Inside SEAL Team Six(69)
The experience reinforced an important lesson: Don’t lose your cool when you see someone who is grotesquely injured. Stay calm and proceed to treat him the way you’ve been trained.
Afterward the Army conducted an investigation. They found out that three LAW rockets had been fired at the boat, and the EOD guys had recovered only two.
So the story came together. And I’m very happy to report that Captain Mike O’Brien is doing well.
Chapter Twelve
San Blas Island
War is hell, but that’s not the half of it.
—Tim O’Brien
Within two days of the launching of Operation Just Cause on December 20, 1989, most PDF units loyal to General Manuel Noriega had either disintegrated or surrendered. Twenty-four U.S. troops had died during the takeover of the country—including four SEALs on the runway. More than 200 PDF soldiers had been killed, and another 1,905 captured. Unfortunately, the New York Times reported, between 202 and 220 Panamanian civilians had also perished.
Still, according to a CBS poll, 92 percent of all Panamanian adults supported the U.S. incursion. Seventy-six percent wished the U.S. had intervened earlier.
The fighting had pretty much ended, but Manuel Noriega was still at large.
Christmas Day 1989, he and four of his henchmen, including the former head of Panama’s secret police, fled to the Apostolic Nuncio—the de facto embassy of the Vatican—and sought asylum.
American soldiers promptly set up a perimeter outside the building, while Secretary of State James Baker sent a strong message to the Vatican asking them not to grant the former despot diplomatic immunity.
When Vatican officials refused to turn Noriega over to the United States, the Army turned to psychological warfare (psy ops), surrounding the building with armored vehicles and blaring rock music over loudspeakers—including some of my favorites, the song “I Fought the Law” by the Clash and the album Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses.
Ten days later, Noriega went outside for a walk around the Nuncio grounds and was grabbed near the gate by what he described as a “gigantic, enormous” American soldier. He was tackled, handcuffed, and whisked off to Howard Air Force Base in a waiting helicopter.
Two years later, on September 16, 1992, Noriega stood in a Miami courtroom listening to a federal judge sentence him to forty years in prison for drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering. He was later extradited to France, where he’s still in prison.
While the Noriega drama played out in Panama City, we continued to patrol the canal and board suspicious vessels. We encountered hundreds of cayucos, which were homemade, cutout-type vessels sometimes powered by outboard engines. Usually they were manned by a husband and wife, and maybe a couple of young children.
Since the cayucos were too small to board, we’d stand on the deck of our PRB and shout instructions in Spanish that meant “Open that container.”
Often we’d find small quantities of marijuana and cocaine onboard.
We also detained fishing boats with small four- to eight-man crews, as well as giant cargo ships. No matter the size of the ship, I’d board with three or four armed SEALs and/or SBU guys, look around, and review the bills of lading. Many times we were badly outnumbered. But we wanted everyone to know that we controlled the local rivers and the canal.
We conducted searches day and night, seven days a week, and seized huge amounts of cocaine that was being smuggled up through the canal from Colombia. Once, we had to wear plastic gloves as we were carrying off the shrink-wrapped packages because the cocaine was seeping through the plastic. We were getting wired and starting to grind our teeth.
Initially some of the SBU guys were intimidated to work around SEALs. After I’d been with them for about a month or so, I said to a group of them, “Whenever you guys are at a party or bar and the team guys [SEALs] are around, you SBU guys would all sit down, stop having fun, and get quiet. That’s wrong. I mean, you guys kicked ass in Vietnam and now you’re kicking ass down here and in South America. You’re every bit as good at what you do as we are at what we do.”
A couple of nights later, a pudgy little guy from SBU-26 went up to some SEALs in a bar and said, “Senior Chief Mann said that except for the trident, we’re just as good as you.”
The SEALs beat the hell out of him.
I told the SBU guy that he didn’t get the right message. I wasn’t telling him to mouth off. I wanted him and his teammates to hold their heads high and take pride in the fact that they were professional warriors.
My buddy Lieutenant Adam Curtis had returned to SBU-26 after he and his wife were released by the Panamanians. One day we were patrolling the canal together when we received a report about a boat that was attempting to smuggle one of Noriega’s officers out of the country.