Word: panama
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About the timetable, at least, there were few arguments: at 8 a.m. last Tuesday, a line of jeeps and canvas-covered military trucks roared up Avenue A in Panama City and disgorged armed troops at the headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces. The soldiers joined 200 others stationed there, and gunfire soon erupted inside and outside the building. Within 90 minutes, the rebels had seized the Comandancia, as it is known locally, and trapped Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega in a small part of the compound. At 11:30, the insurgents issued a statement on national radio proclaiming their coup...
...grenade explosions and gunfire from forces loyal to Noriega. The firefight claimed the lives of ten rebels and wounded 18 loyalist troops and five civilians. By 2 that afternoon, Noriega's supporters were rounding up the last of the rebels. It was all over but the pompous pronouncements in Panama -- and the recriminations in Washington...
...first, the U.S. retorted that its limited maneuvers were intended only to safeguard American lives and property, as permitted under the Panama Canal treaties. "There were rumors around that this was some sort of an American operation," President Bush said on Tuesday. "I can tell you that is not true." Two days later senior officials acknowledged that they had acted at the request of the rebels...
...investigation of the Administration's handling of the failed coup, as did two congressional committees. Conceded a senior White House official: "You could ) make a good case that we had something of an intelligence failure." Said another: "There's no excuse. We've had a big presence in Panama and close ties with its military for a long time...
...first intimations of a plot came on Sunday, when Major Moises Giroldi Vera, leader of the failed attempt, told U.S. officials in Panama that an uprising was imminent. The news was surprising, since Giroldi was a Noriega loyalist who played a key role in quelling the previous military revolt in March 1988. "Giroldi's a bastard, a sort of mini-Noriega," says a Pentagon official. "Warning signs went up. We 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...