KISSINGER TESTIFIES ON 'BRIBERY' BY KOREA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R000600130010-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 18, 2004
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: April 21, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2004/05/21 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600130010-1
KISSIN6ER TESTIFIES
1ON'BRIBERY'BY KOREA
Hints Efforts to Buy Influence
Continued Beyond Date Generally
Given for Last Payments
By RICHARD HALLORAN
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, April 20-Henry A.
Kissinger indicated in testimony today
that South Korean efforts to buy influ-
ence from American Congressmen may
have gone on longer than publicly dis-
closed to date.
The former Secretary of State told a
House investigating subcommittee that he
first became aware of the alleged bribery
in early 1975 but that the evidence was
inconclusive.
Late in 1975, Mr. Kissinger said, he
was given much more definite informa-
tion about the bribery. He said he in-
formed President Ford, who ordered the
information turned over to the Attorney
General for investigation. Mr. Ford has
confirmed that.
That information, according to in-
formed officials, referred to bribery al-
leged to have taken place at that time,
as well as to earlier bribes. Previous pub-
lic testimony has shown that most South
Korean money being given to American
Congressmen stopped in 1974, a year
earlier.
`Not Lobbying but Bribery'
Mr. Kissinger clearly labeled the alleged
acts as bribery, saying they were first
brought to him by then Assistant Secre-
tary of State Philip C. Habib. He said
that Mr. Habib had called his attention
not to lobbying but to bribery."
Mr. Kissinger declined later to give re-
porters many details about the list of
alleged briberies, other than to repeat
his testimony that it had come from a
sensitive intelligence source.
Informed officials said, however, that
the information had come from an elec-
tronic interception of South Korean com-
munications obtained by the National Se-
curity Agency, which monitors communi-
cations around the world.
Those officials also said that the intelli-
gence reports did not refer to Tongsun
Park, the covert Korean lobbyist who tes-
tifed recently that most of his payments
to Congressmen ended in 1974. But the
officials did not disclose the source of
the later payments.
Moreover, Mr. Kissinger testified that
he believed that the new information was
not in the possession of the Attorney
General in late 1975, when an investiga-
tion into Tongsun Park's activities was
Little Additional Knowledge
While Mr. Kissinger also added more
details of the timing and the extent of
his knowledge of the South Korean affair
he added little to public knowledge of
the secret South Korean effort to influ-
ence American policy, or what United
States officials knew about it.
The investigating subcommittee, headed
by Representative Donald M. Fraser,
Democrat of Minnesota, is charged with
'determining the means with which the
South Koreans sought to manipulate
American policy from 1968 to 1976, and
what United States officials knew and
did about it.
Mr. Kissinger said- that he had "no
recollection" of three letters addressed
to him in 1971 and 1972 by the late J.
Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, about alleged ac-
tivity of the Korean Central Intelligence
Agency. He said that he did recall one
allegation of bribery but could not pin-
point his source of information.
John N. Mitchell, the former Attorney
General, testified last month that he re-
called seeing one of the letters and acted
on it but that he was sure he had not
seen the two others.
Mr. Kissinger said that he could not
recall an allegation contained in one of
the Hoover letters that the South Koreans
had contributed several hundred thou-
sand dollars to the Democratic Party. He
said it was "inconceivable" that he would
not have remembered that, had he seen
In one of the few wry comments he
permitted himself, Mr. Kissinger added:.
"I find it even more inconceivable that
Mr. Mitchell would have done nothing
about it." That was in 1972, when Mr.
Mitchell was moving into Mr. Nixon's re-
election campaign and presumably would
have relished information, as Mr. Kissing-
er put it, that was "potentially embar-
rassing" to the Democrats.
The Occidental Petroleum Corpora.
tion disclosed that its coal subsidiary
paid $15,357 in 1975 for Tongsun
Park to act as its agent. Page D1.
Mayor of Garv. Ind - -
DATE t
already well under -proved For R lease 2004/05/21 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600130010-1 .