Judge Wapner, Where Are You?

By Bonnie Angelo

Only the television cameras are missing. Otherwise, the theatrical trial that will go to the jury in Manhattan's federal courthouse this week could have been packaged as a prime-time mini-series. It has everything:

< The accused: Imelda Marcos, widow of the exiled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, charged with helping him loot $220 million from their country's treasury. Three times she brought the trial to a halt by swooning, once coughing up blood to the shock of the courtroom.

The co-defendant: former billionaire Adnan Khashoggi. The now bankrupt Saudi Arabian arms dealer stands accused of conspiring with the Marcoses to conceal their illicit spending by backdating documents to make it appear that he, not the Marcoses, had bought four Manhattan skyscrapers valued at about $400 million. Actress Bo Derek played a cameo role, visiting her friend Khashoggi in the courtroom.

The defense lawyer: Gerry Spence of Wyoming, a John Wayne wannabe whose trademark is an oversize Stetson atop poet-length silver locks. "When I come into a courtroom, I come to do battle," Spence growls, his hand figuratively on his holster.

The angry judge: from opening day, Spence and Judge John F. Keenan have been on a collision course. Keenan has repeatedly chastised Spence for rambling off the issues and playing to the jury. When Spence suggested that he was not being treated fairly, the judge leaped to his feet, a red tide of fury rising from black robe to white hair, slammed down a sheaf of papers and snapped, "Such wild, improper, misleading statements should not be made in front of the jury!"

The big-bucks backer: tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Unruffled by sums requiring two commas, Duke posted $5 million bail for her close friend Imelda and, it is rumored, plunked down further millions for Spence's fee.

The star witness: movie actor George Hamilton. Imelda's dancing partner at countless parties, he testified in a voice choked with emotion, "When my brother died, my mother wanted to commit suicide." Imelda Marcos' kindness, he said, is "the only reason my mother is alive today."

Marcos is the first wife of a foreign head of state to stand trial in an American court. U.S. prosecutors say she wove a "spider's web of deceit and corruption" that stretched halfway around the world. With testimony from 95 witnesses, the prosecutors have outlined a tangled tale of secret Swiss bank accounts and laundered money, forged signatures and phony names, bribes and kickbacks, smuggled paintings, a phantom ship loaded with Japanese gold from World War II, and offshore shams and scams of such complexity that one wonders how the Marcoses ever had time to run their country.

In the Philippines the Marcoses allegedly demanded kickbacks on all government contracts, a practice the defense dismissed as an "unofficial tax." One witness, shipping executive Jose Reyes, said that over a ten-year- period he paid $25 million, delivered to the Marcoses' personal Swiss banker.

Spence characterizes his celebrated client as a "small, fragile woman" with little grasp of "the intricacies of finance." But the exiled First Lady, claims the prosecution, treated the Philippine National Bank as her "personal piggy bank." The former manager of the bank's New York City branch, Oscar Carino, nervously detailed how he delivered bundles of cash, usually $100,000, to the First Lady when she visited New York in the early 1970s. (Although she owned a fashionable six-story town house, Marcos preferred to stay in a $1,700-a-night Waldorf-Astoria suite.) Her personal secretary, Carino asserted, withdrew as much as $14.5 million in cash. A total of $6,671,919 went for jewels purchased from such houses as Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Even before the Marcoses were indicted in late 1988 for racketeering, mail fraud and obstruction of justice, Imelda was hoping to exercise her old influence. In a "Dearest Nancy" letter to the then First Lady, she pleaded -- to no avail -- for the Reagans to help with the Marcoses' legal problems. At least old friend Doris Duke came through with bail. For his involvement, Khashoggi, a man of multiple houses but no fixed address, was saddled with bail of $110 million -- and an electronic ankle band that keeps prosecutors informed of his whereabouts as he roams from smart Manhattan boites to the slopes at Aspen.

Imelda, recovered from her gastritis attack, sits at the defense table, wearing the black of mourning for her husband, who died last September in exile in Hawaii. As she enters, eyes are inexorably drawn to her feet. What cake was to Marie Antoinette, shoes are to Imelda, who had 2,700 pairs in her closet in the presidential residence in Manila. Newsday runs a daily shoe- watch photo, but she now tends to wear modest black pumps.

At 60, Imelda has seen her former life of glamour, riches and power reduced to shards. Impassive and wan, her face puffy, she is a long way from the days when she was runner-up in the Miss Manila beauty contest, or danced cheek to cheek with President Lyndon Johnson, or took the microphone to croon for state visitors at the Malacanang Palace, or dazzled foreign capitals in her exotic Philippine gowns. Back then Imelda was a force to be reckoned with -- governor of the Manila district, Minister of Human Settlements. There was even talk that she might succeed her husband as President.

Last week the prosecution rested. Spence, who claims that in 30 years he has never lost a criminal case as prosecutor or defense attorney, pulled a surprise: the defense would call no witnesses because the Government had "utterly failed in this case." For once Judge Keenan seemed to agree with Spence, asking, "What am I doing trying a case involving the theft of money from Philippine banks? I want to find out what the frauds were here in America, because ((Philippine President Corazon)) Aquino can enforce her own laws." Keenan deferred to Government policy, but the jury may share his doubts.

At the outset of the trial in March, Marcos pleaded, "If I am to be tried here, I pray that I will be treated like an ordinary American seeking justice." An extraordinary kind of ordinary.