Word: noriega
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Especially troubling to the government is the defense strategy of dredging up Noriega's role in covert U.S. operations just as the Iran-contra scandal is re-emerging. Where the trail will lead no one knows. Noriega was an important player in the training and resupply of the Nicaraguan rebels. An earlier investigation into Noriega's gunrunning was discouraged by Washington, primarily because of former White House aide Oliver North's involvement; but rumors of drug running by CIA pilots to pay for contra guns have persisted. "The story has never been proved or disproved, but there is the nagging...
Four years ago, in fact, when Bush was running for the presidency, questions about what he knew of Noriega's drug-running activities while he headed the CIA and while serving as Vice President dogged his campaign. Some cynics believe the Administration will cut a secret deal with Noriega to avoid explosive disclosures at a trial that is likely to drag on into the 1992 presidential campaign. Others, like former Panamanian President Ricardo de la Espriella, disagree. "I don't think Noriega has anything on Bush," he says. "It's a bluff. It will be Noriega's word against Bush...
Hoping to expose Noriega's links to Washington, defense lawyers have been battling all summer behind the closed doors of U.S. District Court Judge William Hoeveler's ninth-floor chambers in Miami. Their goal: winning the release of classified documents. But many of the texts already made available have hardly proved revealing. Censors have taken a giant white-out brush to entire pages on Noriega's dealings with Bush, North and the late CIA Director William Casey. In a 41-page order that is still secret, Hoeveler this month % gave the defense access to classified documents that Rubino claims will...
...government has already admitted that Noriega was paid $320,000 by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency for information that ranged from "incidental" to the Panamanian government's stance in the canal negotiations in 1976. The defense, however, claims that the general also had control of an $11 million slush fund from which, on Washington's behalf, he allegedly supplied the Nicaraguan contras and spied on Castro. Prosecutors are braced for any such bad-news revelations and expect the CIA, DEA and DIA to have some dirty laundry aired...
Leaked debriefings from Noriega's inner circle shed considerable light on his many shady dealings, from arms transactions with Libyans and North Koreans to intelligence-sharing with the Cubans. But none of his former high-ranking officers say Noriega ever moved drugs or even formed a partnership with the Colombian drug lords. Former Major Felipe Camargo did confirm that Noriega received a multimillion-dollar bribe from Colombian drug lords in 1984 in exchange for safe haven in Panama. But Camargo also said the only bid by the general's men to get into the drug business in a major...