Sowing Dragon's Teeth

By Ed Magnuson

Operation Just Cause was less than eight hours old, but General Colin Powell was all but declaring victory. As Defense Secretary Dick Cheney looked on approvingly, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff boasted that a 24,000- man U.S. force had "decapitated" Manuel Antonio Noriega's army and seized control of strategic facilities along the Panama Canal. Though the crafty dictator was still on the loose, Powell said that it was only a matter of time before U.S. soldiers tracked him down. The only bad news in Powell's rosy report was the uncertain fate of a dozen American hostages, seized by fleeing Panamanian irregulars as they cut and ran from approaching American troops.

On the battleground in Panama, however, a far less optimistic drama was unfolding. Confounding Pentagon hopes that Noriega's Panama Defense Forces would quickly crumble under a devastating U.S. onslaught, the fugitive dictator's men were preparing a determined counterattack. Instead of the quick and decisive knockout U.S. commanders had sought, the invasion was in danger of degenerating into a nasty street fight in densely populated Panama City. House-to-house fighting in a crowded urban area was something military planners were leery of because of the threat to civilians.

In recent months the Pentagon had quietly bolstered American forces in Panama in preparation for a possible strike, adding 4,500 combat troops, as well as tanks and attack helicopters, to the 8,500 soldiers already deployed at U.S. bases. The force was so strong that Pentagon planners had briefly considered dispatching a column of U.S. troops to nab Noriega during an ill- ! fated uprising by P.D.F. officers last October. That daring plan was quickly -- and, as it turned out, wisely -- discarded as too risky and uncertain.

Just how risky became clear as Operation Just Cause got under way. Many of Noriega's 4,000 best troops, including units that had raced to his rescue during the failed coup, were posted far outside Panama City. Another, less predictable menace was posed by the brutal Dignity Battalions: 8,000 fanatical pro-Noriega irregulars who had savagely attacked opposition leaders in the aftermath of last May's aborted election. Confronted by superior American forces, many P.D.F. soldiers slipped away, only to reappear later and launch counterattacks in Panama City.

When George Bush ordered military action against the increasingly arrogant dictator, the Pentagon put the finishing touches on the option it preferred and had been secretly preparing to implement: a massive simultaneous assault on all P.D.F. strongholds by a combination of forces already in Panama and a huge airlift of reinforcements from bases in the U.S.

The plan called for overwhelming American forces to intimidate and neutralize the P.D.F. while special units secured vital dams and the electrical facilities powering the Panama Canal. Once organized resistance had been shattered, military police and other units trained in MOUT -- military operations in urban terrain -- would undertake the house-to-house battle against the Dignity Battalions. At Southern Command Headquarters in Panama City, the arrival of General Maxwell Thurman last Oct. 1 brought a marked change in mood. Unlike his predecessor, General Frederick Woerner, Thurman saw Noriega as primarily a military rather than a political problem. According to Pentagon sources, Thurman had been bristling for a fight since American troops stood helplessly by while the October coup was crushed.

As Wednesday's H hour approached, huge military transports were landing at ten-minute intervals at Howard Air Force Base, doubtless alerting Noriega that a U.S. strike might soon be under way. Pentagon spokesmen dismissed the airlift as a routine exercise. But total surprise had never loomed large in Pentagon planning, which depended on vastly superior manpower, firepower and speedy execution.

The initial phases of Operation Just Cause went off as planned. Shortly before midnight Tuesday, guests at Panama City's ritzy Marriott Caesar Park Hotel were awakened by sporadic shooting. A team of Navy SEALs (sea, air and & land capability) rushed the nearby private Paitilla Airport, where Noriega kept a potential getaway Learjet. In a brief but vicious firefight the SEALs overwhelmed guards, secured the landing strip and destroyed the aircraft. But four SEALs were killed, perhaps the earliest casualties of the conflict. Other SEALS died while disabling boats Noriega could have used to make an escape by sea.

At around 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, residents of century-old wooden houses ringing Noriega's sprawling P.D.F. headquarters, called the Comandancia, were startled by the roar of circling U.S. AC-130 combat Talon gunships and attack choppers, then the rumble of tanks in the streets. The tanks fired barrage after barrage at Noriega's official lair, and the sky was lit by antiaircraft tracers. The streets soon began to fill as terrified residents ran out of their flaming houses. An unknown number died in their homes; many were injured. Meanwhile, U.S. infantry units at Fort Amador opened fire with howitzers against P.D.F. barracks situated conveniently nearby at the facility shared by troops of both nations.

Over the next 24 hours, the American force nearly doubled as 9,500 troops, divided into five task forces, parachuted out of the Panama skies or scrambled from large transport aircraft:

TASK FORCE ATLANTIC. Made up of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers from Fort Bragg, N.C., and Seventh Infantry troops from Fort Ord, Calif., backed by special units, it raced to secure vital facilities at the Caribbean end of the canal, near Colon. It took over Madden Dam, which stores water used to raise and lower ships in the canal's locks, and seized control of the electrical distribution center at Cerro Tigre. The task force encountered stiff resistance from a P.D.F. naval infantry unit on the northern coast. This force also freed 48 P.D.F. prisoners at Gamboa prison.

TASK FORCE SEMPER FIDELIS. Essentially a blocking force deployed on Panama City's western border, its Marine rifle company and light armored infantry company occupied the Bridge of the Americas, which spans the canal, to prevent a P.D.F. counterattack on the crucial Howard Air Force Base.

TASK FORCE RED. Assigned targets on both sides of the capital, its rangers had the night's most difficult chores. As Pathfinder planes dropped flares to illuminate the drop areas, the Rangers jumped from planes that flew as low as 500 ft., well within the range of small-arms fire. The Rangers on the west landed near Rio Hato, assaulted the barracks of the 6th and 7th P.D.F. companies and took 250 prisoners. The bulk of P.D.F. soldiers had slipped away. To the east, other commandos dropped in large numbers on Torrijos International Airport.

TASK FORCE PACIFIC. Once Task Force Red had secured the airport, two waves of 82nd Airborne paratroopers jumped from 20 C-141 transports. They fanned out to assist Rangers and Special Forces units that had blocked the Pacora River bridge to prevent Battalion 2000 from reaching Panama City and to turn back any attack from P.D.F. infantry and cavalry units based at Fort Cimarron. When the Americans reached the fort, the crack battalion was no longer there.

TASK FORCE BAYONET. This mechanized battalion and light tank force attacked the P.D.F. headquarters with a vengeance, igniting a huge fire that gutted the main Comandancia building. When the bombardment was over, its troops searched the building room by room -- and found no one. By 8 a.m. Wednesday, Powell felt confident enough to proclaim that "for the most part, organized resistance has ended."

U.S. forces then focused on the plight of hostages who had been seized by Noriega's men. At the Marriott a foreign journalist was approached at about 12:25 a.m. Wednesday by three gunmen in ski masks and civilian clothes. They ordered her to join eleven other guests, including seven Americans being held hostage in the hotel by thugs toting AK-47s. They were marched into a van, driven to a house and held in a kitchen for three hours. "You're bombing our children; you're bombing our people," one told the Americans. "If we were in another country, we would kill you." The group was placed in two cars and released near the hotel with a final word from their captors: "We will continue the fight, the struggle."

Not until Wednesday night did American troops finally fight their way through Dignity Battalions to protect 64 frightened guests and workers at the hotel. The next day one U.S. unit at the hotel sighted a personnel carrier approaching and opened fire. The shots were returned. In the hotel parking lot a Spanish photographer, Juan Antonio Rodriguez, was killed and Patrick Chauvel, a photographer on assignment for Newsweek, was wounded. The shooting was a tragic mistake; the approaching vehicle was carrying American soldiers.

Elsewhere, a boat filled with Noriega gunmen landed at one of the San Blas islands off Panama's Caribbean coast and took hostage eleven people working at a Smithsonian Institutions marine-research project. The group, including five Americans, was taken to the mainland and forced to march into the jungle. Next day, they were abandoned without food and finally rescued. At the international airport two terrified American women were threatened with death by a group of 30 P.D.F. soldiers, who used them as a shield against U.S. paratroopers surrounding the terminal. The two were freed just before dawn after the American soldiers told the gunmen that Noriega had been killed and their cause was futile.

That episode illustrated Noriega's crucial role in the continuing resistance. American commanders have made capturing him a high priority, since as long as he remains at large, some Panamanian units might rally around him. Yet the wily dictator managed to evade the net. American troops surrounded the Cuban and Nicaraguan embassies in Panama City to prevent Noriega from seeking refuge. Six hours after the invasion began, U.S. soldiers burst into the "Witch House," a Noriega residence on the Pacific coastline. Inside, they found cigarettes still smoldering in ashtrays, suggesting that the strongman might have slipped away only moments before. Later on Wednesday, Noriega's apparently tape-recorded voice was heard on a private FM station, exhorting his supporters "to win or die, not one step back."

That appeal may have worked. As U.S. forces moved into the chaotic streets of Panama City, they faced not only widespread looting but also pervasive sniper fire from the Dignity Battalions and a few black-uniformed members of an elite special-forces unit. On Friday, as Pentagon briefers asserted that organized resistance in Panama City had faded, Noriega loyalists opened fire on the car of newly installed First Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderon as it sped away from the National Assembly building. Arias was unhurt. Mortar shells landed near the U.S. Southern Command Headquarters at Quarry Heights, and fighting erupted at a nearby police station. Thurman said that the fighting seemed to be "centrally controlled" and that Noriega himself might be "the guiding force." He estimated that 1,800 irregular troops might be involved.

If the resistance persists for long, Operation Just Cause may lose some of its sheen. As the Pentagon boasted, immense force was speedily dispatched to Panama, the canal was quickly protected, key P.D.F. installations were overrun or neutralized, and Noriega was removed from any effective power. The cost, however, may have been a distressingly high loss of life among Panamanian civilians. An unofficial check of hospitals showed that more than 200 noncombatants had died. A drawn-out struggle with rising American casualties also loomed. At week's end, as 2,000 more troops were sent into Panama, the Pentagon conceded that it might take more than a week for Operation Just Cause to pacify the tiny nation's capital.

With reporting by Wilson Ring and Dick Thompson/Panama City and Bruce van Voorst/Washington