The story of how AC/DC caused a political revolution in Panama
AC/DC were a defining band of the 1980s, and a deafening one at that too. Just as the final song of their record-breaking Back in Black screeches home, “Rock ‘n’ roll ain’t no riddle, man”. For their seventh album, AC/DC continued to adhere to the Spinal Tap sacred formula of rock: do it loud and “make a big thing out of it”. The band embraced the laughable side of everything about Spinal Tap style rock ‘n’ roll and brashly celebrated the humorous hubris of rocking for the sake of it.
This catapulted the band to international repute… but if you had a headache to begin with, their screech could quite easily be classed as disrepute. This element of their sound was eventually weaponised by the US Navy SEALs, no less.
In 1983, Panama fell victim to the dictatorship of Manuel Noriega. By 1989, his authoritarian regime was fuelled by a drug trafficking trade aimed at little more than building him a personal fortune. However, he had previously worked for the CIA, who had utilised his former position as chief of military intelligence to gather intel on movements in the South American region.
But when Panamanian politics entered a period of upheaval, Noriega saw his chance to use his power and expertise to become part of the racketeering he had previously been informing about. Eventually, his criminal running of Panama led to him being indicted by several US grand juries. Their need to step in then came to a head when he annulled the 1989 general election in the country, essentially proclaiming himself a dictator.
So, US special forces then embarked on a mission to arrest Noriega. However, the crafty dictator had holed himself up in the Apostolic Nunciature (embassy) of the Holy See (a Vatican building in Panama). They had no jurisdiction here. So, they somehow had to coax him out. They turned to psychological warfare and the wailing tones of AC/DC.
The primary tactic of Operation Nifty Package was to blast AC/DC’s ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ continuously at such decibels that he would simply walk right out of the building and plead for mercy. In order to keep the torture fresh, they would intermittently mix it up in case he had grown used to the song and also reportedly played ‘I Fought the Law’ by The Clash and, equally fittingly, ‘Panama’ by Van Halen. It worked; after ten days, Noriega simply walked out of the building and accepted his arrest.
He received a 40-year sentence, eventually serving 17, before being extradited to other countries so that they, too, could arrest him. Ultimately, he died in 2017, aged 83, and reports claim he never listened to rock music ever again following Operation Nifty Package. When he was toppled from power, a political revolution began in the country, and ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ remains a ubiquitous track there as a measure of thanks to the rock ‘n’ roll band who helped to return the country to simpler times.
Weirdly, this is not the only time AC/DC have been caught up in high-profile operations. More recently, when Iran’s nuclear computers were worryingly hacked, they all began playing ‘Thunderstruck’. Why it is always AC/DC is a puzzling question for another day.
