McCarthy Ties Wilson Aides to Noriega

Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy’s efforts to rev up his flagging Senate campaign have taken the race into murky waters as McCarthy attempts to tie two prominent aides of his Republican opponent to Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega.

The accusation is one of several that McCarthy leveled at the campaign of Sen. Pete Wilson in one of the nastiest weeks of the young campaign.

McCarthy also connected one Wilson aide to the Watergate dirty tricks of the early 1970s, and he accused Wilson of keeping two other staff members on the Senate payroll at the same time they were being paid to do campaign work.

The Watergate allegation is a warmed-over charge that was brought against the same Wilson aide in 1982 to no effect. The Noriega insinuation, on the other hand, is new and possibly embarrassing. The question, however, is whom is it going to embarrass, since the Noriega business shows signs of being a bipartisan can of worms.

Worked for Panamanian

Two Wilson aides, pollster Richard Dresner and strategist George Gortner, did work in 1984 for Noriega-backed Panamanian presidential candidate Nicolas Ardito Barletta. But Dresner and Gortner were recruited to the job by a political consulting firm, Sawyer-Miller of New York City, that had worked for McCarthy’s 1982 campaign for lieutenant governor. Dresner, Gortner and Joel McCleary of Sawyer-Miller all worked on Barletta’s successful campaign.

Barletta, who besides being Noriega’s choice also enjoyed support in the United States, became Panama’s first elected president in 16 years. The Wall Street Journal has reported that McCleary assembled the campaign team to help Barletta at the urging of Hamilton Jordan, who had been a top aide to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter. McCleary also had worked in the Carter White House.

Both Carter and Secretary of State George P. Schultz attended Barletta’s inauguration.

The year after his election, Barletta lost the support of Noriega and was ousted by him. Since then, allegations of horrific cruelty and corruption have been brought against Noriega. Among the crimes he is accused of are drug running, spying for Cuba, throwing a priest out of a helicopter and ordering the beheading of a political opponent.

It is also alleged that Noriega helped rig Barletta’s 1984 election--the same election that Carter and Schultz applauded and that Wilson’s aides worked on.

Gortner said Tuesday that he is proud of the work he did for Barletta’s campaign, despite the reports of election fraud that eventually surfaced.

“From my point of view, it was the right thing to do and the right candidate to work for,” Gortner said this week. “Everyone thought that the election was fairly fair. Carter was there the day of the election and spoke of its fairness. Later, it turned out that the election was stolen.”

McCleary and Scott Miller of Sawyer-Miller blasted McCarthy for seeking to discredit Dresner and Gortner for their work on the Barletta election.

“The idea that Leo McCarthy would attack these guys is evidence of his absolute ignorance of foreign policy,” McCleary said.

“We were on the side of the angels in Panama. Barletta was seen as a progressive leader.”

“Working for Nicky Barletta was like working for Leo McCarthy. They were both the good guys,” Miller said.

The controversy comes at a time when McCarthy has taken a tumble in the polls, leading his own chief media strategist, Robert Shrum, to conclude that the lieutenant governor’s campaign is in need of “a second beginning.”

The McCarthy camp is sticking to its position that the Wilson aides, along with Sawyer-Miller, have some explaining to do. Darry Sragow, director of the campaign, said it is hypocritical for Wilson to denounce Noriega, as he has, and, at the same time “employ people who helped Noriega choose the man he wanted to be president.”

Sragow acknowledged that Sawyer-Miller worked for McCarthy in 1982, but pointed out that that was before the firm took the job in Panama.

Sragow said that the two Wilson aides, along with Sawyer-Miller, bear the burden of proving that they were not working for Noriega, were not paid with drug money, and did not know that the election was fixed.

“The burden of proof is on them . . . sophisticated political consultants who you would have to think are aware of the political climate they are working in and of the morality of the people they are working for,” Sragow said.

McCarthy says that Wilson should fire Dresner and Gortner.

Published reports have argued that U.S. government officials, including members of the Carter Administration, knew as far back as the 1970s of evidence linking Noriega with drug dealing but chose to overlook it in order to gain approval of the Panama Canal Treaty.

McCleary and other officials of Sawyer-Miller insist that they were neither hired nor paid by Noriega when they worked on the Barletta campaign, and they denounced Sragow’s statement that they had some explaining to do.

“That sort of guilt by association is appalling,” said Jack Leslie, president of the firm.

McCarthy has also attacked one of the two Wilson aides who worked in Panama for his association with Watergate.

In 1972, Gorton was the national college director of the Committee to Reelect the President, the notorious “CREEP” whose employees engineered the break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington.

Gorton has not been accused of complicity in the break-in or in any other Watergate-related crimes. However, he did admit to hiring a student spy to infiltrate groups of young radicals.

Gorton has built a career as a political adviser despite a statement from Vice President George Bush in 1973 that he should be barred from Republican political campaigns. Bush was the party’s national chairman in 1973.

Gorton was hired by Wilson to work on his 1982 campaign despite criticism from another Republican candidate, and he is back this year.

Now McCarthy is saying Gorton ought to be fired, especially in light of what Bush said about him. McCarthy has also said that Wilson ought to fire Gorton and Dresner because of their work in Panama.

In a separate statement, Sragow of the McCarthy campaign has said that Wilson ought to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for salaries paid to two staff members who were also being paid by Wilson’s campaign to work on his reelection.

Sragow was responding to a report in the Sacramento Bee that said Wilson paid $75,000 out of campaign funds to aides Otto Bos and Sally Rakow in addition to their government salaries.

Bos, who is heading Wilson’s campaign, disputed Sragow’s claim that he and Rakow were being paid for campaign activity done on Senate time. Bos said they were paid the extra money for campaign work during weekends and evenings.