Gabriel Lewis Galindo
 Gabriel Lewis Galindo     (banker, diplomat, deep state operative) | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | February 24, 1929 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Died | December 19, 1996 Denver, Colorado, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | Panamanian | ||||||||||||||||||||
Panamanian diplomat-banker with ties to the US deep state.
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Gabriel Lewis Galindo was a Panamanian banker and diplomat.[1] Coming from on of the wealthiest families in Panama, he had ties to the US deep state and held several high positions.
He started development on Contadora Island, which soon became a safe haven for U.S. politicians and corporate executives to enjoy sex and drugs away from the prying eyes of the international press; actions which were secretly filmed for blackmail purposes.
Career
He was part of one of the wealthiest families in Panama, he had business interests that included a bank and a brewery. When General Omar Torrijos came to power in a coup in 1968, he was one of the few elite figures to immediately support the new populist government, and quickly became a friend and confidant of General Torrijos.[2]
As Panama's ambassador to the United States during the 1970s, the treaties that executed the transfer of sovereignty of the Panama Canal. to Panama in the year 2000.
When Jimmy Carter entered the White House in 1977, General Torrijos appointed Lewis as Panama's Ambassador to the United States in hopes of reaching an agreement under which Washington would transfer control of the Panama Canal to Panama, where he was instrumental in helping the US government reach agreement and ratify the treaty.
During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, Lewis again came to the aid of the United States. When the Carter Administration had difficulty finding a country where the Shah of Iran and his family could take refuge, Mr. Lewis, with the approval of General Torrijos, offered his own home on the island of Contadora, where the deposed Iranian ruler remained until just before his death.
But after Torrijos died in a CIA assassination in 1981, Lewis's relationship with the new leader, General Noriega, deteriorated. In 1987 Lewis urged Noriega to resign and fled into exile in the United States after the military responded with threats against his family. Drawing on his broad network of contacts in Washington, Mr. Lewis soon emerged as the opposition coalition's chief representative abroad. He not only financed some of their activities, but vigorously lobbied State Department officials and members of Congress and the press and devised several ways for the United States to exert economic pressure on Panama, which led the Noriega Government to call for his arrest on charges of treason.[1]
Neverthless, when the Democratic Revolutionary Party, the party of Torrijos and Noriega, returned to power in Panama in September 1994, the new President, Ernesto Perez Balladares, once again turned to Mr. Lewis. Aware that many in the United States were deeply suspicious of the new Government's intentions, the new President named Lewis Foreign Minister and asked him to repair relations with Washington.[1]
