No Evidence of Noriega Secret Against Bush

“George Bush is my friend,” deposed dictator Manuel A. Noriega once told an interviewer. “I hope he becomes President.”

Some friendship. For almost two years, ever since two U.S. grand juries indicted him on drug-trafficking charges, the former Panamanian leader has gleefully launched rumors that he holds some dark secret over the President’s head, dating either from Bush’s year as director of the CIA or from his eight years as vice president.

In a speech during the U.S. presidential campaign last year, Noriega derided American efforts to negotiate him out of power as an attempt to protect Bush’s White House bid.

And now, Noriega’s sly hints have led to speculation that Bush does not really want to bring him to trial--even though the President deployed more than 25,000 troops in Panama to oust the former dictator.

But despite two years of rumors and allegations, no evidence has surfaced to support the idea of a secret Bush-Noriega connection.

Bush himself has called the stories “total lies.”

A Democratic-led congressional committee spent more than a year investigating Noriega’s drug operations and found nothing solid that pointed to Bush.

“On the Bush connection, all we could find were rumors,” a senior investigator said.

Dozens of reporters and other congressional investigators have combed through records and chased down witnesses, and all have come up empty-handed.

“If Noriega had something on Bush, he would have used it before now,” argued Nestor Sanchez, a former senior CIA officer in Latin America.

In fact, some investigators and other officials believe that whatever “secrets” Noriega once knew about Bush may already have been included in the flood of revelations that followed the discovery of the Iran-Contra scandal.

“What can Noriega say that’s going to be so dangerous?” Sanchez asked. “That he was on the CIA payroll? That’s already been reported. That he met with George Bush? That’s been acknowledged. That he helped (convicted former White House aide) Ollie North? That’s out there too.”

Still worrisome to some U.S. officials is the possibility that Noriega, if he goes on trial in the United States, might attempt to reveal what he knows about CIA secret operations in Panama and elsewhere in Latin America.

But officials familiar with the case say even that issue is no longer a major concern. “We crossed that bridge a long time ago,” one senior official said. “We don’t think Noriega knows anything that we would find all that embarrassing.”

Still, the issue has been a long-running embarrassment for Bush--if only because, as CIA director and as vice president, he was caught in the middle of an official relationship with Noriega that went spectacularly, and painfully, sour.

Last year, when Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis attacked Bush for “involving people like Noriega in our foreign policy,” Bush responded by referring testily to that long history.

“Seven Administrations were dealing with Mr. Noriega,” he said. “It was the Reagan-Bush Administration that brought this man to justice.”

And, ever since, aides have noted that Bush has taken his confrontation with Noriega on an unusually personal level. “I’ve been frustrated that he’s been in power so long--extraordinarily frustrated,” Bush said last week.

Noriega worked with the CIA, the U.S. military and the Drug Enforcement Administration beginning about 1969, when he became an intelligence officer in Panama’s National Guard, according to former officials. For part of that time, he was a paid “asset” of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars for his services.

But during the same period, U.S. officials slowly discovered, Noriega was also working for major South American cocaine smuggling rings, for the intelligence service of Communist Cuba--and for himself.