Noriega’s U.S. Intelligence Ties Could Vex Prosecution

Despite repeated assurances from the White House and Justice Department to the contrary, Manuel A. Noriega’s intelligence links are almost certain to be the most troublesome problem facing prosecutors in the U.S. drug case against the deposed Panamanian dictator.

U.S. officials contend they are not deeply concerned about potentially explosive revelations at Noriega’s trial or in pretrial proceedings, even though the former strongman functioned for years as an intelligence operative for the United States and other nations.

These officials voice confidence that U.S. Dist. Judge William M. Hoeveler in Miami will regard Noriega’s intelligence activities as unrelated to the drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering charges against him.

Even so, they acknowledge that Noriega maintained extensive ties with organizations ranging from America’s CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency to Cuba’s DGI and the Soviet KGB; from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to Colombia’s Medellin cartel, from the Pentagon to Nicaragua’s military intelligence.

Indeed, Noriega’s intelligence contacts were so sweeping and duplicitous that they reportedly included even the Middle East’s archrivals--Israel’s Mossad and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“There’s an understanding that we may bear a little pain, but there are no smoking guns, no time bombs,” said an official close to the case. “There is nothing so sensitive from a national security point of view that someone will stand up and say, ‘You can’t do this.’ This case is handle-able.”

Whether the official’s confidence--and similar assessments elsewhere in government--turn out to be well-placed or Pollyannish hinges largely on how Hoeveler rules on the relevance of Noriega’s intelligence work to the drug charges and the extent of the information to be revealed in open court.

“Relevance depends in part on the imagination of the defense attorneys,” said a Senate investigator who has looked into Noriega and his ties with U.S. agencies. “If they can come up with a good enough argument, the judge might buy it.”

A Bush Administration official countered: “If the judge keeps the case focused and narrow as (U.S. Dist. Judge Gerhard A.) Gesell did when the (Oliver L.) North case got to trial, then I think there’s not much that anyone can say we can’t turn over.

A Monkey Wrench?

“But there could be a ruling that throws a monkey wrench into this, as happened in the Fernandez case,” he conceded.

He was referring to the dropping of Iran-Contra charges last year against Joseph F. Fernandez, a former CIA station chief in Costa Rica. U.S. Dist. Judge Claude M. Hilton made the ruling in the Fernandez case after Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh blocked disclosure of information that Fernandez contended was vital to his defense.

The Justice Department has joined in appealing the Fernandez dismissal on grounds that a solution could have been worked out without publicly disclosing information the intelligence community sought to keep secret.

In the North case, for instance, such compromises were worked out, even though the case appeared on the verge of being dropped as intelligence agencies repeatedly objected to disclosure of secrets.

Both cases were handled under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). Congress enacted the law in 1980 to reduce the problem posed by defendants in spy cases and other national security matters who seek to pry loose secret government files they say they must have to defend themselves--a tactic known as “graymail.”

Under CIPA, arguments over such sensitive information are thrashed out in closed hearings, and the attorney general is the final arbiter of what information will be disclosed at trial.

So far, federal prosecutors have not completed their review of Noriega’s files at the CIA, and Justice Department attorneys, along with FBI and DEA agents, still are studying massive amounts of possibly related documents obtained during the U.S. invasion of Panama.

Even so, U.S. officials from President Bush on down express confidence that Noriega can be tried.

Earlier this month, Bush conceded that Noriega “may get into the release of some confidential documents,” and that “he may try to blind-side the whole justice process.”

“But the system works,” the President said, “so I wouldn’t worry about that.”

Although U.S. officials play down the significance of Noriega’s intelligence work to the criminal case against him, they do not attempt to minimize the extent of his cloak-and-dagger work.

For more than two decades, Noriega served as a U.S. intelligence informant and operative. And while knowledgeable sources believe that the United States was his first major client, it certainly was not his last.

He was reportedly recruited by the CIA in the mid-1960s during a training course on special operations and psychological warfare at Ft. Bragg, N.C. At the time he was an up-and-coming officer in Panama’s National Guard.

Ironically, Ft. Bragg is also the base for the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which led last month’s invasion of Panama and toppled Noriega from power.

Although he began as a small-time operative, reportedly paid only a few hundred dollars a month, by the 1980s Noriega had risen to become one of the biggest fish in the U.S. intelligence network in Latin America.

CIA ‘Arrangement’

After the death of Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos in a mysterious helicopter accident in 1981, Noriega worked out “an arrangement” with the CIA under which the U.S. would “run everything” through him, according to a Senate investigator familiar with key Noriega files.

“If they (the CIA) had any contact with the PDF (Panama Defense Forces--a name assumed by the National Guard in 1983), Noriega had to be advised. This gave him control and knowledge,” the Senate source said. The CIA, Noriega was told, would have no other independent operatives in Panama.

His working relationship with the Drug Enforcement Administration involved a similar arrangement.

“Up until 1986, DEA ran no unilateral operations in Panama, so they were just like the CIA,” the Senate source said. Under Noriega’s cooperation with the DEA, some drug traffickers sought by the United States were put on aircraft with PDF escorts and flown to authorities in the United States, according to Senate staff sources.

Beginning in 1978 and continuing as recently as 1987--less than a year before Noriega’s indictment on drug charges in Miami--senior DEA officials repeatedly praised Noriega for his cooperation.

In a March 16, 1984, note, then-DEA Administrator Francis M. (Bud) Mullen thanked Noriega for an autographed photograph, saying that he “had it framed, and it is proudly displayed in my office.”

In 1987, more than a year after the New York Times detailed Noriega’s alleged drug involvement in a front-page story, Mullen’s successor and present head of the DEA, John C. Lawn, praised Noriega’s “personal commitment” in helping to solve a major money-laundering case. “Drug traffickers are now on notice that the proceeds and profits of their illegal ventures are not welcome in Panama,” Lawn said in a letter to Noriega.

Over the past two decades, Noriega frequently proved useful to the United States. He aided U.S. covert operations such as the training of the Nicaraguan Contra resistance and facilitating of the Iran-Contra arms pipeline run by former White House aide North. He even briefly took in the wandering Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

During the North trial, the government admitted that Noriega, through a go-between, had offered to assassinate the leadership of the Nicaraguan government if the United States would help clean up his image and lift a ban on military sales to the Panama Defense Forces.

North turned down the proposal because of a U.S. ban on assassinations. But, backed by then-National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, he met in London with Noriega in 1986 and agreed to a scheme under which Noriega would attempt to sabotage Sandinista facilities, including an oil refinery and an airfield, according to the government’s admission.

Yet, as far back as the Nixon Administration, U.S. intelligence reported that Noriega allegedly was aiding and abetting the transshipment of drugs to the United States, informed sources said.

And by the mid-1970s, Noriega had begun expanding his deals with U.S. officials into arrangements with other masters--such as Cuban intelligence--for both personal profit and political gain.

For example, Noriega allowed two U.S. listening posts to be established in Panama to monitor sensitive communications in Central America. Then, in 1976, he discovered that U.S. intelligence was eavesdropping electronically on Panamanian officials engaged in talks on the Canal Treaties.

Bought Copies of Tapes

In what became known as “the singing sergeants’ affair,” Noriega bought copies of the tapes from U.S. sergeants involved in the operation. He turned over the tapes to his boss, Torrijos, and there were indications that he sold some of the intelligence to Cuba.

The incident marked the first major crisis for the CIA’s new director--George Bush--during the Ford Administration. But Bush and others opted not to prosecute the sergeants or drop Noriega from the CIA payroll.

“As was so often the case in our dealings with Noriega, it was the cost-benefit ratio,” said a knowledgeable source. “We thought at the time that the benefits of using him outweighed the costs.”

“They were aware that he was playing all sides,” said a Senate investigator, “but they thought they could control him.”

Noriega was also one of the last problems Bush faced during his short stint as CIA director. In a meeting that Bush initially denied but later acknowledged, he conferred with Noriega in Washington in 1976.

The future President’s mission was to urge Noriega and Torrijos to clean up their acts. After the singing sergeants’ affair, Noriega had also been linked to a series of three bombings against U.S. personnel and property in Panama, reportedly because of difficulties in the Panama Canal negotiations.

The meeting apparently had little long-term impact, for Noriega grew increasingly bold, as both the Carter and Reagan administrations watched.

By the late 1970s, Panama was rapidly becoming an international center for trade and banking as well as espionage and drug trafficking. Besides the Latin American drug lords, various East Bloc and Middle East parties took advantage of Panama’s corporate secrecy laws to deposit funds and set up dummy companies.

Panama’s growing importance and Noriega’s ascent to effective chief of state two years after Torrijos’ death, in turn, increased his value to the United States.

Torrijos’ death coincided with what authorities portray as Noriega’s deepening ties with the Medellin cartel. He allegedly began providing safe haven for personnel, laundered money and transshipment of drugs, and U.S. intelligence became aware of at least some of those activities, government sources said.

Ironically, however, the booming drug trade worked to Noriega’s advantage as the Reagan Administration argued that he was was too valuable an informant to cut off. Among the leading advocates of keeping him on board was CIA Director William Casey, who met with the Panamanian strongman at least six times in Washington and Panama.

At least twice, Casey was instructed to warn Noriega that his drug deals jeopardized his relationship with the United States. Officials now contend that Casey ignored the instructions.

U.S. officials expect that, as a result of his longstanding ties with the United States and meetings with ranking officials, Noriega’s defense lawyers will seek to portray his activities as well-known to U.S. intelligence and therefore authorized.

One official acknowledged concern that partial information may paint a more damning picture than would a full accounting, which cannot be presented in court because of intelligence concerns.

“Good defense lawyers come up with all kinds of ways to turn incidents into something. That’s a risk you always take in these kinds of cases,” said the U.S. official close to the case.

“If you can explain in full, then it doesn’t appear as sinister,” he said. “Yet snippets here and there, when tied to other coincidences, make inferences difficult to disprove.”

Of greater concern is the list of witnesses--particularly U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials--that Noriega’s defense team may summon to testify.

“The government is not as worried about testimony on what (information) Noriega may have sold to the Cubans. It’s worried more about information on the extent of Noriega’s relationship over the years with the U.S., and particularly the naming of his contacts,” explained an official close to the case.

“We don’t like to put CIA officers on the stand, as it diminishes their effectiveness from then on,” he continued. “And CIA policy is not to confirm that someone was an asset or a source, even after the fact, because it dilutes the agency’s ability to assure future assets that it can protect them.”

Since the defense is still months away from submitting a list of witnesses it plans to call, “we don’t know where the problems might be,” the official said.