Word: coupe
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...feared a Noriega trap." Fueling that suspicion was the fact that two principal U.S. players -- General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Maxwell Thurman, chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama -- had taken up their posts just that weekend. The timing of the coup seemed calculated to take advantage of their greenness...
...assist the uprising by blocking two access roads near Fort Amador and the Bridge of the Americas, but otherwise wanted no U.S. involvement that might discredit them. Through Monday, as they waited in vain for news of Giroldi's move, Bush and his aides decided that if a coup were mounted, they would honor the blockade request...
...prepared to lift this burden from their hands." The rebels refused. "They were clearly not of a mind to turn ((Noriega)) over to us," Defense Secretary Richard Cheney said later. "They were not willing to have him extradited to the U.S." Soon after, word arrived in Washington that the coup attempt had collapsed...
...details of the botched coup emerge, it seems clear that the rebel force had potential that Washington underestimated. Noriega's subsequent roundup of plotters showed that the effort reached deep into the dictator's circle. Among the 37 arrested were three of the general's closest and most trusted associates: Colonel Guillermo Wong, head of military intelligence, Colonel Julio Ow Young, who oversees personnel for the dreaded Doberman militias that have repeatedly been turned on opposition rallies, and Lieut. Colonel Armando Palacios Gondola, head of an organization that supervised joint military operations with U.S. troops...
...Administration's caution may have been reinforced by the presence of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico, who was in the White House Tuesday morning to meet with Bush. As the coup unfolded, Bush briefed Salinas on the developments; not surprisingly, the President did not do the same for General Dmitri Yazov, the Soviet Defense Minister, who visited the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon...