LICENSED THUGGERY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020064-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 64
• Publication Date: September 20, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020064-3
WLSHIAaTON ST.
2 0 SEP 1974
Garry Wills:
Licensed Thuggery
President Ford said in his press con-
ference that he meant to continue a poli-
cy of openness and candor. But there
was nothing very candid about his first
answer on the CIA's crusade against
Chile's deposed and murdered presi-
dent, Salvador Allende:
Ford first said our $8 million of CIA
money was spent to "take certain ac-
tions in the intelligence field." If Al-
lende's 'government had fallen, we
would have heard about it, and it would
not have cost us $8 million to hear about
it. The aim was not to find out anything
about Allende, but to do him-in. -
Ford went on to half-admit this, all
the while painting our actions in the
guise of disinterested love for the free
press.
So much for campaign spending re-
forms. The next time the government
gets after big corporations for under-
writing candidates, the officers of such
corporations can just say they were
being philanthropic and encouraging
freedom of the press.
(ITT DID in fact offer the CIA an
extra million dollars for the subversion
of the Chilean government, but the CIA
thought it would stick with the taxpay-
ers' money. )
Then Ford made Henry Kissinger's
distinction between our attacks on Al-
lende and the coup that overturned him.
We, he claimed, did not stage or run the
coup. We are expected to take the gov-
ernment's word for that, but various
officers of our government also gave
their word under oath that we were not
financing the opposition, and now it
turns out that we were.
It is not only less than candid, it is dis-
graceful, to pretend we are protecting
another people's liberties. when we
undermine their economy to "prove"
that communism is bad for them. Il
communism were so self-evidently bad,
we would not need to help it along in
proving its disastrous effects. And we
would nothave to lie to each other in the t
process.
Ford's first answer did not satisfy, so
the question was raised again - and
then he did approach candor on the sub,
ject, saying he would not quibble about
whether the subversion of other peo- ples' governments is "permitted or
authorized under international law." It
is "recognized fact" that other govern-
ments do it, so we will do it too, for our
own best interests. And international
law be damned.
William Buckley, once a CIA agent
himself, defends the Chile operation by
saying that such acts are what the CIA
exists for. He is right. And that is why
the CIA should cease to exist.
IT BREAKS the laws ,of every country
it operates in, beginning with our own -
and makes any pretense to international
morality simply ludicrous on our part.
Through the CIA we proclaim a licensed
thuggery to all the world.
We got along for a century and a half
without an international secret police
force; and it is only after we learned to
live with one that we started toying with
the idea of a domestic secret police
plan. The development is not acciden-
tal. We had to be conditioned to our
various Howard Hunts. We had to de-
serve them before we got them. Now we
better deserve to be rid of them, and all
their ilk, and all their works.
00732
Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020064-3