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Noriega began his legal counterattack the day he arrived in Florida by refusing to enter a plea at his arraignment in U.S. district court. Dressed in a fresh uniform that was sent to him at the Vatican embassy by his mistress Vicky Amado, the general used headphones to follow the proceedings in Spanish. Defense attorney Frank A. Rubino argued that his client was immune from prosecution because he was a political prisoner who had been brought to the U.S illegally.
Though that argument may provide a basis for later appeals, it was just a minor stumbling block last week. After U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen raised objections to Rubino's statements, Judge Hoeveler entered a not-guilty plea on Noriega's behalf. Defense attorneys are also insisting that Noriega cannot get a fair trial in a nation where the President has publicly called him a thug. Yet the fact that twelve jurors could be found who were unfamiliar with the congressional testimony of Iran-contra star Oliver North makes it less likely that those objections will stand in the way of a trial.
Noriega may hope to escape a guilty verdict because of weaknesses in the Government cases. The indictments in Tampa and Miami are based largely on testimony by convicted felons, whose word juries sometimes find less persuasive than evidence provided through wiretaps or documents. Said a prominent federal prosecutor: "Sounds to me that they got nothing but snitches." A probable witness is Steven Michael Kalish, 37, a convicted drug dealer serving time in Louisiana who claims he passed on $6 million to Noriega over a ten-month period in 1983 and '84. Two other likely convict-witnesses who have given testimony from their jail cells are drug-running pilots Floyd Carlton-Cacerez and Antonio Aizprua, the latter another of Noriega's personal pilots.
An important witness who has not been charged with any crimes is Jose Blandon, former consul general of Panama in New York and a onetime member of Noriega's inner circle. After breaking with the dictator two years ago, Blandon told a Miami grand jury that in Havana in 1984 he watched Fidel Castro mediate a dispute between Noriega and members of the Medellin cartel after Panamanian troops closed down a drug laboratory that Noriega had been paid to protect.
That allegation later formed the basis for one of the charges in the Miami indictment. Blandon maintains that Castro was not so much interested in furthering the drug trade as he was in preventing the drug lords from destabilizing Noriega, who was helping Cuba get around U.S. trade restrictions through false-front companies in Panama that purchased Western goods.
To strengthen their case, prosecutors are sifting through documents seized by U.S. troops who invaded Noriega's Panama headquarters. Noriega's attorneys are likely to claim that the military's warrantless search makes the evidence inadmissible in court. Few legal observers expect that objection to hamper the prosecution; American constitutional safeguards usually apply only within the nation's borders.