Noriega Prosecutors Deny Secret Data Will Be Released

Manuel A. Noriega’s usually tight-lipped prosecutors went public Thursday to rebut defense attorney accounts that a judge had ordered the release of important secret documents.

U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler issued a sealed 41-page opinion Wednesday dealing with classified reports by the CIA and other agencies on such subjects as guns-for-drugs deals and Noriega’s ties to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Noriega’s attorneys said Hoeveler ordered many documents released and hailed the ruling as a boost for their defense in the deposed Panamanian leaders’s scheduled Sept. 3 trial.

But, on Thursday, U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Diane Cossin broke her department’s customary silence on the case to challenge that account.

“When the document is made public, we believe statements made previously will be shown to be misleading,” she said. “But this document is still sealed and is not to be discussed publicly at this moment.”

A U.S. Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the government had won on “99% of the issues.” The official said the ruling was so favorable that prosecutors did not expect to appeal any of it to a higher court.

Defense attorney Frank Rubino said Thursday that he was amazed by the prosecution’s reaction.

“The judge allowed four out of the five defense theories we wanted,” Rubino said. The government “didn’t want anybody to know the general’s relationship with the CIA, with respect to (Fidel) Castro, with respect to the Contras--but all that will now be part of this trial.”

Noriega is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center outside of Miami while awaiting trial on charges that he turned Panama into a way station for Colombia’s Medellin cartel to ship cocaine to the United States.

The U.S. Customs Service, meanwhile, reacted to reports that government witness Boris Olarte Morales--a Medellin cartel bagman who says he took $4 million to Noriega--has been sent to Colombia as a Customs informant.

The reports in the Washington Post and New York Newsday said Olarte’s absence could undermine the government’s case and that Drug Enforcement Administration officials were outraged at Customs.