CAMPAIGN OF CUNNING THE INSIDE STORY OF ALEXANDER HAIG'S RISE TO POWER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302440016-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: August 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000302440016-3
ARTICLE AP PE 1:D
0 PLG
fi-oin a post insidh' the national
security council, the author watched
hang mount the plVotal campaign
of his life-an assault oli the soul
of a tragically ntseriue president
article By ROGER MORRIS
IT BEGAN almost quietly. Early in Decem-
ber 1968, ut his transition headquarters
in New York's Hotel Pierre, on Fifth
Avenue facing Central Park, President-
elect Richard Nixon introduced to the
press his choice as National Security Ad-
visor, an unfamiliar Harvard professor
named Henry Kissinger. Typically, it
began, too, with a little deceit on a matter
that would prove monumental. Having
vouchsafed beforehand to a gratified
Kissinger that they would "run foreign
policy from the rr'hite House," Nixon
proceeded to announce to the reporters
that his new assistant would confine him-
self to planning and leave diplomacy
to a "strong Secretary of State" about to
be named. Out of "eagerness to deflect
any possible criticism," Nixon's public
pretense was "substantially at variance"
with their private intention, as Kissinger
later delicately described it in his mem-
oirs. It was also an omen of much more
such variance to come.
STA
PLAYBOY
AUGUST .1982
From the Pierre, Nixon and Kissinger
fastened their absolute control over the
governance of the country's international
relations. They fashioned and implanted
a new circuitry of decision making in
which all the impulses of foreign policy
fused in the White House, shorting out
the bureaucracy and the Cabinet secre-
taries. Yet in the hotel that December, a
time Kissinger remembered as a "moment
of charmed innocence," those fateful
consequences were scarcely apparent. It
was an unlikely dyarchy, the German-
born academic strategist with a fondness
for great power concerts and the Cali-
fornia politician of native suspicion,
bigotry and home-grown anticommu-
nism. Least of all was there any foreshad-
ow that their historic collaboration would
produce one more figure-tea third man,
who, raised in the strange inner ferment
of their regime, would eventually succeed
to Kissinger's place and pretend to
Nixon's. Like the seizure of power at
the Pierre, the extraordinary rise of
Alexander Haig from 1969 to 1973 hap-
pened largely out, of sight.
Of the Nixon Administration policies
in which his role was later questioned,
none would be more charged for Haig
than the covert U. S. intervention in
Chile. Coming in the wakt of the wire
taps and the Cambodian invasion, the
Chilean episode in the autumn of 1970
possessed all the elements to excite its
eventual 1975 Senatorial investigation
and revelation: corporate bribery and
scheming, White House intrigues, mili-
tary conspirators, CIA agents passing
money and guns at some predawn rendez-
vous and, in the end, torture, tyranny
and assassination.
One of the few Latin nations with a
firm tradition of nonmilitary democratic
rule, Chile also had a history of ~ regular
CIA intervention. The Eisenhower, Ken-
nedy and Johnson Administrations all
spent covert money to back pro-U. S.
candidates, including $3,000,000 in
propaganda and various secret subsidies in
1964 to ensure the defeat of Salvador
Allende, the avowedly Marxist presiden-
tial candidate of a loose Socialist/Com-
munist/moderate coalition. In the 1970
election, however, Allende's Christian
Democratic and rightist opposition was
splintered and leaderless, and his victory
seemed likely. Precisely what danger an
Allende regime represented to Washing-
ton was one of the tragic puzzles left
when it was all over.
In any case, Allende's prospective
triumph at the polls rang alarm bells
throughout the Administration's covert
precincts early in 1970. The highly secret
40 Committee-a sub-Cabinet body
chaired by Kissinger, staffed by Haig and
responsible for overseeing clandestine
operations-voted on 'March 25 to
spend $135,000 on a "spoiling" opera-
tion against Allende in the September
Chilean election. That sum was sup-
plemented by International Telephone
and Telegraph's $350,000 payment to
stave off nationalization of its lucrative
holdings in Chile. Meeting again on
June 27, the committee voted to in-
crease the anti-Allende campaign fund
to $300,000 and discussed bribing the
Chilean congress in its final presidential
certifying vote in October should Allen-
de win the popular election. When
Allende won in a free election on Sep-
tember fourth, the committee allocated
S250,000 to bribe members of the Chil-
ean congress. It also launched still more
covert actions prior to the October 24
congressional vote to prevent Allende's
assumption of power "through either
political or military means."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000302440016-3