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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8 Num. 07
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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NORIEGA: OUR MAN IN PANAMA
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[Following is dated material, from the CN archives]
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Ward Larkin: Noriega & the USA -- 24 Mar 92 05:58
The following appeared in the Fall, 1991 issue of Convergence,
published by
The Christic Institute
1324 North Capitol Street NW
Washington, DC 20002
Voice: (202) 797-8106
Email: christic@igc.org
Headline -- Noriega: our man in Panama
U.S. Administration turned blind eye to Noriega's drug deals
By PETER DALE SCOTT and JONATHAN MARSHALL
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the C.I.A. in Central
America is the title of a new study published by the University
of California Press. Prof Peter Dale Scott of the University of
California, Berkeley and Jonathan Marshall economics editor of
the San Francisco Chronicle, use official documents as well as
interviews with Government officials, journalists, mercenaries
and drug traffickers to show that the current response to the
drug crisis in this country overlooks Washington's own
contribution to the problem. During the war against the
Nicaraguan Sandinistas, significant elements within the contras
trafficked extensively in cocaine supplying much of the North
American market while the CIA., National Security Council and
Justice Deparmnent ignored the evidence. In the following
excerpt Scott and Marshall trace the history of the United
States' relationship with former Panamanian dictator Manuel
Noriega. For information on how to purchase this book from the
Christic Institute please send email to christic@igc.org
Regional influences, both political and criminal, fueled the
explosive growth of drug trafficking through Honduras in the
early 1980s. In 1980 and 1981, for example, the head of military
intelligence in Panama, Col. Manuel Noriega, teamed up with his
counterpart at the head of the Honduran G-2, Colonel Tortes, to
smuggle first arms (on behalf of Marxist rebels in El Salvador)
and then drugs.
Noriega's malign influence spread to Costa Rica as well. A Costa
Rican legislative commission concluded in 1989 that Noriega
helped install in that country at least seven pilots who ran guns
to the contras and drugs to North America. "More serious still,"
it added, "is the obvious infiltration of international gangs
into Costa Rica that made use of the [contra] organization.
These requests for contra help were initiated by Colonel [Oliver]
North to General Noriega. They opened a gate so their henchmen
utilized the national territory for trafficking in arms and
drugs."
As that finding suggests, Noriega's reach extended far beyond
Central America to Washington. Indeed, his relationship with
U.S. intelligence helps account both for his own longstanding
immunity from American law enforcement and for his ability to
promote corrupt elements of the contra support movement.
Noriega was first recruited as an agent by the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency in 1959, while still a young military cadet
studying in Peru. He went on the C.I.A.'s payroll in 1967. The
next year, a military coup assisted by the U.S. Army's 47Oth
Military Intelligence Group gave Noriega his opportunity to take
charge of Panama's own G-2. His new job made him a priceless
source for the Americas services, which used Panama as a
listening post for much of Latin America.
Before long, however, Washington discovered its protege's
criminal bent. As early as May 1971 the Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs (B.N.D.D.) heard serious allegations of Noriega's
involvement in trafficking. A former chief of staff to Gen. Omar
Torrijos, Panama's military ruler, settled in Miami after
botching a coup attempt. He revealed to U.S. authorities that
Noriega had "overall operational control" of the officially
sanctioned narcotics trade in Panama. The B.N.D.D. actually
amassed enough evidence to indict him in a major marijuana
smuggling case, only to run up against practical objections from
the U.S. Attorney's office in Miami: No one in those days could
imagine invading Panama to bring a senior officer to justice.
Intent on negotiating a new Panama Canal treaty, however, the
State Department put other foreign policy objectives ahead of law
enforcement and persuaded B.N.D.D. to back off. A long honeymoon
began and Panama's economy boomed under the stimulus of drug
dollars attracted to its modern and secretive banking sector.
By 1976, Noriega was fully forgiven. C.I.A. Director George Bush
arranged to pay Noriega $110,00 a year for his services, put the
Panamanian up as a house guest of his deputy C.I.A. director, and
helped to prevent an embarrassing prosecution of several American
soldiers who had delivered highly classified U.S. intelligence
secrets to Noriega's men.
Noriega earned his pay. He supplied pilots who helped smuggle
weapons to the contra leader Eden Pastora. In July 1984, he
contributed $100,000 to contra leaders based in Costa Rica. In
March 1985, Noriega helped Oliver North plan and carry out a
major sabotage raid in Managua, using the services of a British
mercenary. In 1985, responding to pleas from Casey, he promised
to help train contra units and let them use Panama as a transit
point. In September 1986, North met Noriega in London; the two
discussed further sabotage against Nicaraguan economic targets,
including an oil refinery, an airport, and the electric and
telephone systems. North's diary indicated that Noriega offered
the aid of skilled (probably Israeli) commandos, including one
who "killed head of PLO in Brt [Beirut]." The two men also
considered setting up a school for commandos that could "train
experts" in such matters as "booby traps," "night ops" and
"raids."
Noriega also allowed members of North's enterprise to set up
Panamanian corporate fronts to disguise the financing of contra
supplies. As noted in Chapter 1, one such front, Amalgamated
Commercial Enterprises, used the services of the drug-linked
Banco de Iberoamerica. A related dummy company, which did
business with the same bank, purchased arms for the contra
through Manzer al-Kassar, the Syrian arms and drug broker, who
also dealt with leaders of the Medellin cartel. Noriega's
personal lawyer and business representative in Geneva also set up
a front to establish an airfield in Costa Rica for supplying the
contras.
_Helped obstruct investigation_
Evidence gathered by Costa Rican authorities suggests that
Noriega's intelligence operatives also helped the C.I.A. and its
allies in the Costa Rican security services obstruct the
investigation of an assassination attempt against Pastora by
peddling disinformation about the main suspect's background. The
bombing of Pastora's press conference at La Penca on May 30,
1984, which killed several journalists and an aide to Pastora but
missed the rebel leader himself was most likely planned by
hardliners in the contra movement close to the C.I.A., according
to an official Costa Rican probe. The Noriega connection to the
La Penca coverup is significant since, according to Floyd
Carlton, his former friend and drug partner, "there are some
officers who are connected to the intelligence services of Costa
Rica which to a certain extent are the creation of General
Noriega. They have been trained in Panama... and these people
keep a certain... loyalty to General Noriega."
None of these allegations apparently made any impression on Vice
President George Bush, coordinator of the Reagan administration's
War on Drugs. Bush claimed during the 1988 presidential campaign
to have known little or nothing of Noriega's narcotics dealings.
Perhaps he was kept in the dark by his top drug aide, Adm. Daniel
Murphy, who declared in September 1988, "I never saw any
intelligence suggesting 'General Noriega's involvement in the
drug trade. In fact, we always held up Panama as the model in
terms of cooperation with the United States in the war on drugs."
_Never turned over files_
The political intrigues that first attracted the Administration
to Noriega and ultimately repelled it will take years to uncover
fully. The C.I.A. never turned over its files on Noriega to
Federal prosecutors. The National Security Council ordered
agencies to refuse congressional requests for information that
would illuminate the policy debates. However, it seems clear
that official approval of Noriega's indictment and subsequent
military capture had as much to do with politics as with law
enforcement. After June 1986 media revelations about Noriega, an
interagency meeting of senior Administration policy makers
decided to "put Noriega on the shelf until Nicaragua was settled.
After Noriega's indictment in early 1988, one State Department
official commented: "We don't know anything today about Tony
Noriega that we didn't know a year ago. What's changed is
politics and Panama, not Tony Noriega." And as the New York
Times observed (almost four years to the day after it branded him
Central America's leading criminal), Noriega's alleged drug
dealing was relatively small scale by Latin American standards...
American officials strongly suspect highranking military officers
in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador of similar, and in some
cases even greater involvement in drug dealing -- yet have not
taken harsh action against them."
Perhaps the most striking evidence of a political double standard
was the silence of the Bush Administration on the composition of
the post invasion regime. The U.S. installed president of
Panama, Guillermo Endara, had been a director and secretary of
Banco Interoceanico, targeted by the F.B.I. and D.E.A. and named
by Floyd Carlton as a major front for laundering Colombian drug
money. The bank reportedly served both the Cali and Medellin
cartels. Endara's business partner Carlos Eleta, who reportedly
laundered C.I.A. finds into Endara's presidential campaign in the
spring of 1989, was arrested in April of that year in Georgia for
allegedly conspiring to import more than half a ton of cocaine
into the United States each month. Prosecutors dropped the
indictment following the invasion, citing lack of evidence.
Washington issued no public protest when Endara appointed to the
key posts of attorney general, treasury minister and chief
justice of the supreme court three former directors of First
Interamericas Bank, an institution controlled by the Cali cartel
and used to wash its drug money. Panamanian authorities took
over the bank in 1985 and liquidated its assets -- an action
hailed by U.S. authorities as the government's first major action
against a money -- laundering operation. Noriega's move against
the bank may have been less then altruistic, however; a lawyer
for the Cali interest complained that Noriega made a practice of
turning in rivals of the Medellin cartel.
--
-- Ward Larkin
wlarkin@hounix.org
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