DEA Reports Show Noriega Targeted Drug Barons

A U.S. drug agent who insisted that he could not recall Manuel A. Noriega’s cooperation against the Medellin cartel was confronted in court Wednesday with his own reports showing that Panama targeted Colombian drug barons.

The reports and the agent’s grudging testimony appeared to contradict the prosecution’s charges that the ousted Panamanian leader protected cartel operations in his country for millions of dollars in bribes.

Thomas Telles, who headed the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Panama from 1984 to 1986, was on the stand for the defense in its effort to show that Noriega actually helped the United States fight the cartel in Panama.

The agent strongly resisted detailing Noriega’s cooperation, however, pleading memory loss and saying he never saw DEA reports to his office.

Telles confirmed he and a Noriega aide participated in a 1984 meeting in Panama about undercover operations. But even when shown DEA summaries of the meetings, he insisted he could not remember discussing a money-laundering probe against cartel leaders dubbed Operation Plata.

The agent also denied knowing that Eduardo Zambrano, a trafficker arrested by Noriega’s narcotics police in June, 1984, and turned over to the United States, was a top lieutenant of a cartel leader, Fabio Ochoa.

But he reversed his answer when a defense attorney confronted him with his own report stating “investigative leads have determined that Ochoa has placed Eduardo Jose Zambrano (and another trafficker) as his lieutenants to direct the financing of the ether shipments in Panama.”