Twenty-two years after the Panama Canal treaties were signed, and with only a month-and-a-half to go before the transfer is complete, Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, has introduced legislation seeking to nullify the planned turnover of the strategic waterway.

"The Carter-Torrijos treaties are not valid," Chenoweth-Hage told WorldNetDaily, adding that there are "very few people standing up to point out that fact." Even though time is short, "I don't think it's ever too late to take action on something you know needs to be done," she said.

The bill is named the Panama and America Security Act, or H.J. Res.77 -- aptly matching the year the treaties were originally signed before ratification. Co-sponsoring the bill are Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., Rep. Dave McIntosh, R-Ind., Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., and Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C.

"It's a bill that has teeth," a spokesman for Chenoweth-Hage told WorldNetDaily. "Other pieces of legislation regarding the canal transfer were just a consensus of Congress without any substance to them.

"Basically, what this legislation would do is recognize that the original treaty that was signed in 1903 which gives the United States full sovereign rights over the Panama Canal and Canal Zone is still in effect -- and that these two other treaties were not legally ratified, therefore they're null and void."

The timing of the bill's introduction appears to be a symbolic parting shot. Congress apparently will let the calendar run out on the last vestiges of U.S. control over one of the world's most strategic choke points by leaving town for the holiday recess.

Asked if the legislation will be given emergency treatment before the canal transfer is completed Dec. 31, the spokesman for Chenoweth-Hage replied: "No it won't; the transfer will occur. We will be adjourning, but we will be coming back in January and we hope this legislation will begin to reverse the process," adding they anticipate major opposition to the bill.

"Carter-Torrijos," the controversial pact hammered out by President Carter and Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, consists of two separate treaties signed Sept. 7, 1977 -- less than a year after Carter promised, "I'll never give up control of the Panama Canal." On that day, the wheels were set in motion for the United States to withdraw its armed forces from Panama and hand over the keys to the canal and military bases.

Asked for comment about efforts to nullify the Carter-Torrijos treaties, Carrie Harmon, a spokesperson at the Carter Center in Atlanta, told WorldNetDaily, "President Carter supports the treaties now as he did when he negotiated them."

The first treaty put the Panamanian flag in the position of honor at the canal, terminated any previous agreements and treaties, disposed of U.S. property without charge, initiated payments to Panama and established a new U.S. agency called the Panama Canal Commission. The agency was tasked with running the canal during the scheduled transition process, which included a drawdown of U.S. military forces standing guard over the engineering marvel and source of pride for many Americans.

In 1990, the Commission became the first U.S. agency to be headed by a non-citizen. The Panama Canal Treaty terminates Dec. 31, 1999, at noon Panama time, when complete legal jurisdiction and ownership of the canal and facilities will go to Panama.

The other treaty, the "Neutrality Treaty," guarantees the canal will stay open to all nations in war or peace while granting expeditious passage to the U.S. and Panama in wartime.

This second treaty, however, is one in which the two nations ratified different documents, according to the Chenoweth-Hage legislation, which maintains fundamental conflicts were created when "the United Sates and Panama did not agree to the same text of the treaties."

Universal principles of international law concerning treaties hold that "the parties must agree to the same written text" -- or there is no treaty, according to Chenoweth-Hage.

To gain Senate ratification of the canal treaties, in early 1978 President Carter agreed to the "DeConcini Reservation," among others. That amendment gives the U.S. the legal right, with or without Panama's consent, to use military force to re-open the canal or restore operations should the canal be interfered with.

However, according to the Chenoweth-Hage bill, "The United States Senate was not informed that the president of the United States had secretly agreed with the regime of Omar Torrijos in Panama not to include the essential DeConcini Reservation in Panama's text version; and, moreover, that the president of the United States added further to this illegal and unconstitutional action by secretly accepting Panama's counter-reservation, which explicitly repudiates the DeConcini Reservation and subjects United States' right of military intervention to 'principles of mutual respect and cooperation.'"

The neutrality treaty is "doubly void," says the bill, because Article V of the treaty "specifies use of defense sites by Panama only, but Panama is leasing defense sites to a partner of the merchant marine arm of China's People's Liberation Army (Hutchison Whampoa)."

Critics of the treaties also point out that the U.S. Constitution requires both houses of Congress to vote to dispose of U.S. territory and property and to terminate a law or treaty, such as the original 1903 Panama Canal treaty. Only the Senate and the president acted in this instance.

On the Panamanian side, the president is required by that nation's constitution to sign treaties, but President Demetrio Lakas did not. Torrijos, alone, signed the canal treaties. Torrijos also did not submit the six major U.S. changes added to the treaty to a plebiscite vote by the Panamanian people as required, say critics.

A State Department official told WorldNetDaily he had not seen the Chenoweth-Hage bill yet, and couldn't comment on it, but that the Panama Canal treaties "were carefully worked out in a bi-partisan way more than 20 years ago and has gone through many, many steps to assure that it would take place."

Asked if signing treaties with different text rendered them invalid, the official responded, "The administration certainly, and the bulk of the Congress are convinced that they are valid and that we are doing the right thing."

Commenting on the treaty nullification legislation, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, told WorldNetDaily, "Congress may act or it may not, but the chance that it will do so undoubtedly will be improved by a spirited battle in the courts," referring to a lawsuit his organization, U.S. Defense-American Victory, filed late last month with assistance from Larry Klayman and Judicial Watch. The suit's plaintiff is dual Panamanian/American citizen William Bright Marine.

By asserting his rights as a Panamanian, Marine is suing to have our courts strike down the treaties based on the way in which the Neutrality Treaty was altered in Panama and not signed by the Panamanian president in accord with its constitution. The lawsuit cites precedent from old U.S. cases.

Gen. Gordon Sumner was heavily involved in Latin American military affairs as chairman of the Inter-American Defense board from 1975 until the spring of 1978. A three-star general with a promising military career, Sumner resigned from the army as a matter of honor after testifying against the Carter-Torrijos treaties. He objects to the canal treaties negotiated during the Torrijos regime because, he said, "these are bad contracts with bad people."

"On a scale of one to 10, the importance of the Panama Canal to the United States is a nine, and Kosovo is a two," Sumner told WorldNetDaily.

Regarding the legislation just introduced to nullify the treaties, Sumner said it is a good move that will both put Clinton on notice, and the issue in front of the American public. "The treaties in the first instance were not properly ratified according to the constitutions of both countries," he said. "Plus, they have been violated in so many respects that nullifying them is the proper course." He questioned, however, whether we can "walk this cat back," since the U.S. already has turned over a lot of property to Panama.

"There is no military capability to protect the canal," said Sumner, pointing out that Colombian narco-terrorists recently walked into a former U.S. air base at the canal and seized two helicopters at gunpoint.

Although reluctant to speculate, Sumner thinks if the U.S. does not recover what it lost, the nation eventually will be forced into another invasion of Panama similar to the Noriega-busting "Operation Just Cause."

Aside from any security concerns, he said, loss of passage through the waterway commercially would be "catastrophic." Sumner videotaped a U.S. transportation system computer model developed by Los Alamos national laboratory and showed it to the House in June to demonstrate the commercial impact that would result from the Panama Canal's closure.

"If I were a shipper, I'd be making other plans," he said, adding that it would be very expensive to go an extra 9,000 nautical miles around Tierra del Fuego, an area littered with shipwrecks.

Recounting how Carter and his supporters had claimed that if shipping were ever blocked, the "dry canal" -- an inland transportation system -- could handle our commerce, Sumner says that system is at full capacity now, with a backlog, and "could never handle the enormous tonnage we put through the Panama Canal." The Navy requires passage through the canal, too, he said.

"We've got enough carriers from a two-ocean Navy standpoint," he said, "but not enough ships. We've dropped from 650 ships to approximately 300." Sumner explained the necessity of transferring destroyers, frigates and logistics ships from one ocean to the other in case of a conflict. "You can't move a frigate or a destroyer across land."

There was a "need for a new relationship" with Panama, said Sumner, but "this was not it." The strategy of completely abandoning our position in Panama was, he said, "sheer madness that will come back to haunt us some day, some way, and sooner rather than later."

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Edward G. Oliver is a contributing editor to WorldNetDaily.