explosions rendered my attempts futile. We were totally alone.
As the hours went by, the situation outside did not improve. We awoke to explosions, which had not diminished. The shooting did not let up during the day either, so we had a long and uncertain wait. A few metres from the hotel was the Telecommunications Palace. Attempting to alleviate my boredom at fairly high risk, I looked out the window to see the place being mercilessly assaulted by armed forces from the air and land. Now, the explosions were less than 400 metres away. We felt the exchange of gunfire on top of us and could hear loud voices and music from loudspeakers mounted on helicopters.
The next night came and, with it, the shelling and machine gun fire intensified. As we lay on the bathroom floor, I realised we’d been taking shelter in the hotel for a full 24 hours.
The second night was a nightmare that felt like it would never end. Unable to bear our situation any longer, I came up with a plan and told my wife about it:
‘We have only one possibility—get help from the Swedish Consulate’, I said, which reassured her.
The dawn of Thursday 21st December arrived with rays of light filtering through the small bathroom window. We had brought the hotel room’s phone closer to us so that we could use it from the bathroom. At about 5 AM, I managed to get through to the Swedish Consul. I had called him at home several times earlier in the morning, but he hadn’t answered. By the timbre of his voice, he was an old man.
He was also not a career diplomat; rather, he was one of those so-called honorary consuls who serve little purpose. In that moment, he was useless. Our conversation, which lasted for several minutes, led nowhere. Instead, it turned into a brawl with an incompetent official.
I lost patience and told him to go and fry monkeys in the African jungle. While I got my point across, our only chance of help had vanished.
‘You are too fucking old, man!’, I ended up yelling at him. Mierda…
Normally, my wife and I spent this important time of the year in Panama. As such, we knew the political situation of the country in depth, like the Panamanians. Over time, we’d heard details of the tactics proposed in various statements by the Battalions of Dignity, who had been aware of an imminent invasion by the United States.
Anyone who was aware of this background knew at the storm was far from over. . With each passing day, fears loomed heavy, one of which was the possibility that the Battalions of Dignity, an armed popular movement, might just rise to meet the mounting expectations placed upon them.
As a civil movement related to General Noriega, the Battalions of Dignity had received military training from the Panama Defence Forces. Much was said about them, including how radical their actions could be. It had been mentioned that in the event of an invasion by foreign forces, they would kidnap foreigners with impunity, especially U.S. citizens, whom they knew were mainly to be found in hotels. They would then seek to use them as human shields.
Sheltering on the floor of our small bathroom, unable to sleep, we felt totally helpless. We couldn't come up with any ideas—no one could do anything for us. Then, we felt the bombardment of Operation Just Cause intensifying. Pushed by uncertainty, we finally agreed on a strategy in case the Battalions of Dignity or the U.S. Army entered the hotel.
Mid-morning on Friday 22nd, we heard a violent knock on the room door. It seemed like the person outside wanted to beat the door down.
‘Open up! Open!’, the person shouted while knocking aggressively.
‘Who is it?’, I asked.
However, the voice on the other end persisted:
‘Open up or we're going to shoot!’
The order had become a threat. I made an inference based on the man’s tone of voice.
‘They are from the Battalions of Dignity’, I whispered in my wife’s ear. ‘Quick, get your passport’.
I opened the door to see five guerrilla fighters of the battalion. Looking excited and nervous, they spoke in a hurried, desperate manner.
‘Where are you from?’, one of them asked.
My wife quickly handed him her Nicaraguan passport.
‘We are from Nicaragua’, she replied.
The bravest fighter checked the passport closely, which did not take him long.
‘And who is he?’, he asked as he fixed his gaze on me.
‘He’s my husband’, my wife said.
He looked at me carefully.
‘It is okay’, he said cautiously.
Then, he offered a warning:
he added, "Watch out, the gringos are on their way." ‘
The militiaman’s advice, though warning us of danger, came as a relief as his fury had abated. Although my wife and I remained on tenterhooks, we realised that we had made it through an extremely dangerous moment.
When they left, we returned to sheltering on the bathroom floor. That afternoon, the phone rang. It was my friend Harald Falt, the Swedish Ambassador to Nicaragua, who had managed to locate us after many phone calls.
‘How are you?’, he asked.
I began to feel relieved. I told him about our situation and perilous experiences. Harald informed me that he had notified the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm about our situation. He had also put our names on an emergency list.
‘From Europe, a NATO plane is being coordinated to evacuate European citizens in Panama’, he said.
I thanked him warmly for calming our spirits. Now this was a diplomat who could do the job he was appointed to do.
Until Saturday 23rd, the hotel had managed to serve guests a minimum supply of food and drinks. However, from the third day onwards, we began to feel the ravages in the quantity of provisions and shortage of staff. Subtly, the hotel management suggested that we leave the hotel.
Given the superiority of the U.S. forces, the invasion had not been met with much resistance. Besides, on the fourth day, fierce clashes still raged between the military factions closest to General Noriega and the invading forces. The most intense fighting was in Chorrillos, a popular neighbourhood of Panama City.
Operation Just Cause had the sole mission of capturing General Noriega; but, by the fourth day, he could still not be found.
Significant fractions of the Panamanian police and army had withdrawn, leaving the country without authorities to ensure public order. This triggered a state of anarchy that manifested in a wave of looting and vandalism, which, in turn, became new focal points of armed confrontations between the owners of commercial establishments, defending their property, and the looters.
Sunday 24th, Christmas Eve, was the fourth day of the operation. With all the restrictions and the hotel management’s ‘friendly’ invitation to leave, my wife and I couldn't be unhappier. Our misfortune felt like the most intense darkness that one feels when a new day is approaching. Raquel Abrahamson, Isaac’s wife, called us on the phone, which I passed to my wife. In an act of solidarity, Raquel had a plan to rescue us.
"I'll swing by in 15 minutes," she announced. "Make sure you're all set. Alright, we'll be waiting for you in the hotel lobby!"
Like a Mossad agent, Raquel carried out the rescue operation impeccably.
‘Damn my car has been stolen. They took my new blue Mercedes!’, she said in the car while driving. However, none of us paid any attention to what she was saying due to the war-like scenes around us.
Isaac, a man with what seemed like a thousand and one passports, was waiting for us at the house. He was born in Switzerland, raised in Brazil, studied in the United States, and earned a master’s degree in the United Kingdom. He had married my wife’s first cousin, who was Jewish, and they had put down roots in Panama. He had then obtained Panamanian citizenship.
Isaac became a well-known art dealer and owned an impressive gallery in the city. His life was spent between the art auctions of New York and Panama City. This good man—an always positive, extraordinarily methodical, well-educated, peaceful pipe smoker and music lover— frequently found a way to escape his thoughts.
While being methodical is a virtue, such a trait can sometimes drive people to madness. Isaac documented every chronological detail of every event he experienced—the year, month, day, and hour, even down to minutes and seconds.
He also scored without haste. How much had a particular item cost him? He knew the figure immediately. Who had he bought it from? He had it written down. Who had he sold it to? He had the answer. What had his wife done that day? He could tell you. In this last area, he was patient and diligent. Perhaps, Isaac could have been a better narrator than Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga himself in La Araucana because of his passion for recording details.
I had known Isaac for several years. Over time, we had established a solid friendship, united by our shared enthusiasm for paintings. On several occasions, we had also done good business together.
Raquel and Isaac lived in La Cresta, one of Panama City’s most exclusive areas. They had a huge apartment. To prevent any unwanted visits, Isaac had protected the doors with armour. In this sense, the house was a fortress.
Inside, one was confused as to whether it was a house or a museum. It honestly felt more like a museum. Once we arrived, our main concern changed from dodging stray bullets to not breaking some priceless work of art, which paying for could leave us broke for life. We wandered around the apartment with extreme care and attention, but despite the need to move cautiously, we felt much calmer than at the hotel.
However, Raquel and Isaac told us that they were worried as most of the artworks they owned remained at the gallery. At any moment, they could be looted. Together, we began to plan a second rescue operation to retrieve the paintings.
The most difficult matter was locating a locked truck. We required a daring driver to undertake the adventure for a good few balboas. The rest of the challenge lay in defying adversity. As Raquel had unconditionally brought us from our hotel to their apartment, we didn’t hesitate for a moment about joining the mission. However, to reach the gallery, we had to cross a long stretch of the city, which involved the risk of us being injured or robbed.
On Monday 26th of December, the sixth day of Operation Just Cause, we got the truck along with a driver with the help of some neighbours. We started the trip to the gallery that morning. During the journey, we heard constant gunshots. No one let their guard down until we reached the destination.
The entire mission took us approximately 45 minutes. The gallery was built mostly of glass, which made sense as the works could be seen from the outside. However, at that moment, this style of architecture did not feel beneficial, and every time we took one of the artworks down from the walls, we heard the gunfire getting increasingly close.
Once the paintings had been loaded into the truck, the gunfire increased in intensity, causing a dramatic increase in our anxiety. Raquel’s DNA appeared to have betrayed her, as her innate attachment to material belongings had put the lives of our team at risk. I asked myself the following question:
‘What chucha does this cousin do in the gallery?’
I went back inside to find Raquel eagerly removing the nails the pictures had been hung on the walls with. ‘It can't be, it can't be’, I thought. ‘She wants to take absolutely everything!’ Seeing this caused me to run out of patience.
‘Stop that, please. Do you want them to kill us because of you?’, I shouted. Then, pulling her by the arm, we ran out of the building together. Between the scene’s absurdity and complexity, Isaac looked happy about the harsh scolding he gave his wife in exquisite Chilean.
On the way home, we had to find shortcuts to move forward as mobs of looters had mobilised throughout the streets. On more than one occasion, shots rang out that made us stop for safety.
Back at the apartment, Isaac overflowed with joy and gratitude. He was thrilled to have his things safe, and he offered us all manner of attention.
As the days passed, our sense of nostalgia for our own home grew. Every morning, Harald called to give me the lowdown regarding our evacuation from Panama. In the last call, he added three new elements to the unfortunate situation: First, General Noriega had not been captured; second, Panamanian airspace remained closed; and third, the airport had been seriously damaged and was only being used for military purposes by the U.S. Army. The news, although not encouraging, was at least revealing.
We lived Isaac’s methodical practices each day. Just a few weeks previously, he had become a father to a child named Moshe. Isaac had made a film of the birth, which he proudly—and repeatedly—showed us. With passion, he narrated each stage of childbirth. He bit his pipe while laughing happily, admiring the arrival of his son. In his peculiar Spanish, he recounted the following:
"With a weight of 5 kilos and 535 grams, and a length of 54 centimeters, Moshe beamed with pride and declared, 'Ah, that's the beauty of nature!'"
There was also no shortage of the best Brazilian music. Isaac always offered everything.
‘Whatever you want, I’ll record it for you’, he promised.
I had never seen such a collection of records, and so carefully classified.
On the morning of December 27th, a family friend called to say that he thought he had seen Raquel’s blue Mercedes at a barricade on the way to the airport—although he couldn’t be certain. Why say that? In less time than we took to react, Raquel had already plotted the third mission with the goal of bringing her car home.
Isaac made his way to the library and began to look through photo albums for a photo of the car. It took him a while but he found one, and we immediately set off, encountering more than a few confrontations along the way. On several occasions, we considered aborting the mission, but Raquel’s insistence made us continue. She wanted her car back no matter the risk level.
We found the blue Mercedes barricaded outside a supermarket. At least 40 people were behind the car, and the supermarket was being looted. Raquel got out the car and went towards the improvised troops, who acted quickly.
‘This car is mine!’, she shouted insistently at them.
Isaac was behind showing the photo that identified the Mercedes as her property. One of the members of the group, as if he were an authority, looked at Raquel.
‘The vehicle has been confiscated and declared useful for the war’, he said.
Raquel was not daunted.
‘War or anything—the car is mine!’, she retorted confrontationally.
Some in the crowd began to badmouth her.
‘Sold gringa!’, shouted one. ‘Get out of here!’
However, Raquel made such a fuss that they eventually gave in out of fatigue.
The Mercedes contained a prize as the looters had been using it to transport stolen goods. Raquel opened the car boot to find an entire supermarket of goods, causing her face to beam with delight. She immediately claimed the provisions as her own. However, the day’s events had exhausted our group and another fight broke out over Raquel’s nature, requiring mediation to calm everyone down.
On Thursday 28th December, night had fallen when the phone rang.
‘It’s Harald, the ambassador’, Isaac said.
When I heard my friend’s voice, I was filled with emotion.
‘Fernando’, he told me, ‘NATO has obtained permission from the United States for a plane to land tomorrow in Panama. The plane will leave Panama City at 1 o'clock in the afternoon bound for San Jose, Costa Rica’.
‘What good news! What joy!’, I exclaimed.
I informed Isaac, who offered to take us to the airport. That night, we prepared the little we had with us. On Friday 29th, very early in the morning, we were ready to leave this desvated country. Before we left, Isaac carefully placed each of his passports in different pants pockets, except for his American passport, which he put in his left shirt pocket.
General Noriega had taken refuge in a Catholic nunnery. Moreover, the invading forces employed a variety of strategies to instil fear in the increasingly isolated Panamanian military, including psychological warfare tactics. These tactics encompassed the incessant playing of loud music throughout the day and night, as well as the continuous overflight of helicopters above the Vatican's diplomatic headquarters.
The journey to the airport, which would normally take around 30 minutes, took more than 2.5 hours. Every time we encountered a U.S. Army barricade, Isaac got out of the car and walked purposefully, with a unique courage, toward the military personnel. He took his U.S. passport in his right hand and raised it high, while his pipe did not leave his left hand.
‘I’m an American’, he repeated, ‘and I've come to drop off my cousins who are going to leave on a NATO plane’.
The commandos approached the car, examined it, asked for my passport, studied it carefully, and let us continue. It was a scene repeated at least five times. On that journey, we experienced almost as much anguish and uncertainty as we had in the eight days we had been trapped in the country.
The penultimate surprise came when we arrived at the airport, which was in ruins. There was no one to turn to and nowhere to go.
‘And what shall we do now?’, my wife asked. ‘Wait’, I answered. ‘We can only wait’.
Isaac waited with us. As hours passed, Europeans who were going to leave on the same emergency flight arrived. When there were many passengers, an officer appeared with a list and reviewed each person on it. We bid Isaac farewell with emotion and great affection, thanking him for all the attention.
The plane landed a few minutes before 1 PM. The final surprise was that the plane was an impressive Hercules C-130, commonly used for transporting troops. At first, we didn’t even know how to sit down; however, all 55 evacuees were eventually accommodated onboard. It was approaching 2 PM when the plane took off. As these giant aircraft are so heavy, they fly slowly, so the flight was twice as long as a commercial flight. After more than 2 hours of flying, we reached Costa Rica, where the German ambassador was waiting to welcome us.
We were in the first round of evacuees to leave Panama following the invasion. General Noriega was in the second, but he of course left the country for a different destination—namely Miami, Florida, on 3rd January 1990. Two Black Hawk helicopters were used for what would be a one-way trip to his imprisonment.