Israel and the Panamanian project: Noriega
https://spanishhalyon.wordpress.com
“I was the ambassador to Israel but he was my boss. Everything I did had to be authorized by [Michael] Harari.”
— Panama’s police commander (after Noriega was deposed), Eduardo Herrara Hassan, describing Mossad’s Central American chief, Michael Harari [1]
From the outset, [Harari] worked on the “black,” or covert, side of the house, rising to become chief of the Mossad’s operations section in 1967. [4]The following year, in 1968, the same year Harari had a meeting with Panama’s Major Omar Torrijos and “became friends”, Torrijos staged a coup. With Noriega as his head of intelligence.
[Noriega] provided assistance in countless top secret Mossad operations, as exclusively revealed by Yedioth Ahronoth, Ynet’s print publication. [2]
It’s no coincidence that Israelophile Noriega had received training in Israel shortly prior to this meeting.
[Noriega] had received parachute training in Israel (he made six jumps with the Israeli army, according to Israeli sources) and proudly wore his Israeli parachutist wings on his tunic. [4]
Torrijos would later ask Israel, including Commander Moshe Dayan, to arrange a reconciliation in the US between his Jewish wife and her family who had disowned her for marrying a non Jew.In 1980, Nahum Amoni (Mossad) sent Harari to the Israeli embassy in Mexico but he operated in Panama as Mossad’s “regional representative to Central America”. [4]
Harari “resumed contact” with Noriega in 1980 while he was intelligence chief and around the time Panama’s dictator, Gen. Omar Torrijos, would shortly die in an “aircraft accident”. [4]
Some coincidence Harari was there at two pivotal moments in Panama’s leadership changes…
As Panama’s intelligence chief, Noriega enjoyed close ties to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and, later, the CIA, which paid him $200,000 a year for his services, according to U.S. intelligence sources.
Harari’s intelligence “take” became even richer after Noriega assumed power in July 1981, following the death of Gen. Omar Torrijos…Soon Harari was said to be doing a brisk business as an arms dealer…[and] began handling some arms transactions for Noriega and the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF)…[including the sale of] eight aging jetliners from Alia, Jordan’s national airline. [4]
.. [he] recruit(ed) teams of Israelis who trained Noriega’s personal guard. Israeli sources also claim that Harari helped the PDF establish a special-operations battalion and reorganized the Panamanian intelligence establishment..
To prove his loyalty to Noriega, Harari is said to have helped preempt several coup attempts against the Panamanian leader and even set up countermeasures to make it more difficult for the U.S. National Security Agency to monitor Noriega’s movements. For example, he allegedly helped Noriega feed false information about his whereabouts to the United States through phony telephone and radio messages.[4]
On one of his visits to Israel arranged by Harari in the 1980s, Noriega bought a seaside villa in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya.[1]
Harari was tipped off about the US invasion of Panama —
Harari “may have eluded capture on the night of the United States invasion because he was warned to flee nearly six hours before American troops swept into the capital,” [5]
The US was always aware of Harari’s set-up there.According to 1988 congressional testimony to a US Senate panel, Michael Harari was a close associate of Noriega
Jose I. Blandon, a former top Noriega political adviser, told the Senate panel:
“[Harari] trains and directs {Noriega’s} own personal guards and negotiated with Noriega in weapons trafficking operations.”
Blandon also testified that Harari also arranged for Noriega to receive protection from Israeli intelligence when he travelled to Europe..[and] that on one such trip in 1984, the Israeli intelligence service uncovered an alleged plot by the Colombian drug cartel to assassinate Noriega after the Panamanian military had seized a cartel cocaine processing plant located in Panama.
Blandon and others have testified that the cartel paid Noriega about $5 million to allow it to set up the plant and became upset when it was shut down [allegedly under pressure from the US to do so].
Blandon reaffirmed…that Noriega had received CIA and National Security Council “intelligence reports” on the political and personal views of U.S. senators and their aides. [3] BUT he never specified WHO was supplying him with this information. Remember, the 80s was the decade in which the plague of Israeli spies and collaborators took root.
Bottom line, Noriega was a CIA asset controlled by Mossad. He allowed Panama to be used by the Medellin drug cartel for major cocaine runs to the US in the eighties, and even as a safe haven for Escobar’s paid assassins when they murdered Colombia’s Attorney General. Assassins who were trained by Israelis. [6][7]
Oliver North used him as a conduit to smuggle arms to Nicaraguan contras in return for turning a blind eye to his drug trafficking and they also tried to clean up his image in the US. North had also met with him in Europe to discuss setting up training camps in Panama, run by Israelis. Not only for contras, but for another pet project. The Afghan “rebels”.
This had the blessing of Elliott Abrams and Secretary of State George Shultz. [8]
A US Senate report said:
“It is clear that each US government agency which had a relationship with Noriega turned a blind eye to his corruption and drug dealing.” Noriega was allowed to establish “the hemisphere’s first narco-kleptocracy”. [9][10]
And Mossad ran the show.
Notes:
[1] — “What You Won’t Read about Michael Harari, Noriega’s Israeli Advisor Who Got Away”,
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Feb 1990
https://www.wrmea.org/1990-february/what-you-won-t-read-about-michael-harari-noriega-s-israeli-adviser-who-got-away.html[2] https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4970068,00.html
[5] — The New York Times, January 2, 1990
[6] https://spanishhalyon.wordpress.com/2019/06/05/colombia-the-israel-of-south-america/
[7] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/27/us/noriega-s-ex-pilot-tells-of-medellin-drug-links.html
[8] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/index.html#3a