Next month it is anticipated that three large tankers a day will transit the Canal bearing Alaskan oil from Prudhoe Bay to the energy hungry eastern seaboard.

Dare we leave such an important transportation link in our economy to a dictatorial communist leaning regime that has so poorly managed its internal affairs that it now must pay 40% of its annual budget to debt services?

We do not have a two-ocean navy. Former Secretary of the Navy William Middendorf and other naval experts have made that clear. Hence, the Canal is vital to our national security for the movement of naval vessels from one ocean to the other.

The Canal can handle 98 percent of all of our naval vessels including our nuclear submarines. Only our large aircraft carriers cannot make the transit.

After the Singlaub incident we all know that the President keeps a headlock on the military. Active commissioned officers will either say what the administration desires or remain silent.

Therefore, we must look to our retired officers for the most accurate and honest appraisal of the importance of the Canal to our security.

Earlier this month four retired admirals each of whom had served as chief of naval operations; namely Arleigh Burke, Thomas H. Moorer, Robert B. Carney, and George W. Anderson wrote to the President as follows:

"We note that the present Panamanian Government has close ties with the present Cuban Government which in turn is closely tied to the Soviet Union.

"Loss of the Panama Canal which would be a serious setback in war would contribute to the encirclement of the United States by hostile naval forces and threaten our ability to survive."

I don't know about you, but I find the testimony of those four respected Admirals far more convincing on the question of the importance of the Canal to America's future safety than anything that might be said by Linowitz, Kissinger, Ford, or Carter.

INTERNATIONAL EXPLOITERS

Ambassadors Linowitz and Bunker say that the American public is ignorant about the Panama Canal issue.

They are right if they are speaking about the details of the proposed treaty. These two representatives of our international clique of bankers have refused to answer many vital questions put to them by our Congressmen.

But if they are speaking about the importance of the Canal to the United States they are dead wrong.

The great majority of Americans know that we paid more for the real estate of the Zone than we did for either Florida or Alaska and that America alone built the Canal and has successfully operated as a great international waterway ever since.

Yes, and these hard working, taxpaying Americans recognize the value of the Canal to the future of our nation.

I tell you, sir, that regardless of the secretive and cowardly plans of the giveaway boys, the average American means to hang on to the Panama Canal forever! And if that means driving from the seats of power those public officials who would place the welfare of the republic of Panama above that of the United States, then we shall be about that great task a once.

For practical purposes Panama is bankrupt.

When Torrijos grabbed the reins of power in 1968 without benefit of an election the public debt was $160 million. Now it stands at $1.4 billion.

The current budget for Panama is $607 million. Estimated revenues of $346 million fall far short of the budget. Current debt service is $221 million.

The list of banking creditors of the Panama Government reads like an International Bankers Who's Who.

It includes the Narody Bank of Moscow, the London Branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Citicorp International Bank of London, International American Development Bank, Continental Bank of Chicago, the Export Import Bank of Washington, the Marine Midland Bank, and the Agency for International Development.

All of these banks are vitally interested in the success of the proposed treaty. They see the American taxpayers as eventually picking up the tab for bailing Torrijos out of hock.

But I believe the taxpayers of the land are plain sick and tired of dancing to the tune fiddled by our errant diplomats.

I was told recently by American businessmen in Panama that they had a good dictatorship and that a new treaty would help their business.

Some of these businessmen were like representatives of those American multinational corporations who supplied Russia with the technology and machinery that made it possible to supply Vietnam with the materials of war used against our American soldiers.

Too often, and with disastrous results for this country, businessmen follow the dollar instead of the flag!

Some of the businessmen with whom I talked suggested that their American companies would lobby for a new treaty with Panama.

I hope that if they do the American taxpayers and working people of this nation will mount the biggest boycott in the history of America against all companies that place price above principle.

CONCLUSION

Gentlemen, we have accommodated ourselves to or retreated before communism since World War II. Now communism is on our southern doorstep.

The time is here when we must forget about world opinion, which incidentally has never contributed one depreciated dime to the tax bill of America. Let us think America for Americans.

Let us stop worrying about corrupt, blackmailing dictatorships throughout the world, and instead charge our public officials with the welfare of our own citizens. Whether we admit it or not communism is at war with what remains of the free world.

In his great address before the Congress General Douglas MacArthur recognized this elementary fact of modern life.

He warned, “The Communist threat is a global one. You cannot appease or otherwise surrender to communism in Asia without simultaneously undermining our efforts to halt its advance in Europe".

If we mean to remain a land of the free then we must immediately regain the initiative from the communist forces of the world.

We can do this best by making our stand at the Big Ditch.

Instead of a public debate over a proposed give away treaty of the canal we should demand our public officials an immediate severance of diplomatic relations with the Republic of Panama as long as it tolerates the flagrant disregard of human rights by its dictatorial regime.

Gentleman, I respectfully challenge you to join me in sending to the Halls of Congress an emphatic and reverberative “NO” to the give-away of our Panama Canal.

[From the Congressional Record, Sept. 23, 1977-E5803]

LATIN LEADERS REFUSE TO ENDORSE NEW PANAMA CANAL TREATIES

(By Hon. Gene Snyder of Kentucky)

Mr. SNYDER. Mr. Speaker, Virginia Prewett is one of our country's most astute and experienced reporters on Latin American affairs. She has top-level contacts throughout the Americas, and publishes Hemisphere Hotline Report. Her report for the week of September 16, below, demolishes President Carter's claim that Latin America is gung-ho for the new Panama Canal Treaties: [From the Hemisphere Hotline Report, Sept. 16, 1977]

LATIN LEADERS REFUSE TO ENDORSE TREATIES

WASHINGTON, D.C.-Amid the hoopla of the U.S. capital's "Week of Panama”, the chief point Carter sought to make by inviting the hemisphere's heads of state to his Panama Canal treaty-signing was thoroughly killed by the visiting heads themselves.

The visitors flatly refused to sign his accompanying "Declaration of Washington" until the text was watered down to uselessness for Carter's principal purpose that of using the declaration to convince the Senate that it should ratify the new Canal pacts.

While much of the U.S. press was ooh-ing and aah-ing, as intended, over how many Presidents and dictators were coming, a tense diplomatic struggle behind the scenes was lost by Carter.

As first drafted,, the Declaration of Washington implied the blessing of U.S. hemisphere neighbors on points in the U.S.-Panama treaties themselves including provisions that say the U.S. can intervene militarily at need to defend the Canal after Panama fully takes over. Carter needed, and thought he could get, a collateral signed statement to this effect from the chiefs of state and other representatives invited to the main treaty signing. For this purpose, the U.S. President invited some of these at great political cost to himself.

Getting such a written commitment from other governments was essential to Carter because many moderates in the Senate well may decide for or against the Canal treaties depending on whether Latin America mostly accedes to-or opposes-treaty provisions supposed to protect U.S. economic and military interests.

Because he saw this need as so great, Carter overrode his own New LeftMcGovernite appointees when he invited to Washington seven hemisphere government heads that he and the New Left have placed on the U.S. humanrights blacklist.

Early on, the White House dropped mention of the proposed Declaration of Washington, and the invitees were not told they would be asked to sign a paper-one that would have plucked Carter's treaty chestnuts out of the fire with at least some thoughtful Senators. Heads of state were asked, by the Organization of American States in the name of the U.S. and Panama, only "to be present" at the Sept. 7 treaty-signing.

The Declaration of Washington, a short statement, said in the first version that the signatories "endorsed" the treaties. While some visitors were actually enroute, like process-servers, White House messengers handed Latin American embassies in Washington the declaration text. "The action is without precedent in the history of diplomacy," said one irate hemisphere diplomat. The countries concerned were given the main treaty texts at about the same time.

Then Jimmy Cater began to learn something about Latin America. What ensued should have taught him something also about the unwisdom of the people who advised him to call the hemisphere summit-advisors whose knowledge of Latin Americans is apparently skin-deep. For the treaties Carter expected to get

"endorsed" invoice one of the touchiest issues, and one of the oldest, in Latin American relations versus the U.S. That issue is intervention.

Not surprisingly, the political kingpin of the four Latin American countries actively backing Panama's demand for the new treaties, Mexico, announced in advance that it would never sign such an endorsement. Even Canada balked.

OPERATION ARMTWIST

Carter aids began hasty re-writes of the Declaration of Washington, and at least three revised versions were debated behind the scenes right up through the day of the Canal treaty signing ceremony. Several Latin American Presidents told Virginia Prewett they hadn't had time to study either the treaties of the Declaration of Washington. Another said the English term "endorse" has no adequate Spanish equivalent. (This was a polite stall.).

What had to be done to get the chiefs of state to sign was a complete gutting of the Declaration of Washington. As finally watered down (and signed by all but little Barbados), the document merely required the visiting government heads to "record our profound satisfaction at the signature by the President of the U.S. and the Chief of Government of Panama" of the treaties, with no commitment whatsoever on the nature or content of the pacts.

In keeping with the scale of this defeat for Carter, it was arranged that the visitors quietly sign the gutted Declaration in an OAS anteroom as they arrived. And not one word was said about this in the televised festivities as Carter and Torrijos signed the Panama Canal agreements.

How much arm-twisting the U.S. had to do to get even with this watered-down declaration, which all the Latin Americans agreed among themselves means absolutely nothing, no doubt will leak out gradually. Indications are that the U.S. arm-twisting was harsh, especially with Mexico. If so, the U.S. will pay for it in future, and probably pay high.

The Canal treaty spectacular raises questions about Carter that only time can answer. Did he go all-out for the Panama treaties, far from a crisis issue in U.S. foreign policy, out of sheer ignorance of what he was getting into? Or out of sheer bullheadedness?

For Carter has stirred some hornet's nests that were quiescent. The Panama treaty issue had been lying around for at least 145 years. Carter could easily have said the U.S. refused to negotiate under threat, thus setting a healthy precedent for our times. He could as easily have refused to negotiate with Panama's Torrijos due to his human-rights abuses.

Instead, Carter has entirely vitiated his human-rights credibility. We have seen, a U.S. President accuse, condemn, chide and penalize seven Latin American governments on “human rights" and then, when in political need of their support, embrace them at the White House. No matter how Carterites may claim that the seven (all anti-Marxists) have "improved" on human rights in six months, this is bald expediency for all the world to see.

The world, if not the U.S. public, also knows that Panama's Torrijos, made a Third World hero by Carter's actions, grossly violates his peoples human rights, that he tortures and murders political prisoners, has "family", ties with organized narcotics, and rules Panama with his jackbooted National Guard, a body with Castroite officers in top positions.

WHAT CARTER HATH WROUGHT

Virginia Prewett asked a left-to-right spectrum of Latin American Presidents whether (as the pro-treaty U.S. press insists) Latin Americans hemisphere-wide will attack U.S. property and U.S. nationals if the Canal treaties are not ratified. Responding with a resounding "No"; Argentina's Videla, Bolivia's Banzar, Chile's Pinochet, Hondouras's Melgar Castro, Guatemala's Laugerud, Colombia's López Michelsen, and Costa Rica's Oduber. An editor of Bolivia's el Diario added, "Not unless some pinkos and Communists rig the attacks."

[From the Congressional Record, Sept. 23, 1977-E5807]

HUMAN RIGHTS IN PANAMA

(By Hon. Robert J. Lagomarsino)

1

Mr. LAGOMARSINO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues the January-February 1977 publication of the journal "Freedom at Issue" and "Comparative Survey of Freedom" that it contains. The survey is published by Freedom House, a national organization whose board of trustees includes such persons as Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Carter, Gale McGee, the U.S. Representative to the Organization of American States, and the two distinguished Senators from New York, Jacob K. Javits and Daniel P. Moynihan.

Freedom House has conducted country-by-country comparative surveys of the status of freedom in the world since 1972 as a complement to its more generalized yearly surveys. I believe that the results of this survey are extremely important in light of the strong stand President Carter has taken on human rights and the possible ratification of the recently signed treaties with the Republic of Panama. Judgment of countries was based on four categories: political rights, civil rights, status of freedom, and future outlook. Freedom, according to the survey's authors, is defined as "the extent to which the people of a country are able to play an active and critical role in choosing their leaders, and thus ultimately in determining the laws and means of enforcement under which they will live." Also, freedom refers to the "extent to which people openly express opinion without fear, and are protected against arbitrary actions by an independent judiciary." In the survey, a free state is designated by the symbol "F," A partly free state by "PF," and a not free state by "NF."

The levels of political and civil rights are judged on a scale of 1-7, with 1 being the highest and 7 the lowest. A plus or minus following a rating indicates an improvement or decline in the rating since the last survvey. A rating marked with a period has been changed since the last survey due to a reevaluation by the author. This, however, does not imply any change in the country. Thus, to achieve a one (1) ranking in political rights, a country must have the critical rights, provided by "a fully operative electoral procedure, generally including an electoral confrontation of multiple parties with a significant opposition vote, and those elected must receive the great preponderance of political power."

A state ranked one (1) will also be strong in subsidiary indicators, such as a recent change of government from one party to another, lack of foreign domination, decentralized power, or a broad informal consensus that allows all segments of society de facto power. On the other hand, in a state given a rating of seven (7), political competition is narrowly restricted to in-fighting within party hierarchies, and all other attempts to influence policy or personnel are considered illegitimate.

Similar standards are applied to the area of civil rights where the following criteria were examined: Freedom from political censorship, open public discussion, the maintenance of a rule of law, freedom from government terror, economic independence of the media from government, and freedom of individuals to move about, choose among educational systems and occupations, obtain private property, operate in the market freely, or organize and join private organizations of choice.

Finally, the symbols in the "outlook" column should be interpreted as follows: "A positive outlook for freedom is indicated by a plus sign, and relative stability of ratings by a zero." "The outlook for freedom is based on the problems the country is facing, the way government and people are reacting to these problems, and the longer run political traditions of society. A judgment of outlook may also reflect imminent change, such as the expected adoption of a meaningful new Constitution."

1 See page 261.