Word: noriega
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Noriega won Washington's gratitude by allowing the U.S.-supported Nicaraguan contra rebels to train on Coiba Island, off Panama. In 1985 he made an offer to Marine Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, then on the National Security Council staff, to assassinate Nicaraguan Sandinista leaders and carry out sabotage inside the country. All the time, though, Noriega was allegedly running arms to the Sandinistas and to leftist rebels in Colombia and El Salvador, supplying CIA information to Cuba and helping Cubans smuggle U.S. high- technology equipment through Panama to the Soviet bloc. Said Jose Blandon, a former intimate of Noriega...
...relations with Bush are a minor mystery. According to Blandon, Bush phoned Noriega three hours before the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. He asked Noriega to warn Fidel Castro that if Cuba tried to stop the invasion or to retaliate, it would get the same -- or worse. Noriega made the call, and shortly afterward Bush visited him. Blandon says Bush lectured Noriega on the need for democracy in Panama, but also thanked him for helping contain communism...
Supporting Noriega became steadily more difficult as he rigged elections, was accused of ordering the murder of opponents, and was subjected to journalistic exposes of his drug running and arms smuggling. But the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration stood by him, even as the DEA developed the evidence leading to his indictments. The State Department was split between a get-Noriega faction and diplomats who were nervous about the potential loss of intelligence assets in Panama. By the time of the indictments, though, it was obvious that Noriega had gone out of U.S. control. Investigators assert that...
Drugs became a hot issue in the 1988 presidential campaign, and candidate Bush vehemently proclaimed that if he won he would never negotiate with drug lords. At the same time, the Reagan Administration was dickering unsuccessfully for a deal under which the indictments would be dropped if Noriega went into exile. A year later, a close friend of the dictator's speculated on the likelihood of U.S. troops invading Panama. "Send them in," he said. "By the time they get to Panama City, there'll be news releases detailing everything that Noriega knows about Bush. And what he knows...
...NATION: Noriega is finally in the cooler. Will he try to put the heat on George Bush...