Hands of Stone - Christian Giudice [161]
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was given $10 million to funnel clandestinely to the election campaign of Noriega’s main rival, Guillermo Endara, in the hope that the pockmarked military strongman they called “Pineapple Face” would be overthrown. The plot did not work out as planned. Not only did Noriega immediately annul the election result, but the “bagman” entrusted with laundering the money into Endara’s campaign was arrested in the United States and charged with conspiracy to import vast amounts of cocaine. The bagman was none other than Carlos Eleta Almaran, tycoon, political patron, sportsman, songwriter and one-time manager of Roberto Duran. Endara, a wealthy corporate attorney, had worked with Eleta for twenty-five years and was a stockholder in one of his companies. Eleta was arraigned in Bibb County, Georgia, by Drug Enforcement Agency officials who also accused him of setting up dummy corporations to launder projected drug profits.
Questions arose from the very beginning about Eleta’s arrest. Many in Panama have always believed that he was set up by his enemy, Noriega. “Middle Georgia’s biggest drug case ever – involving an alleged plan to import 1,320 pounds of cocaine a month into the state – has given an ironic boost to General Noriega’s fortunes and added new intrigue to Panamanian politics,” reported the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. “This has played beautifully into Noriega’s hands,” said an expert on the political situation in Panama, who spoke to the Journal on condition of anonymity. “It has given him an opportunity to connect the opposition to drug trafficking.”
Noriega-backed newspapers railed at the seventy-year-old businessman and efforts were made to close down his Channel 4 television station. “The general feeling I perceive from everybody I talk to in Panama is that this could be a setup,” said Roberto Eisenmann, editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa. Eisenmann’s paper had been closed by the Noriega regime and he fled to Miami for his safety.
While Eleta sat in a Georgia prison – with partners Manuel Castillo Bourcy, Panama’s former ambassador to Belize, and Juan Karaminides – protesting his innocence, Noriega was enjoying the last months of his rule. Born in a neighborhood called Terraplen, not far from the Canal and home to many port workers, he had grown up fatherless and hawked newspapers at an early age. In his biography, it was noted that Noriega had lived a troubled upbringing. “Growing up among foreign sailors and prostitutes and with a daily life punctuated with drunkenness and violence, Noriega became street smart without becoming a tough. He was small for his age and tended to be the one the rougher kids picked on.” He and Duran became Panama’s most famous, or infamous, sons. Both had a passion for women and drink. Duran loved whiskey and milk; Noriega’s choice was Scotch. Both loved designer clothes, both had wives named Felicidad and both occasionally traveled with personal jewelers.
A Department of Defense Intelligence Report in the Seventies described Noriega: “Intelligent, aggressive, ambitious, and ultra nationalistic, a shrewd and calculating person.” Sycophantic to his superiors, he was tyrannical to subordinates. Noriega knew power and how to use it. Like his predecessors, Noriega exploited Duran’s fame for his own ends. “Duran always was used by the president or military as a figure to promote themselves,” said boxing journalist Juan Carlos Tapia. “The one exception was Omar Torrijos. Torrijos really loved Duran and supported him but most of the others used Duran for publicity because he was an idol. Noriega was the one who used him the most for his own benefit.”
Noriega was also wracked by paranoia, hate and fear and was suspected of decapitating his political rival Hugo Spadafora, whose headless body was found stuffed in a post office bag in 1985. Duran’s former adviser Mike Acri said, “I think that they wanted Duran to get political and he wouldn’t. Duran didn’t want to be political [Duran would run for Senate in 1994, but his