Fredericksburg man speaks to rotary about ordeal as hostage in Panama

Muse, who lives part time in Fredericksburg, spoke to the Rappahannock Fredericksburg Rotary Club on Wednesday morning about his experience and about the film that is being made about his life.

His wife, Anne Muse, attended the meeting with him, and said she “relives it every time he tells the story.”

“I get the same lump in my throat every time. I have a lot of pride and no regrets. Panama is a free country now,” she said.

From 1987–89, Muse led a band of Panamanian patriots in a plot to overthrow Noriega. Muse was raised in Panama City and, after serving in the U.S. Army, returned to Panama to raise his family and run a printing and graphics business.

He said that in 1988, banks closed and the country moved to a barter economy. His business was down 70 percent.

“People were disappearing, being tortured,” he said. “But it was my home, and I decided I would not leave. Noriega had to leave.”

He banded together with seven men he met through his Rotary Club in Panama and formed an opposition group.

Public assembly was banned, so they organized under the guise of the business organization, creating an underground radio station to promote resistance.

His group’s first broadcast was during Noriega’s state of the union address in 1988. Muse and his associates disrupted the transmission and Muse’s voice was broadcast for two minutes. He urged everyone to vote in the next election and ruin Noriega’s plans.

That transmission made him the No. 1 target of Noriega’s police.

As the resistance progressed, his group disrupted transmissions to soldiers, urging them to rise up and protect Panamanians from the dictatorship. Muse and his group took over a radio station for five minutes during drive time every day.

He was at a fellow Rotarian’s house when Muse found out his friend—the man who delivered his two children—was being targeted by Noriega’s police. Muse harbored him until he could escape.

“All Rotary has a project. Ours became to rescue the civil and moral values of the country,” he told the local Rotarians Wednesday.

The Rotary Club in Panama wanted to hold debates for high-schoolers and college students to get them involved in politics. The club was in the final steps of planning those debates when its president was captured and killed.

Then Muse was captured after flying back to Panama from a business trip to the United States.

“I felt scared to go back,” he said, describing a list kept at the airport naming enemies of the government who should be arrested.

After handing over his passport, he saw a handwritten sign that read: “Kurt Muse, American Citizen, Arrest on Sight.”

Muse was arrested. He said he was tortured and interrogated for four days, after which he was transferred to Modelo Prison and held in solitary confinement.

“They got everything out of me, but I never gave up my friends,” he said.

THREATENED WITH DEATH

Muse was kept in solitary confinement for nine months, and was only taken outside four times. He lost 50 pounds, was subjected to mock executions and was forced to watch men wrapped in American flags tortured.

“I had a lot of time on my hands, and I set out to solve one of life’s greatest riddles: What is the most important thing in life?” he said.

He said he decided that the most important things were the simplest ones: holding Anne’s hand, running around a park, opening and closing a door, seeing the sun and sleeping a good night’s sleep.

He used his wits to get more than just a daily cup of gruel. After an unsuccessful coup, he convinced a new guard that he was also given coffee every day.

“You have to look for how to exploit chaos for personal gain,” he told the local business leaders gathered Wednesday.

At that point, Noriega thought the U.S. was behind the coup, and announced Panama was at war with Americans. He said that if the U.S. invaded Panama, Muse would be the first prisoner executed.

Noriega’s men, equipped with machine guns, watched Muse around the clock in case there was a rescue attempt.

At night, Muse sat in the corner of his cell and whistled songs from his military service and “Amazing Grace.” One night, from the bowels of the prison where men were hanging from chains, Muse said someone responded with the hymn “How Great thou Art.” It was a gesture that gave him hope.

‘THE BEST CHRISTMAS’

On Dec. 20, 1989—the morning of the U.S. invasion of Panama—an Army lieutenant colonel visited him in the prison and said, “If anything happens to you, no one walks out of this prison.”

“I was so humbled that anyone would risk it all to deliver that message,” Muse said.

At midnight, he heard guns and then an explosion. An elite Delta Force unit had blown a hole into the prison and fought its way to his cell. They rescued him and put him in a helicopter.

His chopper was shot down twice, so his rescuers armed Muse. Another helicopter came to their aid and flew them to the United States.

Muse said he felt immense guilt that seven men had been wounded rescuing him. Once he was back in the U.S., “I got down on my hands and knees and told them I loved them.”

Muse didn’t know where his family, who had escaped Panama, lived. But the next day, when he was flown to Dulles, they picked him up and brought him back to their townhouse in Burke.

“It was set up for Christmas,” he said. “It was the best Christmas of my life.”

If Muse’s story sounds like something out a movie; it will be soon.

“No Escape” director John Erick Dowdle has signed on to direct an action thriller based on Muse’s book, “Six Minutes to Freedom.”

“For the first 10 years, I never spoke about it,” Muse said. “Then gradually, after a few years, I could, and I realized I needed to write a book.

“There are so many stories of great people. If it weren’t for me telling the stories, families wouldn’t know what these men and women did.

“Then it became easier. I had to work through my demons, but talking became easier.”