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### Viewing cable 04PANAMA896, PANAMA: TORRIJOS TEAM STIFLES ELECTION EVE

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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
04PANAMA896 | 2004-04-19 21:46 | 2011-05-28 00:00 | CONFIDENTIAL | Embassy Panama

`

    This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

` `

    C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PANAMA 000896

    SIPDIS

    DEPT. FOR WHA/CEN/BRIGHAM

    E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/19/2014
    TAGS: PGOV PINR PM POLITICS FOREIGN POLICY
    SUBJECT: PANAMA: TORRIJOS TEAM STIFLES ELECTION EVE
    "BOMBSHELL" -- SO FAR

    REF: A. PANAMA 0791
         ¶B. PANAMA 0802

    Classified By: Ambassador Linda E. Watt for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d)

    Summary
    --------
    ¶1.  (C) Arnulfista and Solidarity Party opponents of
    presidential candidate Martin Torrijos have given documents
    to reporters that they hope will link him to a 1985
    drug-related kidnapping.  Apparently rattled by a potentially
    damaging story that could break just before the May 2
    election, the Torrijos team has used Democratic Revolutionary
    Party (PRD) influence with the local media to prevent it from
    being published.  Containing allegations of unproved
    veracity, the documents (available on a website) tell a
    tangled tale that attempts to connect Torrijos with sordid
    individuals from the worst days of Manuel Noriega's
    dictatorship.  The documents strongly suggest that Torrijos
    had questionable friends but they go further, purporting that
    he associated with and aided known criminals.  The evidence
    against Torrijos is circumstantial, probably less than enough
    to convict him in a court of law, but more than enough, his
    opponents hope, to convince voters not to elect him.  This
    story reads like a Panamanian soap opera and it is difficult
    to determine whether there is any real substance to this
    convoluted tale.  A search of DEA and other Embassy files has
    turned up no evidence of Martin,s complicity in any crime.
    The PRD,s apparent power to control Panama,s weak-willed
    media -- at least to this point -- is a troubling portent,
    should Torrijos win the election.  End Summary.

    Was Martin Involved?
    --------------------
    ¶2.  (C) On April 7, 2004, according to Embassy sources,
    Martin Torrijos, his lawyers, and his Chilean consultants
    scrambled to study allegations about Martin,s alleged
    complicity in a 1985 drug-related kidnapping that later were
    posted on a website (www.ornstein.org), the day after the
    documents on the website were distributed to reporters.
    Public records show that the then 22-year-old Torrijos signed
    a sworn statement acknowledging that he lent his car to an
    acquaintance, Raul Mata Zuniga, who was involved in the
    kidnapping.  In his July 1985 statement to a judge, Torrijos
    swore that he was not aware of the kidnapping plan.  The
    kidnappers apparently did not use Torrijos' car to abduct the
    victims.  The recent PRD strategy session was called after
    the kidnapping victim, Judy Hidalgo de Watson, apparently
    told the Torrijos campaign that Solidarity Party legislative
    candidate Abraham Martinez had offered her $50,000 to speak
    publicly about the case.  Ms. Watson declined the offer,
    evidently to protect her children from a politically
    motivated media frenzy.

    A Big Cocaine Heist Gone Wrong
    ------------------------------
    ¶3.  (SBU) The complicated story, which reads like the script
    to Scarface, goes something like this.  In May 1985
    Noriega,s drug pilots Floyd Carlton Caceres and Teofilo
    Watson apparently stole more than half a ton (538 kg or 1184
    lbs) of cocaine from the Medellin drug cartel.  According to
    documents on the website, which Embassy has partially
    corroborated from September 1986 DEA reporting (86 DEA HQS
    WASHDC 029870), four Colombians came to Panama City to look
    for Carlton and Watson but, unable to find them, kidnapped
    Watson,s wife, her daughter, and two brothers, both minors,
    on June 30, 1985.

    ¶4.  (SBU) According to Panamanian investigation records, a
    Panamanian accomplice, Raul Mata Zuniga, brought the
    kidnappers and their victims in several cars to a farm
    outside Colon owned by Eric Abrego.  Torrijos was at the
    farm, where he was a weekend guest, according to his
    statement to police.  When Mata's car got stuck in mud near
    the farm, Mata walked to the farm, with gun in hand, to ask
    for help.  Torrijos agreed to let him borrow his Nissan
    Patrol.  When Mata failed to return, Abrego and Torrijos went
    looking for him in Abrego's Jeep, whereupon they came upon
    Torrijos' Nissan, which was also stuck.  They also met Mata,
    the Colombians, Ms. Watson and her children, and several
    vehicles, including a BMW and a Mercedes.  After getting a
    tractor to pull the cars out, everyone wound up back at the
    farm with Torrijos and Abrego.  After some time, Torrijos and
    Abrego left but Mata and the other kidnappers stayed.  After
    Torrijos and Abrego left, according to the documents, the
    kidnappers interrogated Ms. Watson about the whereabouts of
    her husband, and at one point staged a mock execution of Ms.
    Watson,s daughter.

    ¶5.  (SBU) Mata Zuniga and another witness alleged in their
    1985 sworn statements that Martin Torrijos later attempted
    several times to intervene with Panamanian authorities on
    behalf of the same group of Colombians when they were
    arrested in Chiriqui Province in western Panama on
    immigration charges.  Allegedly, Torrijos called Romulo Abad,
    a good friend of Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) Major Luis
    "Papo" Cordoba, and PDF Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, a
    cousin of Omar Torrijos, Martin's dictator father.  Neither
    Cordoba nor Diaz Herrera would agree to release the
    Colombians.  There is no evidence to corroborate Mata,s
    allegations, but they could hurt Torrijos if aired publicly
    on the eve of elections.

    The Darkest Years of Noriega
    ----------------------------
    ¶6.  (SBU) Diaz Herrera, Cordoba, and Abad are bad apples who
    evoke images of the darkest years of the Noriega regime for
    those who lived through them, the last people the Torrijos
    team wants voters to associate with Martin while trying to
    convince Panamanians that Martin represents a "new PRD."
    (See Reftel B.)  Diaz Herrera was fingered as the number two
    in Noriega's drug-running operation and also a accomplice in
    the 1985 torture and murder of dissident Hugo Spadafora.
    Luis Cordoba was a close Noriega associate that U.S.
    authorities arrested in January 1990 for his participation in
    the Spadafora murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
     Among other things, Romulo Abad is a known alien smuggler.
    The Department revoked Abad's nonimmigrant visa along with
    that of former President Ernesto Perez Balladares in 2000.

    PRD Blocks Dissemination, Alleges Smear Campaign
    --------------------------------------------- ---
    ¶7.  (C) A PRD source told POL Specialist April 7 that former
    PRD Foreign Minister Ricardo Alberto Arias had pushed TVN
    (Channel 2) board member Stanley Motta to discourage
    journalist Lucy Molinar from reporting the case on her
    morning program, as she was planning to do.  Motta warned her
    (falsely as it turned out) that she might create "legal
    problems" for herself and the station if she went ahead.
    Molinar, reportedly upset at what she saw as censorship,
    evidently bought the legal argument.  Torrijos supporter and
    salsa star Ruben Blades used the April 7 11 p.m. news on
    Channel 13 (Telemetro - owned by the PRD Gonzalez-Revilla
    family) to warn of an impending "dirty tricks campaign"
    against Torrijos as the election approaches.  The Torrijos
    team is apparently resigned that the story probably will get
    out despite their intense efforts to spike it.  The
    Arnulfistas, our sources say, at one point were trying to
    have the story published abroad to be later "copied" in local
    press.

    Emergency Pow-Wow on Strategy
    -----------------------------
    ¶8.  (C) During the emergency April 7 meeting at Martin's home
    (with his legal team, plus Hector Aleman and Hugo Torrijos),
    according to Embassy sources, the lawyers found no
    exercisable legal recourse against someone who publishes
    factual reports of the case.  The file in question is a
    matter of public record in Panama's National Archives.  When
    consulted, Torrijos' Chilean image consultants supposedly
    told him that if the case surfaces in the local press, Martin
    should stick to his 1985 statement to police that he was
    unaware of the ongoing kidnapping.  Hugo and Hector
    reportedly agreed to dig for dirt on Aleman and his
    associates that they can hold in reserve in case things get
    nasty.

    COMMENT: News behind the News
    -----------------------------
    ¶9.  (C) Most of the allegations linking Martin Torrijos and
    the kidnappers in the 1985 case are not substantiated.  On
    June 30, 1985, Torrijos admitted he lent his car to Mata, one
    of the kidnappers.  There is no proof that he was aware of or
    involved in any criminal activity.  What is not clear is why
    Torrijos was at Abrego's house when Mata arrived, gun in
    hand, as the documents state, with the kidnapping party close
    behind.  The question of Martin's guilt or innocence probably
    would not be as important in the court of Panama public
    opinion as his association with known criminals.

    ¶10.  (C) Torrijos opponents, noting Martin's substantial lead
    in the polls, are desperate to sully Martin's personal
    reputation, but no one has been able to make any accusation
    of wrongdoing stick on Martin.  Anti-Martin attacks tend to
    resonate most with voters who already are anti-PRD, who
    cannot believe Martin really has neutralized the PRD old
    guard, who were frequently involved in shenanigans like this
    during the Noriega years.  Arnulfista candidate Jose Miguel
    Aleman has been Martin's most aggressive assailant, although
    the Endara camp no doubt would like to discredit Torrijos,
    given Endara's consistent message that the PRD has not
    changed and will never change. (See Reftel A.)

    ¶11.  (C) The apparently craven attitude of Panama's press in
    choosing, so far, not to publish the documents is
    disappointing, but whether it amounts to "omerta" (the
    Sicilian Mafia's code of silence), as the website claims,
    probably is an exaggeration.  If Torrijos were President of
    Panama, Panama's media would likely be much more aggressive
    toward him.  For example, despite La Prensa's pro-Martin bias
    during the 1999 and 2004 campaigns, it has criticized
    Arnulfista and PRD administrations alike, inspiring the
    indignation of Panama's current and previous Presidents for
    its investigative reporting.  Once Martin is "on the inside,"
    public scrutiny of everything he does will increase.

    ¶12.  (C) While Torrijos public relations team has shown its
    power to control the media, Embassy believes that the other
    three presidential campaigns have similar resources and
    influence to wield in a comparable situation.  Controlling
    the media probably does not come cheap.  For instance,
    Stanley Motta, whose powerful family controls COPA airlines,
    a large bank, and an import-export firm, as well as several
    Panamanian insurance companies, may simply see his
    involvement as good politics in dealing with the likely next
    president (Torrijos).  Motta probably believes that building
    goodwill with the probable next President is a prudent
    business move.

    WATT

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