Noriega's Days In The Embassy -- Two Men Present In The Papal Nunciature Describe Dictator As Scared And Lonely

(During his stay in the Vatican Embassy, deposed Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega talked frequently with two young Panamanians, Enrique Jelenszky, 24, and Rolando Domingo, 25. This is their story, as told exclusively to Dallas Morning News staff writer David L. Marcus.)

PANAMA CITY, Panama - ``Are you listening? The gringos will climb over the wall! They're burning up the lot next door!'' yelled the general in the bedsheet.

``Please go and check!''

Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was frightened. His hands were at his neck, clutching the sheet he had ripped from his bed and wrapped around his body.

It was the night of Dec. 26 - two days after he had arrived at the Vatican Embassy here, looking haggard and suffering back pains from eluding one of the largest manhunts of the 20th century.

Now the windows of the embassy rattled as U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters swept in from the Bay of Panama. Bulldozers groaned outside.

We were in the room next to Noriega's. Friends of the papal nuncio, we had been called to help out at the embassy during these turbulent days.

And now we were also at a turning point, though we didn't realize it until later. Having initially ignored, even ridiculed the general, we started to see him for what he now was: a scared, lonely man, justifying his past and running out of options.

He had vowed never to be taken by the gringos. But eight days later, he would walk into their arms.

It was an astonishing week. With either Armed Forces Radio blasting hard rock or C-130 turboprops buzzing overhead, we talked late into the night with our deposed leader. More accurately, he talked and we listened - to theories about political intrigue, religion, history, military strategy. He decried communism, even though all of Panama says he was allied with Fidel Castro.

He defended his declaration of war against the United States, then blamed former national security adviser John Poindexter for ruining relations with Panama five years ago by pressuring him to support the contra rebels fighting against the leftist government in Nicaragua.

We often disagreed with the general. But even when we couldn't keep our mouths shut, we kept our minds open.

``You are witnessing history,'' a friend said, and we never doubted that.

On that night of Dec. 26, after chancing into the distraught general, we scurried downstairs to the empty chapel. We could see from the windows on the other side of the building that the Americans were clearing and burning a field to make a helicopter landing pad.

THE VISITOR IS WELCOMED

On Sunday, Christmas Eve, Rolando Domingo, a 25-year-old lawyer, went to a Mass given for the people left homeless because of the bombing and firefights near Noriega's headquarters. He returned to the nunciature about 3 p.m. to find an exhausted, hunched newcomer wearing a cap and draped in a flower-patterned blanket. It was Noriega. No one had said he was expected, but then no one seemed surprised, either.

Domingo went upstairs to check the room assigned to the general - the same room President Guillermo Endara had occupied when seeking refuge from the military a few months before. Domingo disconnected the phone in the room.

Immediately, all of us - aides and even the priests - split up round-the-clock shifts watching the upstairs phone and Fax machine. Noriega rarely left his room, which had an old color TV hooked up to cable television. Domingo steered clear of him. Noriega ate most of his meals at a simple desk.

When he did appear, Noriega wore a flimsy V-necked undershirt, green shorts, dark socks and sneakers. His only other clothing was a pair of gray trousers. Domingo gave him a used shirt.

When the U.S. troops started blaring songs like ``I Fought the Law and the Law Won'' and bellowing ``Good Morning, Panama,'' Noriega barely seemed to notice. But the papal nuncio, Monsignor Jose Sebastian Laboa, trying to maintain his customary calm, called it ``outrageous.''

Enrique Jelenszky, a Fulbright scholar, a Duke University graduate and attorney of international law, arrived Dec. 26, two days after Noriega. He slipped Domingo a note: ``I won't insult him, but I will ignore him.''

Upstairs, Noriega's door was slightly ajar. Jelenszky glanced in to see the gaze of a cornered man. Soon after, the cacophony of bulldozers and helicopters started.

SMALL TALK AT FIRST

At sunset the next day, we sat together next to his room, questioning our Christian sense of charity. We decided Jelenszky should approach Noriega. Jelenszky knocked on the door and entered. Avoiding the general's glance, Jelenszky looked at the television. Children were skating at Rockefeller Center.

``Have your days been long?''

Noriega gestured to the TV set and a Bible and a book by the late Chilean president's daughter, Isabel Allende. He said, ``You know, my life has always been . . .''

His words trailed off as he moved his hands to indicate hectic activity. Jelenszky kept the conversation going.

``Under the most strenuous circumstances, you can always find the good side. What's the good side of your stay at the nunciature?''

``Well, I've learned that nothing is so important that you can't do without it.''

He looked back at the television.

``Life goes on. . . . We are just molecules.''

Without directly referring to the quandary over whether to stay or leave, Jelenszky said:

``A man will always be lonely when making the most important decision in his life, even if he is surrounded by his family. Remember even if your family was here tonight, you would not be alone but you would still feel lonely when making this crucial decision.''

``You have a good philosophy,'' Noriega said.

CONTRA IDEA WAS `CRAZY'

The ice had been broken. The next evening, Domingo approached the general. They got around to a subject that made him animated: the United States.

``You were the pampered boy of the Americans,'' Domingo said, referring to allegations that Noriega was on the CIA payroll. ``What triggered the problems with them?''

``You know, the trigger with the Americans was the 12th of December, 1984, with the visit to Panama of Poindexter to obtain support for the contras in Nicaragua.''

He recalled telling Poindexter, ``It is a crazy idea because the contras lack the formation, the training and the capability for combat.''

He brimmed with confidence on two points. First, he said the governments of both countries would find a way to break the Panama Canal Treaties before 2000. He predicted the Panamanian government would continue to offer the United States military facilities in Panama into the next century, even though the treaties call for the U.S. to leave by 1999.

Second, he boasted that he could have continued hiding forever, referring to the 4 1/2 days he had dropped out of sight before coming to the Vatican Embassy. ``No one could have found me.''

When we pressed him, he said he had been warned about the U.S. invasion several hours in advance by information he received about activity at Fort Bragg, N.C. He wouldn't elaborate, and we sensed that was just part of the story.

His wife and three daughters were out giving Christmas food baskets and were informed not long before the attack, he said.

NUNCIATURE FILLS UP

That first night of the invasion - Dec. 20 - was terrifying. Red lights from tracer bullets and U.S. helicopters laced the sky. Troops gutted the downtown, art-deco-style headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces, then swarmed outward. The next day, Noriega's so-called Dignity Battalions and ordinary citizens were looting and burning everything from barber shops to three-story department stores.

Meanwhile, American soldiers had blocked off roads around the Cuban and Nicaraguan embassies but did not at first surround the Vatican's Mediterranean-style embassy.

The nunciature was getting full. Capt. Asuncion Eliezer Gaitan, the security chief, had arrived to ask for refuge. So did four men from the ETA, the Basque separatist group fighting for independence from Spain, as well as the wife of one of the ETA guerrillas. Lt. Col. Nivaldo Madrinan, the burly director of Noriega's secret police, bolted over a back fence and almost mowed down Domingo, whom he mistook for a priest because of his dark suit. Juan Carlos Cabrera, a Cuban exile who picked a bad time to cross through Panama, walked through the front door.

Others had come and gone, including several officials from the Defense Forces who left to swear allegiance to the new Public Forces at the nuncio's encouragement.

On Dec. 21, Domingo was called to help at the nunciature. Several of Gen. Noriega's associates were already there: Lt. Col. Arnulfo Castrejon; Lt. Col. Carlos Arosemena King, Caja de Ahorros bank director Jaime Simmons, with his two boys and their nanny.

Last October, when Guillermo Endara and other opponents of the military regime took refuge in the embassy, Domingo and his friends joked about the day Noriega would arrive. ``Could you imagine?'' they said.

Now Endara had been declared president and 26,000 troops were searching for Noriega, who had been a frequent visitor to the neighborhood. Panama gossip had it his mistress lived in a bayfront condominium a block from the nunciature.

A FREE-WHEELING TALK

As Panamanians, we can recite the saga of our military leaders for the past 21 years the way American schoolchildren reel off the names of their first presidents. But ours are tinged with rumor and intrigue: the death in a plane crash of Gen. Omar Torrijos in 1981; the spellbinding revelations by his cousin, Col. Roberto Diaz Herrera, that Gen. Noriega stole 1984 elections for his candidate, killed a political opponent and aided drug traffickers.

Noriega, talking with us the night of Dec. 28, dismissed Diaz Herrera as ``kind of loony.''

His comment about stealing the '84 elections was a surprise: ``Yes, with a trampita, a little bit of cheating.''

We were surprised by his description of Torrijos, a hero among Noriega's associates. He noted Torrijos' ``active physical decadence'' before his death.

We switched the subject to religion.

``I'm Catholic,'' he replied.

``Practicing?''

``Panamanian style.''

``Does that mean you only go to church for baptisms, funerals and weddings?''

He laughed.

``What about Buddhism?''

``As you know Buddhism is not a religion unto itself, just a system of philosophical principles and it's not incompatible with Christianity.''

He said people called him a Buddhist merely because he had received a Buddhist leader. If he had received an African tribal leader, he said, it wouldn't mean he was animist.

He said he was very impressed by Pope John Paul II's humility, which was so great ``that you wanted to lift him up.''

He showed his sense of humor.

``This place is so austere. Many people have benefited from sanctuary here and they aren't even given anything in return. They never even offered a Betamax.''

Some of the talk was just fun. Domingo asked who of the current trio of civilian leaders Noriega would most enjoy challenging on a televised debate like ``Crossfire.''

Without pausing, he named First Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderon - ``because he's the most capable.''

We felt emboldened. We asked where he would like to live.

``In South America: Argentina. In Europe: France. The rest of the world. Taiwan.''

At midnight, we broke up the conversation. He wrote us notes on the nunciature's stationery. Domingo's card said, ``A memory of an analytical chat over geopolitics.''

DINNER WITH DICTATOR

We were helping the nuncio in whatever way we could. Some days, that meant shopping. We went to a different market each time because we were afraid people would get wind we were shopping for a group that included Noriega. We bought only the basics, vegetables, eggs, rice and canned meat.

For a few nights, Noriega ate with Madrinan and Gaitan, then moved downstairs to join the ETA group and a few others.

Laboa decided we would have a nicer dinner for New Year's Eve, but nothing fancy. We had turkey and pork and traditional Panamanian fixings. Everyone ate together for the first time. Laboa received special foods from friends at the German Embassy, and he shared with everybody.

At the dinner, Noriega seemed in good humor, until Laboa went to take a phone call. Noriega got quiet and moved to a corner. He turned a coffee mug upside down and used it to put out a candle.

There's a saying that you will have a bad new year if you don't stay up to welcome it. But that night Noriega retired shortly before midnight.

The next couple of days we went to work and only had times for short discussions with Noriega. On Jan. 1, we noticed him at Mass for the first time, standing by himself in the back of the chapel.

On the afternoon of Jan. 3, the opposition held a large rally outside the nunciature to demand Noriega's ouster.

The rumor in the embassy was that Noriega was leaving, that his uniform had been brought it and was laid out on his bed.

The general wasn't around. Domingo went upstairs. Sure enough the shined boots and the uniform were laid out.

Now, when we had the sense that Noriega was about to depart, that a divisive, bloody chapter was ending, we had the courage to ask a favor. It was hard to guess how someone under so much pressure would react. After all, he was a man facing 145 years in prison for drug charges if sent to the United States, or a lynch mob if he was turned over to his own country.

``Would it be dangerous for you if we take a picture?''

``Not at all,'' he said. ``Just let me put on a clean shirt.''

For some reason, at 8:45 p.m., everyone spontaneously gathered inside the double doors. They formed a receiving line as Noriega came down the stairs.

As he went out, he looked serene. Later, when we watched the television pictures of his arrival in Florida, we saw the exact same glower of a cornered man Jelenszky had spotted through the open door that first night.

When we talked with him during those days in the embassy, we were polite to him, but never solicitous. In the first few days, we resisted calling him by a title. Gradually we came to call him ``General.''

At some point, we had stopped fearing him. Perhaps we pitied him; he had such a chance to do good for this beleaguered country, and instead he made it a pawn in his personal chess game with the gringos.

Not until he walked into the humid night air to turn himself over to the Americans did we learn that an Uzi machine gun had been found under his bed, a few steps from the site of our nightly chats.

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THE AUTHORS

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Enrique Jelenszky, 24, and Rolando Domingo, 25, are Panamanian friends and law partners who spent long hours with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega because of their acquaintance with Vatican officials in Panama. During their frequent talks with the general, they took extensive notes to record his words and their impressions.

They admit they are not entirely objective about the fallen Panamanian leader. Jelenszky, who was a Fulbright scholar at Duke University, had taken part in the so-called Civilista movement: people who showed their opposition to the military by waving white handkerchiefs, banging on pots and pans and demonstrating peacefully. His sister, Luli, was beaten and jailed for two days after a women's protest march in 1988.

Domingo's family was friendly with President Eric Arturo Delvalle, who was fired by Noriega in 1988. Domingo, studying in London then, became embroiled in a dispute in the embassy there and hid out from pro-Noriega factions for eight weeks.

David L. Marcus is chief of the Dallas Morning News' Mexico City Bureau. He has covered events in Panama for the past two years.

CUTLINE: AP: MANUEL NORIEGA, SHOW IN A POLICE PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN THIS WEEK IN MIAMI, STAYED IN THE VATICAN EMBASSY FOR 10 DAYS BEFORE GIVING UP. -- ENRIQUE JELENSZKY -- ROLANDO DOMINGO