Dole Wonders if Bush, in CIA, Aided Noriega

And now, more tales from the dark side.

Bob Dole had an impish glint in his eye as he ambled down the aisle of his campaign plane on the way here Wednesday, clutching a cassette music tape for the crew to play over the public address system.

Out crackled the hard rock beat of The Fabulous Thunderbirds: “Ain’t that tough enough (bah-dap-a-dap-bow), ain’t that tough enough.” Dole clenched his left fist and punched it into the air as if he were trying to rally the troops.

It is not exactly the new campaign song for Dole’s Republican presidential drive. But the lyrics go pretty well with the grittier tune the Kansas senator has been singing this week as he crisscrosses the South, trying to chip away at what polls suggest is Vice President George Bush’s commanding lead in Super Tuesday primary states.

Trounced for Caution

Fearful of resurrecting the notion that a brooding, spiteful hatchet man lurked just beneath his exterior, Dole tiptoed around harsh criticism of Bush in the crucial New Hampshire primary and got solidly trounced for his caution.

Clearly, he is not going to make the same mistake twice. Dole’s assaults on Bush have gotten progressively nastier and this week the campaign premiered new television ads that savagely ridiculed an alleged lack of accomplishment by the vice president over his long public life. They also suggest that the vice president knew more than he has been telling about the Iran-Contra scandal.

On Wednesday, Dole edged closer yet to an all-out attack on the jugular, raising questions about whether Bush, as CIA director in the mid-1970s, knew Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega was a drug smuggler and approved substantial CIA payments to him anyway.

Noriega, indicted on drug charges by federal grand juries in Florida, refused to step down as head of his country’s armed forces last week and, instead, engineered the ouster of the Panamanian president who tried to fire him.

“(Bush) keeps saying he made all those decisions in the CIA. Well, what were they?” Dole asked at a press conference here. “Was Noriega on the payroll when he was CIA director?”

Evidence Circumstantial

The evidence offered by Dole and associates for their suspicions was circumstantial at best. “There’s some evidence that he (Noriega) was on the CIA payroll for a long time,” Dole said without further detail. “That’s all I know right now.” He also pointed out that Adm. Daniel J. Murphy, Bush’s former chief of staff, served as a representative for the Panamanian government after leaving the vice president’s service.

One senior campaign official, traveling with Dole, said that the senator and other associates had been contacted by at least two sources who claimed Noriega had received “millions of dollars” of payments from the CIA over the last two decades and continued to be on the payroll during Bush’s tenure at the agency. The official, speaking on condition he not be named, refused to identify the sources but described them as “reliable people” and “people with access to the knowledge.”

This official, too, couched his hints about a Bush-Noriega connection in oblique terms. “All I know is that Noriega has been indicted,” he said. “That Noriega, we are told, was on the payroll during the time the vice president was the director. I have no knowledge whether he (Bush) authorized those payments. I have no knowledge as to when Noriega might have been involved in drugs. But those are questions that are at least fair to ask.”

Lifts Pall of Gloom

Attack mode seems to have done wonders for Dole and his staff, removing the pall of gloom and disorganization that descended over the campaign after the New Hampshire results. The tougher Dole sounds, the friskier and happier he seems to be.

“The polls are looking awful and we’re feeling good,” said William E. Brock III, Dole’s national campaign chairman, who predicted his candidate would outperform the polls on Tuesday.

Dole has taken with a relish to taunting Bush and ridiculing his competence.

“He talks about ‘executive leadership,’ ” Dole said of Bush in North Carolina earlier this week. “Well, where is it? Tell me what you’ve done, George . . . Give us some decision you’ve made in the last seven years that made a difference.”

Underscoring that theme, a new Dole ad running in Florida shows a Bush-like figure walking through the snow but leaving no footprints. The implication of the spot, which the campaign thought too tough to run in New Hampshire, was that Bush had left no record of accomplishment despite years in public service.