Cheer Up, Donnie, Lots of Presidents Go to Jail

AUGUST 24, 2023

BY CHARLES PIERSON

Photograph Source: Thomas Quine – CC BY 2.0

We are living through a unique historical moment. I know this because MSNBC keeps telling me so. With the exception of Rachel Maddow on her August 21, 2023 broadcast, MSNBC’s anchors have been repeating that this is the first time in history a president may be going to jail. It’s a remarkably parochial view. Many presidents have gone to jail—they just weren’t US presidents. What follows is a brief, nowhere near comprehensive list. Maybe Donald Trump, who currently faces 91 felony counts from 4 indictments, will cheer up once he sees his predicament is not unique.

But probably not.

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While not technically Panama’s head of state, General Manuel Noriega was Panama’s de facto ruler from 1983 to 1989. He was also one of Latin America’s biggest cocaine traffickers. (In the 2001 film adaptation of John le Carré’s novel The Tailor of Panama, a newcomer to the country is told that Panama City’s high-rise bank buildings are commonly referred to as the “cocaine towers.”). Noriega’s career serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen to a foreign strongman once he outlasts his usefulness to the US Empire. Noriega had been a CIA asset since the 1950s, trained at the United States’ infamous School of the Americas. The US indicted Noriega in 1988 for cocaine trafficking, money laundering, and impersonating a pineapple. President George Bush the Elder used the war on drugs as a pretext for the 1989 US invasion of Panama, unironically dubbed “Operation Just Cause.” Bush, who had been head of the CIA for twelve months under President Gerald Ford, knew about Noreiga’s extracurricular activities. Anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 Panamanians lost their lives so that the US could arrest one man.

Noriega, who died in 2017, spent the remainder of his life in US, French, and Panamanian prisons.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/08/24/cheer-up-donnie-lots-of-presidents-go-to-jail/