Veteran Highlight

Involved in Lead Up of Naval

Career
To Panama Invasion Submitted by Donald (Donny) J. Piela Sr.

My name is Lt. Cmdr. Donald (Donny) J. Two days after I arrived I gave my first pre- As soon as the major relinquished his
Piela Sr., U.S. Navy (ret). Although I was a sentation to the commanding general and all weapon, Noriega turned around and shot the
seasoned Surface Warfare Unrestricted Line his commanders and staffs, which included second lieutenant in the forehead. The ma-
Officer and expert in the Navy’s AEGIS Com- three generals, an admiral and around 100 jor was then taken away and tortured for a
bat System, the highlight of my career oc- staff officers. week before U.S. forces found his body. Every
curred when I played a key role in Operation Each two-hour presentation covered all the bone in his body had been broken and one eye
Just Cause, the invasion of Panama in 1989. operations, intelligence gathering, training hung from its socket. There were many other
I was in between orders and assigned to and incidents that occurred in theater over men tortured and executed that week.
the Commander, Cruiser-Destroyer Group 12 the past two days. I had to gather the infor- One of the jobs I performed daily was exer-
(COMCRUDEGRU12) staff in Mayport, Fla., mation myself and develop the presentation cising segments of the invasion preparations
when I received temporary duty orders to materials using multimedia resources. operations order (OPORDO), Operation Blue
be assigned to Joint Task Force- The general genuinely liked Spoon.
Panama (JTF-PM) for three my presentations and devel- I would initiate the training exercise then
months. oped a trust in me that was run to the front yard of the headquarters and
Since I had a two-star admiral, unexpected since I was the hop on a helicopter so I could take intelli-
RADM Bob Reimann, as my men- only naval officer assigned to gence photos recording the Panamanian De-
tor, I called him to discuss orders. his staff. fense Forces’ (PDF) response to our exercises.
He offered to intervene and re- Four days after I arrived a The first time I went up in the helicopter,
scind my orders if I didn’t want to coup was attempted on Gen. the warrant officer pilot asked if I had ever
execute them. I thought about it Noriega. Although the major seen Commandancia, Gen. Noriega’s head-
for a while and determined that if and second lieutenant who quarters. I told him “no” so he immediately
my country needed me to perform lead the coup had Noriega set course for that building.
a special duty then I would rise to secured in his office, they He hovered over the rear entrance and
the occasion. allowed him to talk them parking lot when three PDF came storm-
I told the admiral that I would out of consummating the ing out the door. One had a Soviet SAN-5
take the orders and report for endeavor. shoulder-launched rocket and he proceeded
duty as ordered. Little did I know
that plans were underway to pre-
pare for an invasion.
When I reported in September
1989 the officer I was relieving
was due to leave the country the next day.
I had a one-day indoctrination of my duties
which included: Assistant Deputy Chief of
Staff for Operations, head of the Command
Operation Center (COC), presenter of the
commanding general’s twice-weekly opera-
tions and intelligence briefings, and author
of the daily Situation Report (SITREP), that
I was expected to perform flawlessly the very
next day.
I had no knowledge or experience with
Army terminology of which I had to begin us-
ing immediately. Being a fast learner, I devel-
oped all the skills I needed to perform my job
very quickly.

The Missourian Page 24 November 8, 2017