FIVE MEN SABOTAGED ALLENDE

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020101-1
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RIFPUB
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U
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2
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
August 9, 2011
Sequence Number: 
101
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Publication Date: 
September 17, 1974
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OPEN SOURCE
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Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01 000020101 -1 BALTIMORE SUN 17 SEP lli4 rive en sac botag eat Allende On March 29 this y It n 1964 and 1973. betwee By TnAN J_ TARAXER With the Chilean military t___ 1 11 Saturday morning, June 27, 1970, Henry A. Kissinger, ad- dressing the most secret committee of the. United States government, laid down in highly personal terms what was to become official U.S. policy toward But it has produced In re- oppose Dr. Al- cent days several develop- lenear u to de the next year. ments certain to provoke a new national debate on the ? Another $500,000 went to role of the CIA and even of opposition party personnel Dr. Kissinger himself. during the 1970 campaign. Chile. ? Focused attention, at last, "I don't see why we should on the 40 Committee, domin- have to stand-by and let a; ated by military and intelli- gence professionals of the du i e st . tauntry go Commun to the irresponsibility of its own people," he reportedly declared. That statement, according to. government intelligence sources, was made to the 40 p Committee, a five .member f`cial in the nation's history, ence was unknown at the time to the vast majority of Congress, the press, and even the White House staff. Dr. Kissinger, through a State Department spokes- man, said he could not recall making the statement but, in any case, could not comment on 40 Committee activities. The 40 Committee Is elected by no one and res- ponsible to no one except the President, who appoints its members. Serious students of for- eign-policy making have questioned whether, in a de- mocracy, such a five-person directorate should have this kind of unbridled power, whether the five are really in touch with American public opinion, and whether Congress should not have tighter reins on their covert programs. As a consequence of the 40 committee's action, however, large sums of Central Intelli- gence Agency money were poured vainly into Chile to avert the election of leftist Salvador Allende. That money was followed in later years by even larger sums to "destab- ilize" the Chilean economy and topple the Allende re- gime. The Philadelphia Bulletin ,j. uprising in 1973 and Dr. Allen "' Washin ton-On a warm de's violent death, the policy ? About $500,000 was ad- g vanced in 1963 to help Chilean World War II-cold war vint- age, as the real overseer, even operator, of the CIA's covert activities and responsi- ble only to the President. Made clear the emer- gence of Dr. Kissinger as the owerful nonelected offi- most standing astride the Intelli- gence, covert operations and foreign policy apparatus as secretary of state, chairman of the National Security Coun- cil, national security adviser to the President and chair- man of the 40 Committee.. ? Destroyed what was left of the belief that at least a ? Following Dr. Allende's electi . $5 million was authors ed to disrupt the Chilean economy from 1971 to 1973, and $1.5 million more was spent to influence Chilean municipal elections in 1.1973. Some of these funds helped finance an influential Chilean newspaper. ? Finally, in August, 1973; just one month before Presi- dent Allende's downfall, an- other $1 million was author- ized to press home the effort to wreck the Chilean econ- omy, already in trouble be- cause of Dr. Allende's own misguided policies. In each case, - the effort and the expenditure were ap- proved by the 40 Committee, or by the same committee operating under an alias. few members of Congress "No more mysterious have knowledge of and a veto group exists within the gov- ger as- ernment than the 40 Commit- the Cloak-and-da g t over pects of the CIA. "The CIA is the tool of the President and it works today for Kissinger," according to one government source. The history of the U.S. gov- ernment's Chilean adventure dates to 1964 when Dr. Allen- de, a proclaimed Marxist, first sought the presidency. man." tian Democratic opponent, Eduardo Frei, capture the presidency that year. But Mr. Frei could not suc- ceed himself and the Allende threat was seen by Washing- ton as greater than ever. This time even more money was funneled by CIA into anti-Al- Ilende efforts. In all, according to secret testimony April, 22 by the Congress was kept in the CIA director, William E. dark, at least until after the Colby, as revealed by Repre- il operations were completed, sentative Michael J. Harring- 11 and sometimes beyond that. pumped $11 million into anti-Allende efforts in Chile tee," David Wise, a journal- ist who has long been a student of the U.S. intellig- ence community, said. "Its operations are so se- cret that in an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CIA Director Colby was even re- luctant to identify the chair- The Bay of Pigs invasion attempt, the U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union the ov- erthrow of the Arbenz gov- ernment in Guatemala-each of these was a CIA covert operation approved by the 40 Committee, or its predeces- Inmost cases, it appears, an example of how this blindfolding of Congress works. ear, Charles A. Meyers, the former assistant secretary of state for Latin American af- fairs, told a Senate subcom- mittee that "the policy of the government ... was that there would be no interven- tion in the political affairs of Chile ... We financed no candidates, no political par- ties ..." As late as June 12-two months after Mr. Colby's se- c r e t admission-Harry Schlaudeman, No. 2 person in the American Embassy in Chile from 1969 to 1973, den- ied that any such U.S. effort was made. "There was no funding, of that I am quite sure," Mr. Schlaudeman told a closed hearing of the House-Foreign Afairs Committee. ' Mr. Colby emphasizes when questioned that the agency makes full secret re- ports to the "appropriate" congressional committees, the so-called CIA "over- sight" subcommittees of the House and Senate. But what they are told, according to a former top official of the CIA, depends on what questions they, ask -and frequently they do=not ask the right questions. "The CIA deals with Con- gress in the way that Con- gress requests it to," the official, who requested anon- ymity, said "Often they don't know enough to ask the right guestions. But it's their fault." Among the subjects that have esaped close congres- sional questioning has been the operations of the 40 Com- mittee. Despite its anonymity, the committee appears to have existed since before 1954, under several different names. The names have been deli- brately designed to provide no clue as to its function. Its members communicate mostly by word of mouth, with little paperwork and a staff of one man, believed to be a CIA employee. "You can look all you want but you won't find any docu- Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207ROO1000020101-1 in?e~ Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01 000020101 -1 ment with the title '40 Com- mittee' on it," a former in- telligence officer said. "It's like, officially at least, it didn't exist." From its pre-1954 origins as a loose group of top State and Defense department offi- cials, the group has evolved a fixed membership based on title and formalized in a directive of the National Se- curity Council. The name 40 Committee is believed, to rer,r to a National Security Council directive No. 40. Dr. Kissinger, as national adviser, took charge of the 40 Committee under and argument. that went on President Nixon and retains is missing now," one official the chairmanship today. said. The other members are { The controversy over Dr. Gen. George S. Browq, Kissinger's role extends to USAF, chairman of the joint the Chilean adi'enture and chiefs of staff; William P. who really Initiated It. Clements, Jr., deputy secre- t The CIA clearly has taken tary of defense; Joseph J. most of the heat' to date, but Sisco, under secretary of { at least one ' official highly state for political affairs placed in the State Depart- d M an r. Colby, the CIA director. They are men In their 50's, veterans of the World War II and cold war periods. Mr. Colby's membership, according to critics, Is the classic story of the "fox in the chicken coop"-the CIA director, in effect sitting in judgment on plans and pro- posals of his own agency. At times, other officials have sat in; John N. Mitch- ell, as Mr. Nixon's attorney general, was a 40 Committee member, and there is some dispute over whether the late Robert F. Kennedy, in his turn as attorney general, also was a member. It is believed that Mr. Nix- on's controversial assistants, H. R. Haldeman and .Tnhn T) Much 5e time, accord- ing to s,.. oral sources, Dr. Kissinger merely confers with the other members by telephone, dealing with them individually rather than as a group, and passing on to the l President the consensus that li the one has had a real-and in fashioning. The result acc rdi , o ng 0. specialists who have served in both the CIA and State Department, has been to For example, Victor Ma chetti and John D. Marks, former U.S. intelligence offi- cers and authors of "The CIA and the Cult of Intellig- ence," maintain thet covert operations account for only $440 million of CIA's esti- mated budget of more than $750 million a year. The ac- tual figures are a closely held secret. By far the larger, more important operation-world- concentrate concentrate decision-making wide espionage-is subject to' in fewer hands, mostly Dr. no review by the 40 Commit- Kissinger's hands. tee. 'A lot of the consultation This is true even if the ment from 1970 to 1973, the years of the most ambitious { anti Allende effort, believes the "CIA may be getting a bum rap." The idea for intervention, he said, appears to have come from the White House -"from Nixon to Kissinger." Kissinger's plan It was then farmed out to the CIA to develop a plan and provide funds and routed routinely back to the 40 Com- mittee, where Dr. Kissinger, as chairman, approved what may have been his own plan, this source said. The agenda of the 40 Com- mittee includes some of the most delicate foreign policy decisions of the government. meetings, but evidently not jects, it also reviews and as members. approves monthly a joint re- Each 40 Committee, ac- connaissance schedule that cording to past and present intelligence officers, has tended to become an exten- sion of the chairman chiefly because he alone has access directly to the President. Dr. Kissinger has come to dominate the 40 Committee and to an extent, some intel- ligence specialists here be- lieve is dangerous. In the past, for example, the 40 Committee met weekly, but as Dr. Kissin- ger's own responsibilities , tives in a divided world-the have expanded, he has con- vened the committee less frequently, intelligence spe- cialists here say. involves, among other things, the use of spy satellites ar- ound the world. Outside the intelligence community there is criticism Of the secrecy that shrouds the CIA and hands over its `operations to a non-elected elate such as the 40 Commit- tee. But within the Intelligence community here-people sympathetic to the need for clandestine ;policy alterna- concern is that there is not enough control of the CIA by institutions such as the 40 ' Committee. espionage involves an opera- tion as sensitive'as hiring a key official of a foreign vov- ' ernment-as has been done in Latin America, at the risk of a serious diplomatic' inci- dent. Even covert operations ap- proved by the 40 Committee have some history of gener- ating capers never envy ' sioneolby the 40 Committee.' The Soviet sugar case is an to?ample. Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01 000020101 -1