Manuel Noriega

"Drug trafficker"  Manuel Noriega   (soldier, politician, puppet leader)
For a year or two, Noriega was enemy image number 1
Born	Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno 11 February 1934 Panama City, Republic of Panama
Died	May 29, 2017 (Age 83)
Cause of death	brain tumor
Alma mater	Chorrillos Military School, School of the Americas
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Children	3
Spouse	Felicidad Sieiro de Noriega
A puppet leader being used in CIA Drug trafficking.  Maximum Leader of National Liberation In office December 15, 1983 - December 20, 1989  Military Leader of Panama In office August 12, 1983 - December 20, 1989

Manuel Noriega nicknamed Pineapple Face for his acné was the right hand man of assassinated strongman Omar Torrijos and Panamanian military officer and politician, who was de facto ruler of Panama from 1983 until 1989. Although funded, educated, trained and protected by the CIA and 3 US presidents, Noriega was removed in a US invasion in 1989.

Career

Full article: CIA/Drug trafficking

Kid rape

Noriega - coming from a poor family - failed to get into medical school before joining the National Guard. In the guard he would abuse girls while on the job. In 1963, he had been accused of raping a sex worker in his patrol car and a few years later he raped a teenage girl. The last scandal got him reassigned to a remote region, but he was never sentenced. An editorial in the NYT suggested that was because of protection from higher ups in the military. Noriega rose through the ranks of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) and became a key figure in Panamanian politics and military leadership.

School of the Americas

Full article: School of the Americas

The School of the Americas was established in 1946 under the name Latin American Training Center - Ground Division in the extra-territorial canal zone of Panama. Its task was a sorts of deep state recruitment centre through military training of Latin American military personnel and military advisors. During the Cold War, the focus set in ccm shifted towards preventing the spread of communism in Latin America with the famous polarising perspective known as the (domino theory). After the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 and under pressure from the Panamanian government, the location in the extraterritorial canal zone was given up in 1984 and relocated to Fort Benning. Noriega was recruited as a CIA informant while studying at a military academy in Peru. He received intelligence and counterintelligence training at the School of the Americas at Fort Gulick, Panama, in 1967, as well as a course in psychological operations at Fort Bragg, North Carolina After a military coup in 1968, Noriega quickly rose through the ranks and became head of Panama's military intelligence and a key figure under General Omar Torrijos, the military ruler who signed a treaty with the US to restore the Panama canal zone to Panamanian sovereignty in 1977. Torrijos died in a very strange plane crash after which Noriega became increasingly skill-full in using his SOTA's torturing techniques while working hand in hand with other drug kingpins including Pablo Escobar.

How the CIA Created a Cocaine Dictator - VICE NEWS In December 1989, 25,00 US troops invaded the small, Central American republic of Panama. But this was not a war against some communist regime or terrorist group – this was a drugs bust, aimed at arresting Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, who was wanted on trafficking charges in Miami. Awkwardly for the US, Noriega had been a major CIA asset for decades – even as they knew he was becoming massively embedded with the cartels flooding the streets of the US with coke. This is how US intelligence shielded Noriega, even as he trafficked cocaine and laundered cartel millions – and also how the War on Drugs came to replace the Cold War as the central feature of US foreign policy.

Early CIA friend

Bush Sr and Noriega sitting peacefully together. The Guardian - 2010

Noriega's relationship with U.S. intelligence began in the 1950s when he was a young military officer. At the time, the United States saw him as a valuable asset in the region due to his knowledge of Panama's political landscape and his willingness to assist in anti-communist efforts during the Cold War. Manuel Noriega worked with the CIA and U.S. intelligence agencies primarily because of his early cooperation, his strategic importance due to Panama's location, and his role in providing intelligence on communists movements in Latin America during the Cold War. However - officially - his involvement in drug trafficking and human rights abuses eventually turned local media and populations against him. Bush still reported back internally of not knowing what Noriega did with or how he funded the economy in Panada. Noriega provided information to the CIA about leftist movements and political developments in Latin America, particularly in countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In this form, Noriega's operation greatly facilitated the infamous Contras in Latin America later on. Noriega set up relay stations to let the CIA spy on Nicaraguan targets and allowed the US to virtually tap every place of entry from airports to telephone stations.

Loose Cannon or True to the mission?

Full article: Document:The Man Who Sold the War

During negotiations for the Panama Canal treaties, the U.S. government ordered its military intelligence to wiretap Panamanian officials. Noriega discovered this operation in early 1976, played a double bluff, bought the tapes and attempted to blackmail the CIA, who named it the "Singing Sergeants affair". Bush Sr - fresh new head of the CIA, did not report this incident to either the National Security Agency or the U.S. Justice Department, to keep Noriega's contacts with the CIA private. At this point, Noriega became a sort of double agent, even leaking to the KGB, placing the cold war narratives in question. In 1986, the East German Stasi and the Danish ship Pia Vesta tried to sell Soviet Union weapons and military vehicles to South Africa's Armscor. After Jimmy Cartel oversaw several failed coup attempts in the increasingly more unstable country, Noriega revoked the rights of the country to hold elections and declared himself "Maximum leader" of the country. U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney - who never escaped these kind of stories in American history - was alleged to have refused to take Noriega or help the coup attempt.

In 1989, shortly after his last election, President George H.W. Bush signed a highly secret "finding" authorising the CIA to funnel $10 million to opposition forces in Panama to overthrow Noriega. Reluctant to involve agency personnel directly, the CIA turned to the Rendon Group. Rendon's job was to work behind the scenes, using a variety of campaign and psychological techniques to put the CIA's choice, Guillermo Endara, into the presidential palace. Cash from the agency, laundered through various bank accounts and front organizations, would end up in Endara's hands, who would then pay Rendon.

SOTA Executions

“I’ve got Bush by the balls”
Manuel Noriega (1988) 

Around 1972 the U.S. were reported to increasingly let more people in Panama let go in investigations, possibly as a result of an agreement between Torrijos and U.S. President Richard Nixon. Noriega according to journalist John Dinges - Noriega was using his SOTA training to execute the most trivial of opponents on a Phoenix-program style level of skill. Priests arguing for less drug trafficking were thrown out of helicopters, Noriega began selling info to the countries he had relay stations for the CIA set up for - including Cuba, which in part, caused the Jimmy Carter administration to stop funding after President Ford already halted the funding - alleged up to $100.000 a year of Noriega (which increased to $11 million at the end of his reign)

Hugo Spadafora, had reported on Noriega's involvement in the huge cocaine importation into the US through collaboration with Colombian drug lords Carlos Lehder and Pablo Escobar. Weeks later, Spadafora torso was discovered inside a sizable USPS mail bag. A butcher's knife had sawn off his head, which was never discovered.

However, Noriega's relationship with the United States deteriorated in the late 1980s for various reasons, including the perception of him growing out of control. In December 1989 - one year after dropping him from their payroll, the CIA gave green light and the United States invaded Panama in an operation called "Operation Just Cause," with the official narrative of capturing Noriega and "bringing him to justice".

Arrest

Tyrants and Dictators - Manuel Noriega - Miliary Doc.

Full article: Invasion of Panama

“He was a pawn in an international game that was way bigger than him and he certainly paid dearly," said Barbara Trent, a filmmaker who directed "The Panama Deception," a 1992 documentary about the U.S. invasion.

"He was a small-time player catapulted to international fame by the U.S. government and the media to drum up support for a ruthless invasion," Trent added. Working with the CIA Noriega ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989. Before and during that time, he worked with multiple U.S. intelligence agencies who agreed to ignore allegations that he was a drug trafficker in exchange for a staunch anti-communist ally in Central America during the height of the Cold War. Noriega was paid handsomely for his help, about $10,000 per month at one point, according to John Dinges, author of "Our Man in Panama: How General Noriega Used the United States and Made Millions in Drugs and Arms (1990)."

"The relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon was quite intense in the early '80s," Dinges told ABC News. "He was considered an important asset, and everyone in the documents I've read spoke very highly of him. He was trusted to the extent that you trust someone who is a paid intelligence asset.”
Kaelyn Forde,  ABC (2017) 

After the invasion, Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican Embassy in Panama City but eventually surrendered to U.S. authorities in January 1992. He was subsequently transported to the United States, where he faced trial on charges related to drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering. Noriega’s counsel moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that United States laws could not be applied to a foreign leader whose alleged illegal activities all occurred outside the territorial bounds of the United States. Counsel further argued that Noriega was immune from prosecution as a head of state and diplomat, and that his alleged narcotics offenses constituted acts of state not properly reviewable by the US Court. In 1992, he was found guilty and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Noriega was extradited to France in 2010, where he was convicted and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for money laundering. In 2011 France extradited him to Panama, where he was incarcerated for crimes committed during his rule, for which he had been tried and convicted in absentia in the 1990s. Diagnosed with a brain tumor in March 2017, Noriega suffered complications during surgery, and died two months later. Manuel Noriega's rise and fall illustrate the complex and controversial history the CIA drug trafficking and thus U.S. involvement in Panama and its relationship with strongman leaders in the region during the Cold War era. Noriega's case also highlighted the connections between military regimes, drug trafficking, and international politics in Central America during that period.

“[Manuel Noriega] allied himself with the Medellin Cartel, his country serving as an important transit point for cocaine towards the United States. The Reagan administration worked with Noriega in support of the Nicaraguan contras, but by 1989 the dictator was growing out of control and had become such a liability to the United States, that George H. W. Bush ordered an invasion of Panama to capture Noriega. During his trial in the early 1990s, numerous witnesses/drug traffickers accused Noriega of drug trafficking, along with ties to George H. W. Bush, Colonel Oliver North and other CIA Contra figures. As the torture-murder of Hugo Spadafora in particular revealed, Noriega also was an extreme human rights violator who, similarly to the drug cartels and the CIA, had no problem torturing his enemies to death.”
Joël van der Reijden (August 27, 2016) 

9/11 Connection?

Noriega's planes were still used decades later. Arne Kruithof is the Dutch-German owner of flight school "Florida Flight Training", the flight school used by the 9-11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. The plane Jarrah was trained in by Kruithof was allegedly traced back to Noriega's associates by Daniel Hopsicker.

Occultism?

Noriega practiced occult rituals of at least two religions related to voodoo. US Officials raided his US compound and dubbed it the "witch house". Noriega was accused to "practicing evil magic" and other occult rituals to help himself politically and personally according to Special Agent James R. Dibble, a specialist on "cults and deviant movements" in the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. He said there also were indications that Noriega practiced "sex magic", not clarifying what that meant or if it could be related his early life child rape.

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