Encyclopedia of world history (facts on file library of world history) 7 volume set ( PDFDrive ) 3139

Noriega, Manuel

319

General Manuel Noriega walks to his seat aboard a U.S. Air Force aircraft, escorted by agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
The former Panamanian leader was flown to the United States, where he was held for trial on drug charges.

to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and
to combat leftist revolutionary movements elsewhere
in Central America, Noriega ran afoul of U.S. policymakers in the aftermath of the Iran-contra affair;
was indicted on federal drug charges in February 1988;
and was overthrown in late December 1989 in the U.S.
invasion of Panama. He surrendered to U.S. officials
in early January 1990; was transported to the United
States; tried for drug trafficking in April 1992; found
guilty in September; and sentenced to 40 years in prison,
where he has remained. Convicted in France for money
laundering, and in Panama in absentia for murder, it is
unlikely that he will ever be freed.
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was born on February 11, 1938, in Panama City, the illegitimate child of
a poor single woman who died when he was a small boy.
Raised by his godmother in Panama City, he entered the
military and was trained at the Military School of Chor-

rillos in Peru, where in the late 1950s he was recruited
by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. His relationship
with U.S. intelligence agencies deepened during his training at the School of the Americas in Fort Gulick,
Panama, where he completed his coursework in 1967.
Commissioned as an intelligence officer in the Panama

National Guard the same year, he rose rapidly in rank.
In 1969 he helped dictator General Omar Torrijos fend
off a coup attempt, and soon after was appointed the
country’s Chief of Military Intelligence.
A shrewd political operator who deftly played
both sides of the fence, through the 1970s he received
hundreds of thousands of dollars as a CIA informant,
and passed U.S. secrets to Fidel Castro and other
U.S. adversaries. Allegedly complicit in the July 1981
plane crash that resulted in Torrijos’s death, with U.S.
backing he became the country’s de facto head of state
in August 1983.