Panama: The Road to Recovery : Freed Hostage Tells of His Ordeal

A veteran CBS News producer on Sunday recounted his harrowing ordeal during three days of captivity in the hands of irregular Panamanian soldiers loyal to deposed dictator Manuel A. Noriega.

CBS Evening News producer Jon Meyersohn, 33, told reporters at a news conference how he was handcuffed by militiamen armed with high-powered weapons and grenades and dragged to several hide-outs before his release was finally arranged by another captive, Douglas Mullen, and a third man.

Meyersohn lauded Mullen, a GTE Corp. executive in Panama, and Ramon Mejia, a GTE employee, for the manner in which they handled a perilous situation.

Members of Noriega’s Dignity Battalions, a paramilitary force recruited from among Panama’s poor and criminal elements as personal shock troops, abducted Mullen and Meyersohn from the Marriott Hotel in Panama City soon after the U.S. invasion began about 1 a.m. Wednesday.

The two Americans were freed Saturday after an intense negotiating session during which the Noriega loyalist in command broke down in tears while holding a grenade in a house where the two Americans awaited U.S. Embassy help, Meyersohn said.

When U.S. soldiers arrived at 4 p.m., “he still had the grenade in his hand,” Meyersohn said. The Noriega loyalist then put it down at Mullen’s urging, and the captors left the house first, the producer said.

Meyersohn’s wife, Julie Hartenstein, a producer for ABC News in New York, called Sunday “the happiest day of my life.”

When she heard Meyersohn was a captive, she said, “my life started to pass before my eyes. It was really hell.”

A 10-year veteran of CBS News, Meyersohn said he held no animosity toward the people of Panama nor toward his captors.

Meyersohn said the ordeal began after a grueling night of taping a news program.

Both men were taken to an abandoned social club where their hands were handcuffed behind them with ropes tied to tree branches, but they were soon thrown in a van with rice, water and other supplies because of the sound of helicopters and gunfire, he said.

“Doug and I looked at each other then and said, ‘This is it. We’re going to be killed or (we’re) going to be here for a very long time.’ ”

They were later transferred to another house to stay with a family with four children. Meyersohn said he spent much of Thursday watching television.

But on Friday, the two Americans were taken to a small city apartment and later to the negotiating house.

“Doug convinced our captives that maybe we were important,” and he was allowed to call GTE employee Ramon Mejia, Meyersohn said.

“Doug Mullen saved my life because he is the most cool, calm negotiator you ever would imagine,” Meyersohn said. “Ramon was talking to our captives. They were beginning to get hysterical (saying): ‘We just want dignity. We don’t want to be a colonial nation.’ Ramon was talking to our captives. . . . He knew what to say and when to say it.”