June 12, 1986

The army commander of Panama, a country vital to United States interests in Latin America, is extensively involved in illicit money laundering and drug activities and has provided a Latin American guerrilla group with arms, according to evidence collected by American intelligence agencies. Senior State Department, White House, Pentagon and intelligence officials said the evidence also showed that the commander, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who is in effect the leader of the country, had been tied to the killing of a political opponent. They also said that for the last 15 years, he had been providing intelligence information simultaneously to Cuba and the United States. In addition, they said, General Noriega is a secret investor in Panamanian export companies that sell restricted American technology to Cuba and Eastern European countries. Espionage Investigation in 70's In the mid-1970's, according to former officials of the National Security Agency, General Noriega was implicated in a secret espionage investigation involving the transfer of highly sensitive agency materials to Havana. These officials said General Noriega purchased the N.S.A. documents from a United States Army sergeant on duty in Panama.

The Union Pacific Corporation yesterday announced a costly restructuring that will include the buyout and retirement of many employees, the write-down of some oil and gas properties and a substantial buyback of its common stock. William S. Cook, the chairman, president and chief executive of the railroad and energy company, said the steps would result in a special charge of $1.7 billion before taxes, or $945 million after taxes, in the second quarter. Many other oil companies have taken layoffs and write-downs lately, though at Union Pacific railroad jobs will also be affected. Mr. Cook, who will retire next year, said that the steps were taken not as a ''desperate act'' but because of the drop in oil prices, which have depressed earnings of its energy division, and from a continuing effort to cut costs. Drew Lewis, the former Transportation Secretary and more recently the head of Warner Amex Cable Communications Inc., recently joined the company and is now president of the railroad operation. He is due to take over as chairman and chief executive when Mr. Cook retires.

New York City students are harder to discipline than those in Spain, and the paperwork that comes from being a teacher in the city's public schools is much more than expected. But for the more than 80 teachers recruited in Madrid, the school year now drawing to a close has also been ''the experience of a lifetime, a wonderful opportunity to grow as a person and as a professional,'' as one of them put it. The Board of Education recruited the teachers from Spain last summer to help ease the city's teacher shortage in fields such as foreign languages, special education, mathematics and science. It was a sink-or-swim proposition for the Spaniards, who paid their own way here with only the guarantee of employment in 1 of the city's nearly 1,000 schools.

Last year's sale of Richardson-Vicks Inc. to the Procter & Gamble Company for $1.22 billion sent shock waves through other family businesses. If Richardson-Vicks was vulnerable, their leaders reasoned, what family company was not? The Richardson family had managed the 80-year-old maker of cold remedies and personal-care products for four generations and had been united in its desire to keep the company independent. It controlled directly and indirectly a third of the company's stock. In times gone by, that would have been more than enough to quash the fancies of any would-be acquirer. But now even family-controlled businesses are vulnerable if their performance falls short in the eyes of the market. As the fall of Richardson-Vicks amply demonstrated, times have radically changed. In a period when the values and traditions of family businesses are being held up as a model for American industry, it has never been tougher for families to hang on to their companies and to manage them the way they want. Judging from what the leaders of the biggest private and public family companies say, there is no safe haven for a family business of any size from the takeover wars and intensifying competition sweeping corporate America.

A FEW months ago, the subdivisions of North Edison, N.J., didn't matter much to Debbie Pryor. All those lanes, drives and crescents, all those houses with the whirling lawn sprinklers, had simply been a neighborhood, not the target of a decorating commando operation. But today, North Edison is her ''market area,'' one she covers relentlessly in a small white Chevy van emblazoned in rainbow colors with the words ''Decorating Den.'' Debbie Pryor's mission - since she chose to accept it - is no less than the awakening of the decorating sensibilities of the North Edison populace. ''Hi,'' she will say in a voice as freshly perked as morning coffee when she introduces herself by phone. ''My name is Debbie, from Decorating Den.'' There are more than 300 Decorating Den franchises throughout the country, and Debbie Pryor's is only one of them. What McDonald's has done for hamburgers and Mary Kay for cosmetics, so this 16-year-old com pany is attempting to do for home decorating.