Start of Noriega’s Trial Could Be a Year Away : Legal system: Numerous complex issues must first be considered. For example--his years of secret ties to the CIA.

U.S. authorities moved with lightning speed Wednesday to deliver deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega into the hands of the federal courts--but bringing him to trial will be a long time coming at best.

Sources close to both sides of the case agree that a welter of legal and national security issues must be fought over and resolved in favor of the prosecution before a jury can even begin hearing evidence--a process likely to take more than a year.

And, while Justice Department officials continue to insist that the case against Noriega is growing steadily stronger, the nature of the evidence against him and the sensitive national security issues that prosecution would raise are giving other U.S. officials pause.

“We’ve never paid enough attention to the evidence in the case. We don’t have any doubt about his guilt. But convicting him in the media is one thing, and convicting him in a court of law is another,” one senior Administration official said.

Serious Problems

In particular, Noriega’s years of secret relations with the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration pose potentially serious problems for the government.

Defense lawyers already have made it clear that they will demand wide access to classified material involving Noriega’s relationship with the U.S. government. In the past, the government’s reluctance to release such sensitive material about intelligence activities has weakened or even destroyed criminal prosecutions.

Moreover, unprecedented pretrial publicity--including public denunciations of Noriega by President Bush himself, who accused the Panamanian of “poisoning the children of the United States of America and the world”--will be raised by defense lawyers as an obstacle to prosecution.

So will the role of the U.S. military in seizing potential evidence.

Richard D. Gregorie, the former federal prosecutor here who developed the charges against Noriega, said that he expects defense attorneys to seek an undetermined number of secret documents from the CIA and the DEA that could shed light on Noriega’s role as an undercover U.S. informant, which began about 1972.

That role was so vital to U.S. anti-drug efforts that DEA Administrator John C. Lawn wrote Noriega a letter of thanks for his assistance. And as recently as 2 1/2 years ago, high U.S. law enforcement officials, including Lawn, worked alongside Noriega at a meeting of Interpol, the international police organization, that was hosted by Panama--even advising him on how to achieve a better public image, according to one of the officials involved.

Noriega’s ties with the American agencies may raise problems for the prosecution because he is likely to claim that some of the millions of dollars he allegedly squirreled away in European bank accounts represented legitimate payments made by the U.S. government for his services. To support this claim, Noriega’s lawyers are expected to seek stacks of CIA and DEA documents on U.S. intelligence operations not only in Panama but throughout the Caribbean.

Ultimate Arbiter

Legal skirmishes over what records the Bush Administration will have to produce for trial could take many months to resolve, with a federal judge acting as the ultimate arbiter of what must be disclosed if a trial is to take place, Gregorie said.

Historically, the CIA and other intelligence agencies frequently have argued that revealing such material does great damage to national security.

If Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh should decide that the release of such material would harm national security, he could move to dismiss some or all of the charges against Noriega--a step that he recently took in the prosecution of a former CIA agent in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Gregorie, who has left the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami to go into private practice, said that he did not want to minimize the importance of such records to Noriega’s defense because he has never seen them himself.

While Gregorie was in the government, U.S. intelligence authorities showed him only a smattering of documents from their secret Noriega file, while giving him oral assurances that they had no objection to the indictment of Noriega and 15 associates in February, 1988.

Noriega and the others were charged by a federal grand jury in Miami with exploiting his position--first as intelligence chief of the Panamanian National Guard and later as commander in chief of the Panama Defense Forces--to aid drug traffickers in narcotics and money-laundering operations in Panama. Drug kingpins allegedly assisted by Noriega included top figures in Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel.

At the same time, a federal grand jury in Tampa charged Noriega with taking part in a massive drug-trafficking scheme that involved smuggling more than 1 million pounds of marijuana and cocaine into the United States.

After reviewing the two cases last month, officials in the Justice Department’s criminal division decided that Noriega would be tried first on the more sweeping Miami charges, which they said add up to a stronger case.

As a justification for producing CIA and DEA records, defense attorneys may claim that Noriega’s involvement with illicit narcotics was condoned by U.S. agents as long as he provided valuable information to them about the Medellin cartel, ex-prosecutor Gregorie said.

But he said he believes that was not in fact the case. Instead, Gregorie said, he thinks Noriega was involved in narcotics activities for his own profit, not merely to gather intelligence for the United States.

Another potential obstacle for prosecutors is likely to be the fact that U.S. military forces seized financial records, drugs and cash from Noriega’s various offices and homes during the invasion. The circumstances surrounding these seizures and the methods used may be subject to challenge on legal grounds.

Justice Department lawyers are expected to defend the seizures by citing the November opinion of Thornburgh’s top legal adviser, which held that the military can conduct law enforcement operations outside the United States.

Nevertheless, experts said that the seizures still must meet legal and constitutional standards as interpreted by a federal judge--such as demonstrating that the chain of custody over the evidence was carefully maintained.

“If Noriega’s lawyers do not file a motion to suppress such evidence on grounds it was not taken according to proper procedures, then Gen. Noriega will be poorly served,” said Miami attorney Neal R. Sonnett, who was a member of Noriega’s defense team until he withdrew last week after conflicts with other defense attorneys.

Sources close to the prosecution said that, if the case clears the pretrial legal hurdles and reaches a jury, it is winnable.

They said that the prosecution will rely on three or four major witnesses who allegedly conspired with Noriega but who will testify against him in return for lighter sentences for themselves.

Jackson reported from Miami and Ostrow reported from Washington.