Word: panamas
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...PANAMA CITY, Panama--Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, under indictment in the United States on drug trafficking charges, was ordered by the president yesterday to step down as military chief...
With the entire 16,000-man Panama Defense Forces at his disposal, Noriega showed little fear of the violent Colombian cocaine barons. His former private pilot Floyd Carlton, who showed up in the hearing room wearing a black hood, told the subcommittee that when the Medellin cartel offered Noriega $30,000 to protect drug flights, the general laughed and asked if they thought he was begging. Carlton said Noriega then demanded, and got, $100,000 in advance for the first flight, $150,000 for the second and $200,000 for the third...
...protecting the money shipments, Rodriguez claimed, the Panamanian general received about $10 million a month from the cartel. "I paid him -- in ball-park figures -- between $320 million and $350 million from 1979 to 1983," Rodriguez testified. In exchange, he maintained, he was given not only the run of Panama's airports and banking system but also the identities of U.S. drug agents and the schedules of U.S. Coast Guard and Navy drug-surveillance vessels. Rodriguez, 36, is now serving 43 years in prison...
...Back in Panama, a defiant Noriega, who celebrated his 50th birthday last week, responded to the mushrooming charges against him with some old-fashioned Yanqui bashing. To the cheers of peasant supporters, he said his struggle with the U.S. was a battle for "national liberation." He suggested that the U.S. Southern Command, which maintains 10,000 troops in Panama, be sent packing. As for Blandon, Noriega dismissed him as a "Benedict Arnold" and a "paranoid...
...officials is that his fellow military officers will eventually find him a liability. Nervous investors are said to have withdrawn hundreds of millions from Panamanian banks in recent months, weakening an economy already mired in debt. On March 1, the U.S. State Department is expected to certify that Panama has not done enough in the fight against drugs, a finding that will make the country ineligible for a range of trade and economic privileges. "At some point," says an Administration official, "those in Panama with the ability to change things are going to have to ask themselves if Noriega...