ITT, EQUAL JUSTICE AND CHILE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100230056-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: April 1, 1978
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-012
ARTICLE APP.EAFYD_ NATION
ON PAGE
1 APRIL 1978
IT % Zqual Just ce and C e _ .. J
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 aie 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 had 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
CONTL_i UED
STAT
r Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100230056-7