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- <text id=90TT3292>
- <title>
- Dec. 10, 1990: American Notes:Trials
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Dec. 10, 1990 What War Would Be Like
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 47
- American Notes
- TRIALS
- Play It Again, Ted
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> The on-again, off-again saga of the Noriega tapes turned on
- again last week. Federal District Judge William Hoeveler lifted
- the ban he had imposed a month ago on CNN's airing of General
- Manuel Noriega's government-monitored phone conversations from
- prison. Reason: counsel for the ex-Panamanian dictator no
- longer objected to having them broadcast. After reviewing
- transcripts of the five tapes obtained by CNN, lawyer Frank
- Rubino concluded that the most damaging conversation had
- already been played on the air and that it "does no good to
- close the barn door after the horse is out." Yet Rubino
- continued to insist that the drug-trafficking case against
- Noriega be dismissed altogether. Much of the government's phone
- tapping, he said, violates the confidentiality guaranteed to
- lawyer-client conversations.
- </p>
- <p> CNN hailed the latest ruling as a vindication of its First
- Amendment rights and began to air more Noriega phone calls.
- These conversations suggested that the prisoner was making
- surreptitious banking transactions, a charge filed by the
- Panamanian government in another court proceeding last week.
- Meanwhile, four competing news organizations rushed before
- Judge Hoeveler to request the transcripts of the phone calls.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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