Of course, they are now retired and able to speak freely. Colonel Thomas described intelligence reports which chronicle Cuban and Panamanian armed support for the Sandinistas.

Have you seen these reports?

General MCAULIFFE. I have seen many such reports; yes.

Mr. HUBBARD. So you have seen these reports? Are the contents of these reports classified?

sir.

General MCAULIFFE. The ones I have in mind are classified; yes,

Mr. HUBBARD. So Colonel Thomas, if I may repeat, is correct when he says there are intelligence reports within our country which chronicle Cuban and Panamanian armed support for the Sandinistas?

General MCAULIFFE. I would say that there are reports which relate to the Cuban arms; and there are some reports that relate to Panamanian involvement, generally along the lines of the statement that I made to the committee earlier.

Mr. HUBBARD. This involvement by Panama includes arms, does it not?

General MCAULIFFE. It depends upon whether you are talking about the Government of Panama or Panamanian nationals who have been found to have done some of this as has already been indicated in the Florida case.

Mr. HUBBARD. Having heard Colonel Thomas describe these intelligence reports which chronicle Cuban and Panamanian armed support for the Sandinistas, are you contradicting the statement, the testimony of Colonel Thomas in any way?

General MCAULIFFE. No, sir. I just want to be sure that you understand that in my instance here I am talking about a Panamanian involvement that is not necessarily an involvement of the Panamanian Government.

Mr. HUBBARD. Did you take any action subsequent to hearing General Sumner's report today on his conversation with General Torrijos concerning gun running?

General MCAULIFFE. As I recall the conversation which I had with General Sumner, I believe the day after his meeting with General Torrijos, the subject of the discussion between the two of them was Torrijos own sympathy for, and you may say, support of, the Sandinistas, at least certain members of the Sandinista group. The subject of running arms to the Sandinistas was not, as I recall, brought out in that conversation-in that meeting.

Mr. HUBBARD. General McAuliffe-and I ask you to listen carefully to this-have you been to Nicaragua recently, during this year? Just yes or no.

General MCAULIFFE. I am just trying to think. I was there either in December or January. I believe it was in December-last December.

Mr. HUBBARD. Did you have the opportunity to speak to President Somoza?

General MCAULIFFE. Yes, sir.

Mr. HUBBARD. Did you suggest to President Somoza that he resign?

General MCAULIFFE. No, sir.

Mr. HUBBARD. You never made that suggestion to President Somoza?

General MCAULIFFE. No, sir. We discussed

Mr. HUBBARD. Did you discuss his resignation?

General MCAULIFFE. Discuss what?

Mr. HUBBARD. His resignation.

Mr. MCAULIFFE. Not in that tone.

Let me say that what we discussed-and of course that was a sensitive discussion-but I believe that I can tell this committee that I went there to▬▬▬▬

Mr. HUBBARD. At whose direction did you go there?

General MCAULIFFE. I went there at the request of the Department of State with the concurrence of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mr. HUBBARD. Did you tell President Somoza that it would be in the best interests of the stability of Central America if he resigned? General MCAULIFFE. I wanted to say, sir, that our discussion was to advise General Somoza of our support; that is to say, our military support, U.S. military support, Department of Defense support, for the process of negotiations leading toward a plebescite which was then alive and under active consideration, negotiations which had been carried on between representatives of Somoza's party and the Broad Opposition Front in Nicaragua, and by three member nations of the OAS.

It perhaps was not clear, or not made clear to General Somoza that we on the military side supported that process. That was the purpose of my visit.

Mr. HUBBARD. While we give you more time to think back on that conversation with General Somoza, we need to go back for a rollcall vote.

Thank you very much.

[Brief recess.]

Mr. HUBBARD. Thank you for your patience.

We had two votes during that time, including final passage of housing legislation. So we should have a while without being disrupted.

We do have Congressman Dornan, a member of the minority on the subcommittee, present.

Now, back to the questions, please, General McAuliffe and Mr. Grove.

General McAuliffe, again, when was it you were in Nicaragua to speak with General Somoza?

General MCAULIFFE. As I recall, Mr. Chairman, it was in December of last year.

Mr. HUBBARD. What was the date? You say December. Do you remember if it was prior to Christmas, or after?

General MCAULIFFE. I will get the dates for the committee, but my recollection is that it was about the middle of the month, middle of December.

Mr. HUBBARD. Who was present with you?

General MCAULIFFE. Ambassador Bowdler.

Mr. CARNEY. I did not hear that name.

General MCAULIFFE. Ambassador William Bowdler who, at the time, was the designated U.S. negotiator among the three-nation

group of negotiators. He represented the United States. There were also representatives of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

This group of three was trying to work out an arrangement, an accommodation, with President Somoza's Liberal Party, and the Broad Opposition Front, leading toward the plebescite.

Mr. HUBBARD. So the meeting was between you and Mr. William Bowdler and General Somoza?

General MCAULIFFE. Correct, sir.

Mr. HUBBARD. Was there a transcript taken of the conference? General MCAULIFFE. Not to my knowledge.

Mr. HUBBARD. Has anyone from the State Department ever asked President Somoza to resign?

General MCAULIFFE. I really do not know.

Mr. HUBBARD. Mr. William Bowdler is with the State Department? Is that correct?

General MCAULIFFE. That is correct.

Mr. HUBBARD. Isn't it a fact that in your presence in December, Mr. William Bowdler of the State Department asked President Somoza to resign?

General MCAULIFFE. No, sir. Certainly not at that meeting. As I had indicated earlier before the vote, my presence there was to convey to General Somoza that we on the U.S. military side were supporting the negotiating process leading toward a plebescite in the country.

Now, one of the implicit purposes of the plebescite was an early resignation of Somoza as president. His term is due to expire in 1981 and the purpose, rather the plebescite process, was intended to be a means of permitting moderate opposition elements in the country to have some influential representation in the Nicaraguan Government and from our point of view on the military side, it was to try to achieve some alternative to the Sandinista.

Mr. HUBBARD. I would ask this of you and Mr. Grove, as you appear before a congressional subcommittee, did in fact Mr. William Bowdler of the State Department ask President Somoza to resign?

Mr. GROVE. I am aware of the meeting

Mr. HUBBARD. When was the meeting?

Mr. GROVE. Whenever General McAuliffe said it was. In December.

Mr. HUBBARD. Is that the only meeting?

Mr. GROVE. That General McAuliffe had with President Somoza? General MCAULIFFE. That was my only meeting with President Somoza; that is, on this purpose. I, of course, had seen him previously, but Ambassador Bowdler was in the country for literally weeks and had many meetings with President Somoza, to my knowledge.

Mr. HUBBARD. Then, Mr. Grove, you would be aware, I assume, that Mr. William Bowdler of the State Department did ask President Somoza to resign?

Mr. GROVE. No, sir, not that I am aware of. I do recall in general the meeting and, of course, I was not present. It came at a time, if memory serves me right, when the plebescite proposal that was being considered by the mediation group and the two other parties concerned, the government of Somoza and the FAO to which I

referred, when the mediation proposal was very much an alive idea. If memory serves me correctly, one of the things that would have been-and I believe was-discussed in terms of the possible outcome would be that if President Somoza lost the plebescite. would he leave the country, would he resign. I believe that was discussed there at the meeting, but I submit that that is very different from asking President Somoza to resign.

Mr. HUBBARD. General McAuliffe, do you recall hearing Mr. William Bowdler tell President Somoza that his resignation would be in the best interests of the stability of Central America? Yes or

no.

General MCAULIFFE. No, sir, not in my presence.

Again, let me say that my purpose was as I have previously expressed it, the meeting was rather lengthy and, as I recall, was largely taken up by General Somoza in an explanation by him of the situation in Nicaragua and of his position on the entire plebescite process. This was before he announced his opposition to that process.

Mr. HUBBARD. Congressman Dornan?

Mr. DORNAN. General McAuliffe, good to see you again.

General, I thought we had learned a very, very hard lesson in Vietnam, sending high-ranking military officers, trained, and trained quite well, to fight wars in political situations. It ended up in the Kennedy years with the ultimate-but nobody intended the death of Diem. But it ended up in finding Diem and his brother executed by a crew that we had encouraged, according to a 4-hour NBC white paper. It had been discussed in the Cabinet Room, and the President himself, in that case, President John F. Kennedy, said, are there any objections to encouraging this coup?

Ted Sorensen told me himself that in an interview. And the result was beheading a country that was then under severe Communist attack. We picked up a moral obligation and went through a series of Air Force attacks and ended up with a guy who runs a restaurant in Paris and who wore a little goatee and a top hat. I thought we had learned that lesson.

Now, I see you were sent, and I am sure you were acting as an honorable citizen, but I do not think that you should be in discussions with a head of a Central American country, whether or not he should resign; whether before or after a plebescite.

I have gotten this from several ambassadors off the record and they have begged me to let them remain anonymous. Two years after your visit down there, a really ugly scene happened in Iran. I understand that the President asked General Haig before he resigned to go down to Iran and tell the generals there not to arrange a coup. Despite all of our international power, we were playing the Pat Darien-Mark Schneider game.

General Haig turned him down, so he sent a four-star general and the Air Force Command, who was probably a decent and honorable man. He described his associations with some of the pilots he had. Then there was this ugly kangaroo execution trial the night before he was-in Iran. One of the victims told this story to the kangaroo court; that the U.S. general came down, met with some of them down there to encourage them to believe in the ayatollah. All those men are dead now.

I wonder if we are not playing a desperate game. If General Somoza is gunned down or blown up, under this Operation Astronaut that we were told about yesterday, whether you will not be left the military fall guy holding some diplomatic policy instead of commanding the south, which you told me was our last outpost from the Rio Grande to the Antarctic. You said you would defend that and defend the canal. We discussed that; that is why we needed this treaty, to keep the canal open, defensible and free. I responded that the canal was open and free. You told me it was defensible.

I would like to ask you this question:

Do you believe if we decided to give the canal to Panama tomorrow that Nicaraguan ships would be allowed to pass through it the very moment that-would Nicaragua have any access to that canal?

General MCAULIFFE. There seem to be two aspects to your question, Congressman.

First, whether the canal is defensible and, second, whether when Panama should ever take it over, they would permit a Nicaraguan ship through.

The canal is defensible. But I must define that to say that our military forces are prepared, have been prepared and can keep the canal from being destroyed by a hostile force.

However, no matter what kind of a force we would put into the Canal Zone, and during World War II we had as much as 67,000 troops in that area, whatever kind of force we put in there could not, if we were in a hostile environment, give a guarantee that we could keep the canal open; that is, today, without interruption of its use by commercial shipping.

We could, of course, from a military point of view, if we should have a hostile environment around the Canal Zone, put air and sea escorts around ships and literally drive them through the canal as we drove ships and barges and the like through the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. But that is a very costly way to go and obviously would not be looked upon very long and favorably by the shipping industry.

Mr. DORNAN. If I may interrupt, may I get into a-I did not get this from a classified source-but immediately after the Panama Canal Treaty went through, and I was one of the few Congressmen on the Senate floor that day watching that hairsplitting victory, the word leaked out of Panama that-the State Department leaked it only for domestic use-that Torrijos had a plan to sink ships at either the mouth of the isthmus, which certainly would not have been beyond his control. That is exactly what he was going to do if the Senate vote had gone two votes the other way.

Have you heard from unclassified sources these stories?

General MCAULIFFE. We have heard stories like that. As a matter of fact, General Torrijos talked in a publicized session a day or two after that vote. He was talking obviously for the benefit of the Panamanians and specifically for the benefit of the members of his Guardia Nacional to try to pat them on the back and tell them that, now they have the treaty and that he would have called upon them to do such damage as you have indicated if the treaty vote had gone the other way.