Word: noriega
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...Noriega made a different kind of arrival last week at Homestead Air Force Base near Miami. Now he was an accused felon and his hosts -- from the Justice Department this time -- took him to jail. After landing at 2:45 a.m., the deposed dictator was sped to a Miami federal courthouse. There he was posed in a T shirt for a humiliating mug shot, then stashed in a windowless basement cell. Panama's numero uno had become federal prisoner...
After the eleven-day standoff outside the Vatican embassy in Panama City, Noriega's surrender to American authorities, which George Bush had defined as a chief goal of the invasion of Panama, triumphantly clinched the gamble the President took by ordering U.S. troops into combat. With Noriega in handcuffs, Panamanians celebrating in the streets and U.S. casualties relatively low, Republican Party chairman Lee Atwater probably had it right when he called the outcome a political jackpot for Bush...
...even as the war in Panama winds down, the battle in the U.S. is just shaping up. Noriega now has at his disposal an arsenal he could not call upon at home: the ample resources of a defendant in an American courtroom. The general's lawyers raised the standard defense objections about pretrial publicity and inadmissible evidence. Both objections have been given a fresh twist by Noriega's singular status as a de facto head of state tracked down by an invading army. The biggest question, however, is more a matter of politics than of legal procedure. With Noriega...
...Noriega's ties to U.S. intelligence agencies date back to the 1950s, when he began to pass along information about his fellow students at a military academy. Later he went on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency, reportedly earning as much as $200,000 a year. The general can plausibly argue that U.S. Presidents stretching back to Richard Nixon were aware of his drug involvement -- no one more so than former CIA director George Bush -- but looked the other way to avoid losing a valuable source of intelligence. At a press conference on Friday, Bush sought to squelch speculation...
Nevertheless, Iran-contra defendants Oliver North, John Poindexter and former CIA agent Joseph Fernandez forced prosecutors to reduce or dismiss many of the charges against them by insisting that reams of classified information were necessary for their cases. Noriega's lawyers are almost certain to make the same argument. "The only way to get to the truth is to get those documents," said Noriega defense attorney Steven Kollin last week. Even if that tactic fails, a question that has haunted more than one previous President -- what did he know and when did he know it? -- may yet rise...