CIA: SILENT PARTNER OF FOREIGN POLICY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020025-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: September 29, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020025-6
2 9 SEP i~ry
d.L.: Silent -Pa.-re-tne'r of Foreign
By Laurence Stern A The dispute over whether the united
f4 A Stir + is a mernber of The Washcingtoni 0 1 f' States should be engaged in secret po
litical warfare abroad is not anew one.
Post's'~ratiuna~ staff. Nothing was said in the nattiunal secu-
RO.II THE ONSET of the Cold War teach-in on CIA covert operations con- rity charter establishing the CIA about
to the outbreak of Watergatcf ducted on Capitol Hill. He concluded, political espionage.
however, that the answer is no. "I can' When trapped in public disputes
covert 'oas been a silent partner `.
of Au~?~.i~an foreign policy. envision situations in which the United over clandestine operations abroad,
States might well need to conduct co- CIA directors present and past pointed
.t was, in the beginning, a morally vert action in the face of some new to a provision of the 1947 National Se-
siattae proposition for most Ameri-'threat that developed in the world." curity Act authorizing the CIA "to per-
cans. The world was, divided into two, President Ford was less qualified in: form such other functions and duties
political hemispheres, one Free and his last press conference. Asked i related to intelligence affecting the na-
ne Communist. The two systems coo- whether, under international law, the; tional security as the National Secu
n, opted each other around the globe. United States has a right to subvert city Council may from time to time di.I
The rules of engagement were that any-i governments such as the one headed rect."
thing went - preferably short of all-i by the late Salvador Allende in Chile, Authors David Wise and Thomas:
oat war. the President said in effect: Sure, ev. Ross, pioneer investigative journalists
Iu the back alley combat of the Cold eryone does it. of the CIA, described this as the age.-1
War years, the Central Intelligence Lntil Watergate the perception of cy's "secret charter" for carte blanche
Agency emerged as the secret team most Americans of political espionage intervention. The charter is amplified
with the capability for bribing unions were forme ;,?)y films and novels set in in a series of highly classified National:
and chiefs of state, for training private ! exotic foreign capitals against a back- Security Council intelligence direc-
ar;ries and - if need be - for top- ground of creaky rattan and slow tivesi (described in the intelligence
plir.-, governments. whirling fans. trade as "nops,-ids") as well as secret
Its leadership was composed of men But the Watergate tapes, with their presidential authorizations.
President Truman lived to deplore
who fought bravely and well together revelations of "enemies lists," bug the secret warfare capability of the
during World War II, many of them gings, wiretappings, political fund
t "Wild laundering and the like, gave us a mild CIA, which was created under his ad-
veterans of General William J. Wild ministration, because of its penchant
Bill" TJonovan's Office of Strategic taste of how things are on the wrong for secret warfare enterprises. It was,
Services. Th4y were, on the whole,' end of a covert warfare capability. he told biographer Merle Miller "a mis-
sons of the American establishment - Before Watergate, the Vietucum -war take ... If I'd known what was going
to happen I never would have -dons it
i. r.uucts ci comfortable homes, good., had eroded public con`idena^ in the
private c,le_;vs and a shared sense of presidency and sewn distrust of the They (the CIA) don't have to ac-
t:nbriciled growth of '1:2 execu ,,
dedication to what they perceived to count to anybody."
branch. The CIA has b c a, in effect, a As far as Truman was concerned,
he trndn;ou 1 American values and un
~tintin.; opposition to the common 1'`esi *::,Xs army. the business of the CIA was intelli-
Also, the Nixon-Kissing': policy of gence gathering. In fact, Truman was
throat: communism. de'erce with the Coa monist superpow responsible for implanting the covert
O e eP these men was William Egan ers mwtdle'i the near, bipolar view of war role in the CIA when he merged
Coihy, man of meticulously gray i,.r, world in the e ;rly years of the: the Office of Policy Coordination and
duality, who jumped behind enemy CIA.
lines in Na;,;,occupied Europe, who Office of Special Operations, both espi-
And .so, when rew details of the U.S.I onage organizations, into the CIA. At
planned ar.d administered the deeply ;ec_et war against the Allende govern-' the time he mak not have realized the
controversial "pacification" programi meat in Chile surfaced recently, consequences of his action.
South Vietnam and who rose pa- p role ' , .
over a year after th . CIA in Chile Political scientist Harry Howe Ran-
tiently through the secret bureaucracy first came to light, the conditions were' som of Vanderbilt University writes
of the CIA's directorate of operations ripe for a bac{dire of public and con-: that "one searches in vain in the pub-I
(more popularly "du?ty tricks") to the `,.essiorai indrgnation
lit records for any evidence of co'
top job, director of central intelli- President Ford did little to assuage gressional intent or acquiescence to as-
;ence. the growing clamor of criticism with sign the functions of foreign -political.
He finds himself today at the center his declaration that the covert political action or subversion to the Central In-'
of one of those recurrent public storms operations against Allende were "in telligence Agency."
which engulfs the CIA when it stum- the be, z interests of the people in yet the secret war-making capability l
bles by mistake out of the cold into Chile ..
of the CIA continued to grow through'
the footlights ci public attention. Sec:etary of State Kissinger put it the years and exercise an even greater
with even more brutal directness dur- ! influence on American foreign policy.
ir,,, a meeting of the National Security It is a tribute to the expansionary
ri,HE CO. Ti O\ ERSY centers more on Louncil's super-secret "Forty Commit"! whether the United States should thrust of the executive branch, espe-
tA _e on June 27, 1970-some two dally when unchecked by serious con-
abandon its covert warfare capabil- months before Chile's presidential
itY and concentrate instead on the election. i There gral are no of erno of i.
ficial figures on the
intelligence-gathering mission for '?I don't see why we need to stand by' size or spending programs of the clan-
which it was chartered in 1947. and w-itch a country go Communist destine services' of CIA. The only pub- '001644
"This Is a legitimate question," due to the irresponsibility of Its own lisped figures. which were subject to
Colby ackn.o?,vledged during a recent peop'.a," said Kissinger, the architect pre-publication CIA review, are con-
o' th American detente policy, ac- tained in "The CIA and the Cult of In-
cordin~ to unchallenged classified min- telligence" by former intelligence offi-
utos of tno.proceeding? tors Victor Marchetti and John D.
Marks.
Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020025-6 continued
 Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020025-6
le ("Country an Lioerty?) were re-!aftermath, the Bay or rigs raises no'k
"Tt?cors-pris -they say, 6,000 'gy p ruited in the battle against Allende. .i serious doubts about the CIA's secret
and a budget 'of'd llio1r iVithin Two weeks ,before the milit coo
this bverait totarzor--clandestine sei~b- ' P warfare role, which by then was well
ices. some 1,800 persons are said to be which ousted Allende a high-ranking: institutionalized.
executive of Chile's secret police told, In 1962 and 1963 the CIA intervened
assigned million-is, to covert ac Washingon Post special correspondent massively against the government of
and 5280 m million s budgeted for such ch. such Simons that the CIA fund
operations. ~ Brazil's President Joao Goulart with