PANAMA: Buried Treasure

Buccaneer Henry Morgan, ravishing Panama of 400,000 pieces of eight in 1671, was a halfhearted shoplifter compared to the modern-day looters who went to work there after World War II. When the U.S. turned its 134 defense sites on the isthmus over to Panama in 1946-48, piratical countrymen ransacked barracks and hangars, worth millions, for lumber and pipe. But the richest treasure turned out to be miles of buried phone and teleprinter cable.

Sheathed in lead worth up to 17¢ a pound, the cable could be had merely by loosening 6 to 18 inches of red earth and pulling up the buried treasure. As outlying, unused cable was mined out, the thieves boldly moved on to Panama City and the U.S.-governed Canal Zone. One youth was electrocuted while cutting a 2,400-volt power line. All America Cables' main wire to New York was cut, 100 phones went dead, and the vital link between control towers at Albrook and To-cumen airports was broken.

Because the loot in any one case was usually worth less than $50, the zone's district attorney could convict thieves only for petty larceny, punishable by no more than 30 days in jail. Early this year, the Defense Department asked Congress for an act to make cable cutting a felony. President Eisenhower has now signed it into law. The cost of breaking cables as of last week: up to $1,000 fine, up to three years in prison, or both.