Editing 77-22-B2 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Every once in a while we're made aware of the personal tragedy of an individual or family caused by the impersonal dealings of government.
I'll be right back.

Georgie Ann Guyer is a syndicated Washington columnist who happens to support the proposed Panama Canal treaties. Nevertheless, she authored a column recently which did not show the advocates of the treaties in a favorable light. She was true to the finest principles of her trade in bringing to our attention a great, tragic injustice. On September 1, a highly respected one-time Panamanian journalist, Leopoldo Aragon exiled in Sweden took his own life. Standing in front of the American Embassy in Stockholm, he set himself on fire to protest the canal treaties.

Now I remember reading the news item and whether it was the way in which it was written or carelessness on my part, it was my impression he was an advocate of the treaties. Thanks to Miss Guyer, I know better now. The widow of Leopoldo Aragon is an American, their two daughters attend college in this country and apparently their mother lives in Washington where she told the whole story of her husband and the events leading to a suicide. As a journalist in Panama, Aragon had somehow seen an American document dated 1967, saying that the United States hoped for a strong man-type rule in Panama, which they subsequently got after the military takeover by Torrios clique. Our government wanted this to facilitate getting a canal treaty, Aragon concluded. He made his discovery public and for so doing was sent to Coiba, Panama's Devil's Island. There he underwent torture that nearly cost him his life and from which, according to his wife, he never recovered mentally. He was finally released and exiled to Sweden.

He told of one experience at the beginning of his time in prison. The prisoners had to run the gauntlet, chased like animals with the guards running among them, beating them with clubs. Rosemarie Aragon tells the tragic finale and the events leading to it. She had worked one time in our State Department and had top secret clearance. She tried to get a visa for her husband to leave Sweden and come here to join his family. This was refused on the grounds that he might become a nuisance and cause a disturbance because he was opposed to the treaties. He might very well have done just that. You see, he felt the treaties would further strengthen the hand of the Panamanian dictator.

When Congress held hearings in October on human rights in Panama a State Department spokesman was asked if the Department had made any effort to find out why Freedom House had rated Panama the worst violator in the hemisphere. He replied that the State Department had made no such effort. A widow and her two daughters must wonder a little about the United States, this land of the free, which would deny admittance to a tortured, mentally disturbed man, denied the right to join his family to speak for a cause he believed in. He chose to die in a tower of flame before our embassy in a foreign land.

Perhaps those middle echelon functionaries in the State Department should be made to read the words inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.

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