Guarding the Crossroads: Security and defense of the Panama Canal
by Charles Morris Brooks
P&P Group, Inc., Panama 2003
282 pages in hardcover
CharIie Morris is a world-class industrial security expert, a retired US Army Reserves colonel whose job for nearly 20 years was to oversee the protection of Panama’s principal industrial asset, the canal. His book, “Guarding the Crossroads,” is an update of a earlier spiral-bound work, itself an expansion of an article in a security industry magazine, which was used to brief people who needed to know such things in the course of the Panama Canal’s transition from US to Panamanian ownership.
There is a lot to update since Morris retired from the canal. Osama bin Laden and friends have launched a worldwide jihad against Western Civilization, that part of Non-Western Civilization that’s not Muslim, as well as the great majority of the world’s Muslims, who reject bin Laden’s bigoted fanaticism. The next attack might come anywhere, but in al-Qaeda’s shallow understanding of the United States, the American people and US culture, certain symbols of American grandeur stand out as tempting targets and one of these must surely be the renowned engineering triumph known as the Panama Canal.
Now you won’t want to read Morris’s book to understand why such a contemporary enemy might do such a thing. The book also won’t explain why the Cold War took place, or why Adolf Hitler was such a mean guy. But it will tell you the basic constants and the changing factors behind how the canal was defended during and after World War I, during the Second World War, in the Cold War era and now in light of present threats. The author is a security planner, not a political scientist. His book is primarily a work of military history, an analysis of how a massive but stationary potential target that has changed relatively little from the defender’s point of view over its 90-year history has been guarded against a variety of enemies with constantly changing capabilities.
Along the way, Morris explodes a number of myths and pares down several exaggerated generalizations to their essential truths.
For example, is it true that the Panama Canal can’t be defended? Well, yes, if the assault is by way of a hydrogen bomb delivered to one of the key canal installations --- the locks or the Gatun Dam, for examples --- by way of an intercontinental ballistic missile. However, the widely held belief that an intrepid commando with a satchel full of plastic explosives can easily and permanently put the canal out of action is debunked. So is the notion that someone with a truck full of high explosives can wreck the canal by taking out one of the saddle dams.
In the first scenario, there would be the great difficulty of placing a charge where it could put an important part of the massive industrial plant that is the Panama Canal out of action, and then assuming that, say, the control room at one of the sets of locks was blown to pieces, that the redundant backup system can be taken out at the same time. (And no, Osama, he doesn’t tell you where they’ve hidden the spare controls.)
As to a saddle dam attack, Morris points out the sheer size of these massive earthen structures. Had Timothy McVeigh set off his massive truck bomb on the most accessible of these, the crater on the road to Escobal and Cuipo would have cut off car traffic to and from those places but canal traffic would have continued unaffected.
So what do canal security experts worry about the most? The same things they always have --- a “Trojan Horse” ship blowing up in the locks, or an earthquake or flood more massive than any in Panama’s recorded history. But then, there are also contingency plans for these sorts of things.
“Guarding the Crossroads” is illustrated with historical photos from the canal’s archives and full of little-known tales like the aborted Japanese attack at the end of World War II. It makes a captivating read for any dedicated military history buff.
It also ought to be required reading for any public-minded Panamanian citizen who wants to be well-informed about the nation’s key asset. (This, of course, recommends the book’s publication in Spanish translation.)
So are sneaky Red Chinese saboteurs poring over “Guarding the Crossroads” in their well-concealed lairs at the ports of Balboa and Cristobal this very moment? Probably not, but if such people exist they’d be shirking their duty if they didn’t Charlie Morris’s book as part of their homework.
Also in this section:
Cool Internet sites
Books: Guarding the Crossroads
Music: Valeria Ovando at Ta'Contento
TV: Confrontación
A century of Panamanian music on the Admin Building steps
