‘Enough Is Enough,’ President Declared

George Bush, accompanied by only a tiny handful of senior advisers, broke away from a small pre-Christmas brunch at the White House on Sunday to make the loneliest decision of his presidency: to order a massive military assault on the regime of Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega.

As Bush and his aides huddled, U.S. intelligence showed that the likelihood of capturing Noriega himself was chancy at best and that the loss of American and Panamanian lives was almost certain. But senior aides said the President did not hesitate.

“Enough is enough,” Bush declared.

The decision, which aides said was highly personal, reflected Bush’s determination not to allow the Noriega regime--tainted by charges of drug dealing and increasingly violent acts against Americans--to remain in power, regardless of the costs.

From the outset of the highly secret 30-minute meeting, Bush made it clear that what he wanted was not a “surgical strike” against Noriega personally but a full-scale attack on the entire Noriega regime and the Panama Defense Forces, which had kept him in power despite two years of U.S. pressure and plotting.

“The President was saying, ‘We don’t want to do it piecemeal,’ ” one official said. “He didn’t have thefull battle plan, but he knew its code name, and he was ready to go with it, accepting casualties” and nothing less than the full plan.

Among the small group attending Sunday’s meeting were Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin L. Powell and Vice President Dan Quayle.

The meeting came just at the end of a holiday brunch that Bush and his wife, Barbara, had hosted for a group of Administration officials and their wives, including Quayle and Baker.

A Defense Department official said that Bush “had to make a fundamental decision: Did we want to have enough people needed for such an operation in place and risk Noriega finding out? Or did we want to risk an operation that failed because of insufficient troops and equipment? That, too, might have failed to get Noriega.”

There was never any question about which option the President wanted, aides said.

“We had made up our mind that if there was going to be a military solution, it had to be one that would succeed--and we developed one that would,” said a senior official.

One factor in Bush’s decision to opt for maximum force instead of a surgical strike, according to members of Congress who were briefed on the military operation by Administration officials, was intelligence reports that Noriega had a 250-member paramilitary unit poised to attack what Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) described as “a designated segment of Americans in their housing units.”

Such intelligence reports were unconfirmed but had to be taken seriously, Baker said.

Further, capturing Noriega would have been difficult under the best of circumstances, a U.S. intelligence official said, because “he has been jumping around like a Mexican jumping bean. We were aware of several places where he was yesterday (Tuesday) and made considerable effort to find him. But there never was any absolute certainty he would be in any particular place.”

Bush was described by one top official as “deeply disturbed” by recent events in Panama, including the killing of a U.S. Marine officer and the abuse of a U.S. naval officer and his wife last weekend and Noriega’s increasingly bellicose statements, including his declaration of “a state of war” with the United States last Friday.

“The scuttlebutt I hear is that the sexual abuse of the Navy officer’s wife sent Bush up the wall,” former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams said.

On Saturday night, Panama Defense Forces soldiers had fired on a car carrying four U.S. military officers, killing one and wounding another. After the shooting, PDF soldiers also repeatedly beat and kicked a Navy officer and abused his wife. The Defense Department reported that she was sexually threatened, slammed against a wall with such force that her head was cut and was made to stand at the wall with her arms above her head until she collapsed onto the floor.

Although concern was expressed within the Administration about the possible loss of life and the potential for Americans to be taken hostage, once Bush made his decision, officials moved quickly to execute a detailed contingency plan that had been developed weeks earlier.

The official code name for the operation still has not been disclosed, but Administration officials have informally dubbed it Operation Just Cause.

Although the basic plan already existed when Cheney took over as defense secretary earlier this year, it was extensively refined after the failure of a coup attempt by some PDF rebels last October.

Weeks ago, members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees were told that a new invasion plan had been adopted and that the Administration was simply waiting for an opportunity to put it into effect. In fact, some key members of Congress were surprised last Friday when the Administration failed to move after the Panamanian legislature declared the country to be in a state of war with the United States.

Bush’s decision, a tightly guarded secret in Washington, was kept from Republican congressional leaders until about 10 p.m. Tuesday--about three hours before the assault.

Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said that he had surmised a military operation might be in the works two days ago, when Bush told him “things were getting pretty bad down there and that something might have to be done.”

Even some senior officials involved in the operation did not learn of the decision until Monday morning, when they were told but instructed to keep the matter in utmost secrecy. John H. Sununu, White House chief of staff, learned of the decision at his regular meeting at 8:15 a.m. Monday with Bush, Quayle and Scowcroft.

That meeting usually lasts only 30 minutes. On Monday, it lasted about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

It was Monday morning that Bush and his aides fleshed out decisions on the details of implementing the contingency plan--when and where the invasion would take place.

Outwardly, Bush and other officials who knew of the plan took pains to go about most of their business as usual so that an atmosphere of crisis would not be created.

The President called a meeting for 2 p.m. Tuesday, which he billed as a session to discuss “the use of the military in the war on drugs,” said one source, and it was at that meeting that several senior officials learned for the first time that the military assault would be launched.

Among those attending Tuesday’s meeting were Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, Deputy National Security Adviser Robert M. Gates and Richard Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“Everybody realized it was extremely important that the decision be closely held,” said an official, who added that Quayle did not tell his own chief of staff, Bill Crystal, until 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Bush and his wife hosted a Christmas party at the White House for staff members Tuesday night, and the President stayed until 9 p.m., about four hours before the assault began.

Defense Secretary Cheney attended a round of holiday parties and social events Tuesday night and did not return to the Pentagon until about 10 p.m. Just before midnight, Cheney joined Gen. Powell in the Pentagon’s Current Situation Room, a windowless chamber filled with electronics communications and computer-generated maps that is used for monitoring military crises.

There, the two remained in contact with the operation through the night, using an open line to Gen. Maxwell Thurman, the Southern Command’s senior officer, and his operational planning staff.

One senior officer said Powell helped shape some operational decisions by asking pointed questions of military commanders on the scene but that he left the Pentagon’s original plan largely intact.

“He let Gen. Thurman run the operation,” said the officer. “It was a very controlled, deliberate, calm atmosphere.”

About 10 p.m. Tuesday, Bush and Quayle began telephoning congressional leaders and informing them of the impending attack.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) told the President he would support the operation, but he expressed some “concerns.” Foley later emphasized that he was “informed” and not “consulted” on the invasion plan.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) assured the President that there would be no criticism from Congress. “There have been any number of your critics out there advocating just this step,” Michel told Bush. “So I don’t think you are going to have any criticism, at least not as far as Congress is concerned.”

About 11 p.m., Bush and Quayle began telephoning leaders of other countries. The President reportedly called Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, among others.

Quayle telephoned Latin American leaders he has met on recent overseas trips, according to an official, who said that one Latin American head of state, whom he declined to identify, told the vice president that Noriega “was asking for it.”

A Quayle aide said that while the vice president found most of the leaders he telephoned “gratifyingly supportive,” several Latin American leaders suggested that both sides were to blame for problems in Panama.

Baker said that the Administration also had sent a detailed cable Monday to North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, Japan and other allied countries, outlining the “facts” of the U.S. case against Noriega.

The cable cited Noriega’s declaration of a state of war with the United States, the killing of the Marine and the abuse of the naval officer and his wife, Baker said, and characterized those actions as “unacceptable.”

Although the cable did not suggest that there would be a U.S. invasion, it did outline the rationale that has been used by the Administration to justify the military action.

Meetings of Administration officials, including a special “deputies’ committee” established to handle international crises, continued into Wednesday evening.

That committee, made up of officials directly below the principals, is headed by Gates, the deputy national security adviser, and includes Undersecretary of State Robert M. Kimmitt, Undersecretary of Defense Paul G. Wolfowitz and Asst. Atty. Gen. William P. Barr.

After the 2 p.m. Tuesday meeting at the White House, where the rationale for the Panama action was spelled out in detail, lawyers reviewed the statements and prepared additional documents in support of the operation.

Because Noriega has used military force to remain in power and is not considered popular among Panamanians, some senior officials suggested that by neutralizing the Panama Defense Forces, the United States was putting pressure on Noriega to flee the country.

“The question is whether he’s going to dig down in a hole or try to get out of there,” one official involved in planning the operation said. “He’s been through a couple of coup attempts, and the Panama Defense Forces consider him a liability. The danger to him can come from a number of places besides the United States, so he has a lot of incentives to get away and stay away.”

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

PANAMA AT A GLANCE

Area: 29,208 square miles with 2.2 million people.

Government: The military, always a powerful force, has dominated political life since an October, 1968, coup. Gen. Omar Torrijos, a populist, ruled the country almost single-handedly until his death in 1981. His intelligence chief, Gen. Manuel A. Noriega, won a power struggle and became commander in 1983.

Economy: With a foreign debt of about $4 billion, Panama is one of the most heavily indebted nations per capita in the world. The United States severed economic and military aid to Panama in July, 1987.