Who

By DAN GOODGAME

What kind of rebel officers risk their lives to storm the lair of a hated military dictator, capture him at gunpoint, decline either to kill him or to turn him over to U.S. forces standing by to receive him, then let him contact his mistress, who calls loyal troops to his rescue?

That credulity-stretching scenario was among the fresh revelations that spilled out last week in Washington during recriminations over the botched rebellion against Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega. Those most to blame for the coup's collapse seemed to be the brave but muddled men who staged it. But congressional critics from both parties lambasted George Bush for failing to dispatch American troops to snatch the dictator and spirit him back to the U.S., where he is wanted on drug-trafficking charges. The White House in turn scolded Congress for trying to micromanage a fast-moving crisis and for hypocritically turning hawkish after earlier rejecting Administration plans for covert action against the strongman. There is plenty of blame to go around:

The Rebels. Their first big mistake was trying to persuade Noriega to retire peacefully instead of killing him or handing him over to the U.S. Their second was counting on Major Francisco Olechea, commander of the elite Battalion 2000, to be neutral; instead, he brought his troops to Noriega's rescue. The widow of the slain coup leader Major Moises Giroldi called Olechea a turncoat. Some U.S. officials, however, suspect that Olechea switched sides because he did not get timely assurances that Giroldi and his troops had succeeded in capturing Noriega. He waited for more than two hours after he knew the coup attempt had begun, and then, under pressure from loyalist commanders to come to Noriega's aid, Olechea and his troops moved out from their base at Fort Cimarron at about 10 a.m. Not until an hour later did the rebels manage to seize a state radio station and begin broadcasting their capture of Noriega.

The Administration. Bush believed, correctly, that U.S. participation in the coup attempt would discredit the Panamanian opposition and anger Latin American countries in which the U.S. has more important interests. The President, however, has sent confusing signals by using macho rhetoric about U.S. military options. Such tough talk, designed to quiet right-wing critics, raised expectations in both the U.S. and Panama of American intervention.

Despite the long-standing contacts between the U.S. and Panamanian military and intelligence communities, the U.S. apparently did not learn of the coup until Giroldi spilled his story. Compounding that failure, the CIA officers whom Giroldi informed of the coup failed to arrange for reliable communication with him. "The first, the absolute first thing you do in this case is put somebody with a radio next to him," says a former CIA director.

Communications back in Washington were not much better, in part because the Bush Administration did not follow a crisis-management practice from the Reagan era: immediately convene the senior deputies of the Defense and State Departments, the CIA and the National Security Council to compare information. Moreover, Bush, a former CIA director who loves to pore over undigested intelligence cables, insisted on receiving three streams of often conflicting reports from the CIA, Defense and State.

Congress. While the coup was under way, Senator Jesse Helms and other lawmakers were contacting sources at State, the CIA, the Pentagon, the White House -- and even the U.S. embassy and military bases in Panama. Those contacts yielded buckets of criticism from mid-level officials who considered the Bush response to the coup too limp. "This creates all kinds of problems," says Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. "You cannot have every member of Congress involved . . . while it is still unfolding."

The U.S. ban on political assassinations may also have reduced Bush's options. In July 1988 the Reagan Administration proposed helping one of Noriega's former cronies, Lieut. Colonel Eduardo Herrera, overthrow him. The idea was rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee out of fear that Noriega, who is always armed and heavily guarded, might have to be killed. Some of the Senators who have sniped publicly at Bush's failure to abduct Noriega were among those who privately opposed the Reagan proposal.

In a session with the President last week, Oklahoma Democrat David Boren, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, conceded that the assassination ban should be reinterpreted. The committee's ranking Republican, William Cohen of Maine, questioned whether U.S. officials might be allowed to "provide information or assistance to groups seeking to overthrow dictatorial governments and establish democracies."

In Panama, meanwhile, Noriega and his terror squads admit to jailing 77 opponents, and have beaten up scores of others on the street. U.S. officials say that some suspected coup leaders have been tortured and executed. Noriega also banned unauthorized assemblies and froze salaries of civilian government employees. Some of them had celebrated a bit prematurely when they heard news of the Oct. 3 coup attempt, cheering and ripping posters of Noriega from their office walls.

The Bush Administration hopes that Noriega's crackdown will radicalize his opposition, perhaps leading to another attempt to remove him. If such an effort is mounted, its organizers would be wise to pay more attention to security than those who took part in the recent fiasco. Consider the case of "Comandante Romano," a rebel officer who managed to escape from Panama to Miami, where government and church leaders hid him in a hotel in which he would be safe from Noriega's spies. Last week the comandante was granting television interviews, unaware that a brochure identifying his whereabouts (the Chateaubleau Inn) was cheerfully poking out of his breast pocket.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira and Bruce van Voorst/Washington