In My Time - Dick Cheney [89]
Eight years later I was at a reception at Robert Mosbacher’s home in Houston when George H. W. Bush, a former president now, told me he had someone he wanted me to talk to. He took me by the arm and walked me into the dining room, where a lone person sat at the table—Mikhail Gorbachev. The president said he thought we should know each other better, seated me next to Gorbachev, and left. On that fall afternoon for a half hour or so, the two of us, with help from an interpreter, talked about the bygone days when we had been adversaries.
I must give Gorbachev credit. He could have done as his predecessors did and used force to preserve the U.S.S.R. The fact that he did not is enough to make him one of the twentieth century’s historic figures.
ONE OF THE FIRST challenges on my watch as defense secretary was a problem we had inherited from the Reagan administration—Panamanian strongman General Manuel Noriega. America had significant interests at stake in Panama. Although President Carter had signed the treaty turning over control of the Panama Canal to the government of Panama, the turnover would not take effect until 1999. In March 1989, America was still in charge, and protecting the rights of transit through the canal was our responsibility. We also had twelve thousand American troops stationed in Panama, and I was responsible for their welfare.
Noriega was a thug, guilty of a long string of outrageous actions, and he was under indictment by federal grand juries in Florida for money laundering and drug trafficking. In early May 1989, when Noriega’s preferred candidates were defeated at the ballot box by presidential candidate Guillermo Endara and others, Noriega threw out the results of the election and sent his “dignity battalions” into the streets to bloody the opposition. Newscasts in the United States carried footage of one of the opposition’s vice presidential candidates, Guillermo “Billy” Ford, trying to flee along a street in Panama City as he was beaten by Noriega’s goons.
We weren’t prepared at this point for a major military action in Panama, but we needed to generate options for the president. The Panama Canal was a strategic asset, there were American lives at stake, and President Bush wanted to make clear that our country’s patience was running thin.
Our plan was to send a clear message by deploying an additional three thousand U.S. troops into Panama, but we ran into an obstacle in the person of our commanding general, Fred Woerner, who headed up Southern Command. He basically told us no thanks when we informed him we’d be sending reinforcements. His response was the same when we told him we would be sending some of our special operations forces into Panama to be ready in case we needed them. Not necessary, he said. Having a general who wouldn’t accept reinforcements was clearly a problem.
After a conversation with Brent Scowcroft, I realized Woerner was going to have to be replaced. At about the same time my old friend Jack Marsh invited me for lunch. Jack was now the secretary of the army, a job he loved and was terrific at. He was a very effective back channel for me a number of times when I was secretary of defense. Marsh knew I would be looking for a replacement soon for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Crowe. “Have you thought about Max Thurman?” he asked. Thurman was currently serving as commanding general of the Training and Doctrine Command, getting ready to retire in two months. Although he wasn’t well-known outside the army, he was a legend inside it. He was a bachelor, married to the army, really. He’d been heavily involved in creating our all-volunteer force. And he got things done. If you