TV Network, FBI Squabble Over Box of Tapes

A sideshow to the government’s case against deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega continued to take on a life of its own Friday, as Cable News Network repeated its charge that the FBI improperly took a box containing audio tapes from a CNN reporter staying at the downtown Omni Hotel.

At issue is whether the tapes in the box had anything to do with tapes that CNN had broadcast of conversations between Noriega and his defense team. A court order barring broadcast of more tapes is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by CNN.

CNN refuses to say how it came by the tapes.

Steven Korn, CNN general counsel, said that, after investigative reporter Marlene Fernandez found that her clothes and some possessions had been taken from her hotel room, a CNN attorney went to the hotel to assist her. The attorney arrived, Korn said, just in time to see hotel security officers handing the box of tapes and other materials over to the FBI.

The hotel said Fernandez’s possessions had been removed because she had abandoned the room. CNN said she never checked out.

CNN executives have complained that the materials should not have been turned over to the FBI, which did not have a search warrant. The network demanded that the agency return the box.

Korn would not say if the seized materials included the jailhouse tapes. The box has not been opened because the FBI agreed to seal it and not to examine its contents until it can do so legally.

“I can’t describe the tapes with that degree of specificity,” Korn said, “but what I can tell you is we don’t believe that our ability to pursue the (Noriega) story has been compromised.”

He called it fortunate that the CNN attorney happened to witness “the FBI and the box, and the box being turned over to the FBI. It was a coincidence, a fortunate one from our point of view, but it was a coincidence.”

Korn denied that CNN set up the removal of the box as a ruse.

“I am confident the general public will not be misled to think that this is a ruse . . . “ he said.

How did the FBI happen to be at the hotel?

Maybe security guards from CNN or the Omni contacted the FBI. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Korn said he understood that the FBI contacted security officers at Turner Broadcasting, parent company of CNN. He said that “our security people are not strangers to the FBI. They know people there.” He said that, if FBI agents “wanted to make contact with somebody or wanted to speak with someone at CNN, they would call security as their contact for CNN.”