Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

He was interrupted by a commotion near the bar. I saw a waitress swing her fist at one of the soldiers, who caught her hand and began to twist her wrist. She screamed and fell to her knee. He laughed and shouted to his buddies. They all laughed. She tried to hit him with her free hand. He twisted harder. Her face contorted with pain.

The MPs remained by the door, watching calmly. Fidel jumped to his feet and started toward the bar. One of the men at the table next to ours held out a hand to stop him. “Tranquilo, hermano,” he said. “Be calm, brother. Enrique has control.”

A tall, slim Panamanian came out of the shadows near the stage. He moved like a cat and was upon the soldier in an instant. One hand encircled the man’s throat while the other doused him in the face with a glass of water. The waitress slipped away. Several of the Panamanians who had been lounging against the walls formed a protective semicircle around the tall bouncer. He lifted the soldier against the bar and said something I couldn’t hear. Then he raised his voice and spoke slowly in English, loudly enough for everyone in the still room to hear over the music.

“The waitresses are off-limits to you guys, and you don’t touch the others until after you pay them.”

The two MPs finally swung into action. They approached the cluster of Panamanians. “We’ll take it from here, Enrique,” they said.

The bouncer lowered the soldier to the floor and gave his neck a final squeeze, forcing the other’s head back and eliciting a cry of pain.

“Do you understand me?” There was a feeble groan. “Good.” He pushed the soldier at the two MPs. “Get him out of here.”

CHAPTER 13. Conversations with the General

The invitation was completely unexpected. One morning during that same 1972 visit, I was sitting in an office I had been given at the Instituto de Recursos Hidraulicos y Electrificación, Panama’s government-owned electric utility company. I was poring over a sheet of statistics when a man knocked gently on the frame of my open door. I invited him in, pleased with any excuse to take my attention off the numbers. He announced himself as the general’s chauffeur and said he had come to take me to one of the general’s bungalows.

An hour later, I was sitting across the table from General Omar Torrijos. He was dressed casually, in typical Panamanian style: khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt buttoned down the front, light blue with a delicate green pattern. He was tall, fit, and handsome. He seemed amazingly relaxed for a man with his responsibilities. A lock of dark hair fell over his prominent forehead.

He asked about my recent travels to Indonesia, Guatemala, and Iran. The three countries fascinated him, but he seemed especially intrigued with Iran’s king, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah had come to power in 1941, after the British and Soviets overthrew his father, whom they accused of collaborating with Hitler.¹

“Can you imagine,” Torrijos asked, “being part of a plot to dethrone your own father?”

Panama’s head of state knew a good deal about the history of this far-off land. We talked about how the tables were turned on the shah in 1951, and how his own premier, Mohammad Mossadegh, forced him into exile. Torrijos knew, as did most of the world, that it had been the CIA that labeled the premier a Communist and that stepped in to restore the shah to power. However, he did not know—or at least did not mention—the parts Claudine had shared with me, about Kermit Roosevelt’s brilliant maneuvers and the fact that this had been the beginning of a new era in imperialism, the match that had ignited the global empire conflagration.

“After the shah was reinstated,” Torrijos continued, “he launched a series of revolutionary programs aimed at developing the industrial sector and bringing Iran into the modern era.”

I asked him how he happened to know so much about Iran.

“I make it my point,” he said. “I don’t think too highly of the shah’s politics—his willingness to overthrow his own father and become a CIA puppet—but it looks as though he’s doing good things for his country. Perhaps I can learn something from him. If he survives.”

“You think he won’t?”

“He has powerful enemies.”

“And some of the world’s best bodyguards.”

Torrijos gave me a sardonic look. “His secret police, SAVAK, have the reputation of being ruthless thugs. That doesn’t win many friends. He won’t last much longer.” He paused, then rolled his eyes. “Bodyguards? I have a few myself.” He waved at the door. “You think they’ll save my life if your country decides to get rid of me?”

I asked whether he truly saw that as a possibility.

He raised his eyebrows in a manner that made me feel foolish for asking such a question. “We have the Canal. That’s a lot bigger than Arbenz and United Fruit.”