The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Manuel Noriega.md

title	aliases	created	updated	category	tags	summary	born	died	location	relations
Manuel Noriega	Manuel Noriega Manuel Antonio Noriega Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno General Noriega El Man	2026-05-17	2026-10-05	Political Figure	Person Military Panama PanamanianDefenseForces DrugTrafficking MedellinCartel IranContra ContraWar BCCI 1980s DarkAllianceInvestigation	Panamanian intelligence chief and commander of the Defense Forces who dealt with the CIA, the Medellin Cartel and Oliver North at once, was indicted in Miami in 1988, invaded in 1989 and convicted in 1992.	1934-02-11	2017-05-29	Panama City, Panama	type with start end role fn head_of Panamanian Defense Forces 1983 1989-12 commander; before that chief of Panamanian military intelligence under Omar Torrijos 5 type with role fn informant_for Central Intelligence Agency intelligence contact and, per Webb and the testimony of CIA operations chief Donald Winters, a long-term paid asset; the 1976 DCI (Bush) file on Noriega is partly withheld 3 type with start end role fn partner_of Medellin Cartel 1982 1984 paid by Pablo Escobar and Gustavo Gaviria for passage of cocaine flights through Panama, per the pilot Floyd Carlton 4 type with start end role fn partner_of Oliver North 1985-06 1986-09 met North in June 1985 and London on September 22, 1986 on sabotage of Nicaraguan targets 8 type with reverse start end role fn investigated Kerry Committee true 1987 1988-12 Senate subcommittee examined Noriega's drug, arms and intelligence ties 2 type with reverse start end role fn prosecuted United States Department of Justice true 1988-02-04 1992-07 indicted in Miami February 4, 1988; convicted on eight counts April 1992; sentenced to 40 years 10

Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was a Panamanian army officer who rose from chief of military intelligence under General Torrijos to commander of the Panamanian Defense Forces. The United States Department of State's Foreign Relations of the United States volume for Panama lists him as "Lieutenant Colonel, Panamanian military figure and Chief of Military Intelligence in Panama."¹ The Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations chaired by John Kerry reported in December 1988 that after Torrijos died in a plane crash on July 31, 1981, Noriega gained control of the U.S. Customs, Immigration and Passport Services, Civil Aeronautics, the National Bank of Panama and the Attorney General's Office, consolidated the National Guard, Air Force, Navy and police into the Defense Forces, and made Panama what one witness termed a "narcokleptocracy."²

Before 1981: intelligence contacts and early reports

The Kerry report states that, according to press accounts, the first ties between the Panamanian military and drug traffickers were noted in the early 1970s by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which identified Noriega, then in charge of military intelligence, as working with traffickers; a DEA agent in South America told the subcommittee that reports linking Noriega and narcotics were received before 1978, and that Noriega and Torrijos were seen visiting Medellin, where traffickers met them. The report counts more than 80 DEA files between 1970 and 1987 in which Noriega's name appeared, none followed up because the references were "third party or hearsay information which we cannot pursue very well."²

The State Department's own volume for 1973 to 1976 contains, as document 133, a "Memorandum of Conversation" of October 6, 1976, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., in New York, whose person index lists George Bush, then Director of Central Intelligence (George H.W. Bush), and Noriega; its source note reads "Central Intelligence Agency, Executive Registry, Job 90M01243R: Box 15, Folder 15: Noriega /Panama Search: DCI (Bush) Files on Noreiga," and states "Three pages not declassified."¹ The writer Gary Webb described Noriega as a longtime CIA asset who received payments from the agency, brokered deals with South American leaders and acted as liaison to Fidel Castro; Donald Winters, identified as the CIA's chief of operations in Panama, testified in the proceeding that led to Noriega's 1999 resentencing that Noriega brokered deals with South American leaders, served as a liaison to Castro, supplied intelligence on guerrilla and terrorist activity and sheltered the former Shah of Iran.³

Noriega's own arms trade began before the Contra war. The Kerry report, citing the testimony of Jose Blandon, says that using his control of the security apparatus Noriega arranged Panamanian end-user certificates, resold the weapons to the highest bidder, and counted among his earliest clients the Sandinistas, then trying to overthrow Anastasio Somoza; the arms were bought in Europe by Michael Barari and Jorge Krupnick and moved to Costa Rica under the eye of Noriega's partner, the Costa Rican Security Minister Johnny Echevarria. After the 1979 victory surplus weapons were sold on to Salvadoran rebels, and the pilot Floyd Carlton and his partner Cesar Rodriguez flew guns into El Salvador in 1980 in Panamanian military aircraft until Rodriguez's plane crashed. The former State Department official Francis McNeil testified that Torrijos was told to "knock it off," producing "a diminution of Panamanian involvement" until his death.²

Control of institutions and the Medellin Cartel

The Kerry report names Panamanian military officers it said were drug-involved, among them Captain Luis Quiel, whom Noriega placed in charge of Panama's anti-drug smuggling unit and as his representative to the DEA, and a nonmilitary "civilian group" of Noriega's personal pilots and business partners including Enrique Pretelt, Carlos Wittgreen, George Novey III, Cesar Rodriguez and Floyd Carlton. Blandón told the subcommittee that Quiel was used to eliminate competitors of the Cartel by turning them over to the United States even as John Lawn called Quiel "integral to the success" of the anti-drug effort.²

Carlton testified that in mid-1982, while serving as Noriega's personal pilot, he was asked by Pablo Escobar and Gustavo Gaviria to fly cocaine from Colombia into Panama; Escobar offered Noriega $30,000 to $40,000 a load, Noriega said that was too little, and he was paid $100,000 for the first flight, $150,000 for the second, $200,000 for the third and $250,000 for the fourth.⁴ The subcommittee's account is that in May 1984, on the day of the Panamanian elections, the Cartel leaders came to Panama to meet the former Colombian president Alfonso Lopez Michelsen a week after the assassination of the Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, and Noriega told associates the Cartel paid between $4 million and $7 million for protection; that in mid-May Noriega, pressed by U.S. law enforcement, allowed a raid on a Cartel cocaine laboratory in Darien province, and according to Blandón the Cartel decided to kill him until Fidel Castro mediated, sending a 25-man Cuba military unit to fly back with Noriega.²⁵ The money launderer Ramon Milian Rodriguez told the subcommittee that he negotiated for the Cartel an agreement with Noriega with fees of one to ten percent depending on the amount laundered, and that currency was flown to Panama by airlines whose station managers were in Noriega's employ. The American trafficker Steven Kalish testified that Noriega gave him three Panamanian passports and protected his organization until Kalish's arrest on July 26, 1984.² The BCCI manager Amjad Awan and bank officials told the subcommittee that in 1982 Noriega opened an account at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International that grew to about $20 million through cash deposits and from which he paid cash to Panamanian political figures; Noriega asked that its records be kept away from Panamanians and booked outside the country.²

Spadafora, the Contras and the "rent-a-colonel"

By 1984 the Panamanian physician Hugo Spadafora was publicly criticizing Noriega for working with Colombian traffickers, and the subcommittee heard testimony from Carlton and Blandón that Noriega had Spadafora tortured and murdered by members of the Defense Forces in September 1985.²⁶ Webb wrote that Sebastian Gonzalez, a CIA asset and close friend of Norwin Meneses, was close to Noriega and was suspected of involvement in the beheading of Spadafora, who was a Contra supporter, shortly before Spadafora was to make public information about Noriega's drug involvement, and that Rafael Cornejo was arrested, tortured and jailed by Noriega's men in 1977 while smuggling cocaine through Panama for Meneses.³ Robert Owen's April 1, 1985 memorandum to Oliver North, released by the National Security Archive, described Gonzalez as "now involved in drug running out of Panama."⁷

McNeil told the subcommittee that the State Department had never trusted Noriega and called him "the rent-a-colonel," in tribute to his ability "to simultaneously milk the antagonistic intelligence services of the United States," and that U.S. intelligence agencies, whom he said had become Noriega's clients, took a "see no evil approach." The former NSC staff member Norman Bailey testified to the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control on Narcotics that when he was at the NSC from 1981 to 1983 "a plethora of human intelligence, electronic intercepts and satellite and overflight photography" constituted "not a smoking gun but rather a twenty-one cannon barrage" of evidence of Noriega's drug and arms dealing, including gunrunning to the Sandinistas, Contras and Salvadoran guerrillas and illegal technology transfers to the Soviet bloc. Customs Commissioner William Von Raab testified that his service had evidence linking Noriega to narcotics trafficking as early as 1983. In 1985 and 1986, McNeil testified, a formal policy review concluded with a decision "to put Noriega on the shelf until Nicaragua was settled"; Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams publicly denied that the delay was because of Nicaragua. Daniel Murphy gave the explanation that lower-level information was not passed to policymakers.²

The Kerry report records that the United States admitted, in agreed statements of fact in the North trial, that Noriega gave Contras of the Southern Front $100,000 in July 1984. Blandón testified that Noriega met North in June 1985 on a boat off Panama City to discuss Panamanian cooperation while the Boland Amendment barred direct or indirect support, and agreed to help train Contra troops and to let Contra leaders enter and leave Panama; Blandón had no information that Noriega acted on North's request. Noriega met CIA Director William J. Casey in November 1985; Casey's memorandum recorded that Noriega left "reassured" and the narcotics issue was not raised, and other officials concluded Casey had "let Noriega off the hook." Ambassador Everett Briggs complained and Admiral John Poindexter was sent to Panama to "upbraid" Noriega; on December 17, 1985 Noriega met Poindexter and Briggs, and Blandón testified that Noriega told him Poindexter said a group of officers would have to leave the country because of the Spadafora murder.²

On May 8, 1986, DEA Administrator Lawn wrote to Noriega expressing "deep appreciation for the vigorous anti-drug trafficking policy that you have adopted," and a May 27, 1987 letter again assured him of DEA's welcome of cooperation.² Lawn testified that DEA had never been refused a narcotics request by the Panamanian government. Seymour Hersh's article in the New York Times of June 12, 1986 quoted an unnamed White House official that "the most significant drug running in Panama was being directed by General Noriega."⁷

Sabotage proposals, August to September 1986

The National Security Archive's briefing book prints North's electronic message to Poindexter of August 23, 1986: "You will recall that over the years Manuel Noriega in Panama and I have developed a fairly good relationship," North wrote, before explaining that if officials could "help clean up his image" and lift the ban on arms sales to the Defense Forces, Noriega would "take care of the Sandinista leadership for us." North suggested paying Noriega $1 million from "Project Democracy" funds for help destroying Nicaraguan economic installations; Poindexter replied the same day authorizing a secret meeting: "I have nothing against him other than his illegal activities." North's notebook for August 24 records a meeting with the CIA officer Dewey Clarridge and a decision to "send word back to Noriega to meet in Europe or Israel."⁷

Lawrence Walsh's Final Report records that at a Restricted Interagency Group meeting in Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage's office on September 19, 1986, North said Noriega had offered to have sabotage conducted inside Nicaragua for $1 million in cash that would not come from the U.S. Government; Alan Fiers understood the funds would be from Project Democracy. Elliott Abrams's meeting with the State Department officials Nicholas Platt and Charles Hill the next day is recorded in Hill's notes: "Noriega offers to do some sabotage (electric pylons) that we training contras to do but which they can't do for 18 mos. Wd get us on the map fast. Do it via mercenaries who may not know who employers are. Brits. Wd do it for cash (not from USG). Wants our go-ahead. Ollie will meet him w/approval of Pdx." Walsh states that "ultimately, the decision was made not to have North cause the $1 million to be paid to Noriega." Fiers testified at the 1992 trial of Clair George that he said, "No. We don't want to do that."⁸⁷ North met Noriega at a London hotel on September 22, 1986, where, according to North's notebook and the agreed statements of fact in his trial, they discussed a commando training program in Panama with Israeli support and sabotage of major economic targets near Managua, and Noriega "agreed to take immediate actions against the Sandinistas and offered a list of priorities, including an oil refinery, an airport, and the Puerto Sandino off-load facility."²⁷ The Final Report's summary of North's "Quid Pro Quo" conduct lists discussions with Noriega about sabotage "in exchange for U.S. help in rehabilitating Noriega's public image."⁹

Webb wrote, citing government documents filed in North's trial, that Noriega also offered to have the entire Sandinista leadership assassinated in exchange for a promise to "clean up Noriega's image," that North was told to say the administration was not keen on murdering Nicaraguan officials though sabotage would be acceptable, that North returned to Panama a month after Spadafora's death to assure Noriega of increased U.S. aid, and that within a year $200 million in additional U.S. funds and bank loans went to Noriega.³ The Kerry report dates Spadafora's murder to September 1985, the first North-Noriega meeting to June 1985 and the London meeting to September 1986.²

The Kerry Committee, the GAO and the NSC

The Kerry report states that the Reagan administration blocked a General Accounting Office review requested by Kerry of how U.S. agencies used information about Noriega's drug activity in policy decisions: the National Security Council "ordered all relevant agencies to withhold their files on Panama from the GAO," and the subcommittee "has not been able to undertake a full analysis of how the Noriega problem was handled by the U.S. prior to his indictment." An NSC legal adviser, Nicholas Rostow, wrote on July 13, 1988 that the request sought "sensitive law enforcement and intelligence files covering a substantial period of time" and raised "important statutory and constitutional issues." DEA Administrator Lawn told Admiral Murphy less than eight weeks before the indictment that none would be issued for insufficient evidence. In 1987 Murphy, with the Korean businessman Tongsun Park, visited Noriega in August and November after briefing officials at the CIA, State, Defense, the NSC and the Vice President's office; Murphy described himself as a private businessman, and Blandón testified that Noriega took the visits as a message from the U.S. government that he could remain in power until February 1989.²

The Kerry report's conclusion on Panama is that it "provides the best example in recent U.S. foreign policy of a foreign leader able to manipulate the United States to the detriment of our own interests," that Noriega "recognized that by making himself indispensable to various U.S. agencies, he could develop U.S. agents who would become dependent on him," and that the result was that "our government did nothing regarding Noriega's ... substantial criminal involvement because the first priority was the Contra war."²

Indictment, capture and trial

A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida indicted Noriega on drug charges on February 4, 1988. After the United States invaded Panama in December 1989 he surrendered to U.S. military officials on January 3, 1990 and was brought to Miami. In April 1992 a jury convicted him on eight counts and he was sentenced to consecutive terms of 20, 15 and 5 years, forty years in all; the Eleventh Circuit affirmed on July 7, 1997, rejecting a head-of-state immunity claim because "by pursuing Noriega's capture and this prosecution, the Executive Branch has manifested its clear sentiment that Noriega should be denied head-of-state immunity."¹⁰ William Hoeveler had granted him prisoner-of-war status and held him in a two-cell suite at a federal prison near Miami.⁵

On March 4, 1999 Hoeveler cut the sentence by ten years, to thirty, citing "the nature of his confinement" and the "disparity between the defendant's sentence and the sentences served by his co-conspirators"; the defense had argued that Noriega deserved credit for aiding U.S. interests in Latin America, and Winters testified to those services. Webb added that former ambassador Arthur Davis testified that Noriega did "a lot of good work." The parole board had indicated he would not be considered before 2019 under the original sentence; the reduction made a first hearing in 2000 possible, with release set for September 2007.⁵³ Parole was denied in March 2000 after former President George H.W. Bush said he feared Noriega would try to assassinate him if released early, and Hoeveler wrote a letter in February 2004 recommending early release.¹¹

France convicted Noriega in absentia in 1999 of laundering $2.8 million in drug money through the purchase of property; he was extradited to France in 2010, sentenced to seven years, and extradited to Panama on December 11, 2011, where Panamanian courts had convicted him in absentia of the murders of Spadafora and Moises Giroldi and of the killing of rebellious soldiers. He died at the Santo Tomas hospital in Panama City on May 29, 2017, aged 83, after surgery for a brain tumor.¹¹

Footnotes

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1. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, vol. XXII, Panama, "Persons" and doc. 133, "Memorandum of Conversation," New York, October 6, 1976. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v22/d133 ↩︎

2. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), ch. "Panama" (pp. 80 to 98), including appended GAO and NSC correspondence, testimony of Carlton, Blandon, Milian Rodriguez, Kalish, McNeil, Bailey, Lawn, Murphy and Gorman, and the Conclusions. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras ↩︎

3. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998, Cast of Characters; ch. 5, "God, Fatherland and Freedom"; chs. 11 and 12; Epilogue, "The damage that has been done." ↩︎

4. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy (1988), "Noriega and the Cartel" and "Noriega's Rift With the Cartel." https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras ↩︎

5. "Noriega's Prison Sentence Cut." CBS News/Associated Press, March 5, 1999. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/noriegas-prison-sentence-cut-05-03-1999/ ↩︎

6. Kerry Subcommittee, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, "Panama," testimony of Carlton and Blandon on the murder of Hugo Spadafora in September 1985. https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras ↩︎

7. National Security Archive, "The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations," Electronic Briefing Book No. 2, section "U.S. Officials and Major Traffickers: Manuel Noriega" (North e-mail of August 23, 1986; Poindexter reply; North notebook entries of August 24 and September 22, 1986; Fiers testimony in United States v. George, 1992; Owen memorandum of April 1, 1985; Hersh, New York Times, June 12, 1986). https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/index.html ↩︎

8. Walsh, Lawrence E. Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, vol. I (Washington, D.C.: Division for the Purpose of Appointing Independent Counsels, August 4, 1993), ch. 25, "United States v. Elliott Abrams," section on the September 19 and 20, 1986 meetings (citing Fiers, Grand Jury, August 14, 1991; Hill note, September 20, 1986). https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_25.htm ↩︎

9. Walsh, Final Report, vol. I, ch. 2, "United States v. Oliver L. North," summary of the "Quid Pro Quo" admission. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_02.htm ↩︎

10. United States v. Noriega, 117 F.3d 1206 (11th Cir. 1997) (Kravitch, J.), docket nos. 92-4687 and 96-4471, decided July 7, 1997. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/743130/united-states-of-america-plaintiff-appellee-v-manuel-antonio-noriega/ ↩︎

11. "Manuel Noriega Fast Facts," CNN, August 19, 2013; "Former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega dies at 83," JURIST, May 2017; "Ex-Panama dictator Noriega denied parole," NBC News/Associated Press. https://www.jurist.org/news/2017/05/former-panama-dictator-manuel-noreiga-dies-at-83/ ↩︎