Jon Christian Ryter

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From The Mailbag

20 years

April 29, 2002

By Jon Christian Ryter
Copyright 2002 - All Rights Reserved
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     In 1979, pressured to do so by Council on Foreign Relations, Panama “expert” Madeleine Albright and other socialists within the arch liberal globalist think tank and in the Democratically-controlled United States Senate, the peanut farmer president James Earl Carter (who had just destabilized the Mideast by helping the Muslim extremists in Iran overthrow the democratic government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in favor of Shi’ite extremist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—also on the advise of the CFR) agreed to sign over control of the Panama Canal to the government of Panamanian strongman Gen. Omar Torrijos (or whomever would be in charge of that government at midnight on December 31, 1999). Further, the Panama Canal Treaty mandated that the United States remove its military bases from the Canal Zone. In return the Torrijos government (which no longer exists) promised that the United States would possess “primary access” through the Canal, with its warships given priority over any vessels approaching the “big ditch.” The one-worlders argued that this would somehow be good for the American economy and, thus, the American people.
     Conservatives in the United States were not quite so sure. It was apparent even to the common, ordinary working man on the street (without a doctorate in political science) that the Panama Canal was necessary for the national security of the United States, and that giving it up to a corrupt second world country that could not effectively manage its own economy would ultimately have a disastrous impact on the United States.
     Most war veterans in America were convinced for years that not too long after we gave the Canal to the Panamanians on December 31, 1999 American troops would have to go to Panama to take it back to protect the national security of the United States from a covert intrusion into the western hemisphere by America’s nemesis—the Soviet Union. With American military dollars withdrawn from Panama, an economic vacuum would be created that the Panamanians would have to offset to keep its economy from going into a tailspin. America’s fear, in 1979, was that the void would be filled by Soviet capital and Soviet investments.
     They were almost right.
     With the Soviet Union theoretically collapsing in 1990 and becoming a friendly, benign American trading partner (with its hand outstretched for massive loans at the expense of the American taxpayers) the threat at the Isthmus would come from the People’s Republic of China.
     Among those who began a Panama Watch during the Reagan-Bush years was the National Security Center —one of the think tanks started by former political fund raiser Richard A. Delgaudio during that era. Serving as Chairman of the NSC’s Retired Military Officers Advisory Board was Maj. Gen. Richard Anson, USA, Ret. Serving as board members and/or advisors to the National Security Center is an impressive list of no less than 45 retired flag grade generals and admirals. Each of these former military leaders all recognized one simple fact: the Panama Canal is vital to the security of the United States of America.
     Captain G. Russell Evans, USCG, Ret., the Honorary Vice Chairman of the National Security Center (who co-authored a book on Panama with Admiral Thomas Moorer, former head of the Joint Chiefs) and Delgaudio had written extensively on the threat to America from Red China in Panama long before the United States squandered this critical asset by surrendering it to the current government of Panama—as the People’s Republic of China stood off in the wings, anxiously rubbing its hands together in anticipation of gaining its first major military base in the western hemisphere.

While the Panama Canal Treaty theoretically forbids Panama from inviting an enemy of the United States to set up nuclear missile sites on Panamanian soil, it has been clear for sometime that this is, and always has been, China’s primary interest and objective in Panama—even though American liberals insist that Hutchinson-Whampoa is a private enterprise owned by Li Ka-sheng, the company has been linked, through Mochtar Riady, with both the PRC and the People’s Liberation Army (which is the minority shareholder in every entrepreneurial venture in China).
Even before Delgaudio wrote his best-selling paperback book, PERILS IN PANAMA, Admiral Moorer confirmed that with China acting as the ‘gatekeeper” at both ends of the Panama Canal a new missile crisis was in the making. Moorer believed that both short and intermediate range missiles could be stationed in Panama without the United States knowing they were there until it was too late. Confirming that thought, Maj. Gen. Anson, who served two tours as the commander of ground forces in Panama admitted that communist Chinese short and medium range missiles capable of striking the continental United States (excluding Alaska) could be brought into Panama without the U.S. government detecting them with spy satellites.
Delgaudio noted that on his most recent Mission to Panama, when the group flew over the Hutchinson-Whampoa port on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Canal that two of the three piers which service merchant ships are now covered with canopies. (Last year, only one pier was covered.) What that means is that shipping containers can now be offloaded from ships and taken directly into the Hutchinson-Whampoa warehouses without ever being “seen” by America’s spy satellites. Once inside the warehouses, the shipping containers can then be opened and emptied in complete privacy without anyone ever knowing what shape and size containers were offloaded or what was inside them.

Chinese Missiles
With the problems China has had with the guidance systems on their Long March rockets which they currently use to launch telecommunications satellites into space, the US intelligence agencies calculated that even with the 300 super computers that Bill Clinton sold to the People’s Republic of China to perfect the guidance systems on their telecommunications satellite rockets, it would take China a decade before their intercontinental nuclear missiles could target an American city—and actually hit it. Before Clinton issued the waivers that allowed China to buy super computers from the United States, the odds were about 50/50 that a guided missile aimed at Washington, DC could just as easily hit Montreal, Quebec or Havana, Cuba—or just about anywhere in between. Now, with the very real possibility of Chinese missiles being secretly brought into Panama, America is now vulnerable to nuclear attack from enemy bases in this hemisphere.
In addition, there is another threat from the People’s Republic of China that is now even more of a reality—nuclear attacks from submarines. Each of these submarines carry Trident-class missiles which can be launched against a target without the need for the submarine to surface. The United States has known for some time that the People’s Republic of China had constructed a submarine base in Cuba that would allow them to patrol the entire east coast of the United States. They also suspected that the Chinese were “parking” submarines on the Pacific side of the Canal. Now that they have taken possession of the former Naval station there, they can now maintain their sub fleet on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Americas with impunity.

Hutchinson-Whampoa
“Economic” Takeover
     Even before the arrival of “D” Day (Departure Day) when the United States government would surrender sovereign American territory without firing a shot in its defense, Hutchinson-Whampoa (the Chinese equivalent of an industrial Standard Oil) was already moving in. Li Ka-sheng (the Chinese equivalent of John D. Rockefeller), who prominently figured in the Clinton-Gore Chinese campaign contribution scandals with Mochtar Riady and his son James, began pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Panamanian economy...and in particular, into the campaigns of the “right” Panamanians seeking political office. Li knew that where it cost the People’s Liberation Army some $600 million to “buy” Bill Clinton and Al Gore (and a like amount over a decade to buy several liberal Congressmen and Senators with that money funneled through the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee beginning the mid-1980s when the Chinese tried to defeat Ronald Reagan and elect Walter Mondale who lost in the biggest political upset in political history since James Monroe trounced John Quincy Adams, taking all but one electoral vote) he could buy the entire Panamanian economy for less.
     By the time the Panama Canal hand-off took place, China was already assimilating the Panamanian people into the new Sino-Panamanian society. China had “conquered” Panama and captured the biggest national security prize in the world—and not one shot had been fired in anger. William Jefferson Clinton, who had profited handsomely from his relationship with the People’s Republic of China since Witt Stephens “traded him” (and a bank franchise) to the Peoples’ Republic of China in 1978 for a PRC rice contract for Stephens’ rice cooperative, Rice Farmers of America, refused to be the political dignitary whose face would be associated with the giveaway. He tried to hand the task off on Gore. Gore, who knew that whomever gave up the Canal would not get elected the following year, also declined, suggesting that the ideal Administration person to “officiate” at the surrender was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright, after all, was one of those who convinced Jimmy Carter to give it away in the first place. She palmed the job off on Carter, but the actual task of turning over the ceremonial “keys” to the Canal fell on the hapless US Ambassador to Panama, Simon Ferro.
     While every liberal in America thought it was a good idea to surrender the Panama Canal in 1979, none of them wanted their name associated with the surrender in 1999.
     In 1999 political activist Richard Delgaudio knew that Panama was going to become a PRC economic satellite, and most likely a staging area for China to reach military targets in the United States from either the East or West coasts—and, once they managed to sneak missiles into Panama, from the South. At the same time, the Chinese knew there was only one thing worse than a troublesome “nosy” civilian political advocate and that was a whole parcel of nosy civilian political advocates, many of whom were flag grade retired United States Army generals and US Navy admirals who participate in Delgaudio’s fact-finding missions to Panama.
     That’s one bad thing about military people. When you are trying to camouflage military-related activity to appear like “commercial” activity, they have a tendency to see what non-military civilians fail to see. And, when they see what looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, they know they’re looking at a duck—even when the spinmeisters say its a merchant ship bringing trade goods to the natives.

Panama Demands Investigation
Of Delgaudio Fact-Finding Mission
     When the National Security Center arrived in Panama on March 24, 2002, they had embarked on their 13th fact-finding mission to The Republic of Panama (and, quite literally, their second to the People’s Republic of Panama). The National Security Center Mission to Panama did nothing different this year than last. They came. They observed. They left. But this year, something was different. Not in what the Mission did, since they did nothing different in 2002 than they did in 2001 or 2000—or, for that matter, in 1999. They came. They observed. They left. What was different in 2002 was what was different in 200—the economic benefactors of the Panamanians. When the Mission to Panama happened in the spring of 1999, the United States still controlled the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone. It was American dollars that fed the Panamanian economy. Today, the economy of Panama is fueled by the People’s Republic of China and so are the campaign coffers of its politicians.
     For that reason, if Hutchinson-Whampoa feels “uncomfortable” with American fact-finding missions to Panama, then Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso very likely will feel uncomfortable with that presence as well—as she did when the Mission to Panama came around Easter this year.
     In past years, when they arrived, the National Security Center Mission to Panama group visited with the Panamanian officials and both pro- and anti-American Panamanian influence centers in that nation. This year, two days before the Delgaudio Mission to Panama had even concluded and the American mission departed, President Mireya Moscoso appeared on Panamanian TV—Channel 13—on March 26 and accused the 8-member fact-finding mission of attempting to destabilize the economy of Panama. Within days of their leaving Panama, Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Aleman sent a list of those the Panamanian government viewed as “subversives” to Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking that the US Justice Department prosecute the American participants of the “plot” to destabilize Panama. The existence of such a list became public in a newspaper article which appeared in the April 6 editions of Diario El Universal and Diaro El Siglo. The headline screamed: “List of Subversives Sent to the United States.”
     In the article, Aleman said he received “worrisome documents...on the activities of persons that are attempting to destabilize the country and the government. There are US residents on the list...” Aleman said he decided to sent the list to Justice Department of its citizens because the United States is a sovereign and independent country, so they can decide what to do.
     What concerns National Security Center founder Delgaudio is what the Panamanian authorities intend to do with what they call “...Panamanian collaborators.” Citizens who come under suspicion in that country are now subject to secret phone taps and surveillance by the National Police. It is becoming clear that it is very likely that all of the time that Delgaudio’s Mission to Panama was in the Canal Zone, every member of that entourage was probably under surveillance by Panama’s secret police.
     Delgaudio, fearing for his friends in Panama, in particular Dr. Tomas Cabal, a correspondent for ABC News in Panama and also for National Public Radio, and Ray Bishop, the pro-USA labor leader, sent letters to both Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell seeking copies of the referrals for prosecution—together with the allegations that would merit action by the United States government—under the Freedom of Information Act. To date, neither the State Department nor the Justice Department has even acknowledged that they received his letters let alone that they were actually considering his request.
     In the meantime, the National Security Center’s Panamanian “collaborators” remain under surveillance in their native land. Some of those pro-American “collaborators were guilty of receiving “destabilizing” copies of the Declaration of Independence given to them by Dr. Robert Selle of Boston, Massachusetts.
     Among them is Dr. Cabal who sent his own letter to Aleman, with copies to Ramiro Jarvis, head of the Panama National Security Council, Javier Cherigo, head of the criminal justice system, and Carlos Bares, head of the National Police agency, asking if he was one of those under “surveillance” for subversive activities. Cabal has had no better luck getting an answer from his government than Delgaudio had with the US authorities. The pro-American Panamanians under surveillance by the Panama National Police as collaborators of the American conspirators who are attempting to destabilize the Panamanian government, apparently, with pro-American gibberish: Cabal, Javier Romero, Michelle Lescure (the former editor of El Siglo who was fired by the current government after she launched a series of articles on corruption in government), David Hunt, Felix Carles and Walter Luschinger. All of them are pro-American Panamanians in a new anti-American era that is now commencing in Panama as the Chinese benefactors ostensibly led by Chinese “businessman” Li Ka-sheng are trying to shroud their covert activity behind a western hemisphere bamboo curtain.
     Cabal, in a statement issued through the National Security Center, said he found it hard to believe that the Moscoso government constantly conjures up attempted plots and coups to justify tightening control over the Panamanian people as its officials become even more corrupt from influence peddling. Of course,since the People’s Republic of China has proven that no national leader, not even the President of the United States, is immune from bribery, it should not come as a shock that the first thing the People’s Liberation Army did when it “invaded” Panama, was to buy an obligingly blind government—one that would not look too closely at its Asian benefactors in the Canal Zone.
     The Sinonization of Panama happened quickly. Even before the Canal exchanged hand, the first signs of the soon coming societal transition were already becoming alarmingly visible to the Panamanian population as signs of the forthcoming new second language of Panama—Chinese, not English—began to appear as the “financial presence” of China was felt in Panama City and elsewhere in the form of new neon signs and subsets in Chinese were slowly added to existing business signs—just as English was the dominant second language of the new nation as Panama was carved from a slice of Columbia during an American-sponsored Civil War at the turn of the 20th century when Columbia would not negotiate in good faith for a canal across the isthmus of what was then Columbian soil.
     Even before many of the Panamanian peasants realized that the United States was leaving, and a new “landlord” was taking over (even though the government of Panama, which now owned the Canal was the actual landlord since the Canal Zone was sovereign Panamanian soil for the first time in the history of that nation), it is a literal reality that whomever controls the continued flow of money into the economy of any nation controls both that nation’s economic survival and its government. That was, by the way, the subject of a 1998 CIA report on the potential economic impact America’s withdrawal from Panama. The CIA correctly postulated that China would quickly fill the “dollar vacuum” created by the rapid exodus of both American investment dollars and American payroll dollars with the closing of two military bases in Panama as well. Even before December, 1999, many American business owners in the Canal Zone had either disposed of the Panamanian holdings and had returned to the United States, or now had them on the market as they witnessed the growing influence of the Red Menace in the Isthmus.
     Almost overnight Chinese became the second language in the Canal Zone and, even before the American flag was lowered at the American Embassy for the last time, English became the third language. Over a three year period, a Chinese language newspaper (which has existed for several years) suddenly become the third largest circulation newspaper in Panama and the American language newspaper which had previously been the largest circulation newspaper in Panama, died overnight when the Canal Zone was surrendered to Panama.

Absurd Allegations
     The National Security Center and its Mission to Panama delegation that included Delgaudio, Maj. Gen. Richard Anson, USA (Ret) and his wife; Captain Walter Foster, USNR (Ret); Rhoda Schaeffer; Dr. Robert Selle; Dan Lewis and Ronald Wilcox admit that they have been critical of American policy concerning Panama, and they have been critical of American policy towards the Panama Canal giveaway prior to the hand-over, but the group has never been critical of Panama nor have they been critical of the Panamanian government—former or current.
     The allegations that the members of NSC’s Mission to Panama engaged in some sort of covert activities to “destabilize” the Panamanian government are telling in Aleman’s own allegations to the Ashcroft Justice Department when he reported that he had received “troublesome documents” detailing the activities of Delgaudio’s group and their Panamanian collaborators.
     It doesn’t take too much of an imagination to realize that the note Aleman probably received that spurred him into motion was not the report from his National Police detailing the “covert passing” of copies of the Declaration of Independence (as if to suggest this document, dripping in patriotism as it is, might incite pro-American Panamanians to attempt to overthrow the pro-Chinese Mascoso government) but a brief note from Li Ka-Sheng or some other People’s Republic of China official suggesting that Moscoso and Aleman had to have been giving themselves rectal examinations with their heads properly positioned for the best internal views when the National Security Center arrived in Panama.
     To the People’s Republic of China, which has its own covert design on Panama—their toehold in the Americas—that is military rather than “trade related,” cannot afford to allow overzealous American political activists, whose writings heretofore have been blatantly anti-Chinese, free access to what the eye can freely see and the ear hear when the trained eyes and ears of former military people may accidentally see or hear that China is determined to create a permanent military base of operation in Panama that contains nuclear guided missiles.
     Learning from the failure of the Soviet Union during the October Missile Crisis in 1962 during which U-2 spy planes caught the Soviet Union trying to build missile silos in Cuba from which they could threaten the United States. Since the construction was discovered before the missiles could be armed and positioned, the Soviets were forced to back down and remove the missiles from Cuba. Now, in the age of spy satellites that are so good that they can zero in on the hands on the face of a cheap Timex on the wrist of Palestinian homicide bomber as the NSA counts the sweat beads on the bomber’s head as he triggers the bomb around his waist and separates the half of his body containing his brains from the half containing his upper torso, the Chinese in Panama need absolute secrecy to bring their deadly cargo to the western hemisphere. It defeats Hutchinson-Whampoa’s efforts to install canopies over the piers to conceal the nature of the shipping containers they are offloading from Chinese “merchant ships” if they haphazardly allow American military chieftans to wander around looking, at ground level or from a helicopter, at what they are doing.
     Clearly, the Chinese—knowing that “Big Brother” is watching from “on high” is not going to repeat the Soviet error of the 1960s. The Chinese know that any attempt to install permanent missile silos in Panama would quickly detected by highly advanced spy satellites that can see far more than the cameras mounted on a 1960-era U-2 spy plane—and would just as easily be destroyed in a precision laser-guided tactical strike.
     China will cart their disassembled missile components into Panama in innocuously-marked shipping containers and will assemble them in secret in the recently deserted American military aircraft hangers or warehouses where, if a nuclear showdown with the United States occurs, they can be mounted on mobile missile launchers (like the American unit above) and fired at American targets. Clearly, if missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads are being secretly assembled in Panama, the last thing in the world the People’s Republic of China—and Hutchinson-Whampoa who is likely the “commercial entity” that would be assembling this “imported Chinese technology” for “rapid delivery” to the American consumers in the urban centers of the United States—would want is for nosy American activists to accidentally stumble on something that would cause the American CIA or NSA to more closely monitor the “commercial enterprises” of Hutchinson-Whampoa or the People’s Liberation Army “executives” who are engaged in a myriad of equally “harmless” commercial ventures in Panama.
     While the National Security Center does not realize it yet, they will likely have “security problems” getting their visas approved for a 14th Mission to Panama in 2003. Nor is it likely that, when their plane lands on Panamanian soil, their feet will touch anything except the concrete on the tarmack as they are escorted into the terminal where they will likely be detained at Customs until their immediate flight back to the United States was arranged.

The National Security Center
is now viewed as a threat to the PRC
     The National Security Center and its Mission to Panama is now viewed as a threat to the long term mission of the People’s Republic of China for two reasons. First, the National Security Council is an advocacy group whose testimony before Congressional committees has been sought on several occasions, and thus, the NSC is a credible organization will highly credible, high profile members who are respected—and listened to—on Capitol Hill. Unlike most junkets to Panama by media personalities or political candidates who scheduled the junkets because they good fundraising raising events, the National Security Center is the leading authority on the Chinese presence in Panama. Delgaudio, Evans and Moorer have written several books and pamphlets on the “red peril” in the western hemisphere, and have strong opinions on the subject. After each Mission, the NSC issued eye-opening reports that raised the argument of whether or not China will be able to use their growing economic and military clout in Panama to block American military vessels from using the Panama Canal to get its fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific theatres of operation.
     The People’s Republic of China, which wants to be viewed as a benign commercial partner in Panama until it embarks on its periodic saber rattling and reminds the United States that it is dedicated to the destruction of America, will eventually engage in a nuclear war with the American people. But, until that time, China wishes to continue being a good trading partner because it needs the American people to buy billions of dollars in Chinese slave labor goods in order to raise the money it needs to sufficiently arm itself to carry out its threats to destroy America.
     More important, if China is importing missile components into Panama in crates labeled “sardines” or “widgets,” the last thing in the world they want is a trained military eye on the ground stumbling into a crate of widgets and recognizing them as guidance systems for nuclear missile, or overhearing a random conversation in a restaurant from someone working in a Hutchinson-Whampoa warehouse who is discussing finding bizarre metal casings that definitely do not resemble sardine cans in crates that supposedly contained sardines.
     But even more, as the Chinese-financed Panamanian government tightens its grip on its citizens and begins to more stringently restricts freedom in order to better control the outcome of future elections, the last thing in the world the PRC, the PLC and the Moscoso Aenulfista Party needs is for idealistic, freedom loving Americans like Dr. Selle passing out copies of the American Declaration of Independence to Panamanian idealists who might start taking that document too seriously if the generous Chinese guests in Panama decide to assume the rights and privileges of a landlord.
     Clearly, the people of Panama know even less about the economic takeover of Panama that has led to to surreptitous psychological overthrow of its government, than do the people of the United States. Like the Americans who watched sovereign American territory surrendered without a shot being fired, native Panamanians do not like the idea of Chinese curtailing their freedoms through the blatant bribery of their politicians. But, unlike the United States, Panama no longer has a ‘free press.” It is ‘free” as long as it reports the news the Panamanian governments deems “fit to print.” Remember, Michelle Lescure who exposed the corruption and bribery that is becoming rampant in Panama was fired and is now being investigated for criminal violations of Panama’s libel laws because she dared to tell the truth.
     But more important is a question that must be answered by the United States National Security Agency. It is a question raised by what Delgaudio’s last Mission to Panama saw. Why has Hutchinson-Whampoa covered the piers on the Atlantic side of the canal with canopies? What types of shipping containers are being offloaded, and why is secrecy so important?
     Hutchinson-Whampoa will likely argue that the canopies are designed to provide “shade” for workers to protect them from the hot tropical sun. That argument fails based on the fact that none of the piers on the Pacific side of the canal are covered, nor is the third pier on the Atlantic side. Only goods earmarked for storage in Hutchinson-Whampoa warehouses are offloaded under the protection of the canopies which block the eye of America’s big brother in the sky.
     It’s no wonder that Hutchinson-Whampoa’s puppet government in Panama feels that Delgaudio’s National Security Center is attempting to destabilize the Panamanian government. What the Mission to Panama may be doing is destabilizing Li Ka-sheng’s plans to bring guided missiles into Panama.
     For more information on this topic, visit www.missiontopanama.org.

NOTE: The National Security Center is one of the key sponsors of the Western Conservative Conference which will be held this year at the Airport Marriott in Orange, California on June 21 and June 22. The keynote speakers for the Conference will be former Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger and Maj. Gen. Anson who figured prominently in Delgaudio’s recent Mission to Panama. To meet and speak with the group that has been instrumental in alerting America to the threat posed by China in Panama since the mid-1990s, you may want to attend this conference. Protecting America from a nuclear missile threat on this hemisphere has to be every American’s primary concern.