Mora. Rogelio Cruz, the new Attorney General, has been a director of the First
Interamericas Bank, owned by Rodrguez Orejuela, one of the bosses of the Cali Cartel
gang in Colombia." The portly Endara was also the business partner and corporate
attorney of Carlos Eleta Almaran, the CIA bagman already mentioned. Eleta Almaran,
the owner of the Panamanian branch of Philip Morris tobacco was arraigned in Bibb
County, Georgia by DEA officials who accused him of conspiracy to import 600 kilos of
cocaine per month into the US, and to set up dummy corporations to launder the
estimated $300 million in profits this project was expected to produce. Eleta was first
freed on $8 million bail; after the "successful" US invasion of Panama, all charges
against him were ordered dropped by Bush and Thornburgh. Bush's heart had gone out in
his December 21 war speech especially to drug pusher Billy Ford: "You remember those
horrible pictures of newly elected Vice President Ford covered head to toe with blood,
beaten mercilessly by so-called 'dignity battalions.'" Bush, it would appear, has never
wanted to beat up a drug pusher.
As for Endara's first vice president, Ricardo Arias Calderon, his brother, Jaime Arias
Calderon, was president of the First Interamericas bank when that bank was controlled by
the Cali cartel. Jaime Arias Calderon was also the co-owner of the Banco Continental,
which laundered $40 million in drug money, part of which was used to finance the
activities of the anti-Noriega opposition. Thus, all of Bush's most important newly-
installed puppets were implicated in drug dealing.
The invasion presented some very difficult moments for Bush. From the beginning of the
operation late on December 20, until Christmas eve, the imposing US martial apparatus
had proven incapable of locating and capturing Noriega. The US Southern Command was
terrorized when a few Noriega loyalists launched a surprise attack on US headquarters
with mortars, scattering the media personnel who had been grinding out their propaganda.
There was great fear through the US command that Noriega had successfully
implemented a plan for the PDF to melt away to arms cashes and secret bases in the
Panamanian jungle for a prolonged guerilla warfare effort. As it turned out, Noriega had
failed to give the order to disperse. The reason for this is most instructive: Noriega had
expected a US move, but refused to credit the overwhelming evidence that the US was
launching a full-scale invasion for the purpose of completely dismantling the PDF and
occupying the totality of Panamanian territory. Noriega remained convinced until very
late in the day that US aggression would be limited to a commando raid devoted
primarily to the kidnapping or assassination of Noriega and a few top lieutenants. In this,
Noriega joins the company of the Shah of Iran, President Marcos of the Philippines, and
Saddam Hussein of Iraq, all of whom were unable to fathom the true extent of the US
committment to topple their regimes (or, in the case of Iraq, lay waste to much of the
country). This is the principal reason why the PDF failed to execute its plan to disperse
and regroup in the jungle.
As Christmas eve approached, and Noriega still had not been eliminated, a whining
hysteria increasingly colored Bush's public pronouncements. In his press conference of
December 22, Bush was tremendously agitated, and opened the proceedings by