Operation Acid Gambit

In the summer and fall of 1989, while American attention focused on events in Eastern Europe with the looming collapse of the Soviet empire, developments in Panama raised the possibility of combat much closer to home.

In May 1989, during the Panamanian national elections, an alliance of parties opposed to the Noriega dictatorship counted results from the country's election precincts, before they were sent to the district centers. Their tally showed their candidate, Guillermo Endara, defeating Carlos Duque, candidate of a pro-Noriega coalition, by nearly 3 to 1. Endara and his running mate, Guillermo Ford (photo) were badly beaten by a detachment of a Noriega paramilitary force called the Dignity Battalions the next day in his motorcade. Gen. Manuel Noriega then declared the election null and void and moved to round up members of the opposition and maintain power by brute force. 

Following this incident, relations with Panama grew sharply worse. On December 15, l989, the Panamanian National Assembly passed a resolution stating that a state of war existed with the United States, and Noriega named himself the Maximum Leader. Violence followed the next evening when a Panamanian soldier shot three American officers; one, First Lieutenant Robert Paz, U.S. Marine Corps, died of his wounds. Witnesses to the incident, a U.S. naval officer and his wife, were assaulted by Panamanian Defense Force (PDF) soldiers while in police custody. 

After a thorough review of the situation in Panama, President George H.W. Bush presented Congress with four reasons why U.S. military forces should invade Panama and capture Noriega:

- The first reason was safeguarding the lives of U.S. citizens in Panama. Bush stated that Noriega had declared war between the U.S. and Panama and that he had threatened the lives of the 35,000 U.S. citizens living there and had already begun to carry out those threats.
 
- The second reason was defending democracy and human rights in Panama and restoring the democratically-elected government of Guillermo Endara. 

- The third reason was to arrest Noriega on drug trafficking charges. With his participation, Panama had become a center for drug money laundering and a transit point for drug trafficking to the U.S. and Europe.

-The fourth and final reason was to protect the Panama Canal by enforcing the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, signed on Sept. 7, 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and Gen. Omar Torrijos, commander of the Panamanian National Guard, under which the U.S. retained the permanent right to defend the canal from any threat that might interfere with its continued neutral service to ships of all nations, and guaranteed that Panama would gain control of the canal after 1999. Members of Congress and others in the U.S. political establishment claimed that Noriega threatened the neutrality of the Panama Canal and that the U.S. had the right under the treaties to intervene militarily to protect the canal. 

Bush's four reasons gained bi-partisan Congressional approval and support for the invasion.

In the early morning hours of December 20, 1989, the U.S. Army spearheaded a carefully planned and well-executed attack that overwhelmed the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) of Dictator Manuel Noriega in what was called Operation Just Cause. Special Operations forces hit strategic targets as conventional task forces seized additional key points and the land approaches to Panama City. Task Force Bayonet then entered the city, secured the U.S. embassy and captured the PDF headquarters, La Comandancia, after a three- hour fight. With the Comandancia in U.S. hands and Noriega in hiding, centralized control of the PDF collapsed. However, fighting would flare sporadically for some time as U.S. forces overcame pockets of resistance.

Noriega surrendered to the Vatican Embassy in Panama City on January 3, 1990. In a deal worked out with the U.S.-created government headed by Guillermo Endara, U.S. authorities brought Noriega to Miami for trial, which was delayed into the early 1990s. He was eventually convicted of several crimes including cocaine smuggling, sentenced to forty years in a Miami prison, and ordered to pay $44 million to the Panamanian government. In 1999 a French court sentenced Noriega and his wife to ten years in jail along with a $33 million fine. Also in 1999, the Panamanian high court announced that it would seek to have Noriega returned to that country to make sure he served time there for murder. That took place in December 2011, when Noriega arrived at El Renacer Prison, a former American facility, to complete a 20-year sentence for three convictions stemming from several deaths.

While many of the battles and scrimmages are well-documented, there was one special operations mission that got little publicity. It was Operation Acid Gambit, a special operations plan to rescue Kurt Muse, an American civilian living in Panama and widely reported to be a CIA operative, who was imprisoned in Carcel Modelo, Panama's notorious prison. Muse had been arrested in 1989 for setting up covert anti-Noriega radio transmissions in Panama.

Political considerations delayed the raid, which was conducted by 23 Delta Force operators (SFOD) and supported by the Night Stalkers (160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment), until the United States invaded Panama to arrest Noriega in Operation Just Cause on December 20, 1989. 

Operation Acid Gambit also began on December 20, 1989, sometime before midnight, when two darkened MH-6 Little Bird helicopters carrying heavily armed Delta Force operators swooped in low, narrowly avoiding city buildings and enemy fire. They safely landed on the roof of the Carcel Modelo prison.

Once off the helicopters, the Delta Force operators fought their way inside. They had to act quickly to deny the enemy the opportunity to murder the hostage. Delta Force operators made their way into the building, tossing smoke grenades for cover in the narrow halls. Target-aiming lights mounted on their weapons sliced through the dust- and smoke-filled halls. Clearing one cell after another, the Delta Force operators found Muse. In an instant, they blew the cell door open, shielded the hostage with their own bodies to protect him from a possible hidden enemy assassin, and shouted, "Muse, we're here to take you home!" With those words, Kurt Muse was set free from nine months of captivity at the hands of Panamanian dictator Gen. Manuel Noriega and the Panamanian military. 

Muse had spent most of his life in Panama City and considered himself more Panamanian than American and was troubled with Noriega using the PDF for drug trafficking, money laundering, arms smuggling, and physical violence to consolidate his power and strangle Panamanian democracy.

To counter this, Muse and his Panamanian friends decided to wage a peaceful revolution. He took on the leadership role of the underground movement and used his lifelong American and Panamanian business connections for financial and technical assistance. The group decided the best method of reaching the common Panamanian citizenry was through radio broadcasting of anti-Noriega messages. The movement came to be known as The Voice of Liberty.

Noriega became incensed at their broadcasts and had his PDF looking for the conspirators. Through luck and skill, Muse and his Panamanian friends always managed to stay one step ahead of Noriega and the PDF.

Muse's group, the Voice of Liberty, decided a large mass event was needed to act as a revolutionary catalyst. Organizers wanted 100,000 people on the streets in support of a peaceful demonstration to successfully overthrow Noriega.

The event Muse and his group chose would be Noriega's official state address to the Panamanian people. On that day, an audience of more than 20,000 Panamanians had gathered to hear Noriega's speech. Just as he began to talk, Muse's group's first prerecorded uprising message went live.

The two-minute recording demanded free and democratic elections and completely interrupted Noriega's State of the Union address.

The next day newspaper headlines screamed of imperialist Yankee interference and propaganda. A furious Noriega set out to find Muse and his pirate radio crew. With the help of experts from East Germany and Cuba, Muse was arrested after a trip to Miami to acquire more radio equipment and money. He was immediately arrested upon his return and placed in the Carcel Modelo, a notorious prison in the heart of Panama City. 

The U.S. State Department wanted Noriega gone and they were using Muse as a propaganda and diplomatic tool against him.

Muse felt one of the things keeping him from being physically tortured was his American birth and U.S. citizenship. A Panamanian army colonel and an immigration official even attempted to find out if Muse had any Panamanian bloodlines, but they failed. This prevented the colonel from physically torturing and possibly even killing him.

Though he was not physically harmed, Muse's incarceration was mentally brutal. By December 20th's rescue mission, he had been held hostage at Carcel Modelo for nine months. He endured solitary confinement, threats of violence, death and the screams of tortured Panamanians. He always had at least one guard assigned to him with the sole mission to execute him should a rescue attempt be made.

Sometime after midnight, the prison was pitch black and silent. Muse heard a couple of rounds from a machine gun, then it became eerily quiet, silent and tense. Muse suddenly remembered the guard with the orders to kill him, but to his relief, he watched the guard run down the hall, presumably to defend the prison's entrances. He then looked across the street to see Noriega's headquarters being pummeled by gunfire and beginning to disintegrate into fine bits of gravel from the pounding. Shortly after that, the guard returned. 

After breaching the roof-top door with explosive charges, the Delta operators raced down the two flights of stairs towards Muse's cell. A Delta operator killed Muse's assassin guard. Muse's cell door was blown and Delta operators gave Muse body-armor and a ballistic helmet and goggles and moved him to the roof to be ex-filtrated by MH-6 Little Birds back to the US base. Muse was unceremoniously shoved inside the waiting helicopter as Delta operators scrambled back from their firing positions around the edges of the prison roof. Delta snipers fired at Panamanian soldiers attempting to stop the rescue operation.

The pilot managed to get the overloaded helicopter to lift off but it didn't go far. It had too much weight with so many people on board. After barely clearing the roof, the helicopter and its human cargo plummeted straight down toward one of the prison walls and narrowly missed smashing into it before crashing hard on the street.

Trained for this type of situation, the Delta operators immediately vaulted from their bench seats on the exterior of the Little Bird and engaged targets as the pilot struggled to regain control of the craft. Once the helicopter was stabilized, the pilot summoned everyone back aboard. Some of the SF operators didn't even have time to hook their safety harnesses up again. 

As the helicopter lifted off several rescuers were shot and a couple fell off. When the pilot was unable to get the helicopter no more than a few feet into the air, he drove the helicopter straight down the street like a car before it crashed. Muse and the Delta operator seated next to him jumped off the helicopter and were making it to the safety of a wall when the Delta operator escorting him fell and pulled Muse down with him.

As the battle raged around Muse, he lay next to the unconscious SF operator hoping the Panamanians would figure he was dead. Slowly the rescuer opened his eyes and asked him if Muse was okay? Apparently, he had been knocked out by the helicopter rotor blade. During the crash, Muse had lost his helmet and had the SF operator's helmeted head not taken the rotor blow, they would both be dead. 

The two of them sought the cover of an apartment wall when Muse noticed most of the rescue team had been wounded, yet despite the severity of their wounds, they formed a perimeter and continued fighting. 

Delta Force operators Pat Savidge, Lee Goodell, James Sudderth, and Kelly Venden were wounded in the crash, while Muse, Delta Force operators Mickey Cantley, John English, and the two pilots were uninjured. Everyone aboard the helicopter quickly took cover in a nearby building. The Delta operators managed to signal one of the gunships flying over the area with an infrared strobe light and remained in a perimeter waiting for a rescue. 

Shortly thereafter, an armored personnel carrier from a nearby 5th Infantry Division cavalry patrol fought their way through the city and linked up with the rescue team. For Kurt Muse, who thought he would never be released and would probably die in prison, he could not have wished for a better outcome. For the Delta Force operators and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) Night Stalkers, they conducted the first successful American hostage rescue mission since WWII.

To view a TV documentary on the rescue, please go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSyFuLokgKE