Manuel Noriega

Based on Wikipedia: Manuel Noriega

The Spy Who Became a Dictator

In 1955, a young Panamanian student named Manuel Noriega received his first payment from the United States government: ten dollars and seventy cents. He was informing on his fellow members of a socialist youth group. Four decades later, the same government would launch a full-scale military invasion to capture him.

The arc of Manuel Noriega's life reads like a Cold War thriller that went horribly wrong for everyone involved. He rose from poverty in a Panama City slum to become one of the Central Intelligence Agency's most valuable assets in Latin America. He helped the United States funnel weapons to anti-communist forces across the region. And all the while, he was building a personal fortune through cocaine trafficking, playing both sides of America's war on drugs with breathtaking audacity.

When the United States finally turned on him in 1989, it took twenty-seven thousand troops and a full military invasion—the largest American military operation since Vietnam—to pry him from power. He spent the rest of his life shuttling between prisons in three different countries, a cautionary tale about the dangers of getting too close to superpowers and their intelligence services.

Born into Poverty

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was born on February 11, 1934, in Panama City—though even this basic fact is uncertain. Various records list his birth year as 1934, 1936, or 1938, and Noriega himself gave different dates throughout his life. What is certain is that he came from the bottom of Panamanian society.

His family was pardo—a term used in Latin America for people of mixed Native American, African, and Spanish heritage. In Panama's racial hierarchy, this placed them near the bottom. His mother worked as a cook and laundress. His father, Ricaurte Noriega, was an accountant, but he wasn't married to Manuel's mother, and the family was desperately poor.

By the time Manuel was five years old, both of his parents were dead. His mother had succumbed to tuberculosis when he was still a small child. He was raised by his godmother in a one-room apartment in Terraplén, one of Panama City's slum neighborhoods. Despite these circumstances, his godmother kept him neatly dressed and sent him to school, where teachers noted he was an unusually serious child, always with his nose in a book.

At the Instituto Nacional, one of Panama City's best high schools, young Manuel made a discovery that would shape his entire life: he had an older half-brother named Luis Carlos Noriega Hurtado, also a student at the school. Luis was a socialist activist, and he introduced Manuel to politics. Manuel joined the Socialist Party's youth wing, wrote articles criticizing the American presence in Panama, and participated in protests.

It was here, in this left-wing student group, that Noriega apparently began his career as an informant. The United States maintained an enormous military presence in Panama—the Canal Zone was American territory, and the canal itself was perhaps the most strategically important waterway in the Western Hemisphere. American intelligence services were keenly interested in anyone who might threaten their position there. The young socialist student seemed like a useful source of information about what his radical friends were up to.

A Patron Named Torrijos

Noriega had wanted to become a doctor, but he couldn't get into the University of Panama's medical school. Instead, with help from his half-brother Luis (who had secured a position at the Panamanian embassy in Peru), he won a scholarship to the Chorrillos Military School in Lima. He arrived in 1958, a young man from the slums about to enter the officer class.

He graduated in 1962 with a specialization in engineering and returned to Panama to join the National Guard. Posted to the city of Colón as a second lieutenant, he found himself under the command of a major named Omar Torrijos.

This assignment would prove fateful.

Torrijos became Noriega's patron, mentor, and protector—a relationship that would survive some serious early tests. Shortly after Noriega arrived in Colón, a prostitute accused him of beating and raping her. Torrijos helped him avoid legal consequences. Soon after, Noriega's drinking and violent behavior became so problematic that Torrijos had to confine him to quarters for a month. Despite these incidents, Torrijos kept Noriega close, always making sure they served in the same command.

Why would a rising military officer attach himself to such a problematic subordinate? The answer seems to be that Torrijos recognized in Noriega a useful tool: someone willing to do the dirty work that more squeamish officers might refuse, someone without the social standing or connections to become a rival, and someone whose own misconduct made him dependent on his patron's protection.

In 1964, Noriega got a chance to prove his usefulness. Arnulfo Arias, a popular politician from Chiriquí province, was preparing to run for president. The sitting president's Liberal Party wanted Arias's supporters harassed and intimidated. Torrijos passed this assignment to Noriega, whose men arrested numerous people. Prisoners later reported being tortured; some said they had been raped. The brutality sparked public outrage, and Noriega was suspended for ten days—a slap on the wrist that American intelligence services took note of.

Two years later, Noriega was involved in another violent incident: he allegedly raped a thirteen-year-old girl and beat her brother. This time, Torrijos transferred him to a remote posting and then sent him to the School of the Americas for training.

The School of the Americas

The School of the Americas was an American military training facility located at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone. Its official purpose was to train Latin American military officers in modern military techniques. Its unofficial purpose, critics would later argue, was to train the future dictators and death squad leaders of the Western Hemisphere.

Noriega didn't distinguish himself academically—he performed poorly in his classes—but he completed courses in infantry operations, counterintelligence, intelligence gathering, and jungle warfare. He also traveled to Fort Bragg in North Carolina for a course in psychological operations, the military art of influencing civilian populations.

When he returned to Panama, his new job was to penetrate and disrupt the labor unions that had formed among workers at the United Fruit Company's plantations. He proved adept at this work. Reports suggest he continued passing intelligence to the Americans during this period, informing on the activities of the plantation workers he was supposed to be suppressing.

By 1967, the administration of President Lyndon Johnson had concluded that Noriega was worth cultivating. He was a "rising star" in the Panamanian military, the Americans believed, and he could be a valuable long-term asset. Noriega, for his part, was proud of his relationship with the School of the Americas. He wore its crest on his military uniform for the rest of his career.

The Coup and Its Aftermath

Arnulfo Arias—the politician whose supporters Noriega had brutalized in 1964—finally won the presidency in 1968. It was a populist campaign, and Arias wasted no time taking on the military establishment that had opposed him. He launched a purge of the National Guard, sending much of its leadership into exile or retirement.

The military's response was swift. Just eleven days after Arias took office, Torrijos and several other officers overthrew him in a coup. A power struggle followed among the various factions that had participated, with Torrijos eventually emerging victorious in February 1969 after his men seized his main rival, Boris Martínez, and exiled him to Miami.

Noriega had been an important supporter of Torrijos throughout this struggle. His loyalty was tested again at the end of 1969, when Torrijos went to Mexico on vacation and other officers attempted a coup in his absence. Noriega's support allowed Torrijos to survive and return to power, and his reward came quickly: promotion to captain within a month of the failed coup, then to lieutenant colonel eighteen months later, along with appointment as chief of military intelligence.

At thirty-six years old, the one-time slum child was now one of the most powerful men in Panama.

The Useful Monster

Torrijos ruled Panama as a military dictator from 1968 until his death in 1981. His greatest achievement was negotiating the Torrijos-Carter Treaties with President Jimmy Carter, which guaranteed that control of the Panama Canal would pass from the United States to Panama in 1999. He also implemented progressive labor reforms, including maternity leave, collective bargaining rights, and bonus pay for workers. These accomplishments made him genuinely popular, despite the absence of democratic elections.

Noriega's relationship with Torrijos was symbiotic. Torrijos provided the political vision and public face; Noriega provided the muscle. When Torrijos needed dirty work done, Noriega did it. When dissidents needed to be silenced, Noriega silenced them. When intelligence needed to be gathered—or fabricated—Noriega handled it.

During his tenure as intelligence chief, Noriega exiled 1,300 Panamanians whom he considered threats to the government. He compiled blackmail files on officials throughout the military, government, and judiciary. He ran the political police and controlled immigration. Opposition parties and their leaders faced constant intimidation and harassment.

One of his most notorious acts was ordering the death of Jesús Héctor Gallego Herrera, a Catholic priest whose work organizing an agricultural cooperative was seen as threatening to the regime. According to reports, Gallego's body was thrown from a helicopter into the sea—a method of execution that would become grimly familiar throughout Latin America during the dirty wars of the 1970s and 1980s.

Yet even as Noriega was suppressing dissent at home, he was also working to portray Panama as a hub of anti-drug enforcement—almost certainly at Torrijos's direction. This was pure theater. By the early 1970s, American law enforcement had reports of Noriega's involvement in narcotics trafficking. A boat courier had been arrested and talked. A drug smuggler caught in New York had named names.

No formal investigation was opened. No indictment was brought. The diplomatic consequences were too severe to contemplate. According to journalist John Dinges, the U.S. government considered several options for dealing with Noriega, including assassination and linking him to a fictional plot against Torrijos. Whether any of these schemes were actually attempted remains unclear. What is clear is that by 1972, the United States had essentially given up trying to stop drug trafficking through the Panamanian government—possibly as a result of some agreement between Torrijos and President Richard Nixon.

The Americans had made a calculation: Noriega was too useful as an intelligence asset and a conduit for covert operations to sacrifice over something as relatively unimportant as cocaine smuggling. It was a calculation they would come to regret.

The Pipeline

During the 1970s and 1980s, Panama under Noriega became a crucial node in America's covert operations throughout Latin America. Weapons, military equipment, and cash flowed through Panama to U.S.-backed forces across the region. The Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua were supplied through Panamanian channels. So were other anti-communist forces throughout Central America.

Noriega was paid handsomely for his services. The Central Intelligence Agency considered him one of their most valuable sources, and they compensated him accordingly. At the same time, he was also selling his services to the intelligence agencies of other countries, playing multiple sides in the Cold War while building his personal fortune.

The drug money helped too. Panama's banking secrecy laws made it an ideal location for laundering the proceeds of the cocaine trade, and Noriega took his cut. The same infrastructure that allowed the United States to move covert funds through Panama also allowed drug traffickers to move their money. Sometimes the same planes carried both.

Torrijos died in a plane crash in 1981. The cause was never definitively established—speculation ranged from mechanical failure to assassination by the CIA to Noriega himself. Whatever the truth, Noriega moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1983, he had become Panama's de facto ruler, though he never officially served as president. Instead, he ruled through a series of puppet presidents, maintaining the fiction of civilian government while wielding absolute power through his control of the military.

The Unraveling

The relationship between Noriega and the United States began to deteriorate in the mid-1980s. The trigger was the murder of Hugo Spadafora, a former government official who had become a vocal critic of Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking. In September 1985, Spadafora was abducted, tortured, and beheaded. His decapitated body was found stuffed in a U.S. mail bag near the Costa Rican border.

The murder caused an uproar. President Nicolás Ardito Barletta called for an investigation. Noriega forced him to resign. This was too much for even the Reagan administration to ignore. American officials began publicly criticizing Noriega, and relationships that had been cultivated over decades started to fray.

Then came the revelations. Noriega's relationships with intelligence agencies in other countries—including Cuba—came to light. His involvement in drug trafficking, which American officials had known about and ignored for years, became a matter of public record. In 1988, federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa indicted him on charges of racketeering, drug smuggling, and money laundering.

The United States tried to negotiate his departure. Economic sanctions were imposed. The CIA attempted to organize a coup. Nothing worked. Noriega held on to power, and in May 1989, when Panama held a presidential election, he simply annulled the results when his preferred candidate lost. When the winning candidate and his running mate appeared in public to protest, Noriega's men beat them in front of television cameras, creating images that shocked viewers around the world.

Operation Just Cause

On December 20, 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause—the largest American military operation since the Vietnam War. Twenty-seven thousand troops invaded Panama with the stated goals of protecting American lives, defending democracy, combating drug trafficking, and capturing Noriega.

The invasion was brief but bloody. Estimates of Panamanian deaths range from several hundred to several thousand, with most casualties among civilians. American forces quickly overwhelmed the Panamanian military, but Noriega himself escaped capture and took refuge in the Vatican embassy.

What followed was one of the strangest standoffs in military history. American troops surrounded the embassy and, in an apparent attempt at psychological warfare, blasted rock music at high volume around the clock. The playlist reportedly included songs like "I Fought the Law," "You're No Good," and "Nowhere to Run." After ten days of this treatment—and heavy pressure from the Vatican—Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990.

He was flown to Miami to stand trial on the drug trafficking charges.

A Prisoner of Three Nations

Noriega's trial in Miami was a spectacle. The former dictator, who had once been on the CIA payroll, was now being prosecuted by the country that had paid him. His defense attorneys tried to introduce evidence of his work for American intelligence, arguing that he had been authorized to engage in activities that were now being treated as crimes. The judge largely excluded this evidence, and in April 1992, Noriega was convicted on eight of the ten counts against him.

He was sentenced to forty years in federal prison.

The sentence was later reduced for good behavior, and Noriega ultimately served seventeen years in American custody. But his legal troubles were far from over. France wanted him too—French authorities had traced drug money that had been laundered through Panamanian banks and deposited in French accounts. In 2010, Noriega was extradited to France, where he was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Then Panama wanted its turn. While Noriega had been imprisoned abroad, Panamanian courts had tried him in absentia for crimes committed during his rule, including the murders of Hugo Spadafora and others. He was convicted and sentenced to decades in prison. In 2011, France extradited him to Panama, where he would spend his final years.

The man who had once ruled a nation was now its prisoner.

The End

In March 2017, doctors discovered a brain tumor. Noriega underwent surgery, but suffered complications. He never recovered.

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno died on May 29, 2017, at the age of eighty-three. He had been a dictator, a spy, a drug trafficker, and an intelligence asset. He had been an ally of the United States and an adversary of the United States, sometimes simultaneously. He had grown rich betraying his country and had died a prisoner in it.

His legacy is a warning about the moral hazards of intelligence work. The United States cultivated Noriega for decades, overlooking his crimes because he was useful. They paid him, trained him, and protected him. And when he finally became too embarrassing to ignore, they had to send twenty-seven thousand troops to clean up the mess they had helped create.

The ten dollars and seventy cents they paid him in 1955 turned out to be a very bad investment.

The Nature of His Rule

Noriega's dictatorship defies easy categorization. He was not an ideologue. He did not espouse socialism or capitalism, nationalism or internationalism, with any consistency. He used the language of Panamanian nationalism when it suited him, but his primary loyalty was always to himself and his own power.

He controlled Panama through the military, which he expanded significantly during his rule. The media was repressed; political opponents were persecuted; elections were manipulated or annulled when they produced undesirable results. Yet he never held the office of president himself, preferring to rule through proxies while maintaining his position as commander of the military.

His relationship with the United States was complicated beyond measure. He was simultaneously a paid asset of the CIA and a business partner of Colombian drug cartels. He helped the United States arm the Contras while also maintaining relations with Cuba. He was described, accurately, as being America's ally and adversary at the same time.

Perhaps the most honest assessment is that Noriega was an opportunist of exceptional skill and limited scruples. He rose from nothing, attached himself to powerful patrons, made himself indispensable through his willingness to do what others would not, and then used his position to enrich himself through any means available. When his American patrons finally turned on him, he had no ideology to fall back on, no popular movement to support him, no principle worth defending. He had only his cunning, and in the end, that was not enough.

Echoes in the Present

The story of Manuel Noriega is not merely historical. The same dynamics that created him—great powers cultivating useful monsters in smaller countries, overlooking crimes in exchange for cooperation, eventually being forced to confront the consequences—continue to play out around the world.

The invasion of Panama set precedents that American administrations have cited ever since. The justifications offered for Operation Just Cause—protecting American citizens, defending democracy, combating drug trafficking—have been echoed in interventions from Iraq to Libya. The willingness to use overwhelming military force to remove a former ally who had become inconvenient established a template that subsequent presidents have followed.

And the fundamental problem that Noriega's case illustrates—the difficulty of maintaining relationships with authoritarian rulers who are useful in the short term but dangerous in the long term—remains as vexing as ever. Intelligence agencies still need sources in places where decent people don't tend to hold power. They still face the temptation to overlook crimes in exchange for cooperation. They still sometimes find themselves having to clean up messes of their own making.

Manuel Noriega was not unique. He was, in many ways, typical of the kind of person who rises to power in the shadows of great power competition. His story is worth remembering not because he was exceptional, but because he was ordinary—a small-time operator who got in over his head, made his fortune betraying everyone who trusted him, and ended his life paying the price for his choices.

The slum child who became a dictator. The spy who became a drug lord. The American asset who became an American prisoner. His life contained multitudes, none of them admirable.