Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and other maritime nations that have accepted that treaty?

Would not surrender of the Canal Zone to Panama violate the right of Colombia under the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty of 1914–22 in the Panama Canal and the railroad? Of course it would. But these people just pretend it isn't there. It is a scrap of paper. It is there.

In view of the terms of the 1903 Treaty ceding sovereignty over the Canal Zone to the United States, how can it be legally surrendered except by abandoning the Panama Canal? Do you want to do that? What reasons except a determination—I told you how far that goes back-to acquire the Panama Canal has motivated the U.S.S.R. in the takeover of Cuba? We know about that. Certain people in the White House got hold of me during that thing. This was no accident. Khrushchev had his eye on that canal. I don't blame him, do you? The building of bases there, operating submarines off both coasts of Latin America.

Remember, the trouble we had in the middle part of World War II was German subs being watered and provisioned off the Atlantic coast there by some fascisti. I can give you their names. I know them. German submarines were being provisioned and watered off the mouth of the canal by certain Panamanian elements, fascisti. This is in the book. Would not the cession of U.S. sovereignty over the Canal Zone to Panama facilitate the expropriation of the canal as occurred in Egypt after the surrender of the Suez Canal Zone? Egypt takes over the Suez. The next day there are three Panamanians in Cairo saying, "How do you do that?" I am not kidding you. In 30 days, for the first time Egypt opened a consulate in Panama City. Very funny. This is history.

History is a very funny book. I took my degree in history under Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard. He had a beard down to his waist. Everybody used to say his beard knew more history than anybody in Cambridge. You couldn't hear the guy in the front row. The beard got all the history.

Can you think of a worse blow against the United States, outside of a nuclear attack, than the loss of the Panama Canal?

Would not the cession of the Canal Zone constitute a precedent for other nations, emboldened by such surrender to Panama? This pops up right along. There isn't a decade this does not appear. The Russians raised this once seriously in an off-the-table debate at the United Nations, in I think the first year, "Our right to Alaska." You can get a great argument on that in Moscow, let me tell you. I mean an argument. That is quite a story.

What about the Gadsden Purchase? The great Southwest? What about that? Do you want to go into that?

Mr. FASCELL. Would that have something to do with Texas, perhaps? Mr. FLOOD. All right, Florida. What about Florida? You don't want to go into that. You know all about Florida history. You don't want to go into that; no, sir.

The Louisiana Purchase. Do you wan

forget about that, huh? Sure.

st that one off? Let's

Mr. CULVER. It depends on which part-obtrict.

Mr. FLOOD. You know what I mean. This name for boys.

68-091 0-71

The historic canal policy of the United States is for an American canal, on American soil, for the American people and world shipping as provided by law, and that is the policy we should follow, without dilution.

Mr. Chairman, the present task before the House of Representatives is the transcendent one of clarification and reaffirmation of our sovereign control of the Panama Canal Enterprise. The resolutions that you know about now pending reflect the views of our best informed congressional leaders and specially qualified citizens from all over this Nation. Their adoption will serve notice in the world, especially Soviet rulers who are now living out of a suitcase, starting today, I guess, putting the show on the road, that the United States has the will to meet its treaty obligations at Panama.

It is about time.

I do not come in here waving the American flag and talking about God, country, and everything else. This is not my act. But I am telling you what they are thinking.

We cannot do anything like this. We must reassert our position, our image, in De Gaulle's great phrase. The public image of the United States worldwide is badly tarnished. I never thought I would live to say that. It is so. We cannot do anything like this.

It will open the way for the next great step by the Congress in the evolution of our canal policy, the major modernization of the existing Panama Canal, and that is a "must."

These two steps together, sovereignty reaffirmation and modernization, should meet the canal situation for many generations in the future.

Accordingly, Mr. Chairman, I urge very prompt and favorable action on the Panama Canal Sovereignty Resolutions that are now pending.

Thank you very much.

Mr. FASCELL. Thank you, Mr. Flood. I appreciate your assurances that Congress will have to act with respect to any territorial cession. Mr. Morse?

Mr. MORSE. I have no questions.

Mr. CULVER. No questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FASCELL. Thank you very much, Mr. Flood. We appreciate your appearance.

Mr. FLOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

(The following was subsequently submitted by Mr. Flood for inclusion in the record :)

CONGRESS OF THE UNITES STATES,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., September 29, 1971.

Hon. DANTE B. FASCELL,

Chairman, Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs,
Washington, D.C.

DEAR COLLEAGUE: A crucial point brought out during the Panama Canal hearings on September 22 was whether major canal modernization requires a new treaty.

The answer is "no" for the following reasons:

(a) Under present Treaty provisions the United States has all the rights, power, and authority of sovereignty over the Canal Zone among which are the major operational improvements and increase of capacity of the existing canal.

(b) The term "maintenance" in current treaties has been officially recognized by the Panama Government as including "expansion and new construction" for the existing canal.

A detailed discussion of the meaning of "maintenance" will be found in the Senate debate when approving the 1936 Hull-Alfaro Treaty. (Cong. Record 76th Cong., 1st Sess.) vol. 84, pt. 9 (July 24, 1939) P. 9834.)

As examples of the exercise of this power there are two important ones: (1) the 1939 Third Locks Projects, which was suspended in May 1942 after expending some $76 million chiefly on huge lock site excavations at Gatun and Miraflores for larger locks; and (2) the enlargement of Gaillard Cut, which was completed on August 15, 1970, at a cost of some $95 million. These two projects together represent a total expenditure of some $171 million toward the major modernization of the existing canal.

In paragraph 4 of the August 1971 State Department circular, "Background on Panama Canal Treaty Negotiations," it will be noted that our present unrestricted right for expansion and new construction is being jeopardized by present treaty negotiations. The statement in this circular that the "right to expand the existing canal" is "essential to U.S. agreement to a new treaty," with the "exact conditions" to accompany it "to be determined by negotiations" clearly portends a substantial surrender of existing rights that will subject the United States to future extortion. Our full sovereignty over the Canal Zone, which includes the rights for expansion and new construction for the maintenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of the existing canal, certainly should not be subject to negotiation.

The United States would never have undertaken the heavy responsibility for the construction and operation of the Panama Canal except for the grant of complete sovereignty over the enterprise, which includes the Canal Zone. It is manifestly unjust and unrealistic for Panama now to claim any sovereignty over it, especially since more than $5 billion have been expended in acquiring the Canal Zone from Panama, the construction of the canal and its defense, not a cent of which Panama offers to pay. Hence, any claim for the surrender of the Canal Zone and canal without repayment of our taxpayers is without any legal or moral basis.

Though pending sovereignty resolutions are broad enough to cover the rights for expansion and new construction may I suggest that the committee report emphasize that these rights along with full sovereignty over the canal enterprise, which includes the Canal Zone, are not subject to negotiation without the specific authorization of the Congress.

Sincerely yours,

DANIEL J. FLOOD, M.C.

Mr. FASCELL. Our next witness is the Honorable John R. Rarick, Representative from the State of Louisiana.

John, if you have a prepared statement, we will be glad to accept it for the record, and you may proceed extemporaneously or any other way you like.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN R. RARICK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

Mr. RARICK. Thank you very much.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I heard some of Congressman Flood's testimony. Of course, I do support the Congressman. I think he has quite eloquently and eminently stated the position and the thinking of probably the majority of the American people.

I am here today Resolution 185, an to maintain U.S. so

Sponsor of House Resolution 540, House ated resolutions, to urge the committee ver the Panama Canal Zone.

More than a half century ago, the Russian revolutionist, Nikola Lenin, recognizing the Caribbean Sea as the Mediterranean Sea of the Americas, selected that strategic region to be transformed int a Red Lake. Theorizing that if Cuba, Guatemala, and Panama coul be taken, he felt the area would fall, separating the two Americas. I fact, one of the important matters discussed by the Reds in 1917this is nothing new as noted by the writings of John Reed, notorion Harvard Communist, who covered the November Revolution-wainternationalization of the Panama Canal. This from his book er titled "Ten Days That Shook the World," Modern Library, 1933 p. 235.

The major tragedies resulting from World War II were the en; slavement by Red power of the peoples of eastern Europe and mainland China, which made the continued control of the Suez and Panama Canals by Western powers more necessary than ever.

As has been repeatedly emphasized by our most able and scholarly colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Flood, whose contributions on Isthmian canal policy questions over many years, what happens at one of these interoceanic canals has its influence on the other. (H. Doc. 474, 89th Congress.)

In July 1954, Great Britain arrived at an agreement with Egypt for a phased-out evacuation of British forces from the Suez Canal Zone over a period of 20 months. This withdrawal had quick consequences. On July 26, 1956, the Egyptian Government promptly nationalized the Suez Canal, creating a world crisis. Panamanian demagogs thereupon started thinking along similar lines, and sent emissaries to Egypt to find out how to do likewise at Panama. Egypt thus sent agents to the Isthmus.

Though the attempted Communist takeover of Guatemala in 1954 failed, the pattern of infiltration and subversion by the international Communist conspiracy by early 1957 had reached alarming proportions. In 1959, Castro revolutionaries, encouraged by the New York Times and like opinion distorters, and aided by suspect elements in the U.S. Department of State, succeeded in overthrowing the Cuban Government and in establishing a Red dictatorship over that strategically located island, which covers the Atlantic approaches to the Panama Canal and now serves as a base of operations against constitutional governments in other Latin American countries.

Two such State Department personnel, who have been identified as aiding Castro in the Communist seizure of Cuba by dereliction of duty through suppression of facts, are William Arthur Wieland and Roy Richard Rubottom. Jr. Both are now retired on full pension.

Wieland in 1959 was in charge of the Caribbean American desk at the State Department. He blocked incoming reports revealing Castro's Communist involvements.

Rubottom in 1959 served as Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs. He had previously been assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, when Castro was arrested during Communist riots in that country and denounced as a Communist agentfacts which he failed to report. He is now vice president of Southern Methodist University.

Having weakened the juridical structure of the Panama Canal by compromises to Panama in the 1935 and 1955 treaties, our Government

aced a series of incursions into the Canal Zone by Panamanian radials, but did not take prompt measures to apprehend the perpetrators. Encouraged by the ill-advised display of the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone in 1960, against the overwhelming opposition of the House and the intent of the law, the Isthmian situation culminated in Janury 1964 in highly organized mob assaults on the Canal Zone that had to be repulsed by our Army in the Isthmus. This operation was not a commitment of U.S. Armed Forces against Panamanian invaders, as recently stated in a U.S. Department of State memorandum, but rather an assault of Red-led mobs on our soldiers in the Canal Zone who had no other recourse than to defend themselves.

The January 1964 attack on the Canal Zone was not an ordinary riot, but a carefully planned invasion facilitated by the Panamanian Government which ordered its own national guard to remain in its barracks. The disorders were aimed at forcing the United States to agree to renegotiate the 1903 treaty that had granted full sovereign rights, power, and authority over the Canal Zone and Panama Canal to the United States.

In this sanguinary operation Panama was successful, for the President of the United States, on the advice of appeasement minded officials from the State Department, supinely agreed to renegotiate. When the texts of the resulting treaties were published in 1967, after completion of prolonged negotiations, an aroused American people protested so strongly that they were never signed.

Now Panamanian and U.S. negotiators are trying to arrive at a new set of treaties that, among other benefits, would cede sovereignty over the Canal Zone to Panama and provide for the operation of the canal by a binational authority. The same man, Robert B. Anderson, a New York banker and former Secretary of the Treasury, who headed our negotiating team for the discredited 1967 treaties, is again our chief negotiator for the present negotiations. In fact, the present negotiations are the same bankrupt policies of the Johnson administration now being carried forward by the new Nixon administration.

To say the least, the naivete reflected by such actions by our Government is beyond comprehension and raises the question, "Who are the people conducting our Canal Zone policy, and whom are they representing?" If we should surrender or relax our exclusive control over the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone, we should expect Soviet power to step into the resulting vacuum, giving that tyrannical system control over the world canal routes, both the Suez and Panama.

At this point, Mr. Chairman, I would emphasize the striking parallels between what occurred at the Suez Canal and what is being attempted at Panama. These common factors include such things as the establishment of governments friendly to the Soviet, the giving of economic or military aid, the use of worldwide hostile propaganda against Western powers, the use of terror, and the creation of crises when these powers are heavily involved in distant areas, such as Vietnam or Korea.

Recent changes in the Panamanian Government have placed radicals in key positions, Soviet technicians have reportedly arrived in Panama, and its Government maintains itself in power by terror and control of the press.