A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

by Jimmy Carter

  There were constant altercations relating to sovereignty over the Canal Zone, culminating in a confrontation during the early months of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. President Eisenhower had pledged to the Panamanians that no U.S. flags would fly over the zone, but some American students raised a flag on January 9, 1964, and massive rioting by Panamanians erupted. American troops responded with force, and twenty Panamanians and four Americans were killed. Johnson called Panamanian President Roberto Chiari to express his regret, and Chiari demanded that the treaty be revised. Johnson promised to consider Panamanian grievances, and he launched negotiations for a new treaty. However, opposition from the U.S. Congress was so great that he never submitted the agreement for ratification.

  Negotiations continued under Presidents Nixon and Ford, but neither proved willing to send a treaty to Congress. Meanwhile, Panama and a number of other Latin American countries pressured the United States to act. Positions on both sides hardened. In 1973 Panama took the issue to the UN Security Council, where the United States exercised its veto over a demand that a new, “just and equitable” treaty be negotiated. The “unaligned” nations, not just in the Western Hemisphere but around the world, all supported Panama’s demands.

  During the fall of 1975, thirty-eight senators introduced a resolution against any revision in the existing treaty, aware that thirty-four could block any effort. Polls indicated that only 8 percent of the American public was willing to relinquish control of the canal, and conservatives saw this as a prime issue. Both Ronald Reagan and the John Birch Society launched nationwide crusades in 1974 with speeches and video and audio tapes. This was a challenge that I inherited.

  After studying the issues, I concluded that Panama had legitimate claims and initiated substantive negotiations. General Omar Torrijos was then the ruler of Panama; I learned to respect his political courage and honesty and to consider him a personal friend. I had two experienced and respected negotiators, Ellsworth Bunker, former ambassador to Argentina and several other countries, and Sol Linowitz, who had been chairman of Xerox. They reached a successful formula early in August 1977. One treaty would apply from 1979 through 1999, when the Canal Zone would cease to exist and the area would belong to Panama. The other would be a permanent guarantee that the United States would protect the canal and have priority of using it in a time of emergency. Now I had to persuade sixty-seven senators to vote for a highly unpopular agreement that many of them had promised to oppose.

  My first effort was to recruit Presidents Ford and Nixon, and Senate leaders Robert Byrd (Democrat) and Howard Baker (Republican) as allies, and then convince other senators that their most influential home state political leaders would be supportive, or at least neutral. We began inviting as many as two hundred prominent citizens from individual states to the White House, where military commanders, cabinet officers, and I would explain the canal’s history and outline the advantages to our country if the treaties were implemented. My cabinet members and other senior officials made more than fifteen hundred appearances throughout the nation, and I induced forty-five doubtful senators to visit Panama and see how vulnerable the canal was to sabotage and how able were the Panamanians who provided most of the technicians in charge of its operation. Our military commanders in the Canal Zone and General Torrijos, with the demeanor and frankness of a sergeant, proved to be excellent salesmen.

  I invited national leaders from the hemisphere to attend a signing ceremony of the negotiated documents in September 1977, and eighteen presidents and a number of other top officials attended the emotional event. As Torrijos and I prepared to enter the large auditorium from a side room, he burst into tears and wept for a few minutes on his wife’s shoulder until he regained composure. Unfortunately, we had to wait until the following year for the Senate to begin substantive hearings in the committees on foreign affairs and defense, and then have extensive floor debates. The public endorsement by Senators Byrd and Baker was a positive factor, but massive pressures were put on senators who expressed an inclination to oppose the treaties. By this time, opinion polls showed that 34 percent of Americans approved the treaties.

  Assisted by Frank Moore, I kept a notebook on my desk with all pertinent information I could obtain about each senator, including twenty or more names of people or organizations that were most influential with each one. I kept a running tally of those committed to vote either for or against the treaties. I knew their primary involvements in state or national affairs, and whether they had any personal interests in the canal. There were nine “undecided” Republicans whom President Ford agreed to call, though only one of them finally voted yes. There was a flood of crippling amendments, and Senators Robert Dole and Jesse Helms charged publicly and falsely that Torrijos and his family were drug dealers and that high officials in the United States had been bribed. The Senate had closed sessions where these charges were refuted. A vote on the first treaty was scheduled for March 16 and the other a month later. With a week to go I had fifty-nine promised votes. Eleven senators were still unsure, and I had to have eight of them. Here are some key concerns that had to be addressed:

  Mark Hatfield (Oregon) was worried that former senator Mike Mansfield, now ambassador to Japan, might support his opponent in the next election.

  Dennis DeConcini (Arizona) wanted a separate amendment to say more forcefully that the United States could use military force in Panama to defend the canal if necessary after 2000.

  Sam Nunn (Georgia) said his fellow senator Herman Talmadge would have to support the treaties and the DeConcini amendment would have to be approved.

  Henry Bellmon (Oklahoma) wanted my promise not to veto a costly desalinization plant in his state.

  Howard Cannon (Nevada) had mail running twenty to one against the treaties, and he feared condemnation from Mormon newspapers.

  James Abourezk (South Dakota) resented having been excluded from congressional meetings on the energy issue and insisted that I not let cabinet members attend them.

  James Sasser (Tennessee), a personal friend, was angry about my vetoing the Clinch River Breeder Reactor and other issues in his state.

  S. I. Hayakawa (California) wanted to be consulted personally on foreign affairs and wanted me to recognize the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia. He had written a semantics textbook of which he was very proud.

  We finally prevailed, with sixty-eight votes, because I met the demands of Nunn and DeConcini with language that didn’t change the treaties; got Mansfield to assuage Hatfield; agreed with Bellmon on his desalinization plant; induced Mormon editors (who opposed the treaties) not to condemn Cannon; got the king of Saudi Arabia to intercede with Abourezk; invited Sasser to the White House to meet a vast array of stars at the twentieth anniversary of the Country Music Association; and read Hayakawa’s book on semantics, discussed it with him, and invited him to meet with me several times to “confer” on international affairs.

  This was the most courageous vote in the history of the U.S. Senate. Of those twenty who voted for the treaties and were up for election that year, only seven retained their seats, and eleven supporters—plus one president—were defeated two years later, in 1980. Reagan used this as one of the decisive issues against me in his campaign, and the decision remained unpopular, even later.

  American officials still wish to stay clear of the controversy. When the time came in 2000 to grant sovereignty to Panama, neither President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, nor the secretary of state wanted to attend the ceremony, so Clinton asked me to represent the United States. Even later, when President George W. Bush was in office, I received another unexpected request: that I represent the United States in beginning a massive expansion of the canal’s capacity. Panama’s President Martín Torrijos (son of Omar) and I pushed the plunger to explode the first dynamite. In both cases, I was grateful for the honor.

  Hubert Humphrey

  Senator Hubert Humphrey had been a hero of mine since I watched him lead the 1948 Democratic Convention figh
t over civil rights. The “Dixiecrats” withdrew and formed their own party, choosing Strom Thurmond as their nominee, with the goal of taking Southern votes away from Truman. Truman won, and Humphrey was elected the first Democratic senator from Minnesota since the Civil War. I met Hubert when I was a state senator. He came back from an African trip to visit the home of a supporter of mine in Atlanta. He began describing his experiences at about 9:00 and was still talking at 2:30 A.M., when I had to leave and drive home to Plains. When Lyndon Johnson ran for election in 1964, he chose Humphrey as the vice presidential candidate. As I mentioned earlier, Hubert and his wife, Muriel, came to Georgia to campaign, and my mother volunteered to be their host.

  Johnson decided four years later not to run for reelection, and Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic candidate, with Richard Nixon as his opponent. He had inherited an unpopular war in Vietnam, and he decided not to criticize or disavow responsibility for any of the decisions that had been made concerning the war. This cost him votes among Democrats on the left, and many conservative votes went to George Wallace, who ran as an independent. Humphrey lost a close election. He was reelected as senator in 1970 and served in that office until the end of his life.

  As one of the Democratic hopefuls who came to visit me in 1972, Hubert really made himself at home in the governor’s mansion and proved to be our favorite visitor. We have a delightful photograph of Amy sitting on his lap as a four-year-old, feeding him part of her brownie, and both of them have it smeared all over their faces. Once again, he was defeated in the presidential race that year, when Democrats nominated George McGovern.

  When I selected Walter Mondale to be my vice president, he turned to Senator Humphrey for advice on what the office might comprise, and Hubert helped him prepare a bold and unprecedented set of proposals. They involved situating his office near mine, having an unrestricted and automatic presence in all discussions, complete briefings with me on the handling of nuclear weapons, meetings with any members of Congress without prior approval, and freedom to go on overseas trips including meetings with heads of state and with an unlimited press entourage. I was surprised to learn that these were privileges and responsibilities that had never been granted to Vice President Humphrey. I added a few perquisites for Fritz, like setting his own times for vacation periods and freedom to go to Camp David whenever he and his wife, Joan, wished. Senator Humphrey was a staunch friend and supporter and was especially helpful in giving me advice concerning how best to approach other senators when I faced sensitive issues such as dealing with Israeli supporters or getting votes for the Panama Canal treaties.

  When Hubert was suffering from terminal cancer, I learned that he had never been invited to visit Camp David and asked him to go with me for a weekend. I stopped in Minneapolis on the way back from a visit to the West Coast in December, picked him up, and we spent a cold and rainy weekend together. We watched a couple of movies and spent hours in front of a warm fire in our cabin, which I described in my diary as “one of the most enjoyable and interesting weekends I’ve ever spent.”

  Mount Saint Helens

  In May 1980 the biggest natural explosion ever recorded in North America occurred when Mount Saint Helens volcano in Washington State erupted. My science adviser, Frank Press, and other scientists had been monitoring activity on the site for several months, and people had been warned of the danger, but fifty-seven people were killed when the entire north side of the volcano blew away and spread ash in fourteen states. I decided immediately to visit, accompanied by Dr. Press; the secretaries of interior, agriculture, and the army; and the directors of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institutes of Health. We found that one cubic mile of the mountain had been pulverized, 28 feet of silt had clogged the Columbia ship channel, and every tree had been leveled in an area of 150 square miles. As we approached the still-smoldering mountain in a large helicopter, we could see that there was nothing left beneath us except a sea of boiling lava, still containing chunks of ice the size of houses, which had been blown off the peak. Thousands of people would have perished without the early warning, and Dr. Press expressed regret that scientists had underestimated the power of the explosion, which was equivalent to a ten-megaton nuclear bomb. Nearby Spirit Lake was filled with 400 feet of ash and lava, and the level of its surface was raised 150 feet. As we flew around the mountain, several miles away, we saw some large pieces of lava fall beyond our helicopter, and we agreed with the pilot that our observation tour should end.

  After consulting with my advisers, I decided not to do any unnecessary renovations but to let nature heal itself. I didn’t see how anything could grow in the devastated area, but twenty-five years later, in 2005, I was leading a group of volunteers in building Habitat for Humanity homes in Benton Harbor, Michigan, when a truck drove up loaded with boards suitable for framing the roof trusses. The lumber had been cut from new-growth trees from the base of Mount Saint Helens, and the timber company wanted us to use it on these homes for poor families.

  China

  One of the most compelling facets of my life has been my relationship with China. As a boy, I shared the admiration of all Baptists for missionaries who served there, whom we considered our ultimate heroes. People would drive long distances to listen to a missionary who was home for a rare vacation, and I remember pledging a nickel a week to help build hospitals and schools for Chinese children. We still honor Lottie Moon, our missionary who died in China from starvation because she gave her food to needy families. My interest in the region was rekindled with my early visit as a submariner, and I continued to follow Chinese history.

  In February 1972, President Nixon made a historic trip to China, which resulted in the Shanghai Communiqué. This agreement acknowledged that there was only one China, but our diplomatic ties with Taiwan remained intact through the balance of Nixon’s time in office and during Gerald Ford’s years. This issue was rarely discussed during my campaign for president, but I was increasingly convinced that the United States should acknowledge an obvious fact: that the People’s Republic of China was the government that should officially represent the Chinese people. I knew that the U.S. Constitution gives sole authority for diplomatic recognition to the president, and I was determined to exercise it if an adequate agreement could be reached with Chinese leaders regarding treatment of the people of Taiwan. I began to explore this possibility as soon as I was in office, but there were other, more pressing international issues on my agenda. Also, it was not clear to me which leader had the authority to speak for the Chinese government.

  On February 8, soon after my inauguration, I met with Huang Chen, the chief of the Chinese liaison office, who told me that their top officials could never come to Washington officially as long as we had an ambassador here from Taiwan but were eager to visit as soon as the Taiwanese left. There was a lack of trust between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, as indicated by a misunderstanding between Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Huang Chen, who was critical of proposed changes in our strategic planning from an ability to fight two and a half wars to one and a half. He thought we were reducing our vigilance against the global threat from the Soviet Union but had no more objections after Harold pointed out that the war for which we would no longer plan was against the People’s Republic of China.

  Instead of choosing a professional diplomat to represent me in Beijing, I decided to send Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Auto Workers. What I needed was not a smooth-talking diplomat but the toughest negotiator I could find.

  Woodcock arrived in China in July, and I sent Secretary Vance in August for consultations with the leadership. The results were discouraging, and there was virtually no progress toward normalization for months. In May 1978, I sent National Security Adviser Brzezinski to see what he could do. He hit it off with the leadership, and Woodcock was able to continue the process. There were a number of people in our State Department who were deeply committed to Taiwan, so w
e never sent any substantive messages from there to Woodcock. To maintain secrecy, all dispatches were approved by me and transmitted from within the White House.

  There had been a leadership struggle going on in China, but it became increasingly clear that Deng Xiaoping (then spelled Teng Hsiao-ping) would prevail over Hua Guofeng. Although his title was vice premier, in late 1978 Deng was the real Chinese leader with whom we were negotiating. I had basic demands on which I was not willing to compromise, and we were pleasantly surprised on December 13, when Woodcock informed me that the Chinese would accept our key proposals, all relating to the status of Taiwan. Amazingly, the secret was kept until Deng and I announced our agreement simultaneously from Washington and Beijing two days later. I wrote in my diary:

  “We were very favorably impressed with Teng and the rapidity with which he moved and agreed to accept our one-year treaty with Taiwan, our statement that the Taiwan issue should be settled peacefully would not be contradicted by China, and that we would sell defensive weapons to Taiwan after the treaty expires.”