D'ESCOTO/CIA/CHILE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000200830003-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: August 8, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200830003-4
RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
DATE August 8, 1983 4:45 PM CITY Atlanta
SUBJECT D'Escoto/CIA/Chile
NEWSCASTER: CNN's special assignment unit has learned
one the leading critics of US involvement in Central America
played a surprisingly different role during one of the most
controversial periods of US foreign policy.
Special assignment correspondent Joe Trento reports.
JOE TRENTO: CNN has learned that Miguel D'Escoto, the
bitterly anti-American Foreign Minister of Nicaragua and a Roman
Catholic priest once worked with the CIA in Chile in the late
1960's.
CNN has learned that D'Escoto worked for Roger Vekermans
[?] a Belgian Jesuit who has funneled millions in CIA and foreign
assistance funds to elect candidates in Chile during the Kennedy
and Johnson Administrations.
According to a top CIA official, and a former US
ambassador to Chile, D'Escoto passed CIA funds to US-backed
Chilean candidates.
Edward M. Kory served as US ambassador to Chile between
1967 and 1971.
Kory revealed D'Escoto's CIA connections in a recent
interview near his Connecticut home.
AMBASSADOR EDWARD M. KORY: If you take the spokesman of
a Sandanista government -- the foreign minister of a Sandanista
government, a Mary Knoll priest named Miguel D'Escoto -- well,
Material supplied by Radio N Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited
Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200830003-4
 Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200830003-4
when I was in Chile, and before I came to Chile, Miguel D'Escoto
was a Mary Knoll priest in Chile. And what did he do? He worked
on behalf of Vekermans, and to my personal knowledge delivered
money for the CIA in the 1969 campaign to one of the candidates
that the US government had decided to support.
Now, just think of this for a minute. Here is the
foreign minister of a country, spouting straight Castro lines,
disliked and being despised by His Holiness the Pope to such an
extent that when the Pope recently visited Nicaragua he had to
leave the country in order to avoid the confrontation -- the
foreign minister left. Guy that gets up in the United Nations
every day and denounces us; and who was he? He was in my house
for dinner at the invitation of the CIA when I gave a farewell
dinner in 1968 -- farewell lunch, I should say. He was on the
list of names that Dunman [?] gave me as the best people to
contact -- and almost everybody on that list I discovered after I
got there were in contact -- I don't say working for -- but in
contact with reliable sources for the CIA.
Just think of the absurdity of it.
Now, I held my tongue all these years about something
like that -- and there are a great many other things -- because I
thought, you know, is it conceivable that this is some kind of a
mole that the CIA planted in the Sandanista government.
TRENTO: Kory later found out through Carter Admini-
stration officials that D'Escoto was so untrustworthy there was
no way he could still be working with the CIA.
The CIA, through spokesman Dale Peterson, said the
agency would have no comment on D'Escoto. Attempts to reach
D'Escoto for comment were unsuccessful.
Angela Survelas, a spokeswoman for the Nicaraguan
embassy said of the charge, that since the United States couldn't
kill D'Escoto, the government was putting out what she called
preposterous allegations to ruin his reputation.
A high ranking former Latin American specialist for the
CIA said the D'Escoto was never paid by the spy agency. The
source, who asked that his name not be used, said D'Escoto was
used by Vekermans under CIA direction, to deliver payoffs and
campaign money to US-backed Chilean politicians.
Joe Trento, CNN special assignment.
Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200830003-4