If not, he was certainly bent on making it seem that way. NEWSWEEK’s photography session with the deposed Panamanian strongman last week was Noriega’s first face-to-face encounter with the press since he was hustled aboard an Air Force C-130 transport in the wake of the U.S. invasion and flown to Miami to face drug-trafficking charges. Noriega’s lawyers and prison officials were jumpy, but the general himself seemed happy enough to talk. Yes, he said, he was following events in the Mideast with interest. Yes, he nodded, Central America seemed to be fading from the headlines. But when Noriega asked if his visitors had visited Panama lately, a prison official jumped in. “No interview,” he said, waving a hand in the reporter’s face. “No talking.” Looking almost amused, the exdictator shrugged and half apologized, trying out his slightly skewed English. “In the next occasion,” he said.

After nearly 10 months in U.S. custody, Noriega still awaits a trial that neither side may really want. U.S. prosecutors say he conspired to smuggle Colombian cocaine through Panama; Noriega counters that he was simply doing his job as a CIA-trained intelligence operative. Saddam Hussein has replaced him as America’s Foreign Enemy No. 1, but the deposed Panamanian leader sits in Miami like an unexploded bomb. Last week 72 congressmen took time out from the budget battle to ask the Bureau of Prisons for an explanation for Noriega’s “dictator’s suite” at MCC: he has an exercise bike, a paper-shredding machine, a color TV and private shower. The same day, Panama’s post-invasion government filed $6.6 billion in civil damage claims against him. The suit could block the release of any funds to Noriega’s lawyers–who in turn are threatening to leave the case unless bank accounts worth $6 million in France, Switzerland and Austria are unfrozen to pay defense costs. The legal delays have made the original Jan. 28 trial date highly unlikely.

At MCC Noriega does get special treatment: no contact with other prisoners, out of fear that someone may take revenge for his days as a highly paid U.S. informant. He gets his own detached building, formerly used for prison administration, and has a TV and private shower and exercise bike because he cannot use the prison’s common areas. But the cell itself is standard issue, with a metal bed and a stainless-steel toilet taking up most of the space. A guard outside must hand him the telephone–reverse-charge and local calls only. Except when he talks to his lawyers his calls are routinely tapped. Once the rest of the 1,200 inmates are locked down for the night, he can ask to take a walk with guards around MCC’s little tree-lined pond, featuring a life-size concrete alligator. He can order his favorite Oreo cookies from the prison commissary, at $2.20 a pack. His POW status entitles him to wear his uniform and to receive a stipend equal to 75 Swiss francs (about $59) each month. Even so, officials still have plenty of power over him: Noriega’s wife, Felicidad, and their three daughters, now living in the Dominican Republic, have not been allowed visas for a visit.

The strongman will end up costing the Justice Department millions of dollars for “secure areas” to handle the thousands of pages of intelligence documents that have already been subpoenaed for his defense. The conference-size room adjoining Noriega’s cell, which has been assailed as a “private office,” is in fact a top-secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, or “skiff,” similar to those in the trial judge’s chambers and the downtown Miami federal courthouse. “I go through six security devices just to get to my desk,” says Noriega co-counsel David Lewis. Each SCIF has special storage safes, secure faxes and telephones, personal computers with removable hard drives, and a special “crosscut” document shredder for disposing of legal drafts and notes. “Forget about spaghetti or confetti,” says lead defense attorney Frank Rubino. “This thing makes flour.” Noriega himself does not have security clearance; he can use the room only when his lawyers or court officers are present.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney says that “as far as the prosecution is concerned, we’re preparing for trial and the trial is moving ahead.” Meeting in a closed courtroom swept by security officers for bugs, the two sides have already begun the sometimes word-by-word battle over classified evidence. As with the Oliver North, Edwin Wilson and other intelligence-related trials, the usual roles here are reversed: defense lawyers argue to admit everything possible, while prosecutors and intelligence-agency lawyers fight them, claiming national-security risks. It is tricky ground. “If the judge lets us defend this case the way it should be,” says Rubino, “we’re going to be in that room for a very long time.” That may suit the Bush administration, which can hope that time will minimize the sting of any embarrassing disclosures. The lesson may be that capturing a dictator still leaves a problem: what to do with him.