AFTER ONE ALL-OUT war and 21 months of legal battles, Manuel Noriega is prepared to become the first leader of a sovereign nation tried in the courts of another nation in crimes committed on his own soil.
"When he first arrived his attitude was, `I can't believe that the government of the United States, who I had such a rapport with for several years, would do this to me,' " defense attorney Frank Rubino said in Miami, site of the trial."Then he reached a transition stage where he accepted the fact that the government had double-crossed him. Now he's reached the stage where . . . he's prepared for the fight.
"He's going to give it the fight of his life."
U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler scheduled a hearing Wednesday to clear the decks of pending motions and Thursday prosecutors and defense attorneys will begin choosing 12 jurors and at least four alternates to hear the long, complex case against the deposed general.
Court administrators summoned 1,204 Dade County voters for jury duty, more than triple the usual number.
"The problem with this trial is length, plus it's Noriega," said jury administrator Maria Bar-reiro.
Each candidate was mailed a 27-page questionnaire asking about biographical data, availability, familiarity with the case, attitudes toward crime and drugs and ties to Panama.
A week before the trial, the jury pool was whittled to 304 candidates.
Barreiro said 435 questionnaires were undeliverable, 114 people failed to return them and 76 candidates were deferred to another panel.
And 202 were either exempt, disqualified or excused because of their jobs, age, family situations, inability to speak English, recent jury service or because they faced criminal charges themselves. The rest were still awaiting decisions on their requests to be excused from the ordeal.
The questionnaires will speed the jury selection process in a trial that is still expected to last three to eight months, Rubino said.
He hired a professional jury consultant to sift through the responses and advise the defense on juror attitudes. Prosecutors were also reviewing the forms.
Diane Cossin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, would say only that prosecutors are looking for "an informed jury" and are confidant an impartial jury can be seated in Miami.
The enormous publicity surrounding the case virtually assured the jury would be sequestered. Ignoring that publicity and presuming Noriega innocent may prove one of the jury's greatest challenges.
"The president of the United States got on national television and said that General Noriega was a purveyer of drugs to little children. So I mean, you start out with that negative publicity," Rubino said.
"Some of the publicity we are responsible for and we admit it, but we felt it was necessary to counteract the adverse publicity the government had generated for such a long period.
"Then needless to say, a case of this nature is going to, in and of itself, get its own publcity no matter who offers it.
"When you try, for the first time in the history of the world, the leader of a foreign country you've got to expect it."
If convicted on all the charges, Noriega could face up to 145 years in prison.
Neither side has revealed who will testify as witnesses.
But the government is expected to present a parade of convicts and snitches to describe alleged Noriega involvement in drug crimes they committed.
Noriega's attorneys are eager to challenge the credibility of the government witnesses.
"As they put them on, we'll knock them down. We'll show each one has been bribed and the bribe he received for his testimony," Rubino said.
Drug enforcement agents were also expected to testify about a 2,141-pound cocaine seizure from a Panamanian plane allegedly sent to Miami with Noriega's blessings.
"Then you've got the entire financial case, which covers everything from the Contra pipeline to the general's relationship with the CIA and other intellligence gathering organizations," Rubino said.
The U.S. government froze more than $20 million worth of Noriega's assets, most of it in European branches of the BCCI, claiming it was drug profits.
Defense attorneys insist Noriega earned the money working for U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, supplying arms to the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua, and spying on Fidel Castro for the United States.
Rubino has subpoenaed diaries and documents from the past five U.S. presidents and the past seven CIA directors and has hinted he will ask Bush to testify.
He will argue that Noriega was working for the U.S. government and that the drug charges were fabricated to get back at him when the relationship faltered.
"We're going to show it's nothing more than a big double-cross of General Noriega by the government. We think that the jury is entitled to the whole truth about his relationship with the U.S. government and how that relationship soured at the end."
Hoeveler ruled that many, though far from all, of the potentially embarrassing classified documents Rubino wanted can be used as evidence.
"He gave us the ability now to put forth what we believe will be a real defense," Rubino said.
Both sides are expected to offer a forest's worth of paperwork, though many of the classified documents will have sections blacked out.
Noriega has whiled away the months in prison reviewing those documents, as well as those generated by his own government and his lawyers.
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(Additional information)
The 12 charges handed up
Manuel Noriega is named in all but one of the 12 counts charged in the February 1988 indictment handed up against the deposed Panamanian leader and 15 co-defendants:
Count I: A catch-all racketeering conspiracy count charging that Noriega helped the Medellin cartel set up operations in Panama, hid its leaders after they were blamed for assassinating Colombia's justice minister in 1984, authorized creation of the cartel's "Tranquilandia" cocaine lab in Panama, and generally supported efforts to import cocaine into the United States.
The count includes the alleged role played by Fidel Castro in smoothing over a dispute between Noriega and the cartel over the eventual bust of the Tranquilandia lab.
Count II: Actual racketeering charge incorporating the actions in Count I.
Count III: Conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States between October 1981 and January 1984.
Count IV: Distribution of 400 kilograms of cocaine in May 1983.
Count V: Distribution of 400 kilograms of cocaine in January 1984.
Count VI: Aiding Medellin cartel leaders in manufacturing "multiton quantities of cocaine" in Tranquilandia between September 1983 and March 1984.
Count VII: Conspiracy to manufacture cocaine in Tran-quilandia, as well as distributing and importing it during May and summer 1984.
Count IX: Conspiracy to import 322 kilograms of cocaine aboard the yacht Krill between November 1985 and March 1986. The U.S.-bound cocaine was confiscated in Colombia after Noriega allegedly approved trading M-16 automatic rifles for the drugs. (Two co-defendants were convicted in a separate trial on this count.)
Count X: Distribution of the cocaine listed in the previous count.
Counts XI: Causing travel in furtherance of the conspiracy; the flight of two drug pilots who carried $800,000 in drug proceeds from Fort Lauderdale to Panama.
Count XII: Causing travel in furtherance of the conspiracy; the flight of drug pilot Tony Aizprua to Panama in May 1984.