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They say the difference between war stories & Fairy Tales
is, a fairy tale starts, “Once upon a time...” while a war
story begins, “This is no sh...” TINS:
Hostage Rescue
A Military Aviator’s Secret Mission into General
Noriega’s “Prison of Death” in Panama, 1989
By Colonel (Dr) James A. Ruffer MC SFS USAF (Ret)
My tale is how a Marine Corps “Black Sheep Squadron”
pilot and Vietnam veteran, who became a Navy Flight
Surgeon and, later, an Air Force Flight Surgeon, got caught
up in a Central American “prison of death” and helped US
Army’s Delta Force pull off the rescue of an American
hostage, Kurt Muse. I was that doctor and the “inside man” for the caper. The prison was the Modelo in Panama City.
As an aside, Producer Lauren Herz put together a “Military Channel” production of these events titled, “Combat Zone
Series; Rescue in Panama.” My diary helped author John Gilstrap build the chronology for the prison portion of his book,
Six Minutes to Freedom.
“Delta” had been in the Iranian Desert in 1980 during “Desert One.” My Naval Air Training Command companion,
Captain James Schaefer USMC, piloted a helicopter on that mission that was accidentally air-taxied, during a blinding dust
storm, into a C-130. Eight men died. The mission to rescue the American hostages in Tehran ended there. To my knowledge,
since WWII there had not been a rescue of an enemy-held American by U.S. forces until “Operation Just Cause.” The rescue
of Kurt Muse was to be the first objective of that invasion, executed by “Delta,” with planning intel from me.
During a period of nine months I was reluctantly admitted into the Modelo prison, three times per week, by its resentful
keepers. Frequency of access had been my purpose at the caustic negotiations. The Panamanian Dictator was obliged to
allow one uniformed American medical officer into the prison to attend the American hostage, after President George H.
W. Bush threatened travel prohibitions against the Panamanian Regime. I dedicated my life to the care and rescue of Kurt
Muse, the owner and operator of clandestine “Liberation Radio,” which had annoyed General Noriega. Kurt Muse was to be
eliminated, and with his life’s dilemma, life for me became stranger than fiction; for him it became almost unbearable.
I did not know then that the hostage’s teenage daughter, Kimberly Muse, then in hiding, knew my daughter, Kristina
Ruffer. In fact, they were best friends at school. I had not even known the name “Muse” until a few days before I began
my missions into the prison. I had to ask myself the question, after these
events had passed, “Had I cared enough about my daughter and her
extraordinary life in those tender years?” I had not known that she had
“lost” her best friend. For me the Modelo was secret business, and this
alone offered a slight excuse for not knowing of my daughter’s personal
plight during the intrigues.
Early in the prison visits with Kurt Muse, he spoke of the sounds within
the prison as haunting and horrible. He could hear men being tortured,
and described awakening to his own screams. I would find him faint
and trembling from emotional shock after a man had been butchered
just outside of his cell. Blood was something I trod through within the
Modelo. It had always been a place to dread, but it became a place of
unimaginable horror during my watch.
For example, my Panama City landlord (beautiful, aristocratic, Lydia
De Janon) was arrested and incarcerated in Modelo, and was fed handslopped food by transvestite inmates.
They themselves were used in the
most hideous ways against the captives of the Regime.
After her eventual release from prison Lydia De Janon
vowed to me to die at her own hands if ever threatened
with Modelo again.
Among the memorable, unique, and disturbing sounds
of the prison were the “phantom” typewriters that hummed
continually, night and day, particularly during the height
of Noriega’s purges of his political opponents and other
enemies. Noriega’s madmen documented the entry of
each prisoner into their infernal sanctum. Noriega’s secret
organizations of extortion and mayhem, outside the prison,
did not bother with such fastidiousness.
Then, there was Barabbas.
Barabbas was a mystery to Muse, and he showed much
interest in the Barabbas story. The man was responsible for
howling that permeated the prison at night and invaded the souls of the inmates until it became part of them. Did a Barabbas
figure indeed haunt the bowels of the prison, eating his excrement, rattling his chains, and howling? Meanwhile, the sound
was as diabolical as it was inexplicable to the uninitiated.
I lengthened my stays within the prison, using every imaginable subterfuge, to support the suffering hostage, and I
completed the “intelligence requirement” at each visit. Then, there came the day when I played my first prank on Kurt
Muse. The time was right, as there was a need for a new “mood” within the walls that encompassed us. “Kurt,” I whispered
knowingly, to capture his attention instantly. “I found out who Barabbas is!” Kurt fell for this bait instantly, and he looked
around him to see if it was safe for me to betray such a secret. In nine months I had never uttered a word that I was not
prepared to have overheard (or picked up by a hidden microphone). I continued, “Kurt, Barabbas is ancient, and has been
in the Modelo forever, it seems. He is a black man, naked, with a pure white afro, chained, and completely mad. He was
picked up in the jungles of Panama by a previous regime, in 1929, I would say, while hand-cranking a clandestine radio,
‘Liberation Panama’.”
Kurt seemed incredibly impressed with this bit of information, exhibiting a stunned expression; and he probably, transiently,
considered himself a fortunate man in the comparison, until, that is, he made the comparison of his own plight with that of
the Barabbas I had just described. At that point his amused stare transformed ever so subtly, muscle by muscle, twitch by
twitch, as the story sank in and as his ire at being hoodwinked by the doctor fully developed. His expression seemed to say,
“A new and different Doctor Ruffer, it would seem, has appeared in prison.”
Gradually the amused stare became a glare, and a very angry one for an
instant, and then Kurt Muse began to laugh outrageously. He would repay the
doctor in kind, later, during a future visit. And despite the danger and diabolism,
or maybe even because of them, our
souls became wedded in the quest for
sanity and survival. The day would come
when I would see Kurt Muse safe; when
I would behold Barabbas, for myself, in
an extraordinary moment; and when I
would again demonstrate some modicum
of adroit and practiced wisdom that helps
make life so much fun.
History records that Kurt Muse was
rescued, not without drama, in a well
planned and well executed mission, by
the US Army’s Delta Force, during “Part
One” of the “Invasion of Panama.” I had
helped prepare for and plan that caper.