Drug Debate: A Bust

With high drama, the Senate shut its ;all wooden doors for a secret debate on the latest hurdle facing the Panama Canal treaties: charges linking Moises Torrijos, the brother of Panama's strongman, General Omar Torrijos, to heroin smuggling in the U.S. Called at the insistence of Kansas Republican Robert Dole and other treaty opponents, the two-day session attracted as many as 70 Senators, practically a mob in Capitol Hill terms. But when the doors reopened at midweek, after 14 hours of testimony and discussion, the great drug drama turned out to be something of a bust.

The accusations against Moises Torrijos, now Panama's Ambassador to Spain, went back to 1971, when two Panamanians were arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport carrying 155 lbs. of heroin. A federal grand jury subsequently handed down a sealed indictment--which the Justice Department unsealed last week--charging that Moises had helped to arrange the smuggling operation. Along with the indictment, antitreaty Senators cited a four-year-old, 20-page Senate intelligence committee report, also released last week, which said that "some sources" had testified that President Torrijos "knew about" drug trafficking by his brother and other Panamanian officials but did nothing about it. Dole argued that this proved that the Panamanian leader was not a trustworthy guarantor of the treaties, which would turn the canal over to the Panamanians after the year 2000.

Few, if any, Senators were impressed. Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh, who heads the intelligence committee, pointed out that its report was based on "largely secondhand" evidence. Treaty proponents argued irrefutably that the drug-trafficking allegations were irrelevant to the question of whether the canal pact was desirable. Said California's Alan Cranston, the majority whip: "There was no smoking gun found in Torrijos' hand, and besides, he's not going to be around in the year 2000." Even Alabama Democrat James Allen, a leading opponent of the treaties, concluded that the drug debate had been pointless. Said he: "I don't think it changed any minds."

Still, with four to six weeks of public debate ahead, the success of the Administration's carefully crafted strategy on the treaties remains in doubt. The plan has been to proceed in stages: first Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd and then Minority Leader Howard Baker were to endorse the treaties after well-publicized visits to Panama; then they were to bring the treaties to the Senate floor, where individual Senators would be allowed to appease critics at home by amending the pact with an "understanding" clarifying the U.S. right to intervene to protect the canal's neutrality after 2000. But as of last week the pro-treaty forces remained short of the 67 votes (two-thirds of the Senate) needed to pass the pact.

Cranston, the treaties' floor leader, could count only 60 sure votes and four more "leaning" in favor of the pact, with eight still undecided. Although Cranston hopes to pick up more votes in the weeks ahead, he cautions: "I wouldn't bet a large amount of money on the outcome."

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