2nd U.S. Probe of Noriega Told : Drug Trafficking Role in Tampa Area Alleged

The FBI is investigating allegations of drug trafficking in central Florida involving Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, the second investigation of Panama’s defense chief by federal agents, government sources said Wednesday.

The inquiry, based on confidential informants in Tampa, is focusing on alleged incidents that date back several years, said the sources, who spoke on condition that they not be identified by name.

In Miami, the Drug Enforcement Administration already is investigating allegations that Noriega helped to launder drug profits and protect traffickers’ shipments that moved through Panama en route to Miami. That investigation is collecting “every snippet they have on the guy, including accepting bribes for looking the other way on narcotics loads,” said an official familiar with the DEA inquiry.

No details could be learned on the allegations being investigated by FBI agents in Tampa. A source familiar with the investigation said only that it was a separate case and “more preliminary.”

The expanding drug inquiries into Noriega’s activities are further straining relations between the United States and Panama and adding to the pressure on the Panamanian leader to step down. The State Department recently called for new elections and a return to full civilian rule in the country.

‘What Can I Say?’

Adolfo Arrocha, charge d’affaires for Panama’s embassy in Washington, said he knew nothing about the FBI’s Tampa investigation.

“While it is ongoing, what can I say? We will have to wait to see what comes of it--if anything,” he said.

Noriega has denied participating in criminal activity.

A Justice Department official said it is unclear whether the two probes eventually may be merged, but another source noted that Associate Atty. Gen. Stephen S. Trott found it necessary at a recent department meeting to “referee” investigative actions regarding Noriega by the FBI and DEA.

Some DEA officials, meanwhile, are known to have mixed feelings about their Noriega investigation, contending that he has provided crucial information to the drug agency about traffickers with whom he allegedly has fallen out.

“The DEA would rather live with Noriega, given the alternatives,” explained one source familiar with the agency. “If someone doesn’t give him the payoff he wants, he sics the DEA on them.”

“DEA (agents), especially those on the scene, believe there are more benefits than negatives from dealing with Noriega,” one official said.

DEA agents in Miami had been “monitoring” Noriega’s alleged drug-related activities for at least two years, one source said, but their work was not regarded as a full-scale investigation until a July 16 meeting at the Justice Department.

At that meeting, presided over by Trott, it was decided to “pull together all we had on him to see if it was prosecutable,” the source said. So far, investigators have indicated, no indictments are imminent.

The second investigation came to light as a Panamanian official protested The Times’ Aug. 4 account disclosing the Miami-based DEA investigation of Noriega.

Santiago Torrijos, Panama’s consul general in Los Angeles, said that the account “is completely false and distorts the truth and cooperative nature of the relationship” between Panama and the Justice Department and DEA.

“Because of political crisis and the late events our country is going through due to near elections, our commanding chief, Gen. Manuel Noriega, is the focus of the opposition parties with the minority support of the U.S.A. political sector,” Torrijos said in a letter to The Times.

“Our government has denounced Washington’s Administration for interfering in Panama’s internal affairs and these false statements are a plot to prevent our country from taking full operational control of the Panama Canal in year 2000,” Torrijos wrote.

The story reported that the Miami investigators were probing an alleged conspiracy lasting several years in which Noriega provided protection to cocaine traffickers and money laundering operations in exchange for hefty payoffs.

Torrijos included a copy of a July 15, 1983, letter to then Col. Noriega from James L. Bramble, then special agent in charge of DEA’s Panama office, saying that information provided by Panama’s law enforcement “has contributed greatly” to the U.S. prosecution of a significant drug figure, Ramon Milian-Rodriguez.

Milian-Rodriguez, a Cuban-American sentenced to 35 years on federal racketeering charges, has been a key witness in a congressional investigation that has focused on Noriega’s activities. Milian-Rodriguez, who allegedly helped manage the finances of a major Colombian cocaine cartel, told a Senate subcommittee in private testimony last month that Noriega negotiated a commission of up to 1.5% on all money transfers by a major Colombian cocaine cartel through banks in Panama, sources familiar with the congressional investigation said.

While he is a key witness in the Senate inquiry, Milian-Rodriguez is not a major contributor to the current DEA or FBI investigations, an official familiar with both inquiries said.

One of the DEA’s prime sources has come to the United States from a Central American country and, along with his family, is now under federal protection, sources said.