Editor's Letter

Miami Vice

The prisoner in a small cell in the Miami lockup is not nearly as glum as you would expect a deposed dictator to be. General Manuel Antonio Noriega is far from pampered by his jailers, but one of the commonest sounds from his quarters is laughter. Twelve months after he was seized in Panama and spirited to the United States to stand trial for drug running, Tony Noriega has managed to turn himself from America's most wanted into America's most persecuted. His abduction was only the beginning of the ethical and constitutional quagmire that has since enveloped the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial as well as the First Amendment. What Noriega is doing, T. D. Allman believes, is corrupting America's legal institutions just as he corrupted an entire country. "Pineapple Face'' has wrapped himself in the American flag and become a whole Bill of Rights issue in himself. Abetting him in this high farce is a repertory company of legal eagles and, writes Allman, "a host of other only-inAmerica characters who—whether they wear crocodile cowboy boots or pink golfing pants—now find their lives and fates stuck to Tony Noriega's life and fate like glue.''

This is the second time Allman has shed light on o Noriega's dark antics. In 1988 he met the general in Panama City and returned to tell Vanity Fair readers that—contrary to the assertions of the U.S. government and the predictions of the pundits—Noriega was not about to give up his one-man rule. Allman was right. It took an American invasion to oust the self-styled Maximum Chief. Allman is also a connoisseur of Noriega's current theatrical backdrop. He is the author of the best-selling Miami: City of the Future, and he has a novelist's ear and eye for the comic incongruities of Wasp justice played out by a cast who sport gold chains and pointy shoes with three-inch heels.

Of course, for all the ludicrous aspects of Noriega's trial, it is not entirely a laughing matter. Whether or not the defendant has a smoking gun that leads to the highest in the land, one outcome of his incarceration and trial is certain: "The United States justice system itself will have to go on trial.''

Editor in Chief