Noriega Was Paid $320,000 by U.S., Court Files Show : Drugs: Prosecutors release the data to rebut allegations of million-dollar payments. Exact reason for the stipends is not disclosed.

Deposed Panama dictator Manuel A. Noriega received more than $320,000 in payments and gifts from the U.S. government from 1955 through 1986, apparently for his assistance in intelligence-gathering in Central America, it was disclosed Friday.

In papers filed in federal court here, U.S. prosecutors said that they were releasing the information to rebut statements last year by defense attorneys for the deposed Panamanian strong man that he had received at least $11 million from the United States for past intelligence activities.

The government filing did not specify any reason for the payments from the CIA and the U.S. Army. The disclosure, however, could bolster Noriega’s expected defense that the alleged international drug trafficking activities with which he has been charged were undertaken with the tacit or explicit approval of U.S. authorities.

On the other hand, some attorneys said that the fact no payments apparently were made by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency could minimize any claims by Noriega that he had been helping the DEA gain intelligence on Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel. Noriega is accused of accepting $4.6 million in bribes from the cartel, which shipped cocaine through Panama.

Noriega’s lawyers are seeking top-secret documents from the CIA and DEA that they assert might prove claims that the former dictator worked for the DEA. No such documents have yet been disclosed.

Noriega, who is imprisoned here on his 1988 drug conspiracy indictment, is scheduled to stand trial next June. He surrendered to American military authorities a year ago after the December, 1989, U.S. invasion of Panama.

Judicial authorities have determined that Noriega can be tried in the United States because his alleged offenses were deemed to have violated U.S. drug laws and harmed thousands of U.S. citizens.

The court affidavit, signed by chief prosecutor Michael P. Sullivan, said that the CIA secretly gave Noriega $160,058--mostly in monthly payments--from 1971 to 1986. Included in this sum were $1,949 in personal gifts to Noriega and members of his family. The monthly payments included a period in the mid-1970s when President Bush was the CIA director.

The years in which Noriega received the most money from the spy agency were 1979, when he was paid $24,200, and 1985, when he received $25,000, Sullivan said.

In addition, the U.S. Army paid him $162,108, including a sound projection system valued at $50,000. The Army payments started with a meager $10.70 in 1955 and continued through 1986 when he received $3,500, the court filing said.

The Army’s largest payment to Noriega was $9,964 in 1972.

Government and outside sources have said that Noriega, who rose through the ranks of the Panamanian military, often informed U.S. authorities about a wide range of Central American security matters, some involving the Ronald Reagan Administration’s battle against Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, as well as matters involving protection of the Panama canal.

Before rising to a position of ultimate power in the country, Noriega was chief of intelligence in the Panama Defense Forces.

The year the payments stopped--1986--coincides with the time U.S. law enforcement agents began amassing the first evidence that they say showed Noriega to be a notorious international drug trafficker.