How Panama's military dictator Manuel Noriega was defeated by rock'n'roll
Former military dictator Manuel Noriega died on Monday, having spent the last three decades of his life shunted between courts and prison-cells in America, France and his native Panama.
The American government brought his brutal six-year regime to an end in December 1989, with the invasion of Panama (code-named Operation Just Cause) but capturing the man himself proved more difficult. It involved one of the strangest operations in military history. Revealing an unexpected secret weapon – a sense of humour – the military set aside their guns for Guns N' Roses.
The assault began on December 20. The Americans dropped more than 400 bombs in 13 hours, while Noriega fled across Panama City in a Hyundai, dashing from one hopeless hide-out to another, ducking into a school, a hospital and even a Dairy Queen fast food restaurant.
"It was like a nightmare – like falling into a swimming pool and when you try to reach for the safety of a wall or touch bottom, you suddenly realise that walls and bottom had fallen away," he wrote in his memoir America's Prisoner. "All I could see was an endless, limitless ocean and thousands of weapons and men hoping to find me in their sights."
He eventually found a place of refuge in the closest thing the Vatican has to an embassy, the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See. For days, Noriega camped out in a sparsely furnished room, reading the bible and considering his options.
The Americans were stumped. They certainly couldn’t draw him out by force – an assault on the Pope’s territory was hardly an option. The government wrote to the Vatican, begging them to refuse Noriega asylum, and describing the drug-lord as common criminal rather than a political refugee. But the request was scuppered by poor timing: it was Christmas, and the Holy See was swamped with other seasonal requests.
Help came in the unlikely form of glam rock. For Operation Nifty Package – the extraction of Noriega – special operatives set up enormous speakers around the building, blasting out the local US military radio station, SCN.
To begin with, the station mostly played news bulletins, interspersed with some music. "We told the audience not to use the phone unless it was an emergency or official business," an official report later explained, "so we would not tie up phone lines." Noriega stayed put.
But then things became stranger. "We opened the request line 21 December," the station staff recalled, "[and] the requests became quite imaginative... we played a lot of songs with the word 'jungle' in it”. Welcome to the Jungle, by hard rockers Guns 'n Roses, was a particular favourite.
Deep in the National Security Archive at George Washington University, you'll find a report from those radio DJs detailing the part they played in bringing down a ruthless dictator.
"On 27 December someone who identified himself as a member of the PSYOPS [psychological operations] team from Fort Bragg called to tell us what they were doing with their loud speakers," the report reads. But PSYOPS needn't have bothered – the station team knew all about it already: the musical stand-off had already been covered on radio and TV news, and was given constant rolling coverage by CNN.
"We had been receiving requests with a 'musical message', for Noriega either by the words or the song title, but as soon as the media picked up on the story, those types of requests increased dramatically," the report explains, listing 95 of the more amusing requests.
A few song-titles say it all. Thanks to their call-in request line, Noriega was repeatedly told he had "Nowhere to Run" and "No Particular Place to Go". He was a "Prisoner of Rock and Roll", with "No Alibis", "Wanted Dead Or Alive". His state of mind was imaginably best captured in a novelty single by one-hit-wonder Napoleon XIV: "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!"
Noriega, an opera-lover, was stuck listening to Oingo-Boingo. He found his eardrums under attack from heavy metal acts like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and KISS, alongside cringeworthy pop-mongers such as Rick Astley and New Kids on the Block. They only interrupted this onslaught of rock and pop for one day: December 25, when the station instead played back-to-back Christmas hits.
It was “a peculiar attempt to unnerve Noriega through questionable art,” as the historian Douglas G Brinkley writes in From Cold War to New World Order. “Blasting rock music was silly, childish, reproachable… but in some strange, postmodern way, it worked.”
After 10 days, with his ears ringing and a mob gathering outside the gates, the Holy See's representative, Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa, told his guest he had to leave. Noriega agreed. He wrote two letters, one to his wife ("I go now on an adventure", he told her) and one to the Pope, thanking him for his hospitality. In full military uniform, he walked through the Nunciature's front gates – and was immediately tackled to the ground by a posse of US soldiers.
But what were the songs that broke his morale? Here (with a few small corrections) is the complete list of 95 musical requests, as printed in US Southern Command's official supplement to their report on Operation Just Cause:
(You’ve Got) Another Thing Coming — Judas Priest
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover — Paul Simon
All Over But The Crying — Georgia Satellites
All I Want is You — U2
Big Shot — Billy Joel
Blue Collar Man — Styx
Born to Run — Bruce Springsteen
Bring Down the Hammer — Georgia Satellites
Change — Tears for Fears
Cleaning Up The Town — The Bus Boys
Crying in the Chapel — Brenda Lee
Dancing in the Streets — David Bowie
Danger Zone — Kenny Loggins
Dead Man’s Party — Oingo Boingo
Don’t Look Back — Boston
Don’t Fear the Reaper — Blue Oyster Cult
Don’t Close Your Eyes — Kix
Eat My Shorts — Rick Dees
Electric Spanking of War Babies — Funkadelic
Feel a Whole Lot Better (When You’re Gone) — Tom Petty
Freedom Fighter — White Lion
Freedom, No Compromise — Little Steven
Ghost Rider — The Outlaws
Give It Up — KC and the Sunshine Band
Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down — Paul Young
Guilty — Bonham
Hang ‘Em High — Van Halen
Hanging Tough — New Kids on the Block
Heavens on Fire — KISS
Hello, It’s Me — Todd Rundgren
Hello, We’re Here — Tom T Hall
Helter Skelter — The Beatles
I Fought The Law and the Law Won — Bobby Fuller
If I Had a Rocket Launcher — Bruce Cochran
In My Time of Dying — Led Zeppelin
Iron Man — Black Sabbath
It Keeps You Running — Doobie Brothers
Judgment Day — Whitesnake
Jungle Love — Steve Miller Band
Just Like Jesse James — Cher
Mayor of Simpleton — XTC
Midnight Rider — Allmond Brothers Band
Mr Blue — The Fleetwoods
Naughty Naughty — Danger Danger
Never Gonna Give You Up — Rick Astley
Never Tear Us Apart — INXS
No Particular Place to Go — Chuck Berry
No More Mister Nice Guy — Alice Cooper
No Alibis — Eric Clapton
Now You’re Messin’ With an SOB — Nazareth
Nowhere Man — The Beatles
Nowhere to Run — Martha and the Vandelas
One Way Ticket — George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Panama — Van Halen
Paradise City — Guns N’ Roses
Paranoid — Black Sabbath
Patience — Guns N’ Roses
Poor Little Fool — Ricky Nelson
Prisoner of the Highway — Ronnie Milsap
Prisoners of Rock and Roll — Neil Young
Refugee — Tom Petty
Renegade — Styx
Rock and a Hard Place — The Rolling Stones
Run to the Hills — Iron Maiden
Run Like Hell — Pink Floyd
Screaming for Vengeance — Judas Priest
She’s Got a Big Posse — Arabian Prince
Shot in the Dark — Ozzy Osbourne
Stay Hungry — Twisted Sister
Taking It To The Streets — Doobie Brothers
The Party’s Over — Journey
The Race is On — Sawyer Brown
The Pusher — Steppenwolf
The Long Arm of the Law — Warren Zevon
The Star Spangled Banner — Jimi Hendrix
The Secret of My Success — Night Ranger
They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! — Napoleon XIV
This Means War — Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
Time is on My Side — Rolling Stones
Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die — Jethro Tull
Voodoo Child — Jimi Hendrix
Wait for You — Bonham
Waiting for a Friend — Jimi Hendrix
Wanted Dead or Alive — Bon Jovi
Wanted Man — Molly Hatchet
War Pigs — Black Sabbath
We Didn’t Start the Fire — Billy Joel
We Gotta Get Out of This Place — The Animals
Who Will You Run To? — Heart
You Send Me — Sam Cook
You Shook Me All Night Long — AC/DC
You Hurt Me (And I Hate You) — The Eurythmics
You Got Lucky — Tom Petty
Your Time is Gonna Come — Led Zeppelin
Youth Gone Wild — Skid Row