Back in January, 1972, aAbaba, the Panamanian delegate, Aquilino Boyd, hat the extraordinary session of the United Nations Security Councd delivered a scathing condemnation of theil in Addis
American "occupation" of the Canal Zone, which most Panamanians found increasingly intolerable.
At that time Ambassador Bush had wormed his way out of a tough situation by pleading that Boyd
was out of order, since Panama had not been placed on the agenda for the meeting. Boyd was
relentless in pressing for abring up the issue of sovereignty over the Canal Zone and the canal. Later, in March, 1973, Bus special session of the Security Council in Panama City at which he couldh's
successor at the UN post, John Scali, was forced to resort to a veto in order to kill a resolution
calling for the "full respect for Panama's effective sovereignty over all its territory." This veto had
been a big political embarrassment, since it was cast in the face of vociferous condemnation from
the visitors' gallery, which was full of Panamanian patriots. To make matters worse, the US hadbeen totally isolated, with 13 countries supporting the resolution and one abstention. [fn 25]
As we have seen, direct personal dealings between Bush and Noriega went back at least as far as
Bush's 1976 CIA tenure. At that time Noriega, who had been trained by the US at Fort Gulick, Fort
Bragg, and other locations, was the chief of intelligence for the Panamanian nationalist leader, Gen.Omar Torrijos, with whom Carter signed the Panama Canal Treaty, the ratification of which by the
US Senate meant that the canal would revert to Panama by the year 2000. During the treaty
negotiations between Torrijos and the Carter Administration, the US National Security Agency and
the Defense Intelligence Agency are alleged to have conducted eletronic eavesdropping against
Panamanian officials involved in the negotiations. This bugging had reportedly been discovered byNoriega, who had allegedly proceeded to bribe members of the US Army's 470th Military
Intelligence Group, who furnished him with tapes of all the bugged conversations, which Noriega
then submitted to Torrijos. According to published accounts, the US Army had investigated this
situation under a probe code-named Operation Canton Song, and identified a group of "singing
sergeants" on Noriega's payroll. Lew Allen, Jr., the head of the NSA, supposedly wanted a publicindictment of the sergeants for treason and espionage, but Bush is alleged to have demurred, saying (^)
that the matter had to be left to the Army, which had decided to cover up the matter. A plausible
political cover story for Bush's refusal to prosecute was his desire to avoid scandals in the
intelligence community that could hurt Gerald Ford in the 1976 election. [fn 26] Whatever the truth
of all these allegations, there seems to be no doubthis 1976 CIA tenure. According to one account, that Bush-Noriega meeting was a luncheon held in that Bush met personally with Noriega during (^)
December, 1976 at the residence of the Panamanian Ambassador to Washington. As Ferderick
Kempe notes, "Years later in 1988, after Noriega was indicted on drug charges in Florida, Bush
would at first deny having ever met Noriega. He thereafter recalled the meeting, but none of its
details. His three lunch guests have better memories and one of them insisted this was the thirdmeeting between the two men." [fn 27]
During the preparation of his 1991 trial in Miamai, Florida, Noriega's defense attorneys submitted a
document to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in which they
specified matters they intended to use in Noriega's defense which might involve informationconsidered claissified by the US government. Before being released to the public, this document (^)
was heavily censored. No part of this filing is more heavily censored, however, than the section
entitled "General Noriega's Relationship with George Bush," which has been whited out on
approximately 6 of 15 pages, allegedly to protect US national security, but in reality to hide material
that is explosively compromising to the political reputation of BusBush-Noriega meeting on December 8, 1976 at the Panamanian Embassy in Washington. "Duringh. Noriega's proffer confirms a (^)
this meeting there were discussions concerning the unrest in the canal zone. But at no time did Mr.
Bush suggest that the Panamanian government was in any way responsible for the bombing" that
had occured in the Canal Zone when Ford, worried about attacks from Reagan demanding that the
canal remain in US hands, had cut off the talks on the future of the canal. Noriega's proffer adds that