Word: noriega
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...early as 1972, a U.S. antinarcotics official had a suggestion for cutting down the shipment of drugs through Panama into the U.S.: assassinate Manuel Antonio Noriega. Not only was that proposal rejected; some time later Noriega, then head of his country's intelligence service, went on the payroll of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Among his bosses: George Bush, director of the CIA in 1976. As late as 1983, Vice President Bush used Noriega to pass a message to Fidel Castro. And as late as 1987, the Reagan Administration was arguing that Noriega had been "fully cooperative" with U.S. antidrug...
Less than a year later, federal prosecutors in Florida won indictments accusing Noriega of helping Colombian drug lords smuggle tons of cocaine into the U.S. Soon Washington began painting Noriega as one of the villains of the century: not only a drug kingpin but also an arms smuggler and a murderous tyrant. How come? Why did the U.S. so long support Noriega despite the gathering evidence of his unsavory activities? And why did it then do an abrupt about-face...
...Noriega's relations with Washington were always ambivalent: he seemed to be a triple or quadruple agent. There appeared to be good grounds for the CIA to hire him: he was a shrewd intelligence operative, and Panama is an excellent listening post for developments throughout Central America and the Caribbean. But from early on, Noriega seemed to play Uncle Sam for a prize sucker. U.S. Customs Commissioner William von Raab once remarked that "occasionally, they ((Noriega & Co.)) swing some poor slob out, in effect give him away to make us feel they're cooperating." And once in a while Noriega...
...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...