U.S. Acts to Bolster Case Against Noriega : War on drugs: Federal prosecutors are pinning hopes on arrested aide to provide new ‘inside’ testimony.

Hopeful that Manuel A. Noriega’s day in court may be coming soon, U.S. prosecutors are attempting to obtain “inside” testimony from newly captured associates to bolster a criminal case that some officials believe is not strong.

So optimistic are prosecutors about potential new evidence against Noriega that they are privately talking about replacing his 22-month-old federal drug-trafficking indictment with a new, more comprehensive one that would cite more proof and additional offenses.

Most important, officials said that the surrender of Lt. Col. Luis A. del Cid, a close associate of Noriega, to U.S. military forces last weekend has given them a potential star witness if he should agree to a plea bargain.

Del Cid was among five close aides to Noriega who were indicted along with the general in a massive cocaine-trafficking case brought by two federal grand juries in Florida last year. He pleaded innocent at his arraignment in Miami this week.

“Nothing has been worked out at this point,” a Justice Department source said, referring to a possible plea bargain. “But Del Cid certainly could provide us with more evidence against Noriega and some other insiders may be more available to us now than before” the Dec. 20 invasion.

The emergence of new witnesses could be crucial to the case against Noriega because some Administration officials have said that they consider the documentary evidence of drug trafficking by Noriega to be tenuous at best. Even new financial records of Noriega’s uncovered by U.S. troops fail to show the source of his wealth, sources said.

“It’s not 100% clear yet that these records show links to drug-trafficking activities,” a Justice Department source acknowledged. “They will be made available to prosecutors, however.”

A high Administration official said the case against the former dictator definitely needs to be bolstered. “We don’t have any doubt about his guilt,” he said. “But convicting him in the media is one thing, and convicting him in a court of law is another.”

At several homes and offices belonging to Noriega, U.S. troops recovered about 100 pounds of cocaine and stacks of cash totaling nearly $6 million. The cash was handed over to Panamanian authorities. Photographs were taken to be used in any trial of Noriega, but such evidence might be considered circumstantial.

A U.S. intelligence official said there are additional concerns that secret U.S. records Noriega would want for his defense could not be produced in court because of their sensitivity. Under the nine-year-old Classified Information Procedures Act, a federal judge would be the final arbiter of this.

U.S. authorities have acknowledged that Noriega once was a secret informant for the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration. If a judge ruled that he had a right to use such documents in his defense and Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh determined that the records were too sensitive to reveal, the case against Noriega might have to be abandoned.

However, David Runkel, a special assistant to Thornburgh, told reporters that prosecutors believe they have framed Noriega’s indictments to avoid the need for disclosure by either side of sensitive government records.

Noriega’s legal defense team, while showing signs of disunity, could be expected to attack the credibility of any “inside” witnesses, which prosecutors claim is a problem in any criminal case that relies on the testimony of past accomplices.

Del Cid, for example, reputedly was Noriega’s liaison officer with Colombia’s notorious Medellin drug cartel and stands accused of conspiring with other defendants to distribute about 400 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Panama to south Florida.

If convicted, he would face a maximum term of 70 years in prison. Legal sources said he would be likely to face attack on the witness stand for “dumping on” Noriega in hopes of gaining leniency for himself.

Meanwhile, a crack developed on the defense team when Neal Sonnett, the most prestigious of Noriega’s Florida lawyers, filed a petition in court to withdraw from the case. His petition cited “conflicts” with other attorneys hired by Noriega, but Sonnett declined to be more specific.