Original subtitles

The shooting began at midnight. Everyone ran toward their home.

People started hollering. Children began crying.

It was a complex operation, 27 targets were hit simultaneously.

I heard some of my family get shot.

I don't know nothing else that has happened.

I just was "keep going", because I was frightened to die.

I was frightened to die.

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. They 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 19th 1989,

while Panamanians were getting ready for the Christmas holidays,

the United States was secretly mobilizing 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 was not just machine-gun fire. There 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 Rather reporting.

More than 20,000 U.S. soldiers and marines

launched their attack in the early morning darkness...

As the invasion unfolded

Americans stayed glued to their TV’s 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 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 Gaddafi, Idi Amin and the ayatollah Khomeini,

whom Americans just love to hate.

The White House announced a $1 million reward for his capture.

The justice department set up a hotline

taking 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 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 Columbia,

U.S. policy abruptly changed.

In 1903, the United States provided military backup

enabling Panama to secede from Columbia.

By doing so, the United States secure the rights to take over the canal project

that had been abandoned by the French.

In a treaty 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. It 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 based on racial segregation.

Where black people could not live in the same home

where black people could not even use the same water fountain.

The Jim Crow 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 continue to expand its military presence

and tighten its grip on Panamanians 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 it's 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 Torrijos, 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.

Torrijos introduced an unexpected period of social reform

that benefited Panama's majority population of Blacks, Indians and Mestizos.

It created a populist reformist process.

Humberto Brown, an administrator at the state university of New York

served as the Panamanians diplomat to the United Nations.

He was educated in Panama, during the Torrijos period.

Where, for the first time in Panama, we had a participation

of the non-oligarchical people of nation.

Where people like myself could go to university and get a degree, where

the peasants, where people from the Mestizos, where

all the people were deprived an opportunity, for once in their life

were playing an important role in our nation.

In 1978, relations between the United States and Panama reached a high point.

Jimmy Carter and Omar Torrijos negotiated treaties that abolished the 1903 treaty

establishing a new relationship between the two countries.

The Carter-Torrijos Treaties

required the United State 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 U.S. 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 Torrijos should be told we are going to keep it.

In November 1980,

Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in a landslide election victory.

8 months later, on the night of July 31, 1981

Omar Torrijos 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 suspected 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.

This I know because I worked with Torrijos.

Jose "Chu chú" Martinez was one of Torrijos closest aides for many years.

They killed him precisely at the moment they had to kill him.

At that moment Torrijos was having a big influence over Central America.

Especially among the revolutionary movement.

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 U.S.

He had been on the CIA payroll since the 60's.

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 CIA to be an asset,

he has obviously provided many important pieces of information to U.S. intelligence.

Peter Cornblue is senior analyst at the National Security archives.

The archive has assembled 100s of previously classified government documents

revealing the details of Noriega's relationship to U.S. intelligence.

They paid him an incredible amount of American taxpayers money.

And obviously decided that his value to them, was so important

that his drug smuggling, and other illegal activities, could simply be ignored.

I, George Herbert Walter Bush, do solemnly swear

that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States.

After George Bush became vice president under Ronald Reagan in 1981,

he was named head of the administrations 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 Noriega was well taken care of.

And in fact, admiral Stansfield Turner, the former director of the CIA under Carter,

claims 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 had 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 U.S., had been indicted and are now serving time.

This operation essentially gave Manuel Noriega the assurance

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 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.

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 people like John Poindexter or even William Casey

coming down to his villa and telling him what he should or should not 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 3 of Noriega's major protectors

were out of government and that led quickly to a shift in U.S. policy.

Sentiments within Panama were turning against Noriega as well.

For three years

Noriega worked with the DEA in a sting operation code-named 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.

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 you would cooperate with U.S. objectives in Central America.

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.

General Noriega told us 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 governments policy on several issues.

He said that by far the most pressing was the demand by the U.S. 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 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.

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 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 Calderón.

If the same scenario of those elections

occurred and had taken place in the United States, they would have been illegal.

In the U.S. 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?

This strategy was applied in Panama. They applied it in Nicaragua.

They will apply it to every government who disagrees with the U.S. foreign policy.

They use economical sanctions

to starve people and then to impose a vote on these people.

Because people vote to get bread when they are hungry.

I don't think that is democracy.

The elections were held, the counting of the votes began,

and it became clear that the PRD would lose the election.

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.

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

One of the opposition presidential candidates

was beaten and injured during the day, by backers of military strongman...

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 2000 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.

We'd love to see him get him out. We would 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

and make sure that certain airfields were not made available for use

by elements potentially loyal to general Noriega.

With these assurances, the insurgent troops launched a coup attempt.

They quickly overpowered Noriega's guards,

seized the PDF headquarters and captured Noriega.

But the Americans did not carry through on the promises.

Forces loyal to Noriega were allowed to gain entrance and crushed the rebellion,

freeing general Noriega.

President Bush later denied any U.S. involvement in the operation.

.. that this is some American operation. I can tell you: That is not true.

I would repeat we have no argument with the Panamanian Defense Forces.

We have no argument with them.

We have good relations with the Panamanians Defense Forces.

But investigative journalist Dough Vaugn

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 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 a weapon. What is wrong with them?

They charge at us with bayonets in order to scare us.

They said not to step onto that area.

But they are on our side, it's Panama jurisdiction,

so what the hell is with them?

It came to an inch that that day the killing didn't started.

Because the tanks and everything were ready to go and 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 the United States position, shots fired in the direction of

of the United States perimeters and positions.

Roughing up of the United States citizens in the street.

Sabina Virgo, a national labor organizer,

was in Panama just weeks before the invasion.

Provocations against the Panamanian people by the 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 claims the marines were unarmed and lost.

But local witnesses said 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.

...what US officials called: An example of general Noriega's cruelty and brutality.

The death of an American officer which pres. Bush condemned today as an outrage.

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 Panama.

The invasion was code-named 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 Chorrillo.

U.S. troops shelled the area for four hours before moving in and calling for surrender.

We ask you to surrender.

If you do not, we are prepared to level each and every building.

Surrender now.

About 10 minutes after, they've been speaking this "surrender, surrender"

we sawed here the helicopters.

Start to bomb the quartel.

And start to use their laser ray.

And things like that so 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 weren't 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 there were children

or women or people fighting.

Instead, everything that moved they shot.

We thought that they would just take Noriega.

They said that's what they wanted. They would take him and respect everyone else.

After the bombing been start

been going on for a few hours.

The soldiers say: Tell everybody to come out with their hands on their head.

They direct us to the church.

When we were in the church about 6:00 in the morning,

all of a sudden,

the building started to burn in front of the church.

The people, the only thing they had was inside that place,

they tried to run out to get water to hose it.

The American soldiers told them to get out.

Some people are stubborn. The Americans soldiers shot up in the air.

The people got scared and ran 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.

All walked in all around the alleys leading to the houses

Then they began to set the houses on fire.

The Panamanian soldiers know each ally,

how to go in and come out and where to go

and from one street to another street

climb up and go onto a balcony.

The only way the American soldiers could get could get rid of that danger

was to burn down the buildings there.

That way the Panamanian soldiers would have nowhere to hide.

I am unaware of any operations by U.S. military to go through and

systematically burn down buildings.

You get fires that are started by weapons.

But I havn't seen any reports of U.S. military folks

going through and setting buildings on fire.

The North Americans began burning down El Chorrillo 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 El Chorrillo went to nothing.

The Pentagon used Panama as a testing ground for newly developed hightech 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 is a probability there was a use of

sophisticated weaponry, merely to test it.

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general,

has conducted extensive research into the invasion.

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

but simply overwhelm the opposition

and the fact that it would cause tremendous peripheral damage,

damage to innocent civilians on a wide scale, was not of concern in the planning.

What we intended to do was to reduce collateral damage.

Collateral damage, it means if the target is right here,

you are trying not to have damage to other places.

You are trying to have damage to a specific target. Because that's a military target.

And you are trying to minimize damage outside of the military target.

And they worked.

My God, we were sending in artillery and air strikes

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 were cases that we know, for example the case of Manuel Carro,

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 eye witness 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 Olivardia, 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 facedown 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 4 hours of the attack

and were restricted to U.S. military bases for the next day and a half.

Our regret is we were not able to use the media pool more effectively.

The goal was to get reporters down there

so that they could to see from 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 gonna be available had to be pulled off.

They 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.

Can I see your credentials please?

One of the few journalists who was able to penetrate the military's restrictions

was a Panamanian photographer Julio Guerra.

I had already taken photographs in the Chorrillo 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 role of film with the shots of the dead bodies I had taken.

Military folk 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 Chorrillo.

As soon as we were able to, we started videotaping.

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 República, 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 is 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.

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 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 universities.

Almost every organization opposed to the United States policy

had its offices raided and destroyed.

Thousands of individuals were arrested.

Aries 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 stormtroopers, 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.

I got it, I got it, I got you covered.

Get the door.

Open the door.

Get down on the floor, U.S. marines.

Government officials had to go underground,

many of them, in order not be arrested, including university professors.

There were former government and diplomatic officials that were arrested

and interned at refuge camps and some of them prisons.

The list runs into the thousands.

Why are they taking you?

They say I have weapons, I don't no have no weapons

Why are 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. Posters of Torrijos.

They would search it whenever they felt like it.

Balbina Herrera de Perinan 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 Rebública newspaper,

had been openly critical of the new government and 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 want 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 Chorrillo,

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 2 large airplane hangers.

Where many languished for more than a year.

In hanger nr. 1, we constructed 506 cubicles.

It's a 10 by 10 foot cubicle where we host each of the families.

In each cubicles we can put as much as 4 camps and 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 to 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.

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.

The Marshall's Office just called me and they said to detain anybody from filming.

I don't think that's right. I think the world has the right to know the truth.

Sir please, we are the victims. We lose everything. We lose our families.

So now why the world is not supposed to know the truth, sir?

I cannot allow you to film.

We are the victims sir. And we want the world to know the truth.

I do too.

Then why are you against it?

You come in and arrest me but we have the right to be here.

Were shooting here a Panamanian project and we have the right of the director.

I'm not stopping, we are not slowing down.

So if you have to bring someone in to forcibly 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. 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 are tired of being stuck inside this hanger. Many old people are sick.

There is 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 Corrilleros,

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 gonna do it!

But we want answers! We wanna get out of this goddamn place.

We are tired of this. This is not no democracy.

They said they get rid of Noriega, and they are worse than Noriega, they are plenty worse!

Because with Noriega we used to eat our 3 meals a day, now we're not even eating one!

More than 60 Panamanians are reported to have died in that...

More than 50 Panamanians were killed. A doctor at a government hospital in Panama...

..casualties, but we've only had one report today 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 we are getting from the Pentagon, seems to conflict

with all the eye-witness information that we were are 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 or the Noriega regime.

What happened in Panama is a hidden horror.

Many of the bodies were bulldozed into piles

and immolated in the slumps where they were collected.

Other bodies were left in the garbage shoots at the poor projects, in witch 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 burned up inside a car.

People from El Chorrillo never thought they would see some 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 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 arrive to the conclusion

that for sure there were more than 4000 people who died.

You have the U.N. human rights commission estimating 2500 deaths

you have the two major independent human rights organizations

in the region estimating 2500, 3000, 3500.

You have Isabel Corro and her organization

estimating probably about 4000

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 is 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 are 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 where as the

American press was talking about maybe a couple hundred civilian casualties,

from the very beginning the European press was talking about

a 1000 civilians dead or 2000 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 of Panama was just jumping up and down with glee.

And that all forces had just moved in the air and without taking any lives at all,

had brought liberty and freedom to these oppressed people.

Does it feel like intervention?

No, it's not intervention. They came to save us, I thank them.

I love them, I love the North Americans right now.

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 going to the bombed areas and talked to people

who had lost their 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?

15 American service men have died in the combat today

Not all the news is good. American casualties are now put at 15 dead.

The Pentagon also announced 1 American civilian has been killed to make a total of 16.

is a schoolteacher, apparently hit by stray gunfire. She is the 20th American to die.

They focused utter ethno-centrism 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. We say goodbye to them.

Every human life is precious.

And yet I have to answer: Yes, it has been worth it.

In the month 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,

I cannot quote to you that number.

Today, there have been 50 mass graves that have been identified throughout Panama.

Th U.S. 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 create the 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 60's and in their 70's.

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 conceive that over 75% of those killed were civilians.

Families of the victims

continue to demand the 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 and violates all principles of human rights

the number of people, the quantity

the figures

if it's 10.000 or it's just one, is irrelevant

the issue that innocent people were killed!

A lot of people died.

Too many people died.

Although the U.S. media created a perception of support for the invasion within the U.S.,

the invasion was overwhelmingly condemned in the international community.

If you look at any document in international law, any 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 U.S. actions are in violation of human rights also violates the Geneva conventions

which protects 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. Everyone of them.

Now, a little body known as the United Nations had a vote about this.

On December 29 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 Deborah Norville,

absolutely no mention what so ever 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 are not favorable to corporate America.

They are corporate America. They are an integral part of corporate America.

We are a Plutocracy. We out to face it. A country in which wealth controls.

Maybe true of all countries more or less. But it is uniquely to 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 all 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 gonna 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, singly or collectively

makes any legal, moral or constitutional sense.

One of the reasons for the invasion

was to take the 'wimp' image of 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 chance for the military to show what it could do.

If they kill an American marine, that is 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 gonna 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've filed.

We could've gone to the world court. We could've gone to the United Nations,

or maybe the organizations of American states,

but invade a country because of this? Is absolutely ridiculous.

The excuse of the invasion

was to protect American lives, is the one that is always given.

The fact is there are 35,000 American citizens there, and none of them were in any danger.

I was there 3 weeks before the invasion. There's simply no evidence.

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 is 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.

Endara, 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 is 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 pres. Endara minimizes the significance of America's military occupation in Panama.

I think we are very normalized now.

We practically have no occupation at all. 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 is not going to say that Panama is occupied,

in fact he might not even call it an invasion.

It wasn't his kind that were killed, or massacred.

He lives in the nice area. In the oligarchical area.

His interest was protected. He is not running Panama.

He is a puppet of the U.S. government. The U.S. government is running Panama.

They are running all of the ministers in Panama.

He is only abiding by what he is 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 2 years following the invasion.

There is also considerable evidence that key members of Panama's new government,

including president Endara,

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 involves most of the Panamanian elite.

Involves most of the people who now run this new U.S. approved Panamanian government.

Endara and Ford, we all know, and Panamanians know,

that they are the real drug traffickers.

They have been, because Panama has had a 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 is very interesting. That, when general Noriega, when office was captured,

we discovered the red pyjamas, the voodoo equipment

and the alleged cocaine that he was using.

And the pornographic pictures in his desk.

Now, I happen to have been in Chile with United Nations

at the time of the overthrow of president Allende.

It is 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 Americans can be so stupid, to believe this. 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 treaty what they wanted. Which is what is happening now.

Although the U.S. governments reasons for the invasion

make 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 therefor

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 Treaties. It states clearly that the year 2000

Panama will 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 presence

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 get 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 U.S.

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 fighting for our rights.

George Bush, may his children be spared what my daughter has been 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 for ever abolish Panama's right to have an army.

Later that year, a law was passed by the U.S. 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.