Inside SEAL Team Six(64)

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Several days later Spadafora’s badly tortured, decapitated body was found wrapped in a U.S. Postal Service mailbag.

In 1987, alarmed by the growing criminality of the Noriega regime and angry about a PDF-directed attack on the U.S. embassy in Panama City, President Ronald Reagan froze U.S. military and economic assistance to Panama.

A year later, General Manuel Antonio Noriega was accused of drug trafficking, by federal juries in Tampa and Miami. In May of 1989, Noriega launched a new round of political repression after he was accused of trying to steal the recent national election. President George H. W. Bush protested loudly, demanding that Noriega end political repression and drug trafficking, and expressing concern about the secure functioning of the Panama Canal, which was vital to U.S. shipping and regional security.

Sometime in early 1989, the CIA, Naval Special Warfare, and other government and military units began to collect intel in Panama for a possible op to arrest Noriega and remove him from power.

I arrived there in November of 1989, shortly after a coup led by Panama’s Major Moises Giroldi had been violently crushed by Noriega’s troops. The moment I landed, I felt the tension in the air. I had heard the stories about Noriega’s out-of-control cocaine parties and about him throwing people out of planes.

I was stationed with a handful of other operators from ST-6 at Rodman Naval Station, which bordered the west side of the Panama Canal. We were there to assist Special Boat Unit 26 (SBU-26) with coastal and riverine operations. I also had orders to serve as SBU-26’s training officer and to establish and run the Navy Special Warfare jungle training and the Central and South American MEDCAP program.

Rodman Naval Station was less than a mile away from the beautiful 5,425-foot cantilever Bridge of the Americas that spans the canal and links Central and South America.

On the night of December 16, 1989, I was driven in an armored vehicle to the airport to meet my girlfriend, Shannon, who was flying in to spend Christmas with me. Accompanying me was a young SEAL lieutenant also assigned to SBU-26, Adam Curtis, whose wife, Bonnie, was coming in on the same flight—a very rare occasion for any of us, especially in a hot zone.

The tension at the airport was palpable. You could see the anxiety about a possible U.S. military action in people’s eyes.

After the plane carrying the women landed, Adam informed me that he was taking his wife out to dinner.

I said, “Be careful, it’s getting bad out there. Shannon and I are going back to the base.”

Adam Curtis and Bonnie dined at a local restaurant and were on the way back to his barracks when they were stopped at a PDF checkpoint. They were questioned and their car was searched.

Adam later stated, “While we were there, another group of Americans came to the roadblock, three Army guys and a Marine—all officers. They felt threatened, they gunned it through the roadblock, and five PDF soldiers turned and fired at the car. The officer in the back, an Army lieutenant named [Robert] Paz, was killed.”

Adam Curtis and Bonnie were pulled out of their car and taken to a detention center, where they were interrogated and tortured. PDF goons hammered Adam’s feet in one room while his wife was fondled and sexually harassed in another.

The next morning at muster, Adam wasn’t there.

The captain turned to me and asked, “Where’s Lieutenant Curtis?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Last time I saw him was last night at the airport.”

According to various sources, President George H. W. Bush made the final decision to invade Panama after hearing about the murder of Lieutenant Robert Paz and the detention and torture of the Curtises.

By Sunday, December 20, assault units from Navy SEAL Teams Two, Four, and Six had infiltrated the country. At around midnight, Norman Carley, task unit commander for SEAL Team Two and former executive officer to ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ at ST-6, and four SEAL divers were aboard a CRRC in a stand of mangroves, waiting to attach a limpet mine to the Presidente Porras patrol boat.

“The commander of the whole operation, General [Carl] Steiner, thought that the operation had been compromised, and he moved up the time to execute the operation by a half hour,” Carley recalled. “But the clocks and safety and arming devices on the explosives were already set.”