Word: panama
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Allied troops stormed the Normandy beaches in 1944, American correspondents and photographers were on hand to tell the story. But two weeks ago, when U.S. Marines and Rangers led the charge into Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, not a single journalist accompanied them. The Pentagon- sanctioned pool of reporters did not arrive on the scene until four hours after the fighting began, and they were unable to file their first dispatches until six hours after that. Worse, the initial pool report shed almost no light on the confused military situation, leading off with the hardly titanic news...
...that failure lies with the military -- particularly the Defense Department's Southern Command -- not with Komarow or his seven colleagues in the pool. From the time the hastily summoned reporters arrived at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on the night of the invasion until they returned from Panama four days later, the Army kept them under such tight control that journalistic initiative was all but impossible...
During their first, crucial day in Panama, the reporters were kept for several hours in a windowless room at Fort Clayton and treated to a tedious, history-laden briefing. Nor were things much better once the poolers were allowed into the sunlight. "To the extent we got any news at all," Komarow says, "it was pretty much by accident." He notes, for example, that the pool did witness looting in Panama City, but only when their military driver lost his way. Exposure to actual combat was also a matter of chance, as when Noriega forces attacked the Southern Command...
...Antonio Noriega, replied leaders of Spain, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and perhaps other nations last week. None wanted any part of the busted Panamanian strongman, accused drug dealer and alleged black-magic practitioner. Only Cuba showed even a grudging interest in enabling Noriega to leave the Vatican embassy in Panama City, where he had taken refuge from invading U.S. troops on Christmas Eve. "We wouldn't do it for Noriega the man," said a Cuban diplomat. "This would be our way of standing up for nonintervention and, frankly, sticking it to the gringos." Officials in Washington, however, swore they would...
...Noriega remained in the Panama City nunciature (papal embassy), presumably covering his ears against a pop-culture version of psychological warfare. U.S. troops ringing the embassy set up loudspeakers and blasted away with rock music, which to the opera-loving Noriega must have been sheer cacophony. Among the titles: No Place to Run, Voodoo Chile and You're No Good. The G.I.s harassed the nunciature in other ways too: they shot out a garden light and repeatedly stopped the papal legate, Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa, as he came and went...