Reply #70: Kerry did such a great job pursuing the cocaine trail in Panama....

[IndianaGreen]

Kerry held public hearings, but he didn't follow the evidence all the way. Kerry was more interested in PR than in exposing the entire network, perhaps because it would lead to the Oval Office:

As the Noriega case progresses toward trial, the media's treatment of key witnesses against the General may offer a case study in bias. Several of the witnesses have already testified on these matters in a very public forum--hearings before Senator John Kerry's Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Narcotics. At that time, February 1988, they fingered Nicaraguan contras as cocaine cohorts of Noriega operating under the umbrella of the CIA and Ollie North. The hearings were ignored or distorted by national media outlets, with Reagan/Bush officials and CIA dismissing the witnesses as drug trafficking felons. ( Extra!, Mar/Apr 88; Warren Hinckle, S.F. Examiner, 1/11/90). In a predictable turnaround, as soon as Noriega was apprehended, TV news brought forth experts to explain that "when one prosecutes someone like Noriega for drug dealing, witnesses will of necessity be drug dealers."

The Media Goes to War:

HOW TELEVISION SOLD THE PANAMA INVASION
by Mark Cook and Jeff Cohen

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/panamainv.html