LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Manuel Noriega: Panama City
built 201 days ago
Manuel Antonio Noriega was born the son of an accountant and his maid in a poor section of Panama City, Panama, in 1934. At the age of five he was given up for adoption to a schoolteacher. He attended the National Institute, a well-regarded high school, with the intention of becoming a doctor, but his family could not afford to send him to medical school. Instead, Noriega accepted a scholarship to attend the Chorrios Military Academy in Peru. He graduated in 1962 with a degree in engineering. Returning to Panama, he became a sublieutenant in the National Guard.
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Manuel Antonio Noriega was born the son of an accountant and his maid in a poor barrio of Panama City in 1934. At the age of five he was given up for adoption to a schoolteacher. He attended the National Institute, a well-regarded high school, with the intention of becoming a doctor, but a lack of financial resources prevented fulfillment of this career choice. Instead, Noriega accepted a scholarship to attend the Peruvian Military Academy. He graduated in 1962 with a degree in engineering. Returning to Panama, he was commissioned a sub-lieutenant in the National Guard and assigned to a unit at Colon, the city lying near the Caribbean terminus of the Panama Canal.
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Manuel Noriega gestures through the barred windows of his command headquarters in Panama City after surviving a coup attempt in October 1989. He was disposed during the US invasion of Panama later that year. Photograph: Reuters/Corbis
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Born in Panama City, Noriega was a career soldier, receiving much of his education at the Military School of Chorrillos in Lima, Peru. He ... received intelligence and counterintelligence training at Fort Gulick in 1967, and also a course in psychological operations (Psyops) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was commissioned in the National Guard in 1967 and promoted to lieutenant in 1968. It has been alleged that he was part of the military coup that removed Arnulfo Arias from power, although in Noriega's account of the 1968 coup, neither he nor his mentor Omar Torrijos were involved. In the power struggle that followed, including a failed coup attempt in 1969, Noriega supported Torrijos. He received a promotion to lieutenant colonel and was appointed chief of military intelligence by Torrijos.
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Noriega's continuing rule in Panama and the new provocations created a personal problem for Bush, because they validated his wimp image. He used tough language against Noriega and made him the number one public enemy of the United States. Still it appeared that Bush was doing little to force him out of office. The gap between words and actions became too wide and Bush's own credibility was put on the line. This came at the worst possible time for him. The international system was on the verge of a major structural transformation.
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Noriega made no attempt to find Spadafora's murderers. That surprised no one in Panama. If he'd wanted the crime solved he could have kept Barletta and let him name a commission and spared himself much grief with Washington. Few in Panama doubted he'd ordered it, despite his being in Paris when it occurred. Noriega ran Panama and the PDF. People who did things against his orders invariably ended up wishing they hadn't, and Noriega rewarded those known to be involved.
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