House. I might have given a copy of that at that time. It may be here in the bowels of the Congress.

Mr. HUBBARD. Chief counsel, Larry O'Brien, advises that we can obtain that.

General SUMNER. Yes, I am sure you can. I believe it was classified at the time. Confidential probably.

[The material was not received at time of printing.]

Mr. HUBBARD. Did you receive a response to this memorandum? General SUMNER. No, I did not. Matter of fact, I made it a policy, as the Chairman, and I was really not officially under General Brown, as a matter of courtesy I thought it incumbent to keep General Brown informed of things that were going on over at the Inter-American Defense Board. I sent him many memoranda and, to my memory, I do not believe I ever had a reply from any of them. Usually, we discussed them personally after I had submitted the memorandum to him.

Mr. HUBBARD. You indicate in your remarks that the report of a Cuban aircraft landing in Panama with combat ready troops strikes you as highly credible. Am I quoting you correctly?

General SUMNER. Yes. I am not in the system now and I do not have access to the classified reporting that the gentlemen sitting behind me do have access to.

But it appears to me it would be a logical thing, it is probably a credible report, it probably happened.

Mr. HUBBARD. You further indicate that at some point you decided to testify against the Panama Canal treaties before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

When did you make that decision to testify against the treaties? General SUMNER. I would say that decision was probably made late November of 1977.

Mr. HUBBARD. Did you testify?

General SUMNER. Yes, I did testify against the treaties. Senator Stennis was after me to testify earlier, and I was able to put him off because I knew it was going to be a very difficult testimony.

However, I felt particularly this is one of the things that brought me to the decision point that I did not feel that I could, in good conscience, testify in favor of the treaties. And Senator Stennis was absolutely adamant that I testify.

Mr. HUBBARD. What was the reaction within the administration when you made that decision to testify?

General SUMNER. I became a real leper. Matter of fact, somebody, as I understand, called the building to find out who I worked for, and everybody denied me, at which time I said I hear the cock crow twice. I suddenly was found without too many friends at the high level.

I will say this about the late Gen. George Brown, he was always supportive of me. He listened to me and was interested in the strategic affairs of the United States in Latin America. And when I could not get a hearing somewhere else, he listened. He also realized that we did not have very much expertise in this area, which is part of the problem.

Mr. HUBBARD. General, were you or are you aware of any intelligence information, past or present, which would suggest that Omar

Torrijos has acted knowingly or otherwise as an agent for any Communist government anywhere in the world?

General SUMNER. I have no personal knowledge, hard intelligence to make the point that you are making there.

My best appreciation would be that, yes, he has. But I have nothing, I have nothing concrete that I could offer to this committee, particularly as a retired officer, to confirm that particular point.

Mr. HUBBARD. Would you repeat what you said quoting Omar Torrijos regarding his ties to, or respect for Fidel Castro?

General SUMNER. Yes. He made quite a point to me, which was rather surprising, as the Chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board, defending Fidel Castro and expressing his admiration for Fidel Castro and what he was doing. This is made by Gen. Omar Torrijos in full knowledge that my position and the position of the Inter-American Defense Board, as expressed in writing, was totally opposed to what he was saying. And I pointed that out to him and incidently, we came up to the end of that conversation on one point that I remember, he said I think the truth is somewhere between red and black, which was a very interesting observation. Mr. HUBBARD. What do you mean by interesting?

General SUMNER. Well, red being to the left and black being to the right. The truth being somewhere in between, talking about the political developments in the Caribe Basin. I found Gen. Omar Torrijos that day to be sober. He just put a group of Senators on an airplane. He was rational. He had a clear head and it was, I thought, a very useful conversation in light of what happened. It was extremely useful.

Mr. HUBBARD. Thank you, General Sumner.

Mr. Bauman?

Mr. BAUMAN. General, I want to thank you for your statement today.

Yesterday we heard a great deal of testimony about the activities in which certain people are alleged to have been engaged, trying to get weapons from Miami through Air Panama to Panama through a corporation alleged to be controlled by the majority interests of one of the G-2 interests that you mentioned, Colonel Noriega. Some of these weapons have been identified as originating in the United States.

Is this kind of activity consistent with the general knowledge you acquired during your term of office? It is certainly consistent with what you described today, but does this form only a small part of a larger pattern, in your view?

General SUMNER. I think it is just part of a larger pattern. I think we are looking at the tip of an iceberg, really. You know, you have only scratched it.

We really do not have a great deal of intelligence effort devoted to Latin America. As a matter of fact, we were talking about a handful of people. We really have a very difficult time knowing what is going on down there. The government on the grounds have the best information, really, but we do not listen to it. We say that is all tainted information. All of these governments have produced, and they are available over at the Inter-American Defense Board, extensive papers on documentation of the leftist terrorists, Commu

nist efforts in almost every country. Venezuela itself has a large insurgency going on. When I say large, they have a lot of troops committed out there and it is a real problem out there for them in the eastern part of the country. There is no one that I know of that is immune from this type of activity.

Mr. BAUMAN. Let me ask you this question. I have been-I have attended three classified briefings in the last 2 years, all I found to be quite extensive and informative.

Would you not say that our Intelligence sources in Panama, since we have the military present, are better equipped to give this information?

General SUMNER. Yes. I think where we have U. S. troops stationed and where we have a strategic problem, of course General McAuliffe is sitting right here, he can confirm this. We do have assets and resources committed there to know what is going on. But I would say in the rest of the hemisphere, it is terribly thin, paper thin, and when you get outside of the confines of Panama, we just do not have much, and our Intelligence Agency, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, as we all know in this room, has been eroded. And Latin America has not been an important area for us. And if you are allocating resources, you are not going to put the resources into Latin America.

Now, things are changing and probably people are scrambling around right now trying to redirect effort into this area. At least I would hope they are.

Mr. BAUMAN. General, you say that you forwarded this memorandum reproducing a conversation of 2 hours with General Torrijos to General Brown.

In your experience, would you say that a memorandum of this nature, which quite obviously is rather impressive in its content, would, in the course of events, have been forwarded to people like the Secretary of State, White House officials and so on, in view of the negotiations that were then going on?

General SUMNER. I know that some of my memos were, but I am not sure what happened to this particular memorandum. It was, as I say, it was combined with the reporting on the conference of the American Armies in Managua, so there was quite a bit of content in it, and it covered more than just my conversations with Gen. Omar Torrijos. And I frankly do not remember what they did with the memorandum. But I know I did talk personally with General Brown on this particular subject.

Mr. BAUMAN. Were there any efforts made by the State Department officials or the negotiators of the treaties to, at any time, meet with you or your staff and discuss the intelligence matters and defense matters in relation to the treaty provision?

General SUMNER. We did have some conversations. I talked to Ambassador Linowitz. I talked to Ambassador Bunker. I talked to Secretary Toddman, General Dalhbin, and I had a number of conversations. General McAuliffe and I were in contact with each other. Matter of fact, the morning after my conversation with General Torrijos, we had either breakfast or lunch together, and I briefed General McAuliffe on the results of this conversation. The problem was I think that people did not really believe anything was going to happen.

Mr. BAUMAN. Do you mean including the treaty?

General SUMNER. No, not as far as concerning the treaty. The treaty was pretty much in the forefront of everybody's thinking, but as far as Central America, it was not really going to come all apart and unglued, and there was not going to be this-the massive activity that we see here now.

Mr. BAUMAN. In your conversations with the negotiators, Linowitz, Bunker and so on, did you convey the substance of what you told us here this morning to them?

General SUMNER. Not in the detail that I have done here.
Mr. BAUMAN. In a general sort of way?

General SUMNER. I am sorry?

Mr. BAUMAN. Were they informed that General Torrijos personally told you that he had a plan to assist, at least in the case of Nicaragua and other countries, subversion of existing government? General SUMNER. I do not remember making a particular point out of that with Ambassador Bunker and Ambassador Linowitz. At that time I did talk to them about other options bringing the other Latin American countries into a treaty negotiation where this canal would be a canal of the Americans. We had conversation about that. I guess I assumed that Ambassador Bunker and Ambassador Linowitz and, indeed, the entire Carter administration, was informed about this man they were negotiating with, Gen. Omar Torrijos.

Now, it is sort of a situation where you are dealing with a very senior official who should have been briefed on all of this on what was happening.

Mr. BAUMAN. I do not want to prolong this, but let me ask you one last question.

We heard allegations that the current President of Panama is in fact a man of his own right, elected by the Assembly, unanimously, without opposition. But do you have any question in your mind that the Washington Post, and a few others who have written about this, are correct when they say that General Torrijos still runs Panama?

General SUMNER. There is no question in my mind that the power-and he still has the machismo, he is the chief down there, and I think the only other power that gets anywhere close to the power that he wields, is the power of Colonel General Noriega. I think they are the two that are very strong, represent strong leadership there.

Mr. BAUMAN. Did you resign voluntarily, or were you forced to? General SUMNER. No, when I saw that I was going to be forced to testify, and I saw what my position would be, I decided to retire early, to avoid the situation that my good friend Jack Singlaub got into. I did not want to be Singlaub, and I did not, you know, I talked to almost all of the heads of State in my 3 years as the Chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board.

My attempts to see Mr. Carter were all rebuffed. He was not interested in talking to me, or even a courtesy call, and I could sense, matter of fact, I was called over to the White House by Mr. Robert Pastore, and he demanded to know of me why they should not disestablish the Inter-American Defense Board. This was about a week after they took office.

The handwriting was very clearly on the wall. This group was out to do away with the Inter-American Defense Board, and we were going to have new policies for this hemisphere, and I decided I did not want to be any part of that, have the responsibility for it, and, of course, it all came to a very sharp focus over the Panama Canal treaties.

Mr. BAUMAN. Are you telling us that you made attempts to reach President Carter with the information that you have given the committee today?

General SUMNER. No, I made attempts-this is before I had this type of conversation. I attempted to meet with the President, and incidentally, we had met with the previous President, Mr. Ford. I wanted him to meet with the entire Inter-American Defense Board. These are senior military people, who go back to their countries and take positions within the government.

The Inter-American Defense Board has produced 16 Presidents, some of whom are serving, like General Fidel. Secretary Orfellai used to tell me, General, you get them going up, and I get them coming down, after they have been President. The Inter-American Defense Board represented an asset in this hemisphere, and I told Mr. Pastore, I said the Soviets would love to have something like the Inter-American Defense Board. We do not have operational control over the Board, we have no assets. The Board does not run its own intelligence operation, but it is a very important link in the security system of this entire Hemisphere, and I could not get anywhere with the current administration on it.

Mr. BAUMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HUBBARD. Thank you, Congressman Bauman, for your questions.

At this point I would remind the members of the 5 minute rule. Congressman Bowen of Mississippi.

Mr. BOWEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General Sumner, to what extent do you believe that Costa Rica, Venezuela, and possibly others are involved in the sort of activities that you have been describing?

General SUMNER. Well, of course, as I have said, I do not have hard information. I have to take really what I am reading in the newspapers, but it is quite apparent to me that this polarization of the Hemisphere that I have talked about, has taken the governments that are more to the left, and brought them together, and when you see the-I believe Venezuelan aircraft, Commander Sarro out of Managua, after the killings there, and I think it is quite credible that they are working together.

I think for Costa Rica it is a real tragedy how they got involved in this, it is a real tragedy for that whole country.

Mr. BOWEN. As I pointed out last year on the House floor, Comandante Zero had been in Caracas for consultation. I am very much concerned about the whole issue you brought up, and in a general way do share your point of view.

There is one observation you make which I find a little bit peculiar, and that is on page 5, paragraph 4, the statement that, "the Panama Canal treaties should not be implemented under the present circumstances. Rather we should be examining other op