Noriega Accuses CIA Chiefs of Gun Deals

A succession of seven CIA directors, including George Bush, “requested and authorized Gen. (Manuel A.) Noriega to allow shipments of weapons to either pass through Panama or be unloaded in Panama for transshipment to Honduras or Nicaragua,” according to Noriega defense documents released Thursday in Miami.

That allegation, unsupported by evidence, was made by the former Panamanian ruler’s defense team in a motion that also asserts that Noriega was complying with orders from the chiefs of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency when he allowed cocaine shipments to pass through his Central American nation.

The motion was filed in March but was held under seal until this week.

Noriega, who surrendered to U.S. forces after the invasion of Panama in 1989, is to stand trial in U.S. District Court next month on various racketeering and drug smuggling charges.

Attorneys Frank A. Rubino and Jon A. May have stated that they will mount a “public authority” defense of Noriega, contending that their client was paid more than $11 million from a CIA slush fund in exchange for overlooking many U.S.-sponsored illegal activities. Some of those activities, according to the defense, involved a “guns-for-drugs” policy designed to support the anti-Sandinista Contras in Nicaragua.

Federal prosecutors, although granting that Noriega was on the CIA payroll, have denied that he was ever authorized to commit any of the illegal acts with which he is charged. Those acts allegedly included assisting Colombian drug lords with cocaine shipments to the United States in return for payoffs totaling $4.6 million.

The defense charges that, in addition to Bush, the former CIA directors who authorized Noriega to protect weapons shipments include Richard M. Helms, William E. Colby, James R. Schlesinger, Stansfield Turner, William J. Casey and William H. Webster. Their years in office cover a span from 1966 to the present.

In another defense document released Thursday, defense lawyers asked the government to turn over any tapes they possess of secretly recorded conversations between Noriega and CIA agents. Based on an affidavit by ex-CIA agent Frank Snepp, defense attorneys say they believe “that the CIA has many taped conversations between CIA agents and Gen. Noriega in its possession,” made either by an agent wearing a body wire or recorded by a bug planted in the general’s conference room.

In another document, defense attorneys requested that the government turn over Noriega’s American Express records, as well as records of accounts in Panamanian banks and in the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit & Commerce International. The defense contends that these documents will help prove that Noriega’s wealth was derived not from drug payoffs but from CIA funds.