In My Time - Dick Cheney [92]
While I don’t believe the United States would have benefited by siding with the coup plotters more openly in this instance, the truth is, we didn’t move fast enough to make a decision. It was made for us by events on the ground. We learned from this experience that we needed a better system in place to stay on top of fast-moving developments and to get good intelligence that we could act on. These were lessons we put to good use a few months later when we invaded Panama.
AS WE MONITORED EVENTS in Panama throughout the fall of 1989, we were also dealing with a potential coup in the Philippines. On November 30 we started getting reports that rebels opposed to the rule of Corazon Aquino had seized air bases belonging to the Filipino government. We also received a request from President Aquino for the United States to use the F-4 Phantom jets stationed at Clark Air Force Base to bomb the rebel positions. I did not believe we should agree to this—nor did General Powell. For one thing, President Aquino made it clear that she would publicly deny having made the request. Asking the United States to bomb Filipino citizens, even if they were rebels, would not go over well inside her own country. But we were committed to defending the government of the Philippines and needed to come up with a show of strength to discourage the rebels.
As the crisis was coming to a head, President Bush, Jim Baker, and Brent Scowcroft made an evening departure for a summit meeting in Malta with Mikhail Gorbachev. Later that night, Vice President Dan Quayle convened a meeting of members of the National Security Council in the Situation Room at the White House. I stayed home in McLean, Virginia, where I had secure communications that enabled me to talk directly to Powell, who was in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, and to Air Force One. When Powell briefed me on the response to the Philippine situation that he and the Pentagon planners proposed—to put up a combat air patrol of American-flown aircraft over Manila—I called Air Force One directly. When I learned that the president agreed with the proposed response, I called Powell with the order to get the operation started. The plan was the right one. It worked to keep Aquino in power without our ever firing a shot.
While our communications ability allowed us to do things our predecessors could not have dreamed of, we also ran into glitches from time to time. During my conversations with Powell the night of the Philippines crisis, he expressed extreme frustration at being unable, despite all the fancy equipment in the National Military Command Center, to talk to Filipino defense officials. The solution, as he described it to me in colorful terms as it was happening, was to have the floor of the command center ripped up and a regular phone line brought in so he could dial out to the Philippines.
AFTER NORIEGA PUT DOWN the coup attempt in October, we took steps to be better prepared for the next crisis—and it wasn’t long in coming. On December 15, the Panamanian legislature declared that Panama was at war with the United States, and the next day members of the Panamanian Defense Force, or PDF, shot and killed an unarmed United States Marine lieutenant, Robert Paz, when the car he was in took off in panic after being surrounded at a checkpoint. An American naval officer and his wife, witnesses to the shooting, were taken into custody by the PDF, harassed, threatened, and the husband beaten.
At ten the next morning, Sunday, December 17, I called a meeting in my office to review our options. General Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Dave Addington, Pete Williams, and Admiral Owens were there, as well as General Tom Kelly, the smart, straight-shooting officer who was director of operations for the joint staff. I went around the table to give each man a chance to be heard.