Critics Compare Military to Mafia : Panama Turmoil Leaves Noriega Still Entrenched

In four years under his command, Gen. Manuel A. Noriega likes to boast, the old National Guard has “exchanged night sticks for rocket launchers” and become a modern army.

Critics of Panama’s dominant institution, now called the Panama Defense Forces, say it has another mission. They call it a mafia, run by uniformed gunmen who have muscled into a major share of the country’s legitimate and illegitimate business and become fabulously rich.

Both images of the Panama Defense Forces are evoked these days to explain the survival of Central America’s only traditional military dictatorship. After three months of popular unrest over Noriega, there is no sign that its 19-man military high command or nearly 20,000 troops are willing to overthrow him.

Opposition leaders, who still count on such a move, point to professional pride, financial greed, suspicion of civilians and fear of Noriega among his men as reasons why it has not yet happened.

“Noriega has succeeded so far in portraying the attacks on him as attacks on the military as an institution,” said Richard Millett, a professor at Southern Illinois University, who visited Panama this summer.

The military has dominated Panama since a 1968 coup by the National Guard that brought then-Col. Omar Torrijos to power. Torrijos reigned as the nation’s unchallenged strongman until his death in an airplane crash in 1981. Lacking Torrijos’ popular appeal, the 49-year-old Noriega dominates the military through skillful maneuvering inside the officer corps.

After a decade of building files on real and potential foes as director of intelligence, he rose to commander in chief in 1983. Former colleagues say he then reneged on a deal to take turns in the post with two other officers.

As commander, Noriega has changed the name and expanded the role of the National Guard, nearly doubling its strength and putting officers in control of a host of lucrative enterprises from traffic fines to the sale of immigrant visas.

The system was shaken last June when Col. Roberto Diaz Herrera, after being eased out as Noriega’s second-in-command, publicly denounced it as corrupt. He also accused Noriega of rigging the 1984 election of a docile civilian government and ordering the killing of a leading critic of the military--charges the general has denied.

Sensing a breach in the military, thousands of protesters took to the streets. They organized the broad-based National Civic Crusade to press for Noriega’s removal, an investigation of the allegations against him and free elections to restore civilian supremacy.

Dissident Colonel Arrested

But Noriega moved to head off any dissent among active-duty officers by dispatching helicopters and troops to attack Diaz Herrera’s home and arrest him.

Opposition activists now admit that they underestimated the general’s staying power. But some believe that the sensational allegations and continuing street protests might still prompt disgruntled officers to act against Noriega if they ever find a leader.

“I don’t think the murmur inside the institution has stopped,” said Ricardo Arias Calderon, president of the Christian Democratic Party. “It just hasn’t surfaced as a movement against Noriega.”

Noriega has also countered the opposition with intense politicking among his men. He eats lunch daily with the high command, his advisers say, and visits the barracks often.

In public pep talks to the troops, he stresses professional solidarity and a twofold mission: to develop rural Panama through Peace Corps-style civic action projects and bolster national defense.

First Military Academy

Under Noriega, the Defense Forces has set up Panama’s first military academy and organized three new battalions for defense of the Panama Canal and the country’s borders.

Institutional esprit de corps is reinforced by a network of social agencies that involve army wives in charity work and provide scholarships to army children.

Noriega’s recent pep talks also provide a history lesson. In 1904, he says, the United States reduced Panama’s army to a police force after helping Panama achieve its independence from Colombia. Today, he warns, the institution is threatened again by an “oligarchy” of Panamanian politicians backed by the United States, which has endorsed the Civic Crusade and suspended aid programs here.

“But they know that the slander and the offenses, the attacks and the pressures, have not produced a single scratch on the Defense Forces’ solid wall of discipline, which has no price,” Noriega declared at a military ceremony last month.

Renato Pereira, a civilian adviser to the general, said the conflict with Washington has strengthened Noriega by enabling him to pose as a shield against foreign interference.

‘Firmness of Character’

“These attacks have allowed him to show a firmness of character that his fellow officers find reassuring,” Pereira said. “If he had shown weakness, the Defense Forces would have expelled him.”

Noriega and his aides do not speak openly about the financial incentives for loyalty. But well-informed civilians say that the Defense Forces and its individual officers hold interests in about 60% of Panama’s commercial enterprises.

Income from these businesses is believed to be double the nominal annual defense budget of $200 million. It supplements officers’ salaries, which range from $800 a month for lieutenants to $2,500 a month for colonels.

Military officers collect their own taxes on merchandise in the Colon Free Zone and on savings and loan companies in Panama. They monopolize the sale of explosives and profit from grain harvested by prison labor on the Pacific island of Coiba.

The majors who command troops in Panama’s 12 military zones have powers greater than those of provincial governors. They take hefty payments from bingo and liquor license fees as well as from off-duty police protection services, according to knowledgeable civilians.

‘150 Juicy Positions’

“There are about 150 really juicy positions,” said a former associate of Torrijos. “These officers have access to more wealth than they ever dreamed of. Some majors with $1,500 (monthly) salaries are living in $350,000 houses.”

Military men began using rank for commercial gain under Torrijos. But the sources of corruption have multiplied since Noriega militarized the government’s immigration and traffic police agencies in 1983.

In public statements before his arrest, Diaz Herrera admitted building his million-dollar mansion with his share in a racket that sold Panamanian visas and residence permits to thousands of Cuban immigrants for $15,000 each.

U.S. law enforcement officials are investigating allegations that Noriega himself has been skimming as much as 1.5% of the value of illegal drug shipments and drug-related money transfers passing through Panama for several years.

Most of the illicit wealth flowing to the military, Diaz Herrera said, is controlled by Noriega and a small group of trusted officers who manage its distribution.

‘They’re Just Stockholders’

“Most of the officers don’t know where the money in their envelopes comes from,” said a businessman with close ties to the military. “They aren’t involved in the rackets. They’re just stockholders in a company.”

Opposition leaders believe Noriega’s style of rule through competing lines of authority causes inevitable friction in the ranks, but they are uncertain how to exploit it.

The commander’s inner circle is built around two colonels--the brothers Alberto and Lorenzo Purcell--and seven majors who served on his intelligence staff in the 1970s. Diaz Herrera identified them as a parallel advisory body that bypasses the high command.

Even the formal chain of authority was divided after Diaz Herrera was fired as chief of staff. Two colonels, Alberto Purcell and Elias Castillo, were promoted to fill the gap.

Analysts said Noriega’s intent was to sow confusion by creating two heirs apparent: one identified with the Defense Forces’ business interests, the other with purely military matters.

Anti-Government Rally

In another case, Lt. Col. Eduardo Herrera Hassan, a respected officer visiting Panama from his diplomatic post in Israel, was suddenly put in charge of the riot police to control an anti-government rally on July 10.

Two civilians said Herrera complained to them about what happened that day. A lower-ranking officer, under direct orders from Noriega, ordered the police to fire shotguns at the protesters in order to tarnish Herrera’s reputation and test his loyalty.

Some opposition strategists argue that the Defense Forces is so corrupt that no officer with enough power to move against Noriega can be trusted to accept subordination to civilian authority.

“You can’t make a mafia into a professional army,” said Miguel Antonio Bernal, a prominent dissident who favors all-out pressure to reduce the Defense Forces to a limited police role. “They are a bunch of gangsters, and they have to be looked at that way.”

Other civilian leaders, accepting the armed forces at its current size, are counting on the right officers to lead a coup, clean up corruption and permit free elections.

Scourge on Their Honor

At least two “open letters” have circulated among officers in recent weeks, each appealing to them to dump Noriega as a scourge on their honor.

One letter to “friends in the armed forces” from Gabriel Lewis Galindo, a prominent industrialist in exile, urged “the many officers and troops who do not partake in any booty” to “stop letting yourselves be used” by a corrupt dictatorship.

The other, from Guillermo A. Cochez, a Christian Democratic lawmaker, said, “This struggle is not against the professional and democratic military that Panama deserves but against those who have discredited it.”

Noriega has responded to such appeals by silencing news media that print them and trying to isolate his men from all but the most formal contact with outsiders. A prominent civilian said one officer told him he feared for his own life if the two were overheard talking politics.

These barriers, added to official secrecy about the military budget and exact troop strength, have only deepened a sense of ignorance among civilian leaders about inner politics in the Defense Forces.

“It’s very difficult to know what’s going on inside,” Cochez said. “As far as we know, the entire Defense Forces will remain loyal to Noriega--until the moment he is overthrown.”