Prosecution Winds Up Noriega Trial
Sun-Sentinel
Wednesday, April 1, 1992
By WARREN RICHEY
Staff Writer
MIAMI — A federal prosecutor described Manuel Antonio Noriega on Tuesday as a "corrupt, rotten cop" who sold out to cocaine traffickers while deceiving U.S. agents into thinking he was cooperating in the war on drugs.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Myles Malman made the statements during the government's closing argument in Noriega's five-month-long drug-trafficking and racketeering trial.
"Manuel Antonio Noriega was nothing more, nothing less, than the corrupt, rotten cop that Carlos Lehder described," Malman said, referring to testimony by the convicted drug cartel leader who was a star prosecution witness.
"He sold his uniform, his army and his protection to a murderous international gang known as the Medellin cocaine cartel," Malman said." He violated U.S. laws and put tons and tons of a deadly white powder on U.S. streets. That is why he is here today."
Noriega sat, passive and motionless, at the defense table as Malman pointed accusingly toward the deposed dictator. As he had been throughout the trial, Noriega was dressed in his ceremonial khaki uniform.
In an unusual move, defense attorney Frank Rubino was not present in court during the government's closing.
Instead, co-counsel Jon May sat beside Noriega while Rubino worked elsewhere in the courthouse on his closing statement, expected to be delivered today.
Rubino has sought to portray his client as a loyal ally of Washington who offered significant cooperation to Drug Enforcement Administration agents at the same time prosecutors said Noriega was taking bribes from the cartel.
"The issue is not whether or not the defendant could play the good cop when he wanted," Malman said. "Manuel Antonio Noriega was a man of great, great power. He used his power to deceive the DEA on a daily basis with sanitized and controlled information."
In a decision announced before closing statements, U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler turned down a dfense request to challenge the veracity of a key prosecution witness, Gabriel Taboada. Attorney F. Lee Bailey had suggested to the court that Taboada, Bailey's former client, may have lied when he testified that he had seen Noriega in a face-to-face meeting with cartel bosses.
Hoeveler said Taboada had passed a polygraph examination on Monday and that the judge had determined that Bailey's concern about possible perjury was a result of "miscommunication and misinterpretation."
