Jon Lee Anderson Visits Manuel Noriega in Prison

Summary

Podcast Summary:

The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Episode: Jon Lee Anderson Visits Manuel Noriega in Prison
Date: June 19, 2017
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guest: Jon Lee Anderson

---

Overview

This episode dives deep into the life, legacy, and complex political identity of Manuel Noriega, Panama’s notorious former dictator, CIA informant, and convicted drug trafficker, who died in 2017. New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson discusses his rare 2015 prison interview with Noriega, recounts the dictator’s rise and fall, unpacks his relationships with the U.S. and the CIA, and reflects on the broader implications for American foreign policy in Latin America.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Forgotten Strongman

• Noriega’s Diminished Relevance:
  • Many listeners may have forgotten Noriega, who faded from public view after his 1989 ouster and conviction (01:43).
  • Anderson argues that Noriega is a “figure we shouldn’t forget about so quickly” due to his significance in Latin American political history (02:21).

Noriega’s Rise to Power

• Background and Ascent:
  • Noriega rose from humble origins through Panama’s National Guard, serving under General Torrijos (05:11).
  • Upon Torrijos’s mysterious death, Noriega became de facto leader; Anderson recalls his intimidating presence, likening him to a “shark” (05:11, 06:18).
• Quote:
  • “Noriega had this shark-like ability to look at you sideways... like a shark passing you in the water.”
    — Jon Lee Anderson (05:54)

The U.S. & Noriega: Allies and Adversaries

• CIA Ties and Shifting Loyalties:
  • Noriega operated in a “netherworld” where “strategic interests collide with the real world.” Described as a double or triple agent for the U.S. and Cuba, yet was always his own man (04:24).
  • He denied being a direct CIA agent, claiming his Torrijos instructed him to develop the relationship to keep the CIA at bay (07:56–08:18).
  • Noriega played a critical role as a U.S. asset during the Cold War, especially in supporting anti-communist operations in the region (08:42).
• Quote:
  • “He was our man, but wasn’t our man. He was also Cuba’s man, but wasn’t their man.”
    — Jon Lee Anderson (04:33)

Drugs, Arms, and the Iran-Contra Connection

• Noriega’s Underworld Operations:
  • Connected to the Iran-Contra affair; Panama was a hub for arms going to U.S.-backed guerrilla fronts (08:47).
  • Anderson directly questioned Noriega about drug trafficking allegations; Noriega denied personal involvement but admitted the U.S. asked him to let money be laundered in Panamanian banks for tracking purposes (10:21).
• Quote:
  • “The gringos, the Americans, did ask me to let the narcos launder their money in Panama’s banks so that they could follow the money. And I let them do that.”
    — Manuel Noriega (via Anderson, 10:32)

Political Violence and the Spadafora Murder

• Hugo Spadafora's Death:
  • Spadafora, a charismatic anti-Noriega figure, was brutally murdered after attempting to expose Noriega’s crimes (11:48).
  • Anderson had previously spent hours interviewing Spadafora. The violence was shocking even for the region (12:34).
• Noriega’s Denial:
  • Noriega claimed he was in London at the time of the murder, but Anderson found the denial unconvincing (13:29).
• Quote:
  • “That was the one time in our interview… I felt that he was just lying through his teeth.”
    — Jon Lee Anderson (13:41)

The Collapse and U.S. Invasion

• Downfall and Invasion:
  • After years of being “Washington’s man,” growing domestic opposition and an incident where American soldiers were killed led to the 1989 U.S. invasion (14:00–15:20).
  • Noriega’s bravado turned to regret; he expressed that “time has taught me to negotiate” (16:01).

Reflections on U.S. Foreign Policy

• Lessons (Not) Learned:
  • The invasion of Panama became a footnote amidst larger global events, such as the First Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union (16:35).
  • Anderson questions whether the U.S. learned anything from these interventions.

The Man Behind the Strongman

• Human Moments:
  • Anderson’s final question in prison was about the teddy bears on Noriega’s wall—symbols of his paratrooper past and ties to American military ritual (17:22).
  • Noriega expressed little long-term resentment towards the U.S., viewing the actions as “everyone doing their job” (17:45).
• Quote:
  • “He told me he wasn’t really resentful of the Americans. He kind of said, you know, everybody did their job. They did what they had to do.”
    — Jon Lee Anderson (17:52)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You hear his laugh, right? There were these teddy bears tacked to the wall in the room, and it was the most bizarre thing. Here was Manuel Noriega, the evil guy, and there were these teddy bears.”
  — Jon Lee Anderson (17:23)

• On Noriega's personality:
  “When he was in power, he was pretty thuggish. But...he existed in that netherworld where, you know, strategic interests collide with the real world.”
  — Jon Lee Anderson (04:24)

---

Important Timestamps

• 01:16: Introduction to Jon Lee Anderson and Noriega’s death
• 02:21: Anderson’s rationale for why Noriega still matters
• 03:13–04:07: Anderson describes how he secured the prison interview
• 05:11: Noriega’s early life and rise through Panama’s military
• 07:56: Noriega’s CIA relationship (direct quote from interview)
• 10:21–10:44: Noriega’s denial and partial admission on drug money laundering
• 11:48–12:34: The murder of Hugo Spadafora—political violence
• 13:29–13:41: Anderson’s assessment of Noriega’s unconvincing denials
• 14:00–15:10: Lead-up to the U.S. invasion, class conflict, Dignity Battalions
• 16:01: Noriega’s regrets and what he’d do differently
• 16:35–17:19: Lessons (un)learned from U.S. intervention in Panama
• 17:22–17:52: The teddy bear anecdote and Noriega’s attitude towards the U.S.

---

Conclusion

Jon Lee Anderson offers an unvarnished, nuanced portrait of Manuel Noriega—both the feared strongman and the complex, contradictory person shaped by decades of covert alliances, betrayal, and the realpolitik of Cold War Latin America. By weaving personal anecdotes, archival research, and exclusive interview material, the episode illuminates how Noriega's story is entwined with broader U.S. foreign policy failures and the murky world of international espionage and drug trade.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the unintended consequences of American interventionism, the psychology of power, and the forgotten histories that continue to reverberate through the present.

Transcript

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a [e-mail] New Yorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, I talk with New Yorker's John Lee Anderson about former Panamanian President manuel Noriega. In 2015, Anderson had a rare opportunity to interview Noriega, who was deposed by a US invasion in 1989. Panama's former dictator, the CIA spy and convicted cocaine trafficker Manuel Noriega, has died.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When the news reports hit at the end of May that Manuel Noriega had died, you could be forgiven a little if your first thought was Noriega still alive. Panama's former strongman has been out of the public eye for a quarter century, since his conviction on drug trafficking and other charges. But also broadly speaking, our attention has shifted way away from Latin America in recent years, certainly since the war on terror began. It seems like a lifetime ago that US Intervention in Panama and El Salvador and Nicaragua was constantly in the headlines, but staff writer John Lee Anderson thinks Noriega is a figure we shouldn't forget about so quickly.

[John Lee Anderson]

What Noriega represented and began to personify, which was this kind of merging of the Backwash of the ideological world of the 60s and 70s and 80s in Latin America with the drug culture and the world that we now know has consumed a lot of our neighbors to the south because to a large extent, we help make it happen.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In 2015, Anderson interviewed Noriega, one of the few interviews he gave during his many years in prison. Here's John Lee Anderson talking with the New Yorker's Dorothy Wickenden.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So how did you find yourself in a room with Manuel Noriega?

[John Lee Anderson]

Well, Panama is a country I go to, and I have been going to for. For 30 years. I had long since given up any hope of interviewing General Nordiega. He'd been in prison for many years, decades. And I kind of forgot about it. And about a little over a year ago, I was in Panama having dinner with an old friend who's an old friend of Garcia Marquez and had at one point worked for Noriega. And he invited me to dinner, to a fish restaurant. In the middle of the dinner, he asked me if I'd like to meet the comandante, who by now was back in Panama in prison, been sentenced to many, many years, and of course, I said yes. So September before last, we quietly went out and I spent a couple of hours with him in his prison. This was an icebreaker, and we were supposed to hit it off. And we kind of did hit it off.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Well, I want to pause right there, because he was. When I read one of his obituaries, I think it was in the Washington Post, and Colin Powell, who was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the invasion, described him as pure ev. Did he strike you as pure evil?

[John Lee Anderson]

No. No, he didn't. I mean, when he was in power, he was pretty thuggish. But, you know, I met a lot of other people, including people who worked for our interests, so to speak, in Latin America and elsewhere, who were pretty much pure evil. But he existed in that netherworld where, you know, strategic interests collide with. With the real world. You know, he was a double or perhaps triple agent. He was our man, but wasn't our man. He was also Cuba's man, but wasn't their man.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So let's back up just for a second. He played an enormous role in US foreign policy in the 70s and 80s. Tell us briefly about his rise to power and then how he managed to hold on for so long.

[John Lee Anderson]

Right, exactly. Well, so Noriega rises through the ranks of the Panamanian military, the National Guard at the elbow of General Torrijo. He's A charismatic strong man who seized power in 1968 and had a relationship where he temporized with the Americans who of course controlled the Panama Canal Zone. We had military bases across the country. Noriega was his useful aide de camp. He was the intelligence chief in the country. He was a man of humble origins who rose through the ranks of the military. Military. He didn't have the public Persona or the charisma of Torrijos. He helped him put down a coup. At one point he became his go between with various intelligence services. By the time Torrijos died in a mysterious airplane crash in 1981, he took over the country. He became the de facto leader of the country. I saw him once in those years, by the way. It was at an event commemorating Torrijos birthday and it was on a lawn in the Canal Zone. And suddenly Noriega showed up and he was at the height of his powers and he and his people arrived and it was like a cold air just came through. And I'll never forget my hair stood on end because I realized that Noriega had this shark like ability to look at you sideways. His eyes were very wide around his. So he could look at someone, say in profile to you, but appear to be looking at you as well, like a shark passing you in the water.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Did you speak to him?

[John Lee Anderson]

We shook hands, but I remember it was very brief and peremptory. No, and I didn't want to. I was frightened of him at the time. Nora Yoga came out of the shadows in the 1980s and at a time when the Reagan administration ramped up its national security doctrine in efforts to undermine Marxist backed insurgency in the hemisphere, to undermine the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And was this when the CIA recruited him?

[John Lee Anderson]

Well, the CIA apparently recruited him earlier. When we spoke, he denied being an agent as such, but apparently he did receive a salary for many, many years.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So you actually have that interview recorded, right?

[John Lee Anderson]

Yes, yes, I recorded it.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

What is he saying there?

[John Lee Anderson]

I'm saying how can you be. He says he's from. I said, were you an anti communist? He says, no, I was on the left. I said, well, how can you be someone with revolutionary aspirations and have a relationship with the CIA? And he said, I wasn't an agent of the CIA. He said Torrijos, his boss, his late boss, had asked him to develop the relationship with the CIA because Turrigos believed the CIA wanted to overthrow him. So he wanted Noriega, his man of trust and confidence, to basically be able to look them in the eye regularly and make sure. That they were kept at bay. You know, you don't want the CIA on the wrong side, so let's keep your enemy closer. That was how he claimed the relationship evolved.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And did the CIA get anything in return? He was a so called asset, but.

[John Lee Anderson]

Did that apparently, yes. Apparently he was at that whole period. Remember Oliver North, Iran Contra scandal? Noriega was in the thick of it. You know, arms came and went from Panama to the various guerrilla fronts that the CIA wanted guns to get to.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And Noriega, did he not, approached Ollie north to see if he could undercut the Sandinistas? The left wing Sandinistas, Yeah.

[John Lee Anderson]

I mean, I take what Oliver north says with a grain of salt, of course, but there was a lot, you know, Noriega at that time, at the height of American involvement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Noriega was a key agent. He was, you know, seen to have a relationship with our CIA chiefs, with, you know, the first President Bush. And everybody seemed very happy with him. This comforted a lot of people because he also developed a relationship, for instance, with Gaddafi in Libya.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And he was a major drug trafficker at a time when the war on drugs was underway.

[John Lee Anderson]

That's right. What Noriega. I asked him directly if he had a relationship and he denied it.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So if that's something about traffic contact, tell me more.

[John Lee Anderson]

So I said, come on, they've accused you, you were convicted of being a narco trafficker. What's the truth? Were you a narco trafficker? Did you do a deal with Pablo Escobar? And he said, never. And then we talked for a while and eventually he said, but the gringos, the Americans did ask me to let the narcos launder their money in Panama's banks so that they could follow the money. And I let them do that.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Wow, that's amazing, John.

[John Lee Anderson]

Yeah. So Noriega is basically saying what the Americans asked him. They're saying, we want to be able to follow, follow the money, find out who the people are, where the money's going, how they're doing it. And they didn't have any way of following it at the time. So he arranged it. And now, I mean, at thisyou know, by the time I spoke to him, was this an alibi? Was it the truth? I kind of felt that it was a half truth that, yes, they probably did ask him that. And he probably did arrange for the money to be laundered. You know, I was hearing as a young reporter running around Central America about him and drugs several years before the Americans turned on him.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So let's talk a little bit about what led up to him being busted. There was that grisly murder of Hugo Spadafore, whom you had just spoken to right before he was killed.

[John Lee Anderson]

I knew Hugo Spadafore. That's right. In Costa Rica, I met Jugo Spadafore. He sought me out. He had been. He was a very interesting character. He was a very romantic character, kind of a Che like figure. He was dashingly handsome. He fought, you know, the good fight against somoza in the 70s with the Sandinistas, but then he turned on the Sandinistas and he had just been fighting against them. And now he had emerged from the jungle and we met in this hotel in Costa Rica, and I remember we spent five hours together. And he was on his way back home to Panama, where he said, that's where the battle has to be fought, because Noriega was a killer, a drug trafficker. He was, you know, double dealing with the Americans. He was all things evil, much as Colin Powell later said. And he, Hugo Spadafora, planned to move against him. And, you know, it was not long afterwards that Spadafora was disappeared. And his headless body was found in northern Panama as he tried to return to Panama on a bus. Two National Guardsmen or a number of National Guardsmen removed him from the bus and apparently they sawed his head off while he was alive. And the brutality of the murder, the gruesomeness of the murder, it was so unusual for the region, especially for Panama, and it seems so obviously to have been directed by Noriega.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

What did Noriega say? You must have asked him about this in your.

[John Lee Anderson]

Well, at the time, he denied it. He said he was on a trip.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Let's hear what he has to say.

[John Lee Anderson]

I asked if maybe some of his guys had done it as a favor to him. And he answers, well, it wasn't so romantic as all that. What he repeated to me was what he had said at the time was that I couldn't have done it. I was in London and, you know, I just thought, oh, I can't believe you just said that to me. And that was the one time in our interview, our conversation, really, that I felt that he was just lying through his teeth.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Was this the end as far as the administration was concerned now, or.

[John Lee Anderson]

No? No, it wasn't. So that was happening in 1985. And it wasn't, of course, until the end of 1989 that the Americans moved against Nordiega. No, he was still Washington's man, and he was for a few more years. But, you know, it was only in the sense that it began to roil the waters in Panama. He began to have a domestic opposition that was vocal, which for a while he managed control because it initially. And I remember seeing those demonstrations. It was on the lunch hour in the financial district in Panama. Everybody would come out in their white clothes like Calvin Klein's. The middle class men and women would leave their banking jobs and go around the streets honking horns in their cars for two hours. And then eventually, as this carried on, Noriega started fielding his own sort of mobs who were coming from the barrios, you know, the out. The periphery. And they were darker skinned and they were carrying machetes and sticks. And he called them the Dignity Battalions. And the more this went on, the more it became a kind of class war. And he began to channel his inner leftist.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I guess toward the end, he really went rogue. And it was 1989, and he essentially dared the Americans to take him on. Didn't he wave a machete over his blood?

[John Lee Anderson]

Yeah, yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a gentler, sweeter time when people actually thought they could do that and get away with it. Tensions ramped up severely between the Americans, who were, of course, military and in the zone, and his own military, when the end finally came for him was after an incident where some of his people stopped a group of American soldiers who were driving through Panama City. And whatever happened, happened. One of those Americans died. Within four days, the invasion had happened. This was the first major military action by the United States since Vietnam.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

What's he saying?

[John Lee Anderson]

He said. I said, you know, you paid a high price for your emotionalism and you took on the empire. And he said, yeah. I said, so would you do it differently? He said, yeah. I said, what would you do differently? He said, time has taught me to negotiate.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

This was immigration, major US Foreign policy embarrassment. This entire episode, which took place over well over a decade. Did we learn anything from this?

[John Lee Anderson]

Well, I'm not sure we did. It was interesting because, you know, within a year and a half of each other, right at the time the Soviet Union was falling apart, you had George Herbert Walker Bush as president, inheriting from Reagan. During his first two years in office, he ordered major police actions, wars, really, against two allies, allies who'd gone rogue. Saddam Hussein and Noriega. Saddam Hussein. The first Gulf War came a year later, and that's why taking out Noriega and the Panama invasion was quickly forgotten. About, you know, it was dealt with. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and the, you know, the first Gulf War, all at the same time. And what had happened in Central America just became a footnote to history.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

What was the very last question you asked him?

[John Lee Anderson]

Well, I asked him about teddy bears. You hear his laugh, right? There were these teddy bears tacked to the wall in the room, and it was the most bizarre thing. Here was Manuel Noriega, the evil guy, and there were these teddy bears, the strong man, and there were these teddy bears on the wall. And I asked him about them, and he explained that they were part of an old, you know, paratroopers tradition of every time you get a jump. US US of course, then they had formed him. He was a creature of the U.S. you know, military training and their rituals. And he liked it. You know, he told me he wasn't really resentful of the Americans. He kind of said, you know, everybody did their job. They did what they had to do. I will see. I will.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

That was John Lee Anderson.

[Katie Drummond]

What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily bas. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative, and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.

[John Lee Anderson]

I want a shark that.

[Katie Drummond]

That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.

[John Lee Anderson]

So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.

[Katie Drummond]

Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find Wired's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.