Lawyers’ Fees, Tapes Probe Could Delay Noriega Trial : Narcotics: Overseas accounts remain frozen. Judge questions how CNN obtained phone call recordings.

The government’s problem-plagued case against deposed dictator Manuel A. Noriega appeared Tuesday to be headed for a lengthy delay because of a shortage of funds to pay his defense attorneys and a judge’s determination to find out who leaked taped conversations of the former Panamanian leader.

At a court hearing, Justice Department officials told U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler that they have been unable to carry out the order he issued last June to unfreeze Noriega’s overseas bank accounts to provide $4 million to $6 million for his legal fees.

Hoeveler replied that he might have to choose court-appointed defense attorneys willing to work at much lower government wages, a development that he said would postpone the scheduled Jan. 28 start of Noriega’s drug-trafficking and money-laundering trial.

In addition, the judge said that he might name a special prosecutor to investigate how Cable News Network last week obtained government tapes of Noriega’s jailhouse phone calls to his lawyers and former associates.

The statement followed a plea from Sam Burstyn, an attorney for co-defendant Luis A. del Cid, that the judge name a special prosecutor with subpoena power to determine why prison officials recorded attorney-client phone calls of Noriega and perhaps other defendants. He said that the inquiry should determine who had access to the recordings and who gave them to CNN.

Hoeveler ordered the network last week to stop broadcasting the recordings, but CNN initially refused to comply. After the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Hoeveler’s injunction, CNN said that it would appeal the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the meantime, the network agreed to stop the broadcasts when Hoeveler said he would postpone any sanctions against CNN until the Supreme Court issues a ruling.

Hoeveler promised to consider Burstyn’s suggestion but said that he first wanted to give the FBI a chance to pursue an inquiry it launched last week into the tapes. If the FBI needs subpoena power, “they know where to come to get it, and I’ll be happy to comply,” the judge said.

On the issue of Noriega’s legal fees, a top Justice Department official said that government lawyers have tried repeatedly to get Switzerland, France and Austria to reverse “freeze orders” imposed on Noriega’s bank accounts at the department’s request last winter.

Drew C. Arena, director of the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, said the department had sought the orders on grounds that more than $20 million held overseas by the Panamanian leader represented the illicit proceeds of narcotics trafficking.

Later, at Hoeveler’s insistence, the department started to reverse the process. “But it’s a little like trying to unring a bell,” Arena told the court.

He said that foreign officials have maintained the freeze on grounds their own domestic laws provide for forfeiture of any drug money, unless U.S. officials certify that Noriega’s funds are free of any such taint. “We, of course, cannot do that,” Arena said.

Frank A. Rubino, Noriega’s chief defense lawyer, said he suspects but cannot prove that U.S. officials secretly had encouraged foreign nations to impose their own freeze to foul up the defense effort.

Hoeveler said that he would act by Friday to appoint government-paid defense lawyers if the problem remains unresolved. Rubino said he could not afford to work for government legal fees of approximately $60 an hour. His own rates are $350 an hour, he said.