SENATOR CHURCH TO PRESS C.I.A. ISSUE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020118-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 118
• Publication Date: September 12, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBL
Senator Church to Press C.I.A. Issue
By SEYMOUR M. HERSH State Department officials, Government officials have con-
special to The New York Times Charles A. Meyer, former As- firmed that the still4ecret testi-
WASHINGTON, Sept. 11- sistant Secretary of State for mony includes a detailed dis-
Latin-American Affairs, and cussion of the C.LA.'s goals and
Declaring that deception of Edward M. Korey, a former strategy in alloting the $8- mil-
Congress has become "a habit," Ambassador to Chile, testified lion cash payments.
Senator Frank Church said to- that the United States had "Apart from the question' of
day he would turn over any maintained it policy of nonin- whether perjury was commit-
misleading , testimony in the tervention toward Chile. ted in a legal sense," Mr.
hearings on policy toward Chile The two officials also' refused Church added, "there's no
to the Justice Department for on a number of occasions during question but what the com-
investigation into possible per- their testimony to answer spe- mittee was given to believe
jury, cific gpestions about what they that our policy was one ? of
I'm not going to let this said were p}~vileged communi- nonintervention."
matter slide by," Mr. Church cations on sited States policy toward Dr. Allende. This is clearly what they
said in a telephone interview [the witnesses] wa ed us to
today. "I'm very much incensed Mr. Church, who returned believe, even though the truth l
by this." late yesterday from a lengthy was a very different, -matter,"
2 High Aides Testified campaign trip to Idaho, said he he said.
had authorized the subcommit-
It 'Vietnam Syndrome' Seen
was the Idaho Democrat's tee staff to review testimony of
first public comment on the Government witnesses who Mr. Church, a liberal who
subject since it was reported knew of the intelligence was one of the early critics of
Sunday that the Central Intelli- aagency's cundestine activities, the Vietnam War, characterized
gence Agency had been secret- If the staff review' determines the misleading testimony as
ly authorized to spend more that there were contradictions "part of the Vietnam syn-
than $8-million between 1970 in their testimony, the Senator drome."
and 1973 in a covert attempt said, "in my judgment the ac- "There's become a pattern
to make it impossible for Presi- tion that would be c>Illed for of deceiving the Congress that
dent Salvtdor Allende Gossens would be to refer the testimony I think began cropping up dur-
to govern in Chile. to the Justice Department for in14 the Vietnam war," he said."
Mr. Church is chairman of investigation of possible prejury. It became a habit with testi-
the Senate Foreigi3 Relations TTi is the reason we swear mony on all sensitive matters.
subcommittee on Multinational in witnesses," he said. If so, It's a habit the Congress
Corporations, which held highly Details Given by Colby is going to have to break."
publicizzed hearing last year Along with the study of pos-
into the . International Tele- To aid in the staff review, Mr. sible perjury, Mr. Church said
phone & Telegraph Company's Church said, he will formally he would formally request the
attempts to urge United States request a copy of the testimony full Senate Foreign Relations
intervention against the Allende on the agency's Chilepn involve. Committee; headed by Senator
regime. Mr. Allende was over- ment given to a House of Rep- J. W. Fulbright, now in China,
thrown by a military junta in resentatives Armed Services to review "the ? propriety" of
a bloody coup d'etat one year Intelligence Subcommittee in clandestine, activities against
ago today. April by William E. Colby, Di- constitutionally elected 1eederc
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'AZ -lot -4 _10e 44
IN THE NATION
BX Tom Wicker .
On the very day that President Ford
extended preventive pardon to Richard
Nixon, another high crime of the Nixon
Administration was being disclosed in
The New York Times. Public outrage
because of the pardon must not be
allowed to obscure this sordid story
of indefensible American intervention
in the internal affairs of Chile, in the
years just before the violent over-
throw of the Allende Government and
the death of President Salvador Ali
lende Gossens.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
appears to have been a principal force
in this covert intervention, and is be-
ing charged once again with not hav-
ing told the whole truth to a Senate
comtttittee. Demands are.being heard
for a reopening of the hearings which
recommended his confirmation as, Sec-
retary.
The Times story, by Seymour Hersh,
was based on a letter from Repre-
sentative Michael Harrington of Mas-
sachusetts to Chairman Thomas E.
Morgan of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee. The Harrington letter gave
an account, from memory, of testi-
mony to a House Armed Services sub-
committee by William E. Colby, the
director of the Central Intelligence
Agency.
Mr. Harrington said he had twice
read a transcript of the Colby testi-
mony. As he described it to Mr.
Morgan, Mr. Colby said that the Nixon
Administration had authorized about
$8 million to be spent covertly to
make it impossible for President Al-
lende to govern. Specifically, $500,000
was authorized in both 1969 and 1970
to help Mr. Allende's election oppo-
nents, and $350,000 was later au-
thorized for bribing members of the
Chilean Congress to vote against rati-
fying Mr. Allende's election.
Later $5 million was authorized for
clandestine "destabilization" efforts in
Chile; and in 1973, $1.5 million was
provided to help anti-Allende candi-
dates in municipal elections. The au-
thorizing body for all this C.I.A. ac-
tivity was the so-called "40 Committee"
of the Nixon Administration-a com-
mittee chaired by Henry Kissinger.
But Mr. Kissinger told the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee during his
confirmation hearings that. "the C.I.A.
had nothing to do with the coup, to
the best of my knowledge and belief."
While that may have been true in the
narrowest sense, it was at best one of
those torturous non-lies in which gov-
ernments specialize and at worst a
concealment of the true nature of U.S.
policy toward the Allende Governmen
and the scope of American activities
Similarly, Edward M. Korry, ambas-
sador to Chile during most of the period
in question, denied under oath to a
Senate subcommittee that there had
been Anerican- attempts to "pressure,
subvert, influence a single member. of
the Chilean Congress." Charles A.
Meyer, a former Assistant Secretary
of State for Latin-American affairs,
also swore that the United States had
scrupulously followed a policy of non-
intervention in Chile.
No wonder, then, that Senator Frank
Church, to whose subcommittee this
sworn testimony was offered, was re-
ported to be outraged upon learning
of the Colby testimony. He has prop-
erly raised not only the possibility of
perjury charges but the question of
comprehensive hearings by the full
Foreign Relations Committee on the
intervention in Chile.
If such hearings are held, or.if Mr.
Kissinger's confirmation hearings
should be reopened--as they already
have been once, to inquire into charges
that he did not tell the whole truth
about wiretaps on reporters and some
of his associates-the inquiry should
Press much further than the candor of
official testimony, important as that
question is.
But as one Government official
pointed out to Mr. Hersh, if covert ac-
'tivities against another country are au-
thorized, Government officials-some-
times including Secretaries of State
and Presidents-have to lie about
them. Lies are part of the business.
The real questions are whether this
supposedly peace-roving and demo-
cratic nation has any legal or moral
right to conduct covert operations
abroad, and whether any Administra-
tion of either party has the constitu-
tional authority to order taxpayers'
money spent for clandestine warfare
against the legitimate government of
a sovereign country.
These questions are long overdue for
full and open debate; the Colby testi-
mony, for example, said the first in-
tervention against -Mr. Allende was
ordered by Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Congress, the press, Presidential can-
didates-all have consistently shied
away from this subject. Supposed
liberals have pled the supposed need
to be "hard-nosed." The real need is
to face the fact that gangster schemes
of bribery, violence and even assassin-
ation are being carried out,' in the
name of the great American people.
The C.I.A. may be only an instru-
ment, but it seems to have its own
sinister vitality. The Chilean efforts,
in fact, were authorized by the lineal
'descendent of a body set up by the
Kennedy Administration to "control"
the C.I.A. Isn't it clear at last that
such "control" can be achieved only
by a Government with the political will
to cut the C.I.A. in half, or kill it 41
to undermine that Government. together?
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flnna AIte'r a Year:
Unrelenting Dictatorship
surrender. But the campaign star
to "extirpate the Marxist. can- Gen. Augusto Pinochet
at the 'time of the coup and
after it-including Dr. Allende,
who, according to the junta,.
committed suicide rather than
ties.
More than 2;500 people died
By JONATHAN KANDELL
$peelal to The New York Thnel
SANTIAGO, Chile, Sept. 12-
A year after the coup d'etat
that overthrew the freely elect-
ed minority Government of
President Salvador Allende Gos-
sens, a Marxist, the military
junta that took power has
strengthened its hold over Chile
and appears determined to con-
tinue its repressive, authoritar-
ian political style and conser-
vative, austere, economic poll
Chileans who celebrated the an-
niversary Wednesday in the
streets of Santiago; and other
cities were a reminder that the
armed ;:forces received ample
political backing and, goading
from the, anti Marxist majority
-particularly middle-class peo-
ple who felt most threatened
by the Allende Government.
But if the coup was the broad
civil-military movement that
Pinochet Ugarte, and the three
other.' members of the junta.
The uprising against the
Marxist coalition Government
was not the usual palace coup.
The scores of thousands of
cer" remains a clarion call for
the chief of state. Gen. Augusto
civillatfa.or prepare a quick re-'
turn to elective politics.
"The recess for political par-
ties must- continue for several
more years and can ol!ly be re-
sponsibly lifted when a new
generation of Chileans, with
healthy, civic: and 'patriotic,
habits, can take over the lead-
ership of public life," said Gen-'
eral Pinochet r ary
The three A1lenae years were
an almost unmitigated econem-
ic disaster of declines in Indus
:trial production, agrarian chaos
and raging' inflation. The
Government brought about a
Continnn_d nn Pn 11-1 rnl,,..,? I I
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