U.S. Planning Better Crisis Management

Bush Administration officials, embarrassed at the disarray that marred their response to the Panamanian coup attempt, are planning to reform the government’s crisis management system and to take more “aggressive” action against Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega in the future, sources said Thursday.

An internal White House investigation has concluded that the sluggish response to the armed rebellion was partly caused by operational and communications foul-ups, according to a source familiar with the inquiry.

Although this source said the problems can be fairly easily corrected, other sources called the communications flaws much more serious. Officials responding to the crisis were “like the five blind guys trying to feel the elephant,” one Bush adviser said. “They didn’t know whether they had hold of the trunk or the tail.”

Even more significant than any flaws and proposed reforms in White House crisis management, however, may be the new, more militant anti-Noriega attitude that has spread through the Administration in the wake of the failure of the Oct. 3 attempted coup. U.S. officials were described as “angry and frustrated” at the way Noriega outwitted his captors and emerged unscathed and more belligerent than ever.

The collapse of the coup amid evidence of Administration confusion and lack of decisiveness was especially galling because President Bush had advocated just such efforts by the Panama Defense Forces to oust Noriega.

“The planning now is for more aggressive action. The word is going out to be more aggressive,” a senior government official said.

While declining to elaborate on what he meant by “aggressive action” or to discuss options available to the United States, the official said: “Noriega’s not out of the woods. He’s into heavy paranoia, wondering who else was in on the plot. And we can make him a lot more paranoid.”

In case another attempt is made to overthrow Noriega, one possible option for Bush would be to implement what some officials call “the President’s snatch authority”--a secret ruling last June 21 by the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel.

Sources told The Times that the legal opinion, which was issued in strictest secrecy and has never been released publicly, provides that the President can authorize the FBI to apprehend fugitives from U.S. law in foreign lands and return them to this country without the foreign government’s consent, even if the action violates international law.

Dating back to Feb. 4, 1988, when federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa, Fla., indicted Noriega on drug trafficking and related charges, the United States has sought to drive him from power and, if possible, bring him to this country for trial.

Kidnaping a foreign leader would violate international law, but the Justice Department’s “snatch” ruling apparently could be invoked as a legal weapon to seize and return to U.S. jurisdiction a foreign leader.

“The snatch option is a prerogative for the President to consider in trying to remove Noriega,” an intelligence official said. He indicated that the Administration never seriously considered taking that action during the Oct. 3 coup attempt because it would have required direct military intervention and Bush wanted to keep “a low military profile.”

The Administration, which has been severely criticized by Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill for failing to assist the Panamanian coup leaders, might be tempted to invoke the Justice Department ruling in the event of another attempt by rebels to overthrow Noriega.

“We’re probably not going to be the coolest of heads for a while,” said one Administration official, who added that he hopes time will calm emotions because “some are angry and feeling that we’ve been had.”

On Capitol Hill, too, there was concern that in the event of another coup attempt Administration officials--still smarting from criticism that they had let an opportunity to topple Noriega slip away--might feel under pressure to act quickly and end up doing something rash.

“I hope they don’t overreact and do something dumb,” said Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), a leading member of the House Intelligence Committee.

McCurdy, who last week charged that the failed coup had reinforced “the wimp factor” that dogged Bush throughout last year’s presidential campaign, said the Administration may never have as good a chance to oust Noriega as it had last week.

“The opportunities are not going to present themselves in a similar way,” he declared.

Despite concerns that the Administration may act precipitously if there is a next time, Bush has a well-earned reputation for being cautious.

And the President’s top national security advisers--Secretary of State James A. Baker III, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and CIA Director William H. Webster--also are well known as cautious leaders who are more apt to opt for inaction rather than run the risk of a serious setback in a crisis situation. (Webster was in Europe on a long-planned visit during the coup attempt.)

Also, “imperiling American troops is something that weighs heavily on the President’s mind,” said one of his top advisers.

During the coup, U.S. troops in Panama acted to support the rebels by blocking some roads near American facilities that Noriega loyalists might have used to attack the coup plotters. But other avenues of transportation, particularly airfields, were not blocked and the coup was crushed.

At first, the White House insisted that the U.S. troops had been deployed as part of a previously scheduled exercise and Bush publicly disclaimed significant U.S. involvement.

Later, however, after it was learned that the United States had advance knowledge of the plot against Noriega, the White House acknowledged that the deployments had been authorized to help the rebels.

Ever since the coup attempt, Bush’s national security advisers have been conducting what one official called “lessons learned” sessions where they have gone over details of the Administration’s response and tried to pinpoint shortcomings in the crisis management system.

Although officials refused to comment on the record about their findings, a report on the internal White House investigation is expected to be presented to the President within a few days.

An official familiar with the findings thus far insisted that there was no failure of U.S. intelligence, that only “relatively minor” flaws were discovered in the response system and that any reforms can be easily implemented by the agencies involved. He indicated that those conclusions will be set forth in the report to Bush.

However, other officials said that intelligence was inadequate and that there were significant flaws in the response system, including a serious lack of coordination among various agencies collecting intelligence.

For example, intelligence collected by the U.S. Southern Command in Panama frequently was fed to the White House through the Pentagon without being supplied to other agencies involved the crisis.

Intelligence officials insisted that they sent enough information to Washington to permit a considered official response to the coup attempt.

One intelligence source said that while the CIA is not under pressure from Capitol Hill as a result of providing inadequate data, some people there are now “circling the wagons,” looking for a scapegoat.

Intelligence sources confirmed that the White House was supplied with information about the coup attempt 29 hours before it occurred, but one official said: “We don’t know how the people there focused on what was being conveyed to them or how serious they thought it was.”

The intelligence agencies themselves approached the planned coup with great skepticism, according to another official, who said: “The coup plan didn’t sound like it was going anywhere from the beginning, and we conveyed that to the White House.”

Neither Bush nor his top national security advisers in Washington at the time--Baker, Scowcroft and Cheney--considered the original information about the coup attempt serious enough to interrupt their personal schedules and go to the White House “situation room,” where officials generally gather to assess intelligence and direct the Administration’s response to an international crisis.

“It’s obvious that two of the things they’ve learned from all this,” said a close Bush adviser, “are that you’ve got to recognize a crisis when there is one, and you’ve got to be willing to interrupt your personal schedule and deal with it.

“Keeping personal schedules is not the beat-all, end-all of governing, and they are all big on that, on keeping their meetings on schedule. Somebody, somehow--Scowcroft or somebody--has got to say, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got to have a meeting.’ You’ve got to say, ‘Here’s a crisis,’ and get all the players involved. They can’t work together if they’re not together.”

Times staff writers Robin Wright, Sara Fritz and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.