Panama Odyssey

By William J. Jorden

“This magnificent diplomatic memoir-history by the American ambassador to Panama at the time should be required reading for every diplomat . . . A classic.” —Foreign Affairs
 
The Panama Canal Treaties of 1977 were the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Carter administration. Most Latin American nations had regarded the 1903 treaty and its later minor modifications as vestiges of “American colonialism” and obstacles to any long-term, stable relationship with the United States. Hence, at a time when conflicts were mushrooming in Central America, the significance of the new Panama treaties cannot be overestimated.
 
Former Ambassador to Panama William J. Jorden has provided the definitive account of the long and often contentious negotiations that produced those treaties. It is a vividly written reconstruction of the complicated process that began in 1964 and ended with ratification of the new pacts in 1978. Based on his personal involvement behind the scenes in the White House (1972–1974) and in the United States Embassy in Panama (1974–1978), Jorden has produced a unique living history. Access to documents and the personalities of both governments and, equally important, Jorden’s personal recollections of participants on both sides make this historical study an incomparable document of U. S. foreign relations.
 
In sum, this is a history, a handbook on diplomacy, a course in government, and a revelation of foreign policy in action, all based on a fascinating and controversial episode in the US experience.
 
“Jordan’s closely knit account of those negotiations brings the whole question of colonialism into stark focus . . . a vivid account of diplomacy in action.” —The Christian Science Monitor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9780292718302

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

When Presidents Negotiate

Can’t we wrap this thing up?

—Gen. Omar Torrijos in Bogotá, August 5, 1977

AUGUST 5, 1977, was a sizzler in Washington. It was Friday, crab-cake day at my favorite watering hole, the Black Steer Restaurant, a block north of the White House. I had enjoyed an excellent meal and good talk with two old friends, Howard Handleman of U.S. News & World Report and Serban Vallimarescu of the U.S. Information Agency. I had known Howard for almost thirty years, since our days as foreign correspondents in Japan and Korea. Val was the son of a prewar Rumanian foreign minister, Harvard graduate, fluent in four languages. We met in Paris when I was a member of the U.S. delegation trying to reach a peace settlement with the Vietnamese and he was a senior officer in the U.S. Embassy.

Back at State, I was sitting in the tiny office the Panama Desk had provided, enjoying the afterglow of good food, excellent companionship, and a couple of splendid martinis. I leaned back in my chair watching the heat waves bounce off the roof just below my window. Compared to this, I thought, Panama is in the temperate zone. That was heartening, because I would be back in Panama the next day.

I thought about the preceding months. The Carter administration wanted new Panama Canal treaties, and we had been struggling intensively for six months to get them. Instead of working in my large, comfortable office in the embassy on Avenida Balboa, looking out over the Bay of Panama, I had been operating from this cubbyhole on the fourth floor of the Department of State.

I had come to Washington in early May, mainly to prepare the way for the new Panamanian ambassador to the United States, my good friend Gabriel Lewis Galindo. The post had been vacant since February, when Gabriel’s predecessor, Nicolás González-Revilla, had been called back to his homeland to become (at 31) the youngest foreign minister in his country’s history. General Torrijos had picked Gabriel, a longtime friend and adviser, as the successor. The selection proved not merely good, but a stroke of genius on Torrijos’ part. Lewis became the most effective ambassador that Panama had had in Washington during its seventy-five years as an independent nation. I have never seen any foreign envoy move so adroitly through the Washington jungle, avoiding the social and political traps that usually ensnare the unwary new envoy. Among other things, he never got bogged down in the endless requirements of protocol—to the chagrin of many colleagues in the diplomatic corps who waited confidently for him to stub his toe on the rocks of tradition. They waited in vain. He quickly became one of the best known diplomats in the U.S. capital.

I came to Washington not only to help Gabriel but also to consult with my American colleagues and treaty negotiators: the tall, white-haired Vermont patrician and diplomatic veteran, Ellsworth Bunker, then 83 years and showing no more than 65 of them, and his co-negotiator, Sol Linowitz, a dynamic international lawyer and former board chairman of the Xerox Corporation, who became the trail boss of the treaty-making drive. They wanted a detailed report on the internal situation and the mood in Panama as they prepared an intensive diplomatic campaign to create a new treaty arrangement with Panama.

I had expected to be in Washington five days, which turned into eleven weeks. What happened was one of those juxtapositions of time and place and people that changes the normal course. We discovered—not surprising to Gabriel and me, but perhaps to others—that there was a level of trust, communication, and mutual confidence between the new ambassador and me that made it possible to overcome in hours problems and disputes that might have taken weeks or months. During the day, the negotiators met. Every evening, Gabriel and I got together to chew over what our colleagues had been discussing. We were able to convey the heart of our countries’ positions on certain issues in ways that did not always translate across the negotiating table.

Look, Bill, Gabriel said to me one night, for you, Ancon Hill is a piece of land, a dot on the map. And you’ve got antennas on the top of it, so it’s important to you. But Ancon is something else for us. It’s the highest piece of land in Panama City. It looks over everything. It’s like Mt. Everest for us. And since 1903, it’s been a visible symbol of the Canal Zone, of foreign power in the middle of our country. It’s not just geography we’re talking about, it’s history and emotion. You can keep your damn antennas, but give us the hill. The next morning, I explained to Bunker and Linowitz why the argument about Ancon Hill was dragging on and on, and creating so much ill will. They soon setded it to both sides’ satisfaction.

On another occasion, I told Ambassador Lewis: Look, Gabriel. You claim Panama has been shortchanged for 65 years. You’ve let us use one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world, and we’ve made money from it, and given you peanuts. All true! But I tell you this, my friend: we may be able to convince the Congress and the American people to make a new arrangement and eventually give Panama the canal. But you have to understand we can never convince anybody that we should pay you for the privilege. The ambassador then went to his negotiators and laid out the reasons why a seemingly logical case simply could not be sold.

And so it went. Day after day, night after night. The U.S. and Panamanian negotiators came to realize they had a useful, constructive channel that made their labors considerably easier. So I stayed in Washington from early May until June’s end. But I had to get back to Panama for the Fourth of July. That is the biggest day in U.S. embassies around the world, our national birthday. For the American community in a foreign country, it is a time for drawing together and remembering home, and flag, who we are as a people, what we are trying to do, and why. It’s also a time when ambassadors invite Americans and the friends of their country to share with them a glass, and fellowship, and a renewed dedication to ideals and ideas—however hard that may be for some who do not live under governments that believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So I had to be there. But I was on a Braniff jet returning to Washington a few days later.

Soon it was early August, and I was preparing to return again to home base. Jean Puhan, the efficient secretary on the Panama Desk, had made our reservations and secured our tickets. My wife, Mili, was with me on this trip and we had taken a small apartment in Foggy Bottom, just behind the State Department on Virginia Avenue. She was busy with last-minute shopping, calls, and final packing. We were leaving a day in advance to be on hand to welcome Ambassadors Bunker and Linowitz and their entourage when they arrived in Panama on Sunday for what we all thought would be the decisive round in the treaty talks. But we reckoned without Omar Torrijos. He had gone to Bogotá, Colombia—and the treaty talks were about to take a quite bizarre turn.

I heard the phone ring in the outer office and then the intercom buzzed. It was Jean telling me Ambassador Lewis wanted to talk with me. I switched over to the lighted connection.

Hello, Gabriel. What’s up?

Look, Bill, he said, we’ve got a problem. I just talked with Omar in Bogotá. He wants us to get to work. I don’t know if it’s possible. But you and I better talk about it. Can you come over?

Sure, I said. Give me twenty minutes. Anything I need to bring along?

No, he said, just bring yourself—and your imagination.

"I’ll be there muy pronto."

I hung up and looked at my watch. It was 4:10 P.M. I stuffed papers and plane tickets in my briefcase and walked out. I told Jean I was off to the Panamanian Embassy and thanked her for all her help over the weeks of wild confusion. I walked down the hospitallike corridor to the bank of elevators and punched the Down button. What in the name of God can Torrijos be thinking of now, I wondered. I had thought that the Bogotá meeting would be a love feast, a gathering of Latin American leaders who would show their solidarity and stand firmly behind Panama’s just demands. Then, when Bunker and Linowitz got to Panama on Sunday, the real business of hammering out a final agreement would begin. What had happened. Why had Torrijos called from Bogotá?

I walked out the diplomatic entrance on C Street and hit it lucky. A cab pulled up just as I got to the curb, and discharged its passenger. I climbed aboard, gave the driver the address, and we took off. In fifteen minutes we were at the Panamanian ambassador’s residence.

A white-clad maid let me in. I walked up the carpeted stairs and into the living room, then back to the comfortable sitting room in the rear, Gabriel’s headquarters and the warmest, friendliest room in the house. It was surrounded on three sides by windows looking over the backyard and the swimming pool. The fourth wall was taken up by two sets of French doors separated by tiered stones from floor to ceiling, the rear side of the huge fireplace in the living room. My friend Ambassador Lewis was obviously tense. He is built like a linebacker with a neck as broad as his head, strong shoulders, and powerful arms. But there is nothing stolid or slow about him. He paces constantly, a kind of perpetual-motion machine. His face is mobile and his eyes crinkle often in humor. We shook hands and he put his scotch aside while he poured me a vodka.

Christ, he said. What are we going to do?

Look, my friend, you better tell me what’s happening, then maybe I’ll have an idea.

He handed me a vodka-and-water, grabbed his own glass, and sat down in an easy chair next to the phone. I took off my coat and sat next to him at the end of a long couch.

Omar just called me before I called you, he said. He’s in Bogotá, as you know, with López Michelsen [Alfonso López Michelsen, president of Colombia] and Andrés Pérez [Carlos Andrés Pérez, president of Venezuela] and the others [the others being José López Portillo, president of Mexico; Daniel Oduber Quiros, president of Costa Rica; and Michael Manley, prime minister of Jamaica]. And Torrijos is asking me: ‘Can’t we wrap this thing up?’ What he would like to do, Bill, is to finish the main problems and announce in Bogotá that the treaty is completed.

I took a sip, looked at my friend, and thought fast. Gabriel, I said, there is no way to do that unless we get the negotiators here and talk about it. And even then . . . and I let it hang. Well, let’s get them here, he said impatiently.

I located Ambassador Bunker by phone. He was understanding when I explained that Torrijos had called from Bogotá and that I thought a meeting at the Panamanian Embassy was necessary. He said he would come in an hour. Meanwhile, Gabriel had tracked down Sol Linowitz at the White House and convinced him to come over, too. We told both of them we thought about an hour would take care of the problem.

Bunker and Linowitz arrived at the Panamanian Embassy at the same moment, 6:00 P.M. I met them at the door, and as we walked up the stairs and through the house, I told them all I knew: Torrijos is in Bogotá. He’s meeting with the other Latin American presidents. And he wants to wrap up some key issues. I don’t have any specifics. But Gabriel thinks it’s important—and he’s usually right on these things.

Gabriel welcomed them warmly as we walked in. He had been joined by two colleagues—Díogenes de la Rosa, a wise and gentle man, a septuagenarian whose memory of treaty talks and problems went back farther than that of any of his fellow Panamanians; and Arnaldo Cano, a young, intelligent Panamanian, graduate of West Point, an engineer who understood the technical and geographic problems that were so crucial.

By the time Bunker and Linowitz arrived, there had been several exchanges between the Panamanians in Washington and the top-level team with Torrijos in Bogotá. The main spokesman for the Bogotá group at that moment was Aristides Royo, a sharp lawyer, then minister of education and later president of Panama. Royo told Ambassador Lewis that several key issues needed to be straightened out, and he asked Gabriel to work for a solution right away. First, the Panamanians wanted to be absolutely certain that the new treaties would replace all previous treaties and agreements regarding the canal. Some economic issues were still pending and Panama wanted to nail them down. There were other technical issues on the Panamanian agenda, matters mainly of interest to specialists or scholars.

The real centerpiece of the Bogotá meeting and the talks between Washington and Bogotá that evening was the issue of the sea-level canal. It was a problem that figured importantly in the negotiations of the treaties of 1967, and in the calculations of the U.S. administration then. But by the middle 1970s, it counted very little in the thinking of the treaty negotiators of either country. In the 1960s, American planners focused heavily on the idea of a new canal to be dug by nuclear explosion. By the mid-1970s that seemed out of the question. On the Panamanians’ side, the existing canal was what counted. They calculated that if a new canal were ever built, it would have to be in Panama, and they could drive their bargain when it became a real possibility.

What moved it to the front burner was a meeting in the White House in early July. Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel had looked deeply into the pluses and minuses of a sea-level canal. His central concern, naturally, was how to get the newly found oil of his home state most efficiently and cheaply to the refineries of the Gulf and East coasts. His conclusion was that we needed a sea-level canal in Panama—one the Panamanians would own and operate, but whose use would benefit us greatly. On July 7, Gravel had an appointment with President Carter. He took with him the accumulated data of months of study and research. He laid it out for the president in painstaking detail. Here’s what a sea-level canal would do for us, he explained. Here’s what it would cost and this is the benefit we would get. Gravel is an effective salesman, with an intelligent mastery of complicated details and an eloquent flow of language. In his Oval Office encounter with a naval-minded, engineer president, the senator from Alaska obviously was in rare form. He left behind a Jimmy Carter who was beginning to think like Theodore Roosevelt, possibly dreaming of the great achievement a new canal would surely represent.

Two weeks after meeting Gravel, the president was in Yazoo City, Mississippi, for the second town meeting of his presidency. Some 1,500 Yazoo City residents jammed into the high school auditorium to ask the new president questions and listen to his answers. It was a warm night, especially inside the meeting place, which had no air conditioning. Ten minutes into the give-and-take session, the president doffed his coat and rolled up his sleeves. A thoughtful, and ad-conscious, local undertaker had provided the audience with hand fans (Carter called them southern, hand-propelled air conditioners) and they were being waved energetically to provide a little relief. Inevitably, in the question period, the Panama treaty issue was raised by one listener. How, he asked, could U.S. military needs be met if the existing canal were turned over to Panama?

My guess, the president replied, is that before many more years go by, we might well need a new canal at sea level. He added: I would say we will need a new Panama Canal. He explained that such a canal could provide the solution to our problems of quickly transporting crude oil from Alaska to Gulf Coast and East Coast refineries. It would also allow the navy’s largest aircraft carriers—which cannot transit the lock canal—to pass readily between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Two days later, after visiting an off-shore oil rig off the Louisiana coast, the president made the same points to an audience in New Orleans.

Scholarly works on the presidency rarely treat the presidential speech as an instrument in policy formulation. But anyone who has worked in the White House knows that getting an idea into a talk by the president is one of the better ways to ensure that the proposal gets broad exposure and immediate attention. The very fact that the president talked publicly about a sea-level canal drove it into the public domain and pushed it forward on the treaty makers’ agenda. When they were writing the draft treaty for the Panama Canal in July 1977, the U.S. negotiating team put in a rigidly worded article that would have given the United States an exclusive option to build a sea-level canal. That option became the big bone of contention during the Bogotá gathering of Latin American presidents.

Several things helped make the sea-level canal issue central to the proceedings in Bogotá. One was the reaction of a key legal adviser to the Panamanian team, Carlos López-Guevara. Carlos, or Fello to good friends, was an astute lawyer (a doctorate from Harvard Law) and a veteran of the treaty-making campaigns. He had flown back to Panama from Washington two days before with a copy of the U.S. treaty draft in his briefcase. On the long flight across the Caribbean he studied the draft with care. When he read the sea-level canal article, he blew up—at least as much as a restrained intellectual like Carlos can blow. Once he arrived in Panama, he contacted General Torrijos’ party and expressed his strong opposition to the one-sided option in the U.S. draft. He was equally irritated by his own country’s effort to require that the United States talk only to Panama about a sea-level canal, and build it there. On the one hand, he later explained, we were saying the U.S. should leave our country. On the other, we were saying, ‘Don’t leave. Build another canal in our country.’ It was, he insisted, politically and psychologically inconsistent.

A principal reason the dispute about a sea-level canal rose to such prominence at that particular moment was that the Panamanians, when they went to Bogotá, knew that some of their neighbors—especially Carlos Andrés Pérez, the fiery Venezuelan president, and López Michelsen, Colombia’s scholarly leader—were convinced the biggest reason for the treaty delay was Panama’s demand for exorbitant payments. Torrijos and his colleagues wanted desperately to convince the summit participants that the United States, too, was making extravagant proposals. So the sea-level proposition became both a real issue and a pawn on the diplomatic board as the wild evening continued.

When Aristides Royo had called Ambassador Lewis in Washington that afternoon, the sea-level canal option figured importantly in their talk. Royo told the ambassador that Panama had, in fact, decided to give the new canal option to the United States. But, he said, it has to be made more palatable. It is much too one-sided in its present form. He mentioned raising Panama’s revenues in return for the new canal option. He also insisted Lewis make clear to Bunker and Linowitz that any new canal would have to be subject to the same conditions governing the old canal under the treaty. In other words, there would not be U.S. control after the year 2000. The education minister also told Lewis that the Americans should be told that if Panama made this concession, we should not consider building a new canal any place but Panama. Gabriel was sitting in his study, holding die phone and frantically writing the instructions he was getting from Bogotá.

I had arrived at the embassy a few minutes after the Royo call. Gabriel had already huddled with de la Rosa and Cano, the only members of the Panamanian negotiating team left in Washington, passing along the orders he had just received. Gabriel knew he had a tiger by the tail. So, very adroitly, he pointed out that he was not a negotiator but that his role was behind the scenes. He asked veteran lawyer de la Rosa to lay out for Bunker and Linowitz what was happening.

The two U.S. diplomats were both wearing dark suits, appropriate for the dinners they had planned to attend later that evening. Outside it was steaming, but Gabriel had turned down the thermostat and the air conditioner was pouring cold air into the room. Ambassador Bunker moved to the center of the couch to avoid the icy blast behind him. Linowitz was sitting to his left, his eyes darting from de la Rosa to Gabriel to me. His foot kept tapping the carpet in impatience. De la Rosa droned on in his soft, gentle voice, going through the list from Bogotá. I was having trouble following Díogenes’ exposition, which was muted and in less-than-fluent English. Ellsworth Bunker, whose hearing was not perfect, was having even more trouble. Sol Linowitz was having about the same difficulty I was—and he had a considerably shorter fuse.

Gabriel was in and out of the room, answering the red phone that connected him on a direct line from Washington to Panama to Bogotá. He sensed the two American negotiators were getting impatient, and he called de la Rosa out of the room so I could placate them. Sol turned to me and asked: What the hell are we doing here? I told him he knew as much as I did, but my understanding of Torrijos told me it was important and that we would get into real business soon. We have to be patient, I said, until we get a better sense of the game. Gabriel came back and Ellsworth turned his cold blue eyes on his host. What is the agenda, Gabriel? he asked. Lewis stressed that six heads of government were at the other end of the line and they wanted to iron out some of the problems we had been discussing. I guess, he said with emphasis, "the real agenda is: are we going to have a treaty or aren’t we?" He felt it was terribly important to go through the items that had been relayed to him, and he told us more details would be coming through any minute.

Bunker and Linowitz were somewhat taken aback. I didn’t think we came here to negotiate, Linowitz said. But he and the rest of us were quickly realizing that that was precisely why we were there and that the pressures from Bogotá had to be met. It was also clear by that time that we needed more precise and accurate interpretation. I called the State Department and had them locate Tony Hervas, the superb official interpreter who had worked most of the negotiating sessions over the past months. He soon joined us and that smoothed the communications flow significantly.

Meantime, some 2,500 miles due south, the scene in Bogotá was only slightly less chaotic. The visitors from the five countries had been welcomed individually at the airport by President López Michelsen—with honor guard, national anthems, speeches, and flag-waving school children. The national leaders then climbed into their Mercedes limousines and headed off to the center of Bogotá behind their police escort and its wailing sirens. They passed through the Plaza de Bolívar and roared to a stop at their destination, the Palacio San Carlos. Colombian presidential guards in colorful dress uniforms snapped to attention as the visitors entered the palace.

The meeting place was a large and opulent room, filled with priceless art. Crystal chandeliers bathed it in a warm glow that one witness said made the antique wood panels look like tooled leather. In one of the phone calls to Washington, General Torrijos told Ambassador Lewis they were working in the room where Simón Bolívar, the fabled Liberator of Latin America, had housed and enjoyed the favors of his favorite mistress, Manuelita. True or not, it added a touch of glamor. I thought: leave it to Omar Torrijos to introduce a little mystery and sex into the affairs of state. The man was many things, but never dull.

In the center of the room was a large, heavy conference table. López Michelsen, the soft-spoken, scholarly host for the Latin American summit, sat at the head of the long table. To his right was Carlos Andrés Pérez, the emotional, suave, socially conscious leader of oil-rich Venezuela. Pérez had followed the treaty negotiations with close attention and, only a few weeks earlier, he had been in Washington where he had several very candid meetings with President Carter. Sitting at the host’s left was the recently installed president of Mexico, José López Portillo, balding and intense, a fiercely nationalistic man, as are all Mexican politicians. He was new to the treaty business but felt strongly about some key issues. Across the table and to the right of Venezuela’s Pérez was Daniel Oduber, a staunch democrat, a thoughtful man, and a close friend of General Torrijos. He headed the government of Costa Rica, the most truly democratic of all Latin American countries. Torrijos sat opposite Oduber and next to the Mexican president. To Oduber’s right was the sixth participant in the summit, Michael Manley, leftist prime minister of Jamaica. Manley led one of the most populous and troubled nations in the Caribbean.

That was the cast of characters for the Bogotá summit, the leaders of the only civilian-led, democratically elected governments south of the Rio Grande—plus Torrijos, who was not a civilian and had not been elected.

Aware of the contrast, the Torrijos delegates aboard the plane bound for the Colombian capital decided to award their leader an honorary doctorate. For the next two days, in the company of his well-educated, civilian fellow leaders, Torrijos would be called by his colleagues not General but Doctor Torrijos. There is no indication what effect this had on the others around the table in Bogotá, if any. But the Panamanians enjoyed it.

The seat at the other end of the table, opposite host López Michelsen, became a kind of witness chair. Members of the Panamanian treaty team sat there in turn as they explained to the Latin American chiefs the status of the negotiations. Each presentation was brief, about ten or fifteen minutes. The foreign minister, who despite his youth occupied the position of canciller (chancellor) in the Panamanian cabinet, led off with a general description of the background of the treaty discussions. Aristides Royo followed with a more specific description of the issues, especially the more contentious ones. Architect Edwin Fábrega Velarde, a soft-spoken Cal Tech graduate who had been working with us on the technical problems of land areas and facilities—which were absolutely necessary for canal operations; which would be turned over to Panama—described what we had long called Lands and Waters issues. Adolfo Ahumada, the left-leaning minister of labor and another of the impressive array of lawyers who dominated the Panamanian team, laid out the defense issues, the meaning of the neutrality treaty, the bases that would be retained by the United States, and the long-range plans for joint defense of the canal. The continued presence of U.S. military bases and military personnel in the heart of Latin America made this one of the most sensitive issues confronting the heads of governments at the Bogotá conference. It was a measure of General Torrijos’ political acuity that he picked a political radical like Ahumada to be his spokesman on this delicate matter before his nationalistic confreres in Colombia. Then, Nicolás Ardito Barletta, a graduate of North Carolina State with a doctorate from Chicago, and one of the top economists in the Western Hemisphere, described the numerous economic issues—the payments Panama would receive under the treaty and the vasdy greater economic benefit Panamanians felt was justified by history and equity.

The summation of the Panamanian case was made by the principal treaty negotiator, Rómulo Escobar Bethancourt—a brilliant choice, and certainly not accidental, for Escobar was perhaps Panama’s most eloquent advocate. He was a lawyer by training and a poet by inclination. His exposition showed the discipline of the former and the passion of the latter, beautifully blended into compelling argument. He was also a supremely gifted political tactician. At Bogotá he used all his skill and wiles to impressive effect. One purpose of the Bogotá summit—as a Torrijos intimate later explained to me—was to find out if the Latin American leaders really were convinced that a treaty with the United States was possible and whether, from their viewpoint, it was a good idea. But Rómulo decided that, to get an honest answer, the Panamanians should not appear as too-eager salesmen. Rather, it would be better to let their neighbors sell them on the advantages of a new relationship with the United States. He had explained all this to Torrijos on the plane en route to Colombia. The general quickly saw the point, and bought it.

When Rómulo took the witness chair at the end of the long conference table in the palacio that night, he was not his usual lively and optimistic self. Up to that point, what the Latin American leaders had heard was an explanation, in some detail, of what a new treaty would provide and why it was advantageous, at least on balance, to Panama. Rómulo looked down the table and said quietly: Gentlemen, Mr. Presidents, I am afraid that I do not feel that we can have a successful negotiation with the North Americans. It was like a bolt of lightning passing through the quiet conference room. The Venezuelan president looked at his Colombian neighbor with a puzzled frown. Costa Rica’s Oduber raised eyebrows and glanced across the table at an impassive Torrijos. The Panamanian negotiators—not in on the Torrijos-Escobar stratagem—looked at each other, puzzled. What was Rómulo talking about? Had something happened that they didn’t know about?

Escobar then proceeded to lay out a gloomy catalog of negatives—U.S. refusal to provide the kind of payments Panama really deserved; American insistence on keeping troops and bases in the heart of the hemisphere; the implied U.S. right to intervene in Panama; the demand for an option to build a sea-level canal in Panama whether that country liked it or not. No, he concluded, we won’t arrive at any successful result with them.

It was totally unexpected, catching the conferees by surprise. The first to recover was President Pérez. The Venezuelan leader had been with President Carter in July. He half-stood, then settled back in his chair, but his tension was evident. He glanced around the table at his colleagues and said: Look, I have been in Washington and I talked with President Carter just a few weeks ago. I know the man wants a treaty, a fair treaty. You [looking at Torrijos] have to keep on negotiating. We just have to insist that the United States reach a reasonable agreement with Panama.

There were nods and mumbles of agreement. But Rómulo continued to take a negative stand. As one participant told me later, He seemed in a very bad mood. A very disappointed man—not angry, but disappointed. The reaction was what Escobar and Torrijos wanted: sympathy for the Panamanian cause, irritation with the United States, and encouragement to push hard for a reasonable accommodation.

To Pérez, it seemed that the sea-level canal problem was central to the difficulty. An astute politician, he judged that if that contretemps could be overcome other matters raised around the table could be settled reasonably. He reached for a scratch pad and began to play with words. He asked for suggestions. Mexico’s López Portillo was the most adamantly opposed to anything that would give the United States unilateral rights, and the Venezuelan leader tried to bring him into the effort to find a compromise solution.

Meantime, another bit of behind-the-scenes playacting was going on. Rómulo decided that Doctor Torrijos had to speak very strongly to his fellow leaders. To make the case Rómulo felt had to be made, his general needed to be angry. Rómulo spoke quiedy to López Michelsen. Look, he said, we are going to write a counterproposal. But we need to have my general speak strongly to the other presidents, because they are going to be in touch with President Carter. So we need to have General Torrijos angry so he will make the case powerfully. López Michelsen understood.

In the exchanges that followed, the Colombian president took a sweetly reasonable position—this is not all bad, he said, and the United States has a certain amount of justice on its side, and let us not be unreasonable. The more he spoke in that vein, the madder Torrijos got. And the angrier he was, the more eloquent he became. He looked in amazement at his friend, who had always been so sympathetic to Panama’s cause. To counteract the appeals for caution and restraint from his neighbor, he spoke with passion and great persuasiveness—so those present say. His words had tremendous appeal to the others. Mexico’s president strongly backed the view Torrijos was advocating. Manley thought it was justified. He said: This is crazy. How can the United States think that we came here to approve this kind of thing? And Torrijos was saying to the presidents: "I came here to announce the conclusion of the treaty—and to have a rest. But this is an entierro [a funeral]."

Having listened to the full exchange, Rómulo suggested that he and Royo retire and try to work something out. They moved aside and started to put words on paper, working from the suggestions that Andrés Pérez and the others had been discussing.

Meantime, in Washington, two frustrated ambassadors, Bunker and Linowitz, were trying to stay calm. And they were getting hungry and thirsty. Ambassador Lewis’ lovely wife, Nita, pulled her husband aside and said: We should give our guests some food; I have some chicken in the kitchen.

No, he said. If I give them a drink, they will relax. And if we feed them, they’ll get comfortable. I want them to concentrate on working. It’s the only way we’ll finish this thing. Besides, I’m sure they would have indigestion if they ate now.

And so the Americans, having by now canceled their Friday evening dinner dates, stayed hungry. Thanks to Ruffino, the ambassador’s efficient man-of-all-work, we, at least, did not die of thirst. But the air conditioner stayed on high, and we all got up now and then to restore our circulation. The phone calls with Colombia continued.

In one conversation with Bogotá, Ambassador Lewis was told by Foreign Minister González-Revilla that if the Americans wanted the sea-level canal option so badly they should pay for it. He suggested that the Panamanians in Washington tell Bunker and Linowitz that, if they raised the tonnage payments to Panama by five cents a ton (to 35?), Panama might consider easing its opposition to the U.S. proposal. Gabriel swallowed hard, and passed that idea on to poor Dr. de la Rosa. Handle it diplomatically, he said, because that’s a tough thing to bring up. In fact, it was outrageous, as Pm sure the Panamanians knew. And of course it was doing precisely what Torrijos and his advisers had been saying all along they did not want to do—trade a political concession for cold hard cash. When he heard it, I thought Sol Linowitz was going to have an attack. He jumped up and said: You’re mad! You’re all mad. I would never raise such a point with the president. And it died right there.

Again the phone rang. Gabriel came in from his study, and said that Nicky Barletta was on the line and wanted to talk to Linowitz. Sol went to the phone, still shaking with irritation. This and the other calls from Bogotá were coming from an alcove just outside the men’s room in the palace. It was the nearest available phone outside the chamber where the presidents were conferring. The Panamanian delegation used it to avoid interfering with the discussions going on among the heads of governments. Later, they would joke about the Men’s Room Connection.

Barletta, Panama’s leading economist, had three items in mind. He began by explaining again why Panama thought larger economic benefits were justified. In a sense it was unnecessary. Linowitz had heard and been impressed by the detailed economic and historical arguments presented by Barletta and his lieutenants over the past month. He and the other members of the U.S. team knew the Panamanians had an excellent point, that their country had been grossly underpaid for seventy-four years. But we also knew—as did Barletta, I am sure—that we were under severe political constraints. Anything paid to Panama under a new treaty would have to come from income provided by the users, and that was not, of course, an infinitely expandable resource. Asking Congress for money to be paid directly to Panama was simply out of the question. Barletta was trying to operate within that limitation, but also trying to get a better deal for his country.

He raised the first item on his agenda: how would the United States feel, he asked Linowitz, about raising by one cent the per ton revenue that Panama would receive a year? He didn’t realize it, but his timing was atrocious. Linowitz had just heard—and reacted violently against—the five-cent-a-ton increase proposed by the foreign minister. Barletta’s one-cent boost stimulated the same reaction. That’s out, he told Barletta. It would be an insult to President Carter and I wouldn’t even raise it. He explained that he had pushed the president hard to get the previous increase—from 27 cents to 30 cents a ton—and that was as far as he was willing to carry this issue. Barletta sensed immediately the strong feelings he was encountering, and dropped the subject.

He went to his second point. We all know, he explained, what inflation does to fixed payments. When the original treaty was signed in 1903, the annual payment of $250,000 a year sounded substantial. Thirty years later, it was paltry. Panama thought it would only be fair if the per ton payments it received were related to some kind of cost-of-living or other inflation index. That way, he said, if inflation continues and canal revenues increase, and world prices rise, Panama’s payments from the operation will keep pace. Otherwise, he said, what we receive will decline every year in terms of real dollars. Ambassador Linowitz considered that a reasonable argument, and he agreed to take it up with the president.

Barletta’s final point was the most difficult. In the July discussions, the United States had agreed to pay Panama $10 million a year from canal revenues. Barletta said he believed strongly that $20 million would be a fairer figure. Linowitz told him that he did not think that could be sold. And, he added, the experts on canal traffic doubted that income from ship transits would sustain that kind of payment. The discussion went back and forth, each man supporting his case with all the arguments he could muster. Linowitz told Barletta he would back either a guaranteed $10 million a year or a conditional $20 million a year—if it were available from canal company profits. Barletta then raised what proved to be the final settlement. Can we say that Panama will get $10 million guaranteed, he asked, and an additional $10 million if it is available from the revenues? In fact, Linowitz had, at that moment, White House approval for just such an arrangement. We had suspected this might well be the Panamanian bottom line, and so Sol had raised it with Vice President Mondale the previous day. He had also talked about it with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the president’s National Security adviser. As a result, Sol had prepared a memo recommending this variation in the economic package, and it had come back to him the afternoon of August 5 with the president’s black-inked OK. Sol did not, however, want to give away this card without something in return. So he told Barletta that if the other issues then being debated could be settled, he would recommend the economic package they were discussing. That generated pressure on the Panamanians to try to work out the other matters quickly.

Linowitz had consulted Ambassador Bunker periodically during the talk with Barletta. He hung up the phone at that point and rubbed his arm, which was nearly numb from holding the phone for forty minutes. We went into the next room for a break, but the red phone suddenly jangled again. It was Edwin Fábrega wanting to discuss some land issues and the transfer of facilities. There was a housing area in Curundu, within a stone’s throw of the Zone border with Panama. Fábrega argued it would create problems if that remained an exclusive U.S. military housing area. Couldn’t we put our people in some less conspicuous place? Then there was the U.S. Navy pier at Rodman, which the navy rarely needed. Couldn’t this seldom-used facility go to Panama? Another problem, on the Atlantic side, involved housing and the high school at Coco Solo. Couldn’t we be a bit more generous on that?

Throughout the treaty talks, the U.S. negotiators were impatient with the tendency of the Canal Zone authorities and the military to try to hold on to as much as possible of what they had regardless of real need. When matters like that arose, Linowitz especially was inclined to seek quick solutions. Bunker’s experience, on the other hand, convinced him that Defense Department cooperation was essential and that we should not alienate the men in uniform if it could be avoided. As the talk with Fábrega progressed, Bunker excused himself and put in a call to Gen. Tom Dolvin, the deputy negotiator who represented the Defense Department on the U.S. team. Bunker wanted Dolvin to know, at least in a general way, what was going on. He also wanted to assure him that no final decisions would be made on these Lands and Waters issues—Dolvin’s specialty—without his knowledge and concurrence. Dolvin appreciated the ambassador’s call and offered to join the group. But Bunker told him it was late (10:00 P.M. by then). He promised to consult Dolvin in the morning. The final response to Fábrega in Bogotá was that the United States was favorably disposed to the points he had made. But, of course, they would have to be checked out with the Defense members of the U.S. team. General Dolvin to this day refers to the meeting at the Panamanian Embassy that night as the Friday Night Massacre because of the implied promises that were made. He spent the next four days pulling back from some of the things the Panamanians thought, with excessive optimism, they had been promised.

By that time, negotiators in both Bogotá and Washington were optimistic. Some issues had been settled; others seemed well on the way to solution. There was a growing feeling at both ends of the line that a few more days of that kind of serious negotiating could make the difference between a treaty and no treaty. But the hardest issue—the keystone of the Bogotá chapter—had not yet surfaced fully at the Washington terminus of the long-distance connection. That was the option for the United States to build a sea-level canal. After all the talk about economics and payments, and housing areas and other matters, it came to the fore.

The phone rang and Gabriel grabbed it. Royo was on the other end. He explained that the Latin American presidents were unhappy with the U.S. proposal. They thought it was completely one-sided. They had a counterproposal—on which they were unanimously agreed—and they hoped President Carter would accept it in the spirit in which it was offered. The ambassador turned the phone over to Tony Hervas, who dictated to us, as Royo read the Bogotá text: The Republic of Panama and the United States of America recognize that a sea-level canal can be important for international navigation in the future. Consequently, after ratification of the actual treaties and during the term of same, both countries agree to study jointly the feasibility of a sea-level canal. In the event they determine favorably the need for a sea-level canal, they will negotiate for its construction on terms agreeable to both countries. Linowitz got on the phone with the scribbled text in his hand. In other words, he said, having quickly caught the central meaning, you’re not giving us an exclusive option. Panama would have as much say as we about building a new and more modern canal. Is that right? Linowitz asked. Correct, said Royo. The presidents assembled in Bogotá, he explained, believed no country should have the right to do anything as major as building a new canal in another country without the full approval of that country.

Royo said the Latin American presidents thought the proposal they were making was fair to both sides. Would it be possible to get President Carter’s approval that night, he asked? Then the U.S. president could cable his acceptance to the Bogotá summit, and everyone would be happy. Linowitz told him it was impossible. President Carter was in Plains and asleep. He and Bunker did not want to wake him in the middle of the night with anything as sensitive as this. Obviously, it would take careful consideration. He promised Royo to contact the president first thing the next morning and to reply to Bogotá as quickly as possible. Royo said he understood and would pass that message to General Torrijos and the others—who by that time were enjoying a sumptuous banquet.

Linowitz hung up the phone. We looked at each other in silence. The Panamanians were trying to read our expressions. There was little to read. Linowitz and Bunker and I went into the next room. We reread the Bogotá wording. Sol said he saw no real problems with it, except it would be hard to give up the exclusivity of our earlier proposal. Bunker agreed. I recalled the strong case that had been made in the 1960s for an open U.S. option to build a new canal—as well as the emotional feelings of some members of Congress—and suggested we might have political problems with the new proposal. But I thought that could be overcome—if the White House took a strong lead.

With that, one of the wilder nights in U.S.-Panamanian diplomacy drew to a close. It was nearing midnight and we had been at it for six hours. Ambassador Lewis was feeling particularly optimistic at that point. He offered Bunker and Linowitz the chicken dinner that Nita had been holding ready. But they were both exhausted and had lost all appetite. They politely declined. It was time to call it a night. Everyone shook hands, and I walked them to the door and down the steps to the sidewalk. That was one unusual night, I said. You’re right, Bill, Bunker said. But worth it in the end. Linowitz thought it had been a good night’s work. And they climbed into their cars.

Are we going to be arrested for kidnapping? Gabriel asked with a grin when I returned. I don’t think so, I said. Actually, my colleagues are quite happy with the results.

So are we, Gabriel said.

We had a nightcap and reviewed the bidding. It truly had been a good night’s work, one none of us was going to forget. No one was likely to be party again to a negotiation with five presidents at the other end of a phone line.

Engineer Cano offered me a ride back to my Virginia Avenue apartment. It was 1:00 A.M. by then and there was litde traffic along Rock Creek Parkway. The downtown streets were almost deserted—only a few cruising cabs, some late partygoers. As we neared my temporary address, due north of the State Department, I pointed to the east. The White House is over there a few blocks, I said, and that’s where it all began thirteen years ago. Cano asked what I meant. I told him that in 1964 an American president named Lyndon B. Johnson had said that the time had come for a new arrangement between the United States and Panama. And that’s what we had been trying to work out over the past thirteen years.

But there were still a few loose ends. Saturday morning was a time for follow-up on the previous night’s events. Bunker and Linowitz had sent to the White House the wording we had received from the presidents in Bogotá. It was forwarded quickly to Plains for the president to study. We also had several questions pending on the economic package. Sol Linowitz had explained the state of play to his assistant, Ambler Moss (a lawyer Sol had brought with him into the treaty business from Coudert Brothers, the prestigious law firm). Moss drafted a memo for the White House on the two key items—the $10 million guarantee with the additional $10 million on an if available basis,*1 and the matter of the inflation index. Moss had studied the matter and found that the Industrial Wholesale Price Index was probably the most reliable and stable of all those available. He put it into the memo as the negotiators’ recommendation. It was, he admitted later, very much an end run around the bureaucracy. But it was the only way to get things done in the time available. The memo came back from the White House in a few hours with presidential approval. Linowitz passed the word to Ambassador Lewis, who relayed it to General Torrijos and his advisers in Bogotá.

The sea-level canal option was more difficult for the president and the White House staff. As he studied the Bogotá wording at his home in Plains, the president saw no real problem with its basic thrust—that the two countries would have to agree on any plans for a new canal. That was only fair, since it was Panamanian territory we were talking about. But he had one nagging worry. What if Panama decided to work out a deal with someone else? What if a consortium of foreign powers made a deal to build a new canal in Panama, leaving the United States out in the cold? Even more worrisome—what if Panama made an arrangement with the Soviet Union, or Cuba? Clearly the Congress would want to know that couldn’t happen. So he wrote some words and discussed the problem with his advisers.

The message went back to Bogotá via Ambassador Lewis: President Carter accepts the text of the six leaders in Bogotá. But he asked that additional language be added to allow him to sell the treaty to the Senate of the United States. The additional text was: A new interoceanic canal will not be built in the territory of the Republic of Panama during the term of this treaty if it is not in accordance with the provisions of same or any other agreement entered into between the parties. The Bogotá formula said that no U.S. canal would be built unless Panama and the United States agreed on the terms. With the added words, the United States would have a veto over a canal proposed by other builders. In relaying the message, Ambassador Linowitz told Lewis that President Carter was asking his presidential colleagues in the Colombian capital to take his problems into account. And he explained the congressional difficulty.

The Latin American leaders in Bogotá were at that moment assembled in a country house (technically, a state farm) some twenty miles from Bogotá. It was a beautiful, rambling ranch house built in traditional Spanish style—lovely tile floors, open terraces, high ceilings, a fantastic view of the surrounding countryside. President López Michelsen had invited his four guests*2 there for a relaxed lunch. They were sitting on the terrace, enjoying preluncheon drinks and talking about the night before. All eyes turned, however, when the phone rang. Ambassador Lewis in Washington was relaying the message from President Carter. Royo took it down, then passed it to Torrijos and the others. The reaction was less than favorable. They understood the U.S. president’s problem, but this was Latin America and they could never approve anything that looked, or was, one-sided for their neighbor Panama. The heart of the matter, as they saw it, was that Panama could not make any arrangement with another country to build a canal on its own territory, but the United States was free to make a deal with some other country in Central America for a new canal if it wished.

Once again the tension mounted. Mexico’s López Portillo called the one-sided proposal unacceptable. Panama’s foreign minister grabbed the phone and told Ambassador Lewis to tell the Americans that if this was their position, Don’t come to Panama. (They were due to arrive the following day, August 7.) Lewis was wise enough not to report this remark to the U.S. team.

Torrijos looked around, sensed the temper of the group, and said, in effect: You, my friends, draft something. Whatever it is, I will accept it—and I hope that Carter will accept it, too. Led by Venezuela’s Andrés Pérez, new additional wording was drafted. It came to be known as Paragraph B, and it was dictated to Lewis: That during the term of the Canal Treaty, the United States will not negotiate with third countries regarding the construction of an interoceanic canal over any other route within the territory of the Americans, nor will it undertake construction of a canal within the territory of the Americas.

Lewis called Linowitz at State and gave him this wording. Sol immediately passed it on to Hamilton Jordan at the White House. Within minutes the Situation Room teletype was clattering urgently, and the counterpart machine in Plains kept pace with the words from Bogotá. It was in the president’s hands in minutes. President Carter thought it over and discussed it with some of his closest advisers—Jordan, Zbig Brzezinski, a few others. Then he placed a conference call to Bunker and Linowitz, standing by in their seventh-floor suite at the southeast corner of the State Department Building. They talked back and forth, and the president gave the ambassadors his decision. He asked them to relay it to Torrijos and his colleagues in Bogotá. Conveyed by Ambassador Lewis, the Carter message was: Tell General Torrijos that I accept, without taking out a single comma, the text of the proposal made by Torrijos and his friends, the presidents. What was added in Washington [the U.S. paragraph] will not go, nor will Paragraph B [the Bogotá addition].

Carter said to congratulate Torrijos on the courage he has shown. The president also expressed his gratitude to Colombia’s President López Michelsen, the Bogotá host, and told him he was glad we have reached an agreement. The presidents in Bogotá were delighted. They issued a joint communiqué that said the end of U.S. control over the Canal Zone meant the end of a colonial vestige in the Western Hemisphere. As could have been easily forecast, the Latin American leaders expressed strong support for Panama’s claims in the bilateral negotiations. But the presidents surprised many readers of their communiqué—and pleased the U.S. president and his key associates—by adding significant praise for Carter. They said that the spirit which has guided President Carter in the negotiations . . . will serve to strengthen friendship and cooperation in the hemisphere. They had heard, and were reacting to, Carter’s request to them to take his problems into consideration. They were passing the word to the American people and to the U.S. Congress that a new arrangement with Panama would make friends for the United States in Latin America, and that rejection of Panama’s aspirations would only make enemies south of the border.

Everything seemed to be coming up roses. Ambassador Lewis asked Foreign Minister González-Revilla if he could tell Ambassadors Bunker and Linowitz that we have a treaty. Nico replied: Not yet. There are no problems in sight. But we have to be very careful to have good people draw up the final text. It was but a small cloud in an otherwise clear and shining sky. Major difficulties had been overcome. The presidents in Bogotá had proved to be able negotiators. And the president in Plains had risked much to buy their compromise. Bunker and Linowitz and their team would be on a plane the next day bound for Panama and the wrap-up sessions.

Mili and I were at Washington National Airport when I got the word that the Bogotá-Washington talks had produced a last-minute solution. I was leaving for home base to be on hand to welcome the U.S. team for what looked like surely the final round. I felt exceedingly good. But somewhere inside was a nagging question: what else can happen to break this thing up? I had no way of knowing then how very close we would come to that break in the next few days. Nor did I foresee how many chasms we would approach, and nearly topple into, during the following eight months, particularly as we crossed the cratered Senate landscape.

As we rose over the Potomac, I glanced down at the familiar monuments of our capital city. The sun was shining brightly and all seemed fair and promising. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Quite a day, I thought. And then I began to relax. There would be some tough ones ahead, I knew. But Scarlett O’Hara had the right idea. I would worry about it tomorrow.

Notes

*1. This was raised again because it ran into some Defense Department resistance that Saturday morning. Defense officials did not know that the president had already approved it.

*2. The fifth leader, Jamaican Prime Minister Manley, had left after the previous evening’s meeting and late dinner in order to be in Kingston in time for a previously scheduled session with Andrew Young, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who was touring the Caribbean.

CHAPTER 2

Prelude to Crisis

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

—Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

IT began in an unlikely way. But most of history is the result of the unexpected, small sparks thrown into tinder made dry and flammable over long years. Who in Boston realized that a group of painted men were changing the world by throwing bales of tea into the icy harbor? How many foresaw that the assassination of an obscure archduke would produce the most massive bloodletting in human history? Who imagined that a hunger strike by one man, even one so holy, would mean the end of empire in the Indian subcontinent? In Panama in 1964, no one thought a small group of unthinking American students could, by raising their country’s flag in front of their high school, assure the beginning of the end of a way of life they and their parents wanted eagerly to preserve. It was not what they expected, even less what they wanted. Nonetheless, an ill-conceived prank and a display of false bravado turned into a nightmare for them and for all