16 of 20 Cleared in Drug Trial

Four men were convicted Monday in a major drug smuggling operation with links to deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega, but 16 co-defendants were found innocent.

The defendants, most of them boat captains and truck drivers, had been charged with conspiracy, importation and distribution. Federal prosecutors said they smuggled 48,000 pounds of marijuana into North Carolina in 1982 and 280,000 pounds into Louisiana in 1983.

They planned to smuggle 1 million pounds into Missouri in 1984, prosecutors said, but were foiled by the arrest of ringleader Stephen Michael Kalish. He testified as the star prosecution witness. Kalish, who said his drug-smuggling organization operated from the late 1970s through 1984, is currently in prison stemming from a guilty plea entered in Tampa, Fla., in 1987 to a charge of continuing criminal enterprise.

The same investigation that led to the trial of the 20 here also led to Noriega’s 1988 indictment in Tampa.

In his testimony, Kalish said he had given Noriega a $300,000 “present” for helping arrange a Panamanian banking network to launder drug profits. He said the network he set up with Noriega laundered $50 million to $100 million a month for the Medellin drug cartel of Colombia.