1.
Maté:
Since the release of Senate findings this month, senior officials from the
George W. Bush administration have defended their global torture program.
Speaking to Meet the Press last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney
said that with no major terror attack since 9/11, he wouldn’t hesitate to use
torture again.
2.
Cheney:
With respect to trying to define that as torture, I come back to the
proposition torture was what the al-Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on
9/11. There is no comparison between that and what we did with respect to
enhanced interrogation. ... It worked. It worked now. For 13 years we’ve
avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States. We did capture
bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys of al-Qaeda who were
responsible for that attack on 9/11. I’d do it again in a minute.
3.
Maté:
The Obama administration and top Democrats have contested Cheney’s claim the
torture program was effective, as well as legal. But
what has gone unchallenged is the assumption the torture program’s sole motive
was post-9/11 self-defense. There has been almost no recognition the
Bush administration also tortured prisoners for a very different goal: extract
information that could tie al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein and justify the invasion
of Iraq.
4.
Goodman:
Instead, from President Obama on down, it’s been taken at face value that
protecting the nation was the Bush administration’s sole motive. Speaking to the
network Univision, President Obama was asked if President Bush had betrayed the
country’s values. This was his response.
5.
Obama:
As I’ve said before, after 9/11, I don’t think that you can know what it feels
like to know that America has gone through the worst attack on the continental
United States in its history and you’re uncertain as to what’s coming next. So,
there were a lot of people who did a lot of things right and worked very hard
to keep us safe. But I think that any fair-minded person looking at this would
say that some terrible mistakes were made.
6.
Goodman:
President Obama’s comments were echoed by CIA Director John Brennan. In his
first response to the Senate report, Brennan said those behind the torture
program faced agonizing choices in their effort to protect the country after
9/11.
7.
Brennan:
The previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue
al-Qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country, while
facing fears of further attacks and carrying out the responsibility to prevent
more catastrophic loss of life. There were no easy answers. And whatever your
views are on EITs, our nation, and in particular this agency, did a lot of
things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secure.
8.
Maté:
Though the White House has not questioned the Bush administration’s motives,
there is no doubt torture played a major role in the push for invading Iraq.
And while the Senate report and other critics say torture produced false
information, that could have been one of the program’s goals. In 2009, McClatchy reported, “The
Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods
on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and ...
Saddam Hussein’s regime.” A “former senior U.S. intelligence official” said,
quote, “There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the
interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the
detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept
coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push
harder.”
9.
Goodman:
The Iraq-torture connection gets only bare mention in the Senate intelligence
report, but it’s still significant. In a footnote, the report cites the case of Ibn Shaykh al-Libi. After
U.S. forces sent him for torture in Egypt, Libi made up the false claim that
Iraq provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda.
Secretary of State Colin Powell then used Libi’s statements in that famous
February 5th, 2003, speech at the United Nations falsely alleging Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Senate report says, quote, “Libi [later] recanted the claim ... claiming that he had
been tortured ... and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear.” Well,
we’re joined now by a guest with unique insight into the Libi case and other
Bush-era uses of torture to justify the Iraq War: retired Colonel Lawrence
Wilkerson. He served as chief of staff to
Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Colonel Wilkerson helped prepare that speech that General
Powell gave at the U.N., only to later renounce it. He’s now a professor
of government and public policy at William & Mary. Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson,
welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about the Libi case and how seminal it
was.
10.
Wilkerson:
Amy, it’s probably the most seminal moment in my memory of those five days and
nights out at Langley at the CIA headquarters with
George Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin. Powell had rarely, in the
some eight years or so I had worked for him to that point, grown so angry with
me that he, in this case, physically grabbed me and took me to the spaces that
were empty in the room adjacent to the DCI conference room, sat me down in a
chair and essentially lectured me on how he was dissatisfied with and very
unhappy with the portions in his presentation that dealt with terrorism,
particularly the connections with Baghdad and al-Qaeda. And I quickly apprised
him of the fact that I was just as uneasy as he was. He calmed down a bit, and
he said, “Well, let’s throw it out.” We did. We threw it out. Within about 30
to 45 minutes, we were back in the DCI conference room to resume that night’s
rehearsal, and George Tenet himself laid a
bombshell on the table. He essentially said—and these are almost direct quotes:
“We have learned from the interrogation of a high-level
al-Qaeda operative that not only were there substantial contacts between
al-Qaeda and Baghdad, that those contacts included Baghdad Mukhabarat, secret
police, Saddam’s special people, training al-Qaeda operatives in how to use
chemical and biological weapons.” That’s almost a direct quote, Amy. At
that point, Powell turned to me and said, “Put it back in.” And from that point
on, though I did take some of the stuff out as late as 2:00 a.m. in the morning
in the Waldorf-Astoria prior to the morning of the presentation, and had Phil Mudd, George Tenet’s counterterrorism czar, standing
behind me in the Waldorf, trying to prevent me from taking things out, until I
finally told him I would physically remove him from the room if he didn’t leave
of his own will, people were trying to get that portion back into the
presentation. But the damage was done. The secretary, as you know, presented
the information as if there were substantial contacts.
11.
Maté:
Colonel, in your judgment, how big of a motive was the Iraq War in the torture
program, in the torture of prisoners to get information that could tie al-Qaeda
to Saddam Hussein?
12.
Wilkerson:
One of the things that I have to say rather stunned me was when Powell, in
April, right after the Abu Ghraib incident was made public or incidents were
made public, asked me to look into it and to get a tick-tock for him, to get a
chronology—essentially, to tell him how we got to that point. And I began my
investigation. I learned that there was, as early as April-May 2002, efforts to
use enhanced interrogation techniques, also to build a legal regime under which
they could be conducted, and that those efforts were as much aimed at al-Qaeda
and contacts between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, and corroboration thereof, as they
were trying to ferret out whether or not there was another attack coming, like
9/11. That was stunning to me to find out that that was part—I’d say probably
50 percent of the impetus that I discovered in both the classified and
unclassified material I looked into.
13.
Goodman:
In June, we spoke to Richard
Clarke, the nation’s former top counterterrorism official. Clarke served as
national coordinator for security and counterterrorism during Bush’s first year
in office. He resigned in 2003 following the Iraq invasion. Clarke said that
after 9/11, right after, in the days after, President Bush had wanted him to
place the blame on Iraq.
14.
Clarke:
I resigned, quit the government altogether, testified before congressional
committees and before the 9/11 Commission, wrote a book revealing what the Bush
administration had and had not done to stop 9/11 and what they did after the
fact, how the president wanted me, after the fact, to blame Iraq for the 9/11 attack.
15.
Goodman:
Richard Clarke also says he believes President George W. Bush is guilty of war
crimes for launching the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
16.
Clarke:
I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war
crimes. Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we
could all have. But we have established procedures now with the International
Criminal Court in The Hague where people who take actions as serving presidents
or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried. So the
precedent is there to do that sort of thing.
17.
Goodman:
So, that’s Richard Clarke, Bush’s former counterterrorism czar, who said Bush
came up to him right after the 9/11 attacks to say, “Start linking this to
Iraq.” Colonel Wilkerson, he’s a Bush administration official. You’re a Bush
administration official. Of course, the man you worked for, Colin Powell, was a
Bush administration official, secretary of state. Do you think that President
Bush, Vice President Cheney, George Tenet, head of the CIA, and others should
be held accountable for war crimes, should be actually charged?
18.
Wilkerson:
I have to say that after all of my investigations, my
students looking into the episodes in case studies and so forth, my own
personal experience in that administration, I can only give you an answer that is, I think, utopian, I
think it’s far too optimistic, it’s Pollyannaish: [FuckingA.] yes. But I don’t
think for a moment that it’s going to happen.
19.
Maté:
Colonel, the Senate report says that 26 innocent people were caught up in the
program, and former Vice President Cheney addressed this. Speaking to Meet
the Press, he was asked about the report finding that 26 of the 119
prisoners were innocent. This was his response.
20.
Cheney:
I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and were released than I am with a
few that in fact were innocent.
21.
Todd:
Twenty-five percent of the detainees, though. Twenty-five percent turned out
not to have—turned out to be innocent. They were—
22.
Cheney:
So, where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are you going to know?
23.
Todd:
Well, I’m asking you.
24.
Cheney:
I’m saying—
25.
Todd:
Is that too high? Is that—you’re OK with that margin for error?
26.
Cheney:
I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.
27.
Maté:
That was Chuck Todd questioning former Vice President Dick Cheney. Colonel
Wilkerson, can you respond to what Cheney said? And
also address the issue of innocence. Do you think that the 26 figure is too
low?
28.
Wilkerson:
Definitely too low, when you consider the entire prison population. As I’ve said many
times in the past, I am quite confident that probably a half to two-thirds,
possibly even more, of those initially put in Guantánamo, some 700-plus people,
were just swept up on the battlefield, through bounty process or
whatever, and were basically innocent of anything other than being in the wrong
place at the wrong time. But let’s look at what Dick Cheney said. This is pure
Cheney. This is Cheney and Rumsfeld’s tactic. They
immediately deflect the question, which is a solid question which they simply
can’t answer. They immediately deflect it to the other side of the equation,
whether it’s the ticking time bomb argument, which is a fallacious and stupid
argument if you really parse it well, or
whether it’s, as Cheney did here, that, you know, 75 percent were
guilty, and any one of those might have done something, and so I was good in
what I did. This is Cheney, amoral, amoral Cheney. What you must look
at, too, and what I wish that interrogator of Cheney had looked at, is, we
know—we
know positively that a minimum—and I suspect it’s higher—of 39 people died in
the interrogation process. Why does no one ever mention that? We
know, too, that in some of those cases the military or civilian coroner
involved found the cause of that death to be homicide. The most famous case, of
course, Alex Gibney in
his documentary, Taxi
to the Dark Side, Dilawar in Afghanistan, is known about, but even that’s been
forgotten. We murdered people whom we were
interrogating. Isn’t that the ultimate torture? No one ever asks Dick about that.
29.
Goodman:
Colonel Wilkerson, that number, 39 people killed by torturers, where do you get
that number, and where were they killed?
30.
Wilkerson:
That number comes from Human Rights First’s initial
report on command responsibility in the interrogation program, which I believe
came out quite early, 2006-2007. It was 39 people who died in detention.
Now, some of them died of natural causes. They had a heart attack or whatever.
Of course, the heart attack might have been brought on by the very strenuous
process they were going through, including hypothermic rooms and stress and so
forth and so on. But nonetheless, several of those were judged homicides. In
other words, either the contractor for the CIA, the CIA or the military
individual conducting the interrogation was responsible for the death of that
person because of what they were doing to them. That’s
never talked about anymore.
31.
Goodman:
Final question. At the time that Colin Powell gave that speech, that infamous
speech that he would
later call a blot on his career, February 5th, 2003, at the U.N., there
were many who were saying, including weapons inspectors in Iraq, that the
allegation of weapons of mass destruction was not true. What would have
penetrated the bubble for you, Colonel Wilkerson—for example, to peace
activists and others—to be able to reach you, to reach Colin Powell? Why could
they continue to say this, with lots of evidence behind it, yet you didn’t hear
it?
32.
Wilkerson:
I think there was objection that made its way through to us. After all, we had
an intelligence and research group at the State Department, INR, and an
assistant secretary, Carl
Ford, who objected rather strenuously to one-third of the major elements
of Powell’s presentation, the most dangerous element, if you will—the active
nuclear program. So, we had opposition. But, Amy, when you have a secretary of
state of the United States sitting down with the representative of the 16
intelligence entities, representing the military, representing NSA,
representing DIA, the CIA, of course, and all the other entities that we spend
some $80 billion a year to keep up and working, and telling the secretary of
state, who is not an intelligence professional, that this is the case and this
is the proof, it’s very difficult for the secretary of state to push back and
say, “No, I’ve got some element here that tells me you’re not right.” Powell
did that, on a number of occasions. But in each case, with few exceptions that
were important, Tenet and McLaughlin pushed back with the weight of the
intelligence community. And people forget, Tenet was pushing back, as he said,
quite frequently, with the Germans, the Israelis, the French and, as he would
put it, all the other countries in the world who have reasonably good
intelligence and intelligence institutions and are corroborating what I’m
saying. So, this is a very difficult situation for the secretary of state.
33.
Goodman:
Do you think John Brennan, head of the CIA, should immediately be fired?
34.
Wilkerson:
I think John Brennan should have been fired a long time ago. Long time ago.
35.
Goodman:
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, we’re going to have to wrap this break, but we’re
going to ask you to stay with us. You served as chief of staff to Secretary of
State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. But we’re going to go back in time. We’re
going to—it is the 25th anniversary of the invasion of Panama. At the time,
Colin Powell was the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We’re going to have a
discussion about this anniversary. Stay with us. This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron
Maté.
36.
Maté:
This month marks the 25th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Panama. Early in the morning of December 20th, 1989, President
George H.W. Bush launched Operation Just Cause, sending tens of thousands of
troops and hundreds of aircraft into Panama to execute an arrest warrant
against its leader, Manuel Noriega, on charges of drug trafficking. General
Noriega was once a close ally to Washington and on the CIA payroll. But after
1986, his relationship with Washington took a turn for the worse. During the
attack, the U.S. unleashed a force of 24,000 troops, equipped with highly
sophisticated weaponry and aircraft, against a country with an army smaller
than the New York City Police Department. The war was chronicled in the 1992
documentary, The
Panama Deception, produced and directed by Barbara Trent. The Panama Deception was
banned in Panama, but it won an Oscar here for Best Documentary.
37.
BushTheSon:
One year ago, the people of Panama lived in fear under the thumb of a dictator.
Today, democracy is restored. Panama is free.
38.
JOSÉ DE JESÚS MARTÍNEZ: We are to say we invaded Panama because Noriega. I don’t know
how Americans can be so stupid to believe this. I mean, how can you be so
stupid?
39.
Parenti:
The performance of the mainstream news media in the coverage of Panama has been
just about total collaboration with the administration. Not a critical
perspective. Not a second thought.
40.
Pete Williams: Our regret is that we were not able
to use the media pool more effectively.
41.
Rep. Charles Rangel: You would think, from the video clips that we had seen, that
this whole thing was just a Mardi Gras, that the people in Panama were just
jumping up and down with glee.
42.
Valerie van Isler: They focused on
Noriega, to the exclusion of what was happening to the Panamanian people, to
the exclusion of the bodies in the street, to the exclusion of the number dead.
43.
Rep. Charles Rangel: The truth of the matter is that we don’t even know how many
Panamanians we have killed.
44.
Peter Kornbluh: Panama is
another example of destroying a country to save it. And the United
States has exercised a might-makes-right doctrine among smaller countries of
the Third World, to invade these countries, get what we want, and leave the
people that live there to kind of rot.
45.
Robert Knight: The invasion sets the stage for the
wars of the 21st century.
46.
Goodman:
That last voice, Robert Knight, the late Robert Knight, a well-known host at WBAI,
Pacifica Radio, in New York. That was part of the trailer for the
Academy Award-winning 1992 documentary, The Panama Deception. We’re
joined now by three guests: Humberto Brown, former Panamanian diplomat; Greg Grandin, professor
of Latin American history at New York University, his most recent book, The Empire of Necessity:
Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, his most recent article
for TomDispatch, “The War to Start All Wars: The 25th Anniversary of the
Forgotten Invasion of Panama”; and still with us in Washington, D.C., retired
Colonel Lawrence
Wilkerson, special assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was
chaired by General Colin Powell at the time of the invasion. Greg Grandin, let’s
start with you. Why the 25th anniversary? What do you have to say, going back
25 years ago, is the most important thing to understand about what happened?
47.
Grandin:
That the invasion of Panama took place a month after the fall of the Berlin
Wall, and it really set the terms for future interventions in a number of ways.
One, it was unilateral. It was done without the
sanction of the United Nations, without the sanction of the Organization of
American States, which was a fairly risky thing for the United States. It didn’t
occur often, even during the Cold War. Two, it
was a violation of national sovereignty, which of course the United States did
often during the Cold War, but it was a violation—the terms of the violation
changed. It was done in the name of democracy. It was argued—it was overtly
argued that national sovereignty was subordinated to democracy, or the United
States’ right to adjudicate the quality of democracy. And
three, it was a preview to the first Gulf War. It was a massive
coordination of awesome force that was done spectacularly for public
consumption. It was about putting the Vietnam syndrome
to rest.
48.
Goodman:
Talk about the effects, Humberto Brown—you were a Panamanian diplomat at the
time—the effects of the U.S. invasion. The Pentagon said hundreds of people
died; Panamanians said something like 3,000 people died in this attack. How long
did it last?
49.
Brown:
Well, Amy, just in the first hour, we had had 200 and—about close to 400 bombs
were dropped after midnight, devastating poor neighborhoods—El Chorrillo, Marañon,
Caledonia. So it was devastating, because, one, the majority of the
people who suffered consequences of it were poor people in the urban areas. And
the elite, who was complicit to this, were—their neighborhoods were protected.
They were safe. Some of them was removed from
their homes and were placed in the Canal Zone. So it was two different
approaches. One was intimidation and literally expressing no concern for the
poor, in a way. So we think it was very devastating. And it’s interesting that
at 25 years, this is the first time one of the presidents are talking about the
need to answer the question about how many people died, how many people
disappeared. And on Saturday, the new president, President Varela, said that he wanted to
create a special commission to investigate what happened during the invasion,
how many people died, because they’re attempting to get a national
reconciliation. The debate—there’s always a debate in Panama, if we’d celebrate
this as a day of mourning. The president calls it a day of reflection, and
there’s a sector that call it a day of liberation. So we still have a
conflicting view of the impact of this invasion in Panama.
50.
Maté:
And, Colonel Wilkerson in Washington, you were an aide to Colin Powell during
this time. What’s your understanding of why this attack took place?
51.
Wilkerson:
Well, my understanding was the understanding that the
press reported. It was everything from attacks on or threatened
attacks on our officers and men and women in the military in Panama to drug
trafficking and extensive contacts with drug gangs that had grown much larger
than the contacts with the CIA had ever contemplated and so forth. But I’ve
got to say that in what I teach, you could learn a lot about U.S. operations in
its own hemisphere. This was an operation, not so unique, as one of the
speakers just suggested. Go back and look at Marine
General Smedley Butler, in his testimony to the then Armed Forces
Committee in the Congress, where he essentially compared himself to Al Capone,
and he said, “Al Capone operated on one continent, I
operated on two. I was a criminal for American commercial interest.” We
have invaded someone or interjected our military force into someone’s territory
in the Caribbean about 35 times since 1850. This is our hemisphere. The Monroe
Doctrine is still operational. And we seem to think that we
can interfere in anyone’s country at any time. 2002, we tried to foment a coup in
Caracas to overthrow Hugo Chávez.
52.
Grandin:
I agree completely. The Cold War, though, did force the United States to
operate under the legitimacy of multilateralism, and that’s what gets swept
away with Panama, with the invasion of Panama. And it does set the terms for
future invasions. But I agree completely.
53.
Goodman:
Greg Grandin, Noriega, his role and why the U.S. wanted him so badly, for years
having worked with him, CIA asset, then took him and imprisoned him?
54.
Grandin:
Well, in some ways, the Panama invasion is a capstone to Iran-Contra, to the
1980s, to the involvement of the United States in Nicaragua. Noriega was a key
player in that, a shadowy player. I actually don’t know—I mean, I’m a born and
raised Catholic, but the mysteries of the national security state doesn’t—you
know, by far outstrips the mysteries of the trinity. I don’t know—Noriega
played both sides. He passed information on to Cuba at the same time he
brokered deals with the Contras. He was an intermediary with the cartels in
Colombia. All of this is the deep politics behind Iran-Contra. And Hersh, Seymour Hersh, published
an article, I think in 1986, before actually Iran-Contra broke, in The New
York Times, outlining Noriega’s involvement in drug running and drug
trafficking. And that really was the turning of the tide in terms of the U.S.’s
involvement with Noriega. It was actually under the Reagan administration that
the federal judiciary issued some warrants for drug trafficking and
racketeering for Noriega. And if you—actually, Brent Scowcroft, who was the
national security adviser for George H.W. Bush, has a very interesting
interview, where he says, “You know, Noriega wasn’t really high on our agenda.”
You know, what happened was that the Bush administration was kind of pushed by
domestic politics, particularly to its bumbling of an October coup in Panama
that it didn’t handle very well, and it took a lot of criticism. And you go back and you actually look at the press, and the
press was baiting the Bush administration for not dealing with this, for not
being—for not supporting the coup plotters against Noriega. And in some ways,
it’s an interesting kind of trajectory, a kind of fumbling into the invasion.
55.
Goodman:
I wanted to ask Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a question.
There’s a book written by
Christopher O’Sullivan called Colin Powell: American Power and Intervention from
Vietnam to Iraq. And he writes, “Powell was aware that
Noriega had been on the CIA payroll for a quarter century. He had witnessed
Noriega being feted as a savior of the Contras by Weinberger at the Pentagon.
Support for Noriega had been so staunch that for a time the Reagan
administration impeded investigations into allegations of his drug trafficking.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had even awarded him with a commendation for
his contributions to the ‘war on drugs.’ Powell observed that the Reagan and
Bush administrations should have known that ‘you could not buy Manuel Noriega,
but you could rent him.’” Then O’Sullivan writes, “With the Cold War ending and
the obsessive fear about Nicaragua dissipating, Noriega’s usefulness to
Washington evaporated. He also took the fateful step of endorsing the Contadora
Peace Process for Central America.” Your comments on this?
56.
Wilkerson: I think that’s—it’s
summary, to be sure, but it’s a pretty good summary of some of the things that
happened. And Powell was deputy national security adviser and then national
security adviser in the last year of the Reagan second administration, so he
was up close and personal watching these things. There’s more to it. Some of
it’s still classified. But U.S. machinations in that region of the world, from
El Salvador to Honduras today, where we supported the heinous overthrow of the
leader of Honduras and installed our man, so to speak, is well known to
anyone inside the community. As I said before, this is how we deal
with our hemisphere.
57.
Maté:
Humberto Brown, on that issue of the U.S. role in the hemisphere, the U.S. has
a long history with Panama, going decades back, long aligning itself with the
light-skinned European elite. Can you talk about this history, this background
to the Panama invasion?
58.
Brown:
Sure. Well, from an internal process of Panama itself, right, not U.S.-only
foreign policy, but I think that invasion represented a move of the U.S. to
make sure that when the Panama Canal was returned to Panama, that the
government in power was the elite that they was accustomed to relate to. If you
see who became the government installed by the U.S., was the former oligarchy
and their representative. So, it wasn’t only that Noriega no longer served the
U.S. interests, but the internal conflict in Panama over governance, control of
the resources. There was a lot of concern that the Panamanian—if Panama Canal
got transferred to Panama and you still have the military in power, that that
will give them an advantage over resources, because they would have the control
of the resources that you made from just administrating the canal. So it also
was to shift the correlation of forces within Panama. I also think that it’s
very important when we discuss Panama, I think it’s the same problem we face
today. When we discuss 9/11, we talk about the victims, and we all understand
what it means to feel vulnerable and be innocent, but pay the price for the
life and the people who disappear and get killed. In
Panama, we still have no answers of how many people were killed. We still have
families that don’t have any answers of where their family disappeared to. And
now that’s the big question in Panama, I think. The U.S. occupation in Panama
is a long history. From 1903, when they supported the oligarchy to become an
independent country, to their intervention in every internal conflict in
Panama, the U.S. was the force. For a long time in the history of Panama, the
first 40 years, Panama policemen was never a force that could handle the
internal process. They depended on the U.S. 14 military bases. And the U.S.
defines politics and internal process of Panama. So, yes, you have the
consolidation of what have been historical. The U.S. determined politics and
all internal process in Panama and supported a small elite that are loyal to
the U.S.
59.
Maté:
You mentioned 9/11. In Panama, is the invasion regarded or marked in the same
way that 9/11 is here?
60.
Brown:
Oh, definitely. For the majority of people in Panama, it’s one of the most—what
is it—traumatic experiences we have ever lived, because we’re a Catholic
country. To
bomb a country when people are in the process of celebrating Christmas, bomb
them at midnight, is something that is—I mean, it violates every basic
international law, from the Geneva Convention or any agreement [inaudible]
about protecting civilian in time of war.
61.
Goodman:
I want to turn to President George H.W. Bush’s announcement of the Panama
invasion, which he made on December 20th, 1989.
62.
BushTheSon:
Last night, I ordered U.S. military forces to Panama. No president takes such
action lightly. This morning, I want to tell you what I did and why I did it.
For nearly two years, the United States, nations of Latin America and the
Caribbean have worked together to resolve the crisis in Panama. The goals of
the United States had been to safeguard the lives of Americans, to defend
democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking and to protect the integrity of
the Panama Canal Treaty. Many attempts have been made to resolve this crisis
through diplomacy and negotiations. All were rejected by the dictator of
Panama, General Manuel Noriega, an indicted drug trafficker.
63.
Goodman:
There you have President George H.W. Bush. And, Greg Grandin, for people who do
not remember this or who weren’t born—we have many listeners who weren’t born
at the time of the invasion. You’re a professor of Latin American history at
New York University. He talked about the indicted drug trafficker, Manuel
Noriega. But he was on the payroll of the CIA.
64.
Grandin:
He was on the payroll of the CIA. He was on the payroll of the CIA. He was
apparently working with the Cubans. He played—he played
multiple roles within Panama that, as you mentioned, the CIA was willing to
work with during the height of Iran-Contra. But things turned with the end of
the Cold War, and he became inconvenient in some ways. Going back to
Humberto’s point, I don’t think we should downplay the racism of it—you know,
Manuel Noriega coming from El Chorrillo, a neighborhood, a popular barrio, next
to the Canal Zone, from migrant workers, most of them from the Caribbean, who
helped build the Canal Zone. Noriega represented the lower classes, the dark
lower classes. And think about the racism, if we go back and remember the way
that it was presented in the press—his belief in
witchcraft, his sorcery, right, the—you know, rifling through his underwear
drawers. You know, the Marines—
65.
Brown:
Cara de piña.
66.
Grandin:
Yeah, I mean, it was pretty intense, the racism.
67.
Goodman:
And he is taken to the United States—
68.
Grandin:
Yes.
69.
Goodman:
—and imprisoned in Atlanta, Georgia?
70.
Grandin:
Yes.
71.
Goodman:
For how long was he imprisoned?
72.
Grandin:
Well, he’s still imprisoned. I mean, he’s still—he was—you know, in that piece,
I used the word “extradited,” but it actually wasn’t. U.S. actually didn’t have
an extradition treaty with Panama at the time, somebody corrected me. He was
seized illegally and brought back to Florida, and then he was extradited to
France. And he was in prison in France for a while, and then he was—now he’s
back in Panama. He was put on trial in Florida in a federal court in 1992. And what’s interesting about that trial is that a number of
government witnesses called actually confirmed Noriega’s defense. And Noriega’s
defense was: “I was working for the CIA.” And one particular witness confirmed
that Noriega helped broker a deal in which a Colombian cartel passed $10
million on to the Contras. This speaks to other issues having to do with the
“Dark Alliance” series of Gary Webb that came out later. So this really kind of—you lift up the—you lift up
Noriega, you lift up the Panama invasion, you both see the overt history of
U.S. interventions that come later, but you see the deep politics of covert
history, the national—the dark national security state that we still don’t
really—you know, that’s still classified in many ways.
73.
Maté:
Well, on that point, Colonel Wilkerson, I wanted to ask you: Do you see the
Panama invasion as perhaps the model for the Iraq invasions that would come
later on? I mean, here you have a tyrant, his worst crimes committed with U.S.
support, then at some point either he disobeys or he misunderstands orders,
then all of a sudden he’s demonized in the corporate media and his country is
invaded.
74.
Wilkerson:
My students study covert and overt U.S. operations from 1947 to the present.
While we might sit back and wax eloquent about international law and about
human rights and so forth, what the world is really
about is power. The United States exercises its power clandestinely
and overtly quite frequently, since the end of the Cold War more so than during
the Cold War. We can argue about the reasons, and there are complex reasons,
usually, for invasions like Panama. And we always put the rhetoric, as you
played, Amy, George H.W. Bush in this case, up, about liberty and democracy and
freedom and so forth, and it is rarely, if ever, about those commodities. What it’s about is raw power—economic, financial, sometimes
personal power. It’s about power. And that’s the way it is with great powers,
and that’s the way it is in the world. We can lament it all day long. It’s still
there confronting us every day.
75.
Goodman:
But if you were to hold out hope, Colonel Wilkerson, do you think things can
change? For example, you’re calling for the prosecution of Bush administration
officials. Is the reason for that is you think that U.S. policy can change?
76.
Wilkerson:
I also said I didn’t think there was the political will or the political
courage to hold those officials accountable. That’s a comment on the state of
our democratic federal republic, which is not very democratic these days. And gives me great
pain to say it, but I don’t see anything changing of a substantial nature until
perhaps a profound crisis to us, something much more serious than 9/11,
actually confronts us. I happen to think that that crisis is rapidly coming
upon us. It’s called climate change. And how we deal with that and how we make
it through the next generation, as it were, is going to paint our republic in
either very draconian terms, collapsing of its own perfidy, or it’s going to
resurrect it. I hope the latter. I’m optimistic in that regard. I hope the
latter.
77.
Goodman:
We have a few more minutes, and though we started by talking about this 25th
anniversary of Panama, I wanted to end with Cuba. You, Colonel Wilkerson, have
been deeply involved with Cuban politics. You were head of the U.S.-Cuba Policy
Initiative / at
the New America Foundation. Greg Grandin, you’re a professor, a
historian of Latin America. Humberto Brown, you were a diplomat, a Panamanian
diplomat. What is the significance of what is taking place today? Let’s start
with Colonel Wilkerson.
78.
Wilkerson:
I was in Havana, Amy, last week, and I’ve got to tell you that when
President Raúl Castro and President Barack Obama made their announcements, we
watched them on television in a room with about 200-250 people, most Cubans,
but some Americans, and there was not a dry eye in the house, Cuban or U.S.
This is a historic moment. I hope the rhetoric
of President Obama is matched by deeds. [That fucking tickles me.] And I
hope eventually we lift the embargo, because this has been a horrible thing,
especially since the end of the Cold War, for the Cuban people. It satisfied
people like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Bob Menendez in our Congress, who are what I call Batista
leftovers, [Saved.] Batista being the original dictator that Castro
originally overthrew in ‘59. But this is a policy that should have changed a
long time ago, long time ago. There are all kinds of ramifications to this
change—security, agricultural sales, commercial operations, you name it. But
basically this change is for the 11-and-a-half million Cuban people, who are good
people, solid people, brilliant people, in some regards, whose culture and art
and so forth is the best in the Caribbean, in my mind, and who have been
cooperating with us for some time on important issues like counterdrug
operations, countercrime in general and so forth. Now we need to get on with it
and have much better relations, ultimately normal relations.
79.
Maté:
Greg Grandin, one phrase I was struck by in President Obama’s speech is when he
was reviewing U.S. policy going back five decades, and he says, “It’s always been rooted in the best of intentions,” unquote.
Can you comment on that?
80.
Grandin:
Well, that’s just boilerplate, obviously. It’s not. It’s been a failed
policy. It’s been a nefarious policy. It’s
been—it’s rooted in the worst kinds of assumptions that the United States has
the power, as Colonel Wilkerson talked about, to act as if the United States
is—Latin America is the United States’ backyard and to come down hard on any
country that begs to differ. I mean,
but Obama did say—President Obama did say that it’s five decades of failed
policy also. And I think that—I think that the change—I think it’s rhetorical,
to a large degree. A lot of the worst of it is
enshrined in law that will have to change, Helms-Burton in particular, signed
under Bill Clinton and supported by Bill Clinton. But Obama—
81.
Goodman:
And that said? Helms-Burton said?
82.
Grandin:
Oh, it basically locks in a lot of the provisions of the embargo that are just
hard to overturn by presidential decree. But I think Obama, even rhetorically,
has nationalized the question. And since JFK, every
president has gone down to Miami and pandered to an increasingly small,
marginal Batista holdovers, as Colonel Wilkerson said, but it has effect,
because you have to—because that margin could win Florida. Obama,
rhetorically, has nationalized the question. Now, all of those Batista
holdovers have to go to the nation and explain why they want to go back to the
old failed policy. So I think, in one—it’s quite remarkable, quite deft in
domestic politics, at least, in what it changes.
83.
Goodman:
Humberto Brown, your take on what has taken place now in Cuba and where it can
go?
84.
Brown:
Well, I agree that this is a significant change, but I think it also reflects
that Latin America have changed. Latin America is not the same Latin America.
And the only country who vote against stopping the embargo, eliminating the
embargo in the U.N. is United States and Israel. The world already have said
that they don’t agree with the embargo against Cuba. I also think that—we
mentioned Hugo Chávez. Hugo Chávez, Lula in Brazil, Correa in Ecuador have shifted this
concept that Latin America is just a backyard of the United States, creating a
new regional policy. And with that regionalization, both for TeleSUR—there are
like four or five different organizations been created that allow Latin
Americans to do more work among themselves, both economically and politically,
including resolving some of the political issues within our region. I also
think it’s significant that when we talk about the U.S. arresting Noriega, that
it comes off like the U.S. role has been to protect citizens from dictators.
Every dictator that served the U.S., that was overthrown by their people, was
protected by the U.S. Stroessner
was taken to Brazil after he was overthrown. He was the most longest in
power.
85.
Goodman:
In Paraguay.
86.
Brown:
Yeah, in Paraguay. Somoza was taken to Paraguay when Stroessner was there. I
mean—
87.
Goodman:
From Nicaragua.
88.
Brown:
—every dictator that served them, they protect them. They don’t arrest them.
They don’t bring them to the U.S. and get them tried. I think what is
significant in Panama, if I end with something, is the Panamanian people are
asking—demanding accountability. We’re asking the
Southern Command to say where those mass graves are located, where are the
bodies of these people. We’re asking the government that participated, the
Christian Democrats, who are responsible for government, the administrative
government, and justice. And we have documentation by people who worked in the morgue,
the—how the U.S. and these government eliminated all the lists that were
created in the morgue after the first two days, and already they had more than
800 names of bodies of the people who work in that morgue. So, we are
asking for answers, accountability, and that there will be now healing in
Panama. That’s why they created a committee, assume they’re looking at national
healing. But until those questions are answered, Panama will continue to be a
country where you have a divisive—a division between those who feel that they
were traumatized and others who still benefit and are complicit of our
resources only used for the interests of certain transnationals from the United
States.
89.
Maté:
Talking about Latin America’s evolution, we were talking on the show today
about CIA torture. The only continent in the world where not a single country
played a role in the torture program was South America.
90.
Brown:
Mm-hmm, interesting. And meanwhile, that the main center for training in
torture for the U.S military and Latin American military used to be in Panama,
right?
91.
Goodman:
And then moved to Fort Benning.
92.
Brown:
The School
of Americas was in Panama for many years. And I, growing up in Panama,
always remembered that, that we have all these different military sectors who
train and use U.S. CIA manuals to train. So, for us, it’s not a surprise the
issue of training for torture. Our whole experience, as students, as university
activists, we lived the experience of seeing our military train to disappear
us.
93.
Grandin:
And according to Marcy
Wheeler, those infamous manuals, which were supposed to—ordered to be
destroyed, apparently Cheney kept a copy for his personal files after he left
the secretary of defense office.
94.
Goodman:
And finally, Colonel Wilkerson, your comment on this point? In the Senate
intelligence report, clearly the only continent not involved with the
killings—with the CIA torture, Latin America, and what that means for a
changing continent to the south of us?
95.
Wilkerson:
Well, I agree with the comments that have just been made. I think Latin America
is a very different place now. I think we’ve seen leadership after leadership
throughout the hemisphere that’s changed and become more independent, and
clearly wants to be more independent of what has been created by the United
States in almost all of them—the rich, elite oligarchy. The most heinous
case of all was Chile and putting Pinochet in place for the years that he ruled
Chile, Nixon and Kissinger, of course, having brought about changes in the
election process through propaganda and money and influence, and then, finally,
participating, I think, in the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende, and
actually got General René Schneider assassinated before that. So, we have a
really, really bad reputation in Latin America. But they are becoming free
of us. Mercosur, the new economic conglomerate, other things—the Summit of the
Americas in April is going to see Cuba and the United States together and the
other Latin American countries. And I think the United States, President Obama,
is going to find a very different Latin America than in the past, a Latin
America that wants to be autonomous, independent, stand up on its own, not
necessarily denied trade with the United States, but have it on a very
different basis, a far more equitable basis, a Latin America that’s grown up
and knows the giant to the north, El Coloso del Norte, quite well now.
96.
Goodman:
We’re going to leave it there. We want to thank Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson,
served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell 2002 to ‘05, helped
prepare Powell’s speech at the U.N. claiming Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction, which he has since renounced, now a professor of government and
public policy at
the College of William & Mary. Humberto Brown, also with us, former
Panamanian diplomat, researcher at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. And Greg
Grandin, professor of Latin American history at New York University. We’ll link
to his latest piece
at TomDispatch, “The War to Start All Wars: The 25th Anniversary of the
Forgotten Invasion of Panama.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Thanks so much
for joining us.
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