Word: noriega
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...Colombia's political leaders are being challenged by the drug dealers, some of Panama's leaders are the drug dealers. Two federal indictments were unsealed in Florida last month charging General Manuel Antonio Noriega with an assortment of crimes, among them drug trafficking and money laundering. Witnesses who testified before Senator Kerry's subcommittee charged that ! Noriega and his cronies institutionalized corruption, putting the country's military services, corporations, banks and airfields at the disposal of the traffickers in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars...
Perhaps the most startling testimony was offered by Jose Blandon Castillo, the former director of Panamanian political intelligence and a Noriega adviser until the two men had a falling-out earlier this year. Blandon branded Noriega's Panama a "criminal empire" and cataloged its alleged sins: bribery, kickbacks, money laundering, arms trafficking, kidnaping, murder. Warned Blandon: "This is a new type of political, economic and financial power, one which can even have an influence here in the United States...
Convicted Trafficker Leigh Bruce Ritch of the Cayman Islands and Money Launderer Ramon Milian Rodriquez, a Cuban-born American, described some of the services provided by Noriega and his associates in exchange for a percentage of the drug proceeds: transit from airports and docks in guarded cars and armored trucks, round-the-clock bodyguards for leading dealers, limousines, apartments, bank accounts, even planes to fly to and from Colombia to drum up new business...
...spotlight may soon shift to Haiti. Leon Kellner, the U.S. attorney in Miami who prepared one of the two pending cases against Noriega, is concluding an investigation of Haitian Colonel Jean-Claude Paul for allegedly helping the Medellin cartel move cocaine into the U.S. Paul, who commands an infantry battalion in Port-au-Prince, is widely regarded as Haiti's most powerful military man. For more than a year Haitian exiles have suspected that the airstrip on Paul's ranch, across a valley from Port-au-Prince, is a refueling point for U.S.-bound cargoes of cocaine. Paul's former...
...such problems multiply, Latin Americans -- and even some U.S. officials -- have come to question the Reagan Administration's commitment to fighting the drug blight. Despite Nancy Reagan's much vaunted Just Say No campaign, the Noriega indictments and the Kerry hearings suggest that the Reagan Administration has selectively ignored some narcotics dealing. Says Representative Larry Smith, a Florida Democrat who heads a congressional task force on narcotics: "You can't tell people 'Just Say No' at home, and then turn a blind eye on the diplomatic front...