
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 27, 1990                   TAG: 9007270583
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/4   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. ACCUSED OF CONDUCTING `DEADLY COVER-UP' IN PANAMA

Charging the United States government with conducting "a sinister and deadly cover-up" in Panama, Rep. Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas, says he will demand a full investigation into the Bush administration's military actions during and since last December's invasion.

"We have been conducting an unconstitutional, twilight war in Panama," said Gonzalez.

But setting the stage for a showdown, the White House counsel, C. Boyden Gray, said President Bush will refuse to make information available to Gonzalez, who chairs the House Banking Committee.

Gray cited "the president's constitutional authority" to withhold sensitive information.

In a letter to Rep. Dante B. Fascell, D-Fla., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Gray also acknowledged that the administration was withholding information because it feared that answers to Gonzalez's questions could end up "further complicating the prosecution" of the former Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel Noriega in federal court.

"There is alarming evidence that our armed forces murdered hundreds more civilians in Panama City than the Pentagon has admitted," Gonzalez said. He has submitted a House resolution asking President Bush to provide Congress with detailed information on:

Past cash payments to Noriega and similar undercover payments to Noriega's U.S.-backed successor, President Guillermo Endara.

Communications between U.S. intelligence and military forces, and Panamanian police and military officials.

The number of Panamanian civilians killed during the invasion, including the number of people buried in mass graves.

The present locations of American military units in Panama, their missions and total manpower involved.

All past communications with Noriega by any U.S. president, vice president or CIA director. Bush has held all three posts.

Any activity by Noriega in support of the Contras' armed resistance in Nicaragua, between 1979 and 1989, known to the U.S. government.

Gonzalez said this week that he plans to wait until September, after Congress returns from its late-summer recess, to seek a vote from the full House on his resolution.

Gonzalez expressed special concern about the Chorrillo district of Panama City, a crowded barrio of rickety wooden houses, some more than 80 years old. American aircraft struck the district, "incinerating people and houses, leaving hundreds more dead than our government has admitted," he charged.

According to the director of Panama's Institute of Legal Medicine, a total of 207 civilians were killed during the U.S. military operation, Gray said in his letter to Fascell.

by CNB