PASSMAN INDICTED IN KOREAN SCANDAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R001200070056-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 1, 2004
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: April 1, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

ARTICLE APP '?ED THE WASHINGTON PACT
ON
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Allegedly Got $9.13,000 From Para
Gassman Indicted in Kvrean Scandal
By Timothy S. Robinson
Washington Post staff writer
Former Rep. Otto E. Passman (D-
La.) was indicted by a federal grand
jury here yesterday on charges that
he received $213,000 in cash from Ko-
rean businessman Tongsun Park in re-
turn for urging the South Korean gov-
ernment to buy Louisiana rice
`through Park.
In addition, the 26 pages of criminal
charges accuse Passman of putting
pressure on Department of Agricul-
ture and State Department officials
to approve the financing of the rice
sales to South Korea through the
federally funded Food for Peace pro-
gram.
Passman, 77 yearn old and in a New
Orleans hospital because of "mental
and physical exhaustion," was unavail-
able for comment. on the charges. How-
ever, Passman, the former chairman
of the House Appropriations subcom-
mittee that held a.. virtual veto over
foreign aid, has consistently denied
receiving illegal payments from Park.
Passman is the second? former con-
gressman to be indicted in connection
with the Korean influence-buying
scandal. Former Rep. Richard T.
Hanna (D-Calif.) pleaded guilty two
weeks ago to a conspiracy charge in-
volving payments he received from
Park totaling $200,000.
Park, who has been granted immu-
government officials, three counts-of
States of the p ,pf ifioti Re4b se 2
tween-1972 and 1974, and Park bought
jewelry and watches from Passman in
1975 at "substantially-. inflated prices"
to account for another $20,000, :; the;
charges said.
The indictment 'charges Passman
tv th conspiracy to defraud'tbe United
count indictment, Park agreed to "pay
Passman sums of money. derived from
the'commissions to be earned. on the
rice sales by Tongsun Park at times
and in. amounts to be specified by
Passman." ?
Cash payments to Passman ranging
in size from $10,000 to.,$50,001 were.
made on at least eight occasions. be-
In return, according to the - sever-_
nlty from prosecution, has reportedly
testified that he gave $730,000 in cash
and gifts to about 30 members of Con-
gress. He received approximately $8
million in commissions on the rice ex-
ports he handled from the United
States to South Korea, according to
government figures.
The indictment against Passman --
who served in Congress between 1947
and 1977 - charges that he entered.
into ,a conspiracy with Park between
Jan. 16 and Jan. 22, 1972, in Southeast.
Asia to promote Park's rice export
bribery and three counts of receiving
an illegal gratuity.
The settings of the alleged illegal
acts included in the indictment range
from Seoul to Hong Kong to the Joan
of Are Co. in St. Francisville, La., to a
U. S. Capitol dining room, to various
government offices in Washington.
The first purchase made by Park af-
ter his agreement with Passman was
an order of. 1,000 cases of sweet pota-
toes.from the St. Francisville firm, ac-
cording to the indictment.
Passman specifically asked Park to
make the purchase personally "in or-
der to help Passman's re-election cam-
paign."-apparently by showing Pass-
man's influence in selling goods pro-
duced in his congressional district,
the Indictment alleged..
Shortly thereafter, Passman met
-with the Korean ambassador to Wash-
ington, Gov: elect Edwin Edwards of
Louisiana, then congressional candi-
date and now U.S. Rep. John B.
Breaux (D-La.) and others to urge the
Korean ambassador to buy more Loui-
siana rice, the indictment continued.
Within a week, the indictment al-
leged, Park paid $30,000 in cash to
Passman in three installments and
'Passman issued a press release an-
nouncing that "Korean ambassador
Tongsun Park" would tour sweet po-
tato plants and rice mills in Louisi-.
ana.
At around the same time period, the
indictment continued. Passman had
begun attempts to influence the man-
ner in which the Agriculture Depart-
ment and the State Department AID
program would deal with Korean rice
sales.
He also suggested to Agriculture
Department officials that Park be
Park as a rice broker between the two
countries, according to the charges.
In a meeting with.Korean officials,
in the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 12, 1974,
further discussions were held concern-
ing the continuation of the rice-export.
relationship between the United
States and -Korea, . it was alleged."
Seven other members of Congress; un-
named in the indictment, reportedly
attended the meeting.
In 1975, _Passman_,began putting
more pressure. on AID officials to
make funds available to South Korea
so it could purchase rice from the
United States, the indictment alleged.
The appropriate AID official re-
fused-to do so, but Passman later
wrote a letter to Tongsun Park prais-
ing him for his efforts involving -a J
400,000-pound Food for Peace rice
deal for fiscal 1976 and saying that
Passman ' "anticipated congressional j
funding at an early date" for the sale, -
according to the indictment. . 4
At the same time, Passman was urg-
ing the Korean government to make
additional substantial purchases of
rice for cash, the charges added.
In the bribery counts involving;
some of the specific alleged cash
transactions, it is charged that Passman
"did corruptly, directly and indirectly,
ask, demand, exact, solicit, seek, a'-
cept, receive and agree to receive" the.
cash from Park.
The case was assigned to U.S. Dis,
trict Court Judge Barrington D. Par-1,
ker. No date for arraignment has been#
set. {
used to work out a compromise in a
dispute between the Korean govern-
ment and the department, a sugges-
tion that was accepted, the indictment
said.
Later In 1972, Passman sent a tele-
gram to the Korean ambassador in
Washington saying "Korean's stubbor-
ness [sic] on the rice purchase is on'
the verge of bringing about my defeat
for re-election to Congress," the in-
dictment charged. He reportedly
urged the ambassador to call Korean
Preisdent Park Chung Hee "to get
this [rice purchase] off dead center,
otherwise, I could be defeated." :..
Passman himself later- wrote to
President Park to thank him for "this
mutually advantageous arrangement
between our countries," the indict-
ment alleged. , . . - : - -"
Within the next three months, it
charged further, Passman .received
Passman repeatedly made contact
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I 1978
ITT, Equal Justice and Chile
On the very last day it was legally possible to do so
the Department of Justice has brought charges of lying
and obstructing justice against two officials of the Inter-
national Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. One day
more and the statute of limitations would have barred
the prosecutions. We are told that one reason why it
took so long to bring these subordinate ITT men to book
was that innumerable pages of classified CIA records had
to be ploughed through in order to make the cases
against them.
The CIA connection is, ~of course, the vital one. It is
known and thoroughly established that ITT, a giant
American. corporation with large interests in Chile,
operated in the closest cahoots with the Central Intel-
ligence Agency to prevent Salvador Allende from ever
taking the office he bad, won in a free election. The
two ITT men, whose names are hardly worth record-
ing (Gerrity and Berrellez), are now at last charged
with repeatedly lying to a Senate committee when
they denied that they had done anything to try to stop
Allende from assuming the Presidency in 1970.
The striking thing about this legal action is the omis-
sion of two names-one of an individual and the other
of an organization. The missing person in this case is
Harold Geneen, chairman of the board of ITT, and-the-
missing organization (not that it could be indicted under
the law) is the CIA. In the latter case, everyone
must remember that the then head of the CIA, Richard
Helms, who knew all about the dirty work in Chile,
pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for his lying to
Congress on the same matter and got off with a small fine.
About Geneen, whose veracity in this affair must be
extraordinarily suspect, the Justice Department is quite
defensive. Announcing the charges against the two sub-
ordinates, Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Benjamin Civi-
letti bridled at a reporter's question about why the
generals in ITT were not being prosecuted along with
the corporate privates. "The law," declared Civiletti,
"doesn't depend on whether someone is senior or junior.
It depends on the facts." Facts provable in court is what
he must ?have meant, and we are asked to take it on
faith that the government tried hard, and failed, to make
a case against the maximum leader of ITT.
Perhaps Geneen had the protection, enjoyed also by
Helms, of being able to expose the secrets of "national
security" if he was forced into the dock. This black-
mail power, in effect, is the best sort of protection I
CONTINUED
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against the fair administration of justice in cases ht- has now acknowledged that it had connections with Dr.
volving dirty work at the crossroads, especially if the in- Sanya Lipavsky, the person with whom Shcharansky
tersections are abroad. Henry Kissinger as wiretapper shared an apartment. Lipavsky has indeed denounced
is clothed in an almost impenetrable suit of this kind Shcharansky and his associates, and presumably will
of armor. testify at the trial. American correspondents in Moscow,
One can hope that justice will be done in the cases wise after the event, now take the view that Lipavsky
of Gerrity and Berrellez and their operations in what was a KGB agent-instructed to approach both them
used to be the Chilean democracy. The charges against and the CIA in Moscow, to discredit the Jewish dissi-
them suggest that they rehearsed with the. CIA- dents, the Western press and our Embassy. The Presi-
their scheme of lying to the Senate. That agency can dent, one hopes, has been told the truth about Shcharan-
hardly be further tarnished for its role in Chile, and sky by the CIA-but neither he ,nor we can be sure. .
now we are told that it is reformed and will sin no No more effective instrument to discredit the dissidents
more. But the public will have to be forgiven if it notes can be found thane the CIA. The CIA officers at our
.once again that the Nixons, Geneens and Helmses of Moscow Embassy who recruited Lipavsky behaved, in
this world. are judged by standards of law utterly differ- the circumstances, with an. unusual degree of cretinism.
ent from - those applied to their subordinates. "Equal Lipavsky, who was a medical examiner at the office
justice under the law," the motto on every federal court- which licensed bus and taxi drivers in Moscow, claimed
house, remains more hope than reality. inside knowledge of the Soviet scientific program. Our
own elite, these days, has begun a subtle whitewash of
The CIA-Again . the KGB. The CIA views its colleagues as fellow pro-
fessionals, who may also .suffer from the interferencd of
It was, apparently, Adm. Stansfield Turner's original politicians and the incomprehension of their public. The`
intention as director of the CIA to alter public impress KB's director, Yuri Andropov, has been depicted as a
sions,. of the agency. We were to learn to think of it as bon vivant, a cultivated connoisseur of avant-garde' art,
a research organization, like the Bell Laboratories or and a man who thinks about the liberalization of the
the National Institutes of Health, rather than as a bu- regime. Andropov must indeed like avant-garde art a
reaucracy run amok. By now, the Admiral must wish great deal, since he prefers to reserve it for himself and
that he had undertaken a more modest- assignment-- not have it shown in public. As for the liberalization of
something like convincing the Congress that giant car- the regime, his efforts of thought must be too exhausting
riers are worth their weight in cost overruns. The news for mere practical expression. In any event, one can
about and from the CIA suggests that it remains a hardly imagine the KGB, either in its baggy-trousered
national disaster. older model or in its more Italianate newer one, taking
First, there was the Admiral's personal campaign to seriously an "informant" like Lipavsky.
take. over control of the nation's entire intelligence Bureaucratic momentum goes a long way. The IA
apparatus. For a time, the CIA's primary antagonist was is incapable of staying out of anything that comes to its
not the KGB but the Department of Defense. Then came attention. I recently sued the agency in Federal District
his decision to fire some hundreds of senior officials. Court for opening a letter to a colleague at Moscow
Stung by the nation's alleged ingratitude, they promptly State. University (a letter dealing with an international .
threatened to tell all. Frank Snepp's book on the CIA scholarly conference on religion, which promptly found
in Vietnam confirmed our worst suspicions about the its way to the CIA's files). At the trial, a CIA official
agency's arrogance, brutality and lying incompetence. testified that the agency kept a watch on the university'
The agency decided to have Snepp prosecuted, making on Americans studying in the USSR, and on Soviet
it clear that it regards questions of constitutional propriety citizens who might (or might not) be dissident. With
irrelevant or worse. Now William Colby has been heard economy, indeed elegance, he verified Soviet official
from, explaining that he was dismissed as CIA director paranoia about international exchanges-and about dis-
because he thought he had an obligation to be minimally sent. (I am now in possession of a court-ordered letter
truthful with the Congress. We also learn that the CIA -.of apology from Admiral Turner-as well as a brief-.filed.
penetrated American black organizations, but that those subsequently by the Department of. Justice, declaring
of its officers who knew of this illegal intrusion obliged that no such letter should have been ordered.)
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by remain- Continuing failure of the executive- branch to ? dis-
ing silent. As one CIA source said to Seymour Hersh of cipline the CIA makes it an impediment to an effective
The New York Times, these were adversary proceedings. foreign policy-as well as a continuing danger to our
The stream of outrages from the CIA, then, shows no own liberties and those of other nations. The case for
sign of diminishing to a trickle. On the contrary, it the abolition of the agency, and the distribution of its
threatens to swell to a torrent. The latest.news entails tasks amongst other departments, is stronger than ever.
the reckless endangering of the Soviet Jewish dissidents, In the meantime, the Congressional committees charged
and beyond them, of Soviet dissent as a whole. The with intelligence oversight should be heard from. Senator
KGB arrested Anatoly Shcharansky, a Jewish dissident Moynihan, who sits on the Senate committee, has been
spokesman, a. year ago. In 'June, he was charged with outspoken in Shcharansky's defense. Will he now assist
treason, punishable by death, for alleged ties to the the Soviet dissidents against the embrace of the CIA-
CIA. President Carter then denied that Shcharansky had which many of them have publicly spurned?
any relationship with the CIA. The agency, however N RMAN BIRNBAUM
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THE WASHINGTON STAR
1 April 1978
__ `F ;i form nt GOt
1 Still.-Gets Pay;.
Viet. p++~y Trig' Is Told.-:1
The government. disclosed yesterday'that a CIA?'
FBI informant who is expected to be a major;
prosecution .witness in the espionage trial of a two
men accused of spying for North Vietnam has been
paid 332,000_ and is continuing to receive $1,200 a
month. '. - -
The disclosure;- which came in a letter from
Alexandria U.S. Attorney William E. Cummings to
defense lawyers, was filed yesterday in U.S Dis-
trict Court. It may affect the credibility of the in-
formatit's testimony, a_ lawyer for one of the de-
fendants asserted. -
"The amount that this informant was paid is
extraordinary," said Warren L. Miller, chief coun-
sel for one -of the defendants, former. USIA ~
employee Ronald L.. Humphrey. "It clearly raises I
a very serious question as to the credibility of the
witness and of the motivation for any testimony
she might give at the trial.".
The informant is identified in court records as
Dung Krall, the daughter of a former Vietcong
representative to the Soviet Union. According to
an affidavit filed by Attorney General Griffin Bell,
she acted as a courier for. the other defendant,
.David Truong, carrying packages to between him
and Vietnamese officials in Paris. '
KRALL - CODE-NAMED Keyseat -. revealed
to federal agents the contents of the packages, the.
court papers say. Some of the letters are expected
to be used as evidence in the trial, Which is sched-
uled to begin May 1.
The revelation of the payments to Krall was
made by the prosecution under rules- requiring'
such disclosures to be made if they might help the
cases of criminal defendants. - - .
U.S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. yester-
day ordered the government to turn over to the de-
fense documents that he had been asked to review
privately by Bell. Bryan ordered that the material
be kept secret by the lawyers, however. They had-
not yet received them late yesterday.
"We still don't know what they are," Miller said.
The lawyer suggested that they might contain
records of Humphrey's being picked up in, elec-
tronic surveillance in an unrelated national se-
curity case.
The other case, Miller said, involved an ap-
proach to Humphrey by a Soviet agent during the
time the defendant allegedly was spying for Viet-
nam. At the time, Miller said, Humphrey informed
U.S. authorities of the approach.
HUMP14REY'S REPORT to authorities demon-
strated his "clear intent to assist his government
and report possible compromises of national se-
curity," Milier said in court last week.
Bryan yesterday also released an order prevent
ing the government from using as evidence much
of its electronic surveillance of Humphrey and
Trucrg, ruling that the material he was suppress-
ing was inadmissable because there had been no
warrant issued for it.
Wiretaps. of both' defendants and a microphone
surveillance of Truon&'s apartment began early
last May, and some orthe surveillance continued.
for 268 days. In addition, the government surrepti-.
ticusly took videotapes of Humphrey in his USIA
cff ice between June 20 of last year and Sept. 15.
Bryan ruled yesterday that none the surveil-
lance after July 20 - or any other evidence deriv-
ing from it - could be used in court. On July 20,
the judge concluded, the government investigation
ceased to be a simple counterintelligence operata-
tion and became a criminal investigation.
Beil had said in an affidavit that the decision to
prosecute.the two men was not made until Janu-
ary, just before they were indicted. But Bryan con-
cluded in the ruling released yesterday that the
Justice Department apparently "was trying to put
together a criminal case" by July 20.
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Decimating `the First Line of Defense' at CIA
The Post's March 21 report that the
CIA now claims its "second wave of ous-
ters will be less than expected" must be
read for what it also says: that nothing
and no one has persuaded Director
Stansfield Turner to give up his origi-
nal plan too oust 820 senior and middle
officers from the CIA's clandestine ser-
vice, the Operations Directorate (DDO)
and abolish.their slots. `
That will leave just 4,045 officers to
man the first line of defense for 215
million Americans and the other bil-
lions of the world who depend on. us as pear.)
their ultimate bulwark.
That is stunning folly when the
United States--once more-,is becom-
ing worried about the intentions of the
Soviet Union while continuing to worry
about what= transnational terrorists
may do next, what the Mideast oil pro-
ducers may do next, etc. All those are
matters for. which the DDO is the
American policymakers' prime source.
Only the president and. the Congress
can stop Turner from fundamentally
compromising the United States's clan-
destine intelligence-reporting organiza-
tion-this unique organization-for
years to come. For them to do nothing
is to acquiesce in Turner's depreda-
tions.
As for the 50 officers who are still
going: to be fired-for whom Turner
has summarily snapped the bonds of
loyalty that are vital to the agency-
they must decide if they want to fight
for themselves, since they have no
more recourse within the Byzantine
system by which they have been
Turner-ed out.
One wonders if the fired 50 might be
able to help restore the agency's sense
of confidence in itself, as well as help-
ing their own cause, by going to the
only forums where they might still be
able-to get a fair hearing: the courts
and .Congress.
CHRISTOPHER MAY'
Chevy Chase
(The writer retired from the CIA last.
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