Did Noriega Slip Over the Edge?

When he was told by an American journalist in 1988 that he was "the most hated man in the United States," Manuel Antonio Noriega preened with pleasure. "Do they really hate me even more than Gaddafi?" he asked. Yes, he was assured, even more than Gaddafi. Noriega laughed.

It was just that cocksure quality, combined with cunning and ruthlessness, that enabled Panama's leader to face down repeated U.S. challenges over the past 2 1/2 years. But in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion, Noriega seemed to slide into recklessness, as if he were deliberately trying to provoke his own doom. First his handpicked assembly declared that a "state of war" existed with the U.S. and installed Noriega as Panama's "Maximum Leader." Then he sat back while his troops shot a U.S. Marine and abducted and abused a Navy lieutenant and his wife. Noriega could not have handed his American adversaries a better pretext for invasion.

Noriega's increasingly bombastic language and his trigger-happy troops may have been indications that events were spinning out of control in Panama, forcing him to extremes. But other evidence suggested that the dictator was losing control of himself: U.S. troops searching his various hideouts found, along with pictures of Adolf Hitler, collections of pornography and sophisticated weapons and more than 50 kilos of cocaine. In one Noriega guesthouse, searchers found a bucket of blood and entrails, which they said may have been used for occult rites to protect him. Was the accused drug trafficker deteriorating into a megalomaniac drug user?

Evidence of his erratic behavior first emerged after an aborted coup attempt against him in March 1988. Reports circulated that Noriega had taken to the bottle and occasionally drank himself into a stupor. In the months after he violently halted last May's presidential election, Noriega -- perhaps prudently -- saw himself as a marked man. He refused to sleep in the same place on consecutive nights and, as a precaution against being poisoned, ate only food prepared by his girlfriend's mother.

Following the second failed coup attempt last October, Noriega rounded up dozens of officers for imprisonment or execution, deepening tensions in the barracks. In public, he sometimes appeared drunk and showed the telltale signs of cocaine abuse. Noriega supporters say that in December, in the wake of reports that Bush had authorized a new covert plan to oust him, the general sank into a deep depression. Under mounting pressure, trusting no one, he was fatalistic about his chances of surviving his confrontation with the U.S.

Many American officials feel that a fitting coda to Noriega's infamous career would be his capture and extradition to the U.S. to stand trial on the 15 drug-related and money-laundering charges handed down by federal grand juries in Tampa and Miami in February 1988. But to convict Noriega, prosecutors would have to rely largely on the testimony of two convicted felons who traded their stories for plea bargains. Moreover, Noriega's long association with the CIA could block any successful prosecution. His lawyers are certain to demand access to classified material that the Government will be reluctant to release, a tactic that has proved successful in the Iran- contra trials. Warns Richard Gregorie, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Miami: "((Noriega)) would be entitled to say that he was getting his money from the CIA, and would request documents to prove it."

First, however, Noriega must be found. At week's end a State Department official said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Kozak had traveled to Panama to advise the Endara government and try to negotiate Noriega's surrender. One of the general's American lawyers, Raymond Takiff, predicts that will never happen. "I feel unhappily secure in my belief that he will be killed," Takiff says. "He will not be captured."