Before the Panama Canal was built, and before the country of Panama gained independence from Colombia, there was much discussion about where the canal should be located. Most scholars and intellectuals agreed that Nicaragua was the ideal location because the country denied the need for locks, which would certainly be needed further south than Panama. However, some of the most prominent American figures of the time such as: JP Morgan and US President Teddy Roosevelt disagreed. Why? Simply because they had fraud in mind. Both parties would have profited greatly because JP Morgan owned numerous shares of the De Lesseps company which had the rights to build the Panama Canal. To satisfy its own desires, JP Morgan began a smear campaign against Nicaragua by claiming that it was too dangerous to build there due to natural hazards such as volcanoes. There was one problem that stood in Morgan's way. The Colombian government refused to grant construction rights to the canal to a U.S.-owned company. This refusal led J.P. Morgan and Teddy Roosevelt to devise a closed-door plan to use American weapons to dismantle Colombia's hold on Panama. The plan was implemented and successful. In the eyes of historians, this act is the greatest example of gunboat politics. Within this article I will discuss the libel cases that Teddy Roosevelt instigated against Joseph Pulitzer for their writings on Roosevelt, Morgan, and the Panama Canal fraud. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Joseph Pulitzer, a writer for the New York World, became a centerpiece of the libel lawsuits after the 1908 presidential election (Pierce 171). This was simply because the articles Pulitzer was writing exposed Roosevelt's gunboat policies and led to a second congressional investigation into the purchase which infuriated Roosevelt because he was about to be exposed for his misdeeds. Roosevelt was so concerned about saving his own skin that he managed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Before Roosevelt was able to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, Roosevelt showed his true character in a letter he wrote to the United States Attorney for New York. Inside that letter he wrote “I know nothing about criminal defamation law, but I would like it to be invoked against Pulitzer, of the World. Would you like to check out his various expressions?'. Reading this quote, I completely changed my opinion on Teddy Roosevelt. He showed me that even though he had absolutely no idea how defamation worked, he was willing to abuse his status in America to make unjust accusations against an innocent man. To further prove that Teddy Roosevelt is a crook who was only in it for the money, he gave Lakes a statement to the Gulf Waterway Association the next day. In this statement he said that he was extremely happy with his results in Panama, especially because they were beyond reproach and that defamation action was possible against those who exposed the fraud. This further demonstrated that Roosevelt was more than willing to take any unjust legal action against those who disagreed with what he and his associates were doing in Panama. As long as Roosevelt's pockets were full of cash, he was more than willing to take fraudulent legal action against those who would reduce his income. Furthermore, he showed his ridiculous sense of hypocrisy by even believing that he and his associates were wrong.