Word: noriega
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...frustration at not being able to bring Noriega to justice, however, Bush hailed the dictator's surrender to the papal nuncio as "a marvelous Christmas present." It promptly put a stop to the fighting that had threatened to drag out into a guerrilla campaign; Noriega loyalists saw no point in battling on after their chief was gone. Last week American troops turned their attention to restoring law-and-order and suppressing looting in Panama City, sometimes in joint patrols with members of the Panama Defense Forces (now renamed Public Forces) with whom they had exchanged gunfire days earlier...
Plans to resist the U.S. invasion had called for the P.D.F. to break up into small groups and conduct a guerrilla war. But Noriega from the first was too intent on saving his own skin to give his followers any direction. Shortly before the invasion, U.S. intelligence claims to have sighted Noriega at an officers' club at the international airport. Noriega, however, had an advance intimation of the attack. As an old intelligence operative, he could hardly have missed the cargo planes ferrying troops and equipment into American military bases. He took off for five days of scuttling around Panama...
...stayed briefly with supporters at homes ranging from multibedroom houses to bug-ridden shacks, and supposedly spent part of one night on the 17th floor of the Holiday Inn. On Sunday, the fifth day of the invasion, U.S. troops reportedly burst into the luxurious home of the mother of Noriega's mistress, Vicky Amado, but missed the dictator possibly by only half an hour. The Wall Street Journal stated that the Americans had been told of Noriega's whereabouts by a telephone call from Amado's teenage daughter. Amado's mother denied that U.S. troops raided her house...
...Christmas Eve, most of Noriega's entourage had melted away. The dictator was exhausted by the chase and depressed by the defection of one of his top lieutenants, Luis del Cid, who surrendered to U.S. forces in the western province of Chiriqui rather than organize a resistance. Noriega, accompanied by two bodyguards, drove to a Dairy Queen ice-cream store in Paitilla, a commercial neighborhood of Panama City. He dialed the nunciature's number and spoke to Monsignor Laboa. As a non-American diplomat who has been in touch with Laboa paraphrased the conversation, Noriega requested sanctuary. On what grounds...
Unable to get at Noriega, the U.S. went after some of his money. The Justice Department asked Britain, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland to freeze accounts in which Noriega was thought to have stashed $10 million or more; France and Switzerland promptly complied. On the basis of documents seized during the invasion, the U.S. felt sure it could prove that the accounts were stuffed with drug money...