PM–41. Editorial Note
On April 12, 1960, Robert K. Gray, the Secretary to the Cabinet, transmitted the text of Cabinet Paper 60–108, entitled “Isthmian Canal Plans—1960” to the Members of the Cabinet. In his covering memorandum, Gray indicated that this document was scheduled for Cabinet consideration at the Cabinet meeting planned for April 29, 1960, and that the Secretary of the Army, acting in his capacity as “the stockholder” and, as such, the senior official of the Federal Government supervising the Panama Canal Company, was complying with the Cabinet decision of May 22, 1959, to present, on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Panama Canal Company, a report to the President and the Cabinet on the feasibility of constructing an alternative Isthmian sea-level canal.
CP–60–108, prepared with the assistance of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of State, concluded that: 1) a new sea-level canal was the most advantageous, least vulnerable, and most practical solution of the problem of the over-used Panama Canal; and 2) that conventional construction of a sea-level canal would cost three times as much as nuclear excavation at a location remote from the present Canal Zone. The report also recommended that the Panama Canal Company and the Atomic Energy Commission promptly initiate construction plans for a sea-level canal at a remote location using nuclear excavation; however, if the nuclear construction of a sea-level canal could not be completed before the early 1970s, the report recommended that the Panama Canal Company use conventional methods to build a new sea-level canal in the Canal Zone.
Documentation in the Department of State concerning the question of the construction of a new sea-level canal is in ARA/PAN Files, Lot 65 D 176, and at the Eisenhower Library, it is in the Whitman File, Cabinet Series.