Noriega’s Conviction

I have just finished reading your editorial, “A Kingpin Is Convicted--but Many Questions Remain� (April 10). The naivete of this article has me so flabbergasted that it’s difficult for me to pick my chin up off the floor! Yes, Noriega has been convicted, but your headline got it wrong. He is no kingpin, just a pawn.

Do you really believe that the agencies of the U.S. government who paid outrageous sums to this dictator were unaware of his ties to drug trafficking?

There are volumes and volumes of evidence that members of our own covert operations teams have tolerated, facilitated, even participated in drug smuggling to form alliances and obtain extra-congressional funding for coups, assassinations, and guerrilla warfare around the world since the end of World War II.

I am distressed, not by the conviction of a corrupt player in the game of world domination, but by the hypocrisy of it all. He faces a possible 120 years in prison, while those he served remain in positions of power and influence.

An Administration with ties to the Iran-Contra era and a President with a career history in the CIA launch an all-out “war on drugs� complete with the invasion of a foreign country and the prosecution of a former ally. The U.S. is still agonizing under the destructiveness of a cocaine epidemic, but George Bush looks like Mr. Clean. I’d say that this geopolitical “friend� was well-picked and expertly used.

JANICE BLUME

Agoura