Noriega Aide Gives Up, Will Help Prosecution : War on drugs: Panamanian allegedly participated in plan to smuggle a million pounds of marijuana into U.S.

The government’s drive to convict Manuel A. Noriega received a significant boost Thursday as a Noriega confidant and co-defendant surrendered and secretly agreed to cooperate with federal investigators, government sources disclosed.

Panamanian businessman Enrique A. Pretelt, 47, who surrendered to the FBI, is the sole co-defendant with the ousted Panamanian strongman in a marijuana smuggling and conspiracy indictment returned in Tampa in 1988. It involves an alleged plan to smuggle more than 1 million pounds of marijuana and to launder $100 million.

The Tampa indictment had been largely overshadowed by the more complicated drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering charges against Noriega and 15 co-defendants in Miami.

But government officials, excited over Pretelt’s surrender, now view the Tampa case as a fallback in the event the Miami prosecution falters.

The extent of Pretelt’s cooperation could not be determined Thursday. But an investigative source noted that Pretelt, who goes by the nickname Kiki, was “one of the closest associates Noriega had and was there for an awful lot of what happened.”

Pretelt, at a brief arraignment here before U.S. Magistrate Thomas G. Wilson, pleaded not guilty. A bail hearing was set for Monday.

Pretelt’s lawyer, George Tragos of nearby Clearwater, Fla., sidestepped repeated questions about whether his client was cooperating with the government. “We are pleading not guilty, and we are going to trial,” Tragos said.

“He is a respectable businessman,” he said of his client, who wore a wrinkled but dapper double-breasted gray suit and demonstrated a fluency in English.

“People like that can’t live on the run,” said Tragos. “He has no prior criminal charges against him.”

Security was heavy at the hearing in a small room on the second floor of the U.S. courthouse in Tampa, with about six deputy U.S. marshals inside the room.

“We asked for the extra security to make sure that he was properly protected,” Tragos said. “There’s always the potential for added problems in a case with this kind of publicity.”

Tragos said he was retained to represent Pretelt on Dec. 24 and began negotiating a voluntary surrender with the FBI.

But Robert W. Genzman, U.S. attorney for Florida’s middle district, and Allen H. McCreight, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Tampa office, said a two-week “intensive search” by the FBI and Panamanian authorities led to Pretelt’s surrender Wednesday.

A defense lawyer involved in a related case said that now “there is an expectation that additional people will be charged.” She declined to elaborate.

Despite Pretelt’s surrender, David Runkel, Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh’s chief spokesman, said the government still intends to try Noriega first on the Miami charges.

The Tampa indictment, focusing on events in 1983 and 1984, alleged that Noriega, Pretelt and a since-deceased co-conspirator, Cesar Rodriguez Contreras, approved and assisted with the laundering in Panama of millions of dollars in U.S. currency, generated by the importation of marijuana into the United States.

Noriega allegedly conspired with Pretelt, Rodriguez and others to deliver about 1.4 million pounds of marijuana into the United States, according to the charges.

The indictment also charged that about $1 million was paid to Noriega, Pretelt and Rodriguez for Noriega’s alleged authorization of marijuana smuggling and money laundering in Panama.

Until Pretelt’s surrender, however, the Tampa case appeared to rely heavily on the expected testimony of Steven Michael Kalish, bolstered by documents. Kalish, now serving a federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 1987 to a charge of having a continuing criminal enterprise, testified that he headed the marijuana smuggling and money laundering ring in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In a related trial, Kalish testified that he had given Noriega $300,000 for helping to arrange a Panamanian banking network to launder drug profits. On Monday, a jury in Lafayette, La., convicted four men, but acquitted 16 other defendants, in a related drug smuggling operation in which Kalish was the star prosecution witness.

Meanwhile, a potential new problems for the government’s Miami case surfaced Thursday.

The lawyer for Daniel Miranda, a pilot accused of transporting $800,000 in drug money to Noriega, said he will ask the federal district court next week to require the Drug Enforcement Administration to turn over the results of an internal investigation. The attorney claimed an investigation was made because evidence was lost or destroyed.

“Documents pertaining to the case were sealed in Panama and shipped to Miami,” Michael O’Kane said in a telephone interview. “When the shipment arrived in Miami, some of the documents were missing.”

He said the DEA investigated the incident but has refused to give its report to attorneys for Noriega or his 15 co-defendants.

Ostrow reported from Washington and Frantz reported from Tampa. Staff writer Norman Kempster, in Miami, contributed to this story.