Operation Just Cause; A Senior Commander’s Perspective
By Lt Gen Bruce L. Fister, USAF (Retired)
Much has been written about Operation Just Cause, which in the early planning stages was known as “Blue Spoon.”This paper is written from my vantage point as the sole surviving senior commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Panama mission. My boss during this time was General Wayne Downing who passed away a few years ago. Wayne was a dear friend and one of the best commanders with whom I had the pleasure of serving.
As I recall, planning for Blue Spoon began in May of 1989. Combat operations were set to begin at 0100 on 20 December 1989. The night before, Gen Jim Lindsay, commander US Special Operation Command, called me at my headquarters and asked if we could call the Panama operation something other than Blue Spoon— a spoon didn’t seem to inspire, even if it was blue. I agreed and we settled on Operation Just Cause.
Prior to the operation, during November, I was deployed with an undercover force to Panama called Nifty Package. We resided in Hanger One at Howard AFB on the south end of the Panama Canal zone. This force included a small contingent of Army special operators, four MH-60 Blackhawks and six A/MH-6 “Little Birds,”two of which were armed with guns and rockets, and two Air Force AC-130H gunships. It was a loose cover and we had two missions if conflict started. First, was to rescue Kurt Muse held in the Panamanian prison, across the street from the Panamanian Army Headquarters. Kurt was an undercover agent in Panama operating among other things, a pirate radio station. Our second mission was to capture Panamanian dictator Manual Noriega.
During the November deployment to Howard AFB, we conducted rehearsals every other night using the Department of Defense elementary school, which was approximately midway up the Canal Zone. The elementary school building had the same planform as the Panamanian prison, so it was perfect for rehearsals and to practice various contingency operations that might occur should things not go exactly as expected. Additionally, every other night we sent an MH-60 from Howard to the Gorgas Army Hospital helicopter pad in Panama City, with directions to extend their flight path over the prison so personnel guarding Kurt Muse grew accustomed to hearing helicopter noise so as to not be alerted if and when we assaulted the prison. This also gave us the opportunity to record videos of the prison and to serve as a morale booster for Kurt.
At the end of November of 1989, the Pentagon directed that we redeploy our force back to the United States. This didn’t last very long. On the 15th of December four American service members were assaulted by members of the Panamanian Defense Force (PDF). One American died of his wounds. Sometime later that evening, a Navy couple in town for dinner were also assaulted by the PDF. These incidents were the final straw and President George H. W. Bush ordered US Forces to invade Panama.
With the President fully engaged, Gen Wayne Downing and his small staff immediately flew to Panama on the 18th of December and set up a joint operations center in Hanger One. Shortly thereafter, President Bush ordered that we execute Operation Just Cause with a D-day, 20 December and H-hour of 0100. As General Downing’s deputy, I worked with General Lindsay to begin movement of forces to Panama. This was a major undertaking which involved Army Special Forces from Ft Bragg, North Carolina, the 82d Airborne Division also from Ft Bragg, Navy SEALs from Dam Neck, Virginia, Army Rangers from both Hunter Army Airfield, South Carolina, and McChord AFB, Washington, KC-135 and KC-10 aerial refueling tankers from McGuire AFB, New Jersey, four additional AC-130H gunships from Hurlburt Field, Florida, two EF-111s from Cannon AFB, New Mexico, additional C-130s from Pope AFB and Hurlburt Field, and C-141s from Charleston AFB, South Carolina. All these forces had to travel through the Yucatan Gap, the part of the Gulf of Mexico between Cuba and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and in order not to be detected by the Cubans, all air assets descended to 500 feet while transiting through the area. We also put an F-15 fighter combat air patrol west of the planned route, just off the coast of Mexico in case the Cubans detected the force and tried to intercept it with their fighter aircraft. Finally, there were MH-53 Pave Low and MH-47 special operations helicopters coming from Hurlburt Field, which inflight refueled with HC-130 tankers from nearby Eglin AFB. Finally, four MH-60 Pave Hawks were delivered to Howard AFB in a C-5 Galaxy transport. There were 65 aircraft total in this movement.
As mentioned, the mission of this military operation was to first rescue Kurt Muse, then capture Manuel Noriega, while also protecting American citizens, and ensure the security of the Panama Canal. The Joint Special Operations Task Force was assigned 27 targets for the operation. By the 19th of December our forces were in place to begin the operation and 15 C-141s were enroute to air drop the Rangers on Torrijos-Tocumen Airfield (Panama’s large international airport) and 15 C-130s were enroute to air drop Rangers on Rio Hato Airfield, located toward the western boundary of Panama. This was a complicated air plan and Colonel Mark Race directed the planning and execution of the air operation. I deployed aboard the C-130 Airborne Command, Control, and Communications aircraft (ABCCC) from Pope AFB, departing just before an ice storm precluded us from flying.
As the 0100, 20 December H-hour approached, General Downing had reason to believe that the operation was compromised and he directed that H-hour be advanced 15 minutes to 0045, 20 December. This change in the H-hour went smoothly, but that successful adjustment had a back story from five years earlier.
Back in February 1985 the Joint Task Force was involved in an exercise off Guam, where the target was an abandoned airfield on Tinian Island. During this exercise, I recommended to Gen Carl Stiner, the task force commander at the time, that we move H-hour forward 15 minutes because there was no opposition force observed on the Tinian runway. Unfortunately, our procedures for moving a time forward had never been practiced and there were problems with communications all of which resulted in a major aircraft accident; an MC-130E landed on top of an MH-60 helicopter that was hovering in the touchdown zone. There were some serious injuries, but fortunately there were no fatalities. After this accident, I was determined that our task force be able to move H-hour either forward or backwards and we practiced that during subsequent exercises. So on 20 
December, when General Downing directed that H-hour be moved forward 15 minutes, it went off without a hitch.
At 0045, 20 December four MH-6 Little Birds landed on top of the Panamanian prison infiltrating several special operators while two Little Bird gunships eliminated PDF .50 caliber machine gun positions located on two high rise apartments, each looking down on the prison. Simultaneously, two AC-130H gunships destroyed the eight buildings within the PDF headquarters compound across the street from the prison in less than eight minutes. A Special Forces shooter fast roped down the side of the prison and shot the PDF guard, who was directed to kill Kurt Muse in the event there was a rescue attempt. The special operators entered the prison, flex cuffed all the guards, and freed Kurt from his cell. They took Muse up to the roof and put him on the side of an MH-6 Little Bird and began to escape from the prison. Unfortunately, the Little Bird received enemy fire and a round hit the engine and the helicopter fluttered off the side of the prison wall. The pilot maintained control and air-taxied two blocks, turned left a block and then crashed. The five operators took Kurt and formed a defensive position to wait for an M-113 armored personal carrier to pick him up and take him to the rendezvous location in an elementary school yard in Panama City. We had practiced this contingency event multiple times at the elementary school in the Canal Zone, as I mentioned earlier. Kurt Muse was later flown out of Panama and reunited with his wife, Ann, in Virginia. (For those interested, I recommend Kurt Muse’s book Six Minutes to Freedom.)
I remained airborne in the ABCCC on the 20th for the duration of initial operations and finally returned to Ft Bragg after 22 hours in the air. Two days later I was back in Hanger One at Howard as we ran stability operations across Panama and captured the leaders of the PDF and further dissolved the PDF. One of our most successful tactics was the “Ma Bell” maneuver where we would put an AC-130H above a PDF cantonment, called them on the telephone, told them to stack arms, and then we would take them prisoner. Another was to put operators in M-113s, send them to suspect PDF hideouts throughout the city, knock on the door, and invite them aboard and take them to a makeshift cantonment area in the Canal Zone as guests of the United States. Prisoners remained there until their names could be cleared, or they could further be imprisoned.
During these several days, our forces tracked Noriega, but were always two hours behind. They checked all his suspected hideouts, but finally cornered him in the Papal Nunica in Panama City; a property we could not violate. I kept an AC-130 over the Papal Nunciature 24 hours a day and General Downing kept his cot at the end of the causeway that connected the Papal Nunciature and the adjacent parking garage. Then over a couple of days and a lot of loud rock music, Noriega finally surfaced. A few days later, I was in our joint operations center when we put him on an MC-130E Combat Talon and made him a guest of the United States via the FBI in Miami, Florida.
This ended the operation for us special operators. The 7th Infantry Division came to Panama to conduct stability operations and put the government into the hands of the rightfully elected Panamanian leaders. It was off to the next exercise or operation which happened to be Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq in August 1990. All in a day’s work and for me, off to Hurlburt Field to become the second commander of the new Air Force Special Operations Command.