"...we built it, we paid for it, it's ours and we should tell Torrijos and company that we are going to keep it!" - Ronald Reagan, 1976
In 1975, Ronald Reagan had the Panama Canal controversy the subject of two articles published in his weekly Copley News Service column.
Time - March 1, 1976
Time - April 26, 1976
U.S. News & World Report - May 24, 1976
Ronald Reagan also had a number of articles about the Panama Canal published in his King Features Syndicate column:
Letter describing a conversation between Sol Linowitz and Ronald Reagan, 1977
Source: http://15787595.nhd.weebly.com/original-documents.htmllet linowitz-reagan by api-56065241
Source: https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4906669
"WE SHOULD NOT EVEN BE DISCUSSING SUCH A GIVEAWAY"
REAGAN'S FURY AT CARTER FOR RETURNING CONTROL OF THE PANAMA CANAL comes through loud and clear in this note to a supporter: "On the Panama Canal, I feel we should not even be discussing such a giveaway. Americans suffered much for it and, of course, paid for most of it. President Carter would be doing this nation a great injustice by handing it to them." In a postscript Reagan adds: "No, I have not had much time to consider a run for the Presidency but appreciate knowing of your support." But it was precisely this issue of the Panama Canal which kept Reagan's presidential prospects alive during these "wilderness years" of the late 1970s.
...Reagan brilliantly caught the mood of the country. In the U. S. decision to devolve control of the Canal to Panama, he saw a great power bowing to the wishes of a weaker opponent. In his syndicated radio program, Reagan consistently played on these themes of America's declining prestige under Carter. By 1979-80, when the Iranian hostage fiasco crippled Carter's presidency, Reagan was no longer a long-shot or a has-been.
Time - August 22, 1977
Please click title below to read
Ronald Reagan's U.S. Senate Testimony Transcript
- September 8, 1977
Ronald Reagan 1977 Letter CA Senator John Stull
Source: https://www.historyinink.com/1320004_Reagan_TLS_9-14-1977.htm
Reagan responds to an encouraging telegram from California Senator John Stull, a fellow Republican, about Reagan's congressional testimony in opposition to ratification of the Panama Canal treaties that President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian General Omar Torrijos Herrera had signed the day before. Reagan was unalterably opposed to the treaties, which ultimately returned full control and responsibility for the Panama Canal to Panama. He writes to Stull, in full: “Just a line to tell you I received your wire at the hotel and hope I fulfilled your expectations in my testimony. / I have already taped three of my radio broadcasts on this subject and will continue my efforts as long as there is a battle to fight. I feel more than ever that the giveaway, if it is ratified, will be a disaster for our country. I am urging everyone to write and wire their congressmen and senators. / Nancy sends here best and from both of us ‒ thanks for the wire."
Reagan was the nation's most vocal conservative voice in opposition to the treaties. Although the Nixon and Ford administrations had negotiated with Panama for return of the 10-mile-wide Canal Zone, Reagan was concerned about the security implications of the transfer. He first spoke forcefully about it in 1975, declaring in a speech, “We bought it, we paid for it, it is sovereign U.S. territory and we should keep it." He then made it an issue in the 1976 presidential primary campaign in an effort to unseat incumbent Republican President Gerald R. Ford, who held the opposite view. As Reagan notes in this letter, he devoted numerous radio commentaries to the topic. He also spoke about it in speeches around the United States.
On September 7, 1977, Carter concluded the Torrijos-Carter Treaties with Torrijos, the commander of the Panamanian National Guard who had seized power in a 1968 coup. Together, the two treaties abrogated the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, guaranteed the United States the right to defend the canal from any threat that might interfere with its continued neutral service to ships of all nations, and returned full control and primary responsibility for the canal to Panama as of midnight December 31, 1999.
The next day, Reagan testified before a subcommittee of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee—the testimony to which he refers in this letter. He argued that the canal was part of the United Statesʼ defense perimeter and that ceding the Canal Zone back to Panama would damage American defense interests. He continued to speak out in radio broadcasts, speeches, and interviews until finally, after intense debate, the Senate ratified the treaties by identical 68-32 votes—barely more than the two-thirds majority that the Constitution requires for treaty ratification—in March 1978. The votes crossed party lines with 52 Democrats and 16 Republicans in favor of them and 10 Democrats and 22 Republicans opposed.
This letter comes from Senator Stull's estate and has never been on the autograph market before. Stull (1920-2011) represented California's 80th Assembly District, covering North San Diego County, from 1967 to 1972. During his tenure he crafted California's famous Stull Act, part of the education code, which made the state's public school teachers accountable for the progress of their students. Stull then won a special election to the California Senate in 1973 and represented the 38th Senate District until 1978.
Reagan has signed this letter in blue ballpoint pen. The accompanying original mailing envelope has a note, “ On Panama Canal give-away & RR's testimony,” in another hand.
Newsweek - September 19, 1977
U.S. News & World Report - September 19, 1977
Time - September 19, 1977
Ronald Reagan's Letter to Selena Walters Lamm - November 8, 1977
Reagan writes to Selena Walters Lamm, who had invited him to speak to her Democratic club, and expresses his agreement with her opposition to the Panama Canal treaty. In full: "It was good to hear from you and to learn how you feel about the 'canal.' Yes we are in agreement on this—as an ex-Dem. myself I find myself wanting to ask—are you sure you are in the right club? / I’m fooling—this is one issue that really should know no party lines. I’m really rather sorry that party organizations—Nat. committees & such passed resolutions on it. / On the invitation—are you sure your fellow members feel as you do? It is an intriguing challenge. / Let me toss this to those who do scheduling and get back to you. / Thanks again."
Reagan presciently viewed Lamm’s invitation to speak to her Democratic club as "an intriguing challenge"—Lamm's fellow Democrats refused to hear him.
Firing Line with William F. Buckley, Jr.
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Senate Should Ratify the Proposed Panama Canal Treaties
Recorded on January 13, 1978
Before the U.S. Senate considered their ratification in 1978, the Panama Canal Treaties were the subject of a two-hour television debate that aired live on PBS. William F. Buckley debated for ratification and Governor Ronald Reagan debated against ratification. The event was chaired by Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC). The other participants served as examiners.
Guests: James Burnham, George F. Will, Elmo R. Zumwalt, Ronald Reagan, Patrick J. (Patrick Joseph) Buchanan, Roger W. Fontaine, John S. (John Sidney) McCain, Ellsworth Bunker
RONALD REAGAN WAS RIGHT by Thomas DeFrank
Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/ronald-reagan-was-right
November 10, 1996
Every American schoolkid knows the story. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt essentially stole the province of Panama away from Colombia, used American troops to guarantee its independence, and committed U.S. technological prowess to building a great ditch linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Panama Canal was more than an engineering wonder of the world, however. It was a national icon, a symbol of the ingenuity, determination, and benevolence of the United States of America. "I took Panama," TR would later crow. Now we're giving it back.
At high noon on December 31, 1999, under terms of the 1977 treaty negotiated by President Carter, the Panama Canal becomes the sole property of the Republic of Panama. Eighty-two years old, fastidiously maintained by a highly professional work force, the canal is still in splendid operating condition. The United States has run the canal as a nonprofit, international utility, which was not only generous but necessary for world commerce; two- thirds of the cargo that passes through the waterway is either coming from or going to the United States. Panama won't be so selfless when it takes over management of the canal; the waterway generates nearly $ 500 million in annual revenues, an irresistible cash cow for a poor country. Panama could raise tolls inordinately or, still worse, skimp on maintenance to steer money into government programs or the pockets of corrupt Panamanian politicians. If these things happen, says an American diplomat who helped negotiate the treaties, "they'll kill the golden goose dead."
The golden goose is already tarnished in America's Hong Kong. The ports at both ends of the canal have fallen into disrepair. The Panama Canal Railroad died a few years after Panama took it over; its passenger cars now rot and rust in barns or along abandoned tracks. Colon, the Atlantic port city where many American servicemen and their families once lived, has been declared off- limits to U.S. soldiers because of rampant crime and drugs. The Bay of Panama off Fort Amador is dangerously polluted and gives off a terrible stench. Locals call it the Bay of Cholera.
The U.S. bases remain all-American enclaves, with their swimming pools, ball fields, and fast food drive-thru restaurants. But crime is an increasing problem. In recent months, thieves have breached security at Quarry Heights, the headquarters of U.S. troops in Latin America. Several autos have been hot- wired and brazenly driven off post, and even the homes of general officers have been burglarized.
Security at bases in the old U.S. Canal Zone controlled by Panamanians ranges from lax to non-existent. After being repeatedly warned I'd be wasting my time trying to gain entry without permission, I drove onto two of them without being challenged by guards. I didn't even have to roll down the window for a cursory explanation of my intentions.
It's easy to see why the Panamanians are skittish about visitors. The jungle has reclaimed parts of Fort Gulick (now Fort Espinar). The School of the Americas, where the U.S. Army once trained thousands of Latin American soldiers, is a gutted hulk, plucked to its foundations by looters; even the wiring, light sockets, and plumbing are gone. "Stripping is our national sport," says a Panamanian security guard.
The jewel in the crown of American properties almost certainly will be next. A breathtakingly beautiful boot-shaped piece of prime real estate at the south end of the canal, Fort Amador was divided into American and Panamanian zones in 1979. The U.S. side remained as perfectly manicured as a Singapore neighborhood, while the Panamanian zone became littered with trash and debris and blighted with empty barracks. On September 30, the United States turned over its portion of Amador to Panama. Already it is beginning to go to seed.
So it appears Ronald Reagan was right when he declared in 1976 that Americans not only built and paid for the canal but are needed to keep it operating efficiently. Through bureaucratic mismanagement and indifferent maintenance, Panamanians have spent 17 years letting the former Canal Zone deteriorate. Is the canal itself next? A constitutional amendment and other legal changes to guarantee the canal's independence from the Panamanian government are in the works, and Panamanian president Ernesto Perez Balladares is committed to safeguarding the canal's autonomy. But many Panamanian leaders are privately skeptical such measures can effectively insulate the canal. "If we allow [the canal] to fall into the hands of the politicians," says Fernando Manfredo, Jr., the first Panamanian deputy administrator, "that will be the end of it."
The turn of the century will also bring an end to the American military presence in Panama, a constant since the first Panama Canal treaty was signed in 1903. At the precise instant the canal goes over, the American military is also supposed to be out of Panama -- lock, stock, and Burger King. Over the next three years, the last 7,400 U.S. troops will ship out, and Panama will inherit 3,600 buildings and 71,000 acres of military real estate. The Panamanians and their struggling economy aren't remotely ready to absorb those installations, which brings up the question: How right was Ronald Reagan, whose crusade against the Panama Canal treaty was a key to his growing national popularity in the 1970s? Should the treaty be abrogated? Could it be abrogated?
"For the last 17 years, Latin America has been watching to see if the United States would live up to its treaty obligations, and they've seen that our word is good," says Joe Reeder, the forceful under secretary of the Army who moonlights as chairman of the Panama Canal Commission and is Panama's firmest friend in the Clinton administration.
The transition is already a fait accompli. The administrator, a majority of the board, 92 percent of the commission's 7,500-man work force, and two- thirds of its managers are Panamanian. By law, Reeder can overrule his board, but he never has and never will. "We're one team with one mission," he says, " and that mission is to make sure the canal operates as effectively and efficiently in the next hundred years as it has in the first hundred."
Reeder says that "the era of Big Brother is over in this hemisphere." Maybe so, but negotiations are underway to keep a 4,000-person American military force in Panama and leave some bases in U.S. hands. That might assure investors that Panama won't fall prey to another dictator or drug cartel. And it would keep American pressure on the Panamanian government to hesitate before diverting the canal's proceeds for its own purposes.
Perez Balladares would like to find a way to let the Americans stay, and a huge majority of his countrymen agree with him. Economic benefit, not nostalgia or altruism, is the overwhelming rationale. "If soldiers leave," a cab driver says, "Panama cries." Why is that? "Dollars," he grins between munches on a Whopper with cheese.
But the United States may exit anyway. After two visits to the isthmus in the summer and more than sixty interviews, I'm convinced that a post-1999 U.S. military presence is very much in doubt. Negotiations are in limbo, and time is the greatest enemy of an agreement. Many of the most fervent supporters of a deal in both nations are increasingly pessimistic.
As a matter of sovereign pride and political necessity, Perez Balladares is wary of antagonizing the vocal nationalist minority that wants America out -- Panama craves Uncle Sam's real estate. But the government can't afford to maintain it. In April, former president Nicolas Barletta, chairman of Panama's Interoceanic Regional Authority, told me his agency was spending $ 250,000 a month to mothball facilities already turned over by the U.S. military. But the contractor had never been paid and got a check for several months of back pay only after Panamanian officials learned this article was being prepared. And these expenses are only about 4 percent of what it's going to cost Panama just to maintain all the bases they'll be getting at the end of the century. Barletta, by the way, has grandiose schemes to create a resort, a casino, a hotel-management school, an industrial park, and more on former U.S. territory. "It's fantasyland," says a skeptical Panamanian official.
The Panamanians have been fully warned. In 1995, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, then commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command and now President Clinton's drug czar, invited Perez Balladares to his headquarters at Quarry Heights for a friendly, Dutch-uncle talk. McCaffrey emphasized to the Panamanian leader that it costs U.S. taxpayers $ 80 million a year just to operate and maintain the bases Panama will be getting.
"His jaw dropped," says an official present at McCaffrey's briefing. "He had no idea what just the housekeeping will cost him." But he did understand the math. Panama's cut on canal shipping tolls was $ 80.2 million last year -- all of which goes directly into the strapped national treasury. In other words, simply maintaining U.S. bases in the short term will wipe out the cash the canal generates for Panama's national coffers.
Some Panamanians still believe the United States will find a reason to renege at the last moment and keep the canal and bases. Indeed, the Panamanians still believe -- mistakenly -- that the United States desperately needs the bases. Both are ridiculous notions. The canal has been off the American political screen since the days in the late 1970s when Reagan liked to thunder, "We bought it, we paid for it, it's ours, and we're going to keep it." After an emotional debate, the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty by a 2- vote margin, and since then three American presidents, including Reagan himself, have stood behind it.
In its heyday, Panama was such a dream posting for Americans that the wife of a young Green Beret officer burst into tears in 1972 when her husband was reassigned from Fort Sherman to a hardship post -- Hawaii. On paper, the long goodbye for America's last colony has three years left to run. But for old- timers in the zone, paradise lost began in October 1979, when the treaty went into effect. The idyllic lives of the civilians who ran the canal and the soldiers who protected it have gone steadily downhill ever since.
The 1903 treaty gave the United States sovereignty "in perpetuity" over a ten-mile-wide swath of Panama spanning the isthmus. The Canal Zone was a Little America unto itself. Crisply administered by the Panama Canal Company, a U.S. government agency, the zone was Main Street, U.S.A., circa 1930. From cradle to grave, the company handled everything. Zonians had their own commissaries, hospitals, schools, churches, service clubs, Little League, restaurants, railroad, mortuary, even their own postage stamps and federal district court. Except for speeding tickets, handed out with stern dispatch by the redneck Canal Zone police force, crime was virtually nonexistent.
"It was a paradise," sighs a third-generation Zonian, and it looked the part. The entire zone was so beautifully kept that from the American towns of Cristobal on the Atlantic to Balboa on the Pacific it resembled one enormous golf course. "It's a wonderful place," says Barry McCaffrey, who was literally conceived in the zone when his father, also a retired Army general, was stationed there in the 1940s. As a young captain in the late sixties, McCaffrey was the aide-decamp to the commanding general of Army troops and lived in quarters at Fort Amador.
"I absolutely loved it," McCaffrey says of his days as a junior officer. " It was very stable and quiet. The whole place was run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers culture -- no flaps, and flawless attention to detail."
In addition to returning the canal and U.S. bases to Panama by the end of the century, the 1977 treaty abolished the Canal Zone and turned over all its governmental functions to Panama. Adding insult to injury, Jimmy Carter's negotiators further agreed to abolish the Panama Canal Company and all its commercial enterprises. Predictably, the quality of life took a nose dive. The service center, a popular cafeteria where kids from Balboa Elementary and the high school hung out after classes, was taken over by the Panamanians, who jacked up the prices so high the kids stopped going. Today the restaurant sits vacant. Next door, the Balboa Theater, an art deco classic, is also a wistful memory of Saturday matinees for a quarter, just like the padlocked bowling alley across the street the Panamanians pledged to keep open.
"This place used to be heaven," says a high-school junior pumping iron at the Balboa fitness center. "It's more like hell every day. We ran this country for them, and now they've run it into the ground."
Now that they've reclaimed most of the real estate, the Panamanians have also begun renaming the streets. The Prado, the elegant palm-flanked thoroughfare leading from the steps of the canal Administration Building to Stevens Circle, the monument to the canal's second chief engineer, is now Avenida Presidente Chiara. Gaillard Highway, named for the Army engineer who supervised the hellish nine-mile cut through the shale and rock of the Continental Divide, is now the Avenida Omar Torrijos, after the military dictator who finally forced the gringos out. Parts of Roosevelt Avenue have become Avenida Ascano Arosemenea. The Americans have protested, to no avail.
There's also a dreadful McDonald's sign at the graceful but defunct Balboa rail station. The Panamanian lawyer who owns the restaurant promised canal officials he wouldn't put it up, then reneged. "It's a matter of business," he shrugs. "If people don't know you're there, you aren't going to sell any hamburgers." Some Americans still boycott the place in protest.
Like the grizzled Texas Ranger captain in Lonesome Dove who drinks a toast to "the sunny slopes of long ago," the dwindling band of Zonians mourns a way of life that was doomed long before the treaty was signed and ratified. "It was always clear to most of us," McCaffrey muses, "that you couldn't continue to have a colonial status in Panama. To this day, a lot of Panamanians feel like outsiders in their own country. It was a distortion of reality that had to end. It's time to move forward. We have to be satisfied with taking pride in what we've accomplished here."
In the spring and summer of last year, the Clinton administration quietly debated whether it made sense to reopen the issue of the U.S. military presence in Panama. Bound by treaty to leave anyway, and stretched to the limit as peacekeeping duties escalated and budgets shrank, the Army was dead- set against staying after 1999. Besides, there's no real external threat to the canal anymore; the huge coastal artillery guns at the entrances were pulled out decades ago. There's no urgent strategic reason for the U.S. military to remain either. Except for critical geopolitical hot spots like Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, Pentagon doctrine is rapidly moving away from the notion of forward basing.
"We're a force-projection army these days," says a top military planner. " If we have to deploy to Brazil, we'll do it from Bragg or Hood or Bliss [in the United States], not from Fort Clayton [in Panama]." This is all the more true since the last American combat units pulled out of Panama last year. So with no vital national-security interests left in Panama, the conventional wisdom favored the status quo.
The man who persuaded the Pentagon and ultimately the president otherwise was McCaffrey. He argued that the American military presence, while not absolutely crucial to U.S. interests, would nevertheless be useful to maintain at reduced levels.
Clinton decided that the United States would be willing to keep around 4, 000 troops in-country beginning in 2000 if the Panamanians were agreeable. U. S. officials, in fact, are interested in hanging on to seven of the ten installations they still own, including Howard Air Force Base, a naval station, the jungle school at Fort Sherman, military housing at Fort Clayton, and a logistics base at Corozal. For fear of spooking the Panamanians, they don't admit this publicly. Instead, they talk about the mutual benefit of the counter-drug operation run out of Howard. That's the easiest sell for keeping the United States around. Having abolished their army after Manuel Noriega was toppled by the 1989 U.S. invasion, Panamanians fear the Colombian drug cartels could quickly undermine the nation's tender democracy if the Americans ship out.
In July, Perez Balladares trotted out the idea of creating a regional anti- drug center based at Howard, a sign he's trying to find a rationale to keep the Americans. But Clinton's offer presents the Panamanian government with an enormous political dilemma. Officially, the ruling Democratic Revolutionary party (PRD) wants the United States out. But many party leaders, including Perez Balladares, an American-educated banker, want to make a deal. His coalition government is fearful of the nationalists, who see the issue as a matter of simple sovereignty and enjoy political muscle out of proportion to their minority status.
The political sensitivities are so great that before Clinton and Perez Balladares met in Washington in September 1995, the Panamanians insisted on a face-saving arrangement. There was no way Perez Balladares could touch this hot potato unless Clinton raised it "spontaneously." The president obligingly gave his guest the requisite cover; at the end of their talks, the two leaders agreed to launch "preliminary exploratory talks" to see whether it made sense for the United States to keep some of its bases.
Since then, the negotiations have gone nowhere. Just before these talks- about-talking were to happen a year ago, the Panamanians asked for a postponement. Their fig-leaf explanation: New U.S. ambassador William Hughes wasn't up to speed on the issue. The real reason was that the Panamanians hadn't prepared their own electorate for the prospect of an extremely tricky political U-turn.
About that same time, the Panamanians began telling their American interlocutors that the only way the PRD could justify allowing the gringos to stay was if the United States agreed to pay rent. Even adjusting for Latin machismo, this demand was too much for the Clinton administration. Getting out has been U.S. national policy since 1977. But the pay-to-stay idea is an absolute dealbreaker. Panama, after all, isn't the only country whose national dignity counts for something. "They simply don't believe we're going to walk out of a country we built and not pay them rent," a senior American policy-maker says. "But we are. They still think they're in a negotiation with us. We think we're leaving -- in fact, we know we're leaving -- unless they sign a partnership with America that's beneficial to us and extremely beneficial to them."
And anti-American politicians have recently begun to play the environmental card, charging that the United States must pay to clean up the mess it's leaving behind. It's a ludicrous argument -- the American bases are pristine - - but even some pro-American politicians are trumpeting it. "It's a smokescreen," one U.S. official says, "but they want billions."
At the moment, the non-negotiations are at a perilous point. The American drawdown proceeds apace and is in fact accelerating. Southcom headquarters will move to Miami next summer, a year ahead of schedule. That should have been a message that the United States really doesn't need the bases anymore, but it didn't register.
Many senior American officials believe the Panamanians don't understand that their window of opportunity is closing. At some point fairly soon, the pullout will reach the point of no return. Unless an agreement in principle is reached by early next year, the American withdrawal is probably irreversible.
The Panamanians don't believe it. Even Americans sympathetic to local political realities worry that Panama, in the time-honored tradition of manana, will continue to miscalculate the degree of urgency and come on board a day late and a dollar short.
A recent poll shows that three-quarters of the Panamanian people want the United States to stay, mostly for economic reasons. Ironically, for a country whose official currency is the U.S. dollar, the nationalists seem hellbent on ignoring the value of the greenback to its struggling economy. In economic terms alone, keeping some U.S. bases is a slam-dunk proposition. The American presence pumps more than $ 350 million a year into the Panamanian economy, roughly 8 percent of its gross domestic product. More than 16,000 jobs depend on the Americans, including those of more than 3,000 Panamanians who work for the U.S. military. Those jobs would evaporate and aren't easily replicated in the domestic economy.
If the United States pulls out entirely, Panama's struggling treasury will have to eat the entire cost of maintaining the bases. And more to the point, the confidence of shippers who use the canal and foreign companies and governments considering an investment in Panama will be shaken. It's too distasteful for them to admit publicly, but senior Panamanian officials understand full well that a post-2000 American presence implies a political stability critical to attracting overseas capital. Perez Balladares's European trip last fall to drum up foreign investment to develop the U.S. bases was a failure. The message he came home with was this: If the United States hangs around, there's less chance of Panama succumbing to a new dictator or the drug lords.
The trouble is, Panamanian leaders want both the nationalist satisfaction of watching American forces depart and the prosperity that depends on their staying. The Panamanians will have to choose. The new Southcom commander, Army general Wesley Clark, thinks they'll opt for a continued American role. " It's hard for me to believe we cannot successfully manage this transition working together," Clark says. A better bet is that the Panamanians will send America packing, suffer more economic woes, let the canal languish and decline, and prove Ronald Reagan a prophet.
Thomas M. DeFrank, a veteran White House correspondent, collaborated with James A. Baker III and Ed Rollins on their memoirs.
