THE C.I.A. IN CHILE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020107-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 107
• Publication Date: September 16, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020107-5
NEW YORK TIMES
The C.I.A. in Chile .
Disclosure that- the Centrai Intelligence Agency au-
thorized more than $3 million for covert activities aimed
first at preventing Salvador Allende's election as Presi
dent of Chile and then at "destabilizing" his Marxist
Government would be appalling enough by itself. It is
doubly so when stacked against flat denials of any such
United States intervention or policy to intervene, some
of it in sworn testimony before committees of Congress
by former and present Government officials.
In secret testimony before a House subcommittee last
April, C.I.A. Director William E.' Colby said his agency
authorized $500,000 to aid Dr. Allende's opponents the
1970 election; $350,000 to bribe Chilean legislators to
vote against him when the election was thrown into the
Congress, and $6.5 million for subsequent "destabiliza-
? tion" activities and for helping anti-Allende candidates
in the 1971 municipal elections.
This conflicts directly with testimony before a Senate
Foreign Relations subcommittee by former Ambassador
Edward M. Korry that "the United States did not seek
to pressure, subvert, influence a single member of the
Chilean Congress" during his four years in Chile, and by
former Assistant Secretary of State Charles A. Meyer
that "we bought no votes, we funded no candidates, we
promoted no coups."
a
During part of the period when Mr. Colby says the
C.I.A. was financing "destabilizing" activities, Ambassa-
dor Korry says he was carrying on secret negotiations
with President Allende, looking toward uninterrupted
Chile
American cooperation and financial aid, provided, did not act with undue hostility toward the Uni! ed States.
These efforts, he says, were undermined by extremists
in Dr. Allende's Popular Unity coalition.
Are we to believe that Ambassador Korry and the State
Department were endeavoring to stabilize Dr. Allende's
Government while the C.I.A. was trying to "destabilize"
it? Could the American Ambassador in Santiago and the
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
have been ignorant of what the C.I.A. was doing-or
was the C.I.A. in truth a law unto itself?
And what of the role of Henry A. Kissinger in this
sordid affair? Throughout the period he heaaed the
so-caned Forty Committee which supervises C.I.A. oper-
ations and, according to Mr. Colby, approved in advance
the covert activities in Chile. Yet, Mr. Korry says that on
a trip to Washington in 1971 he got approval from both
Mr. Kissinger at the National Security Council and Sec-
retary of State William P. Rogers for his proposal of
cooperation with Chile in a compensated take-over of
American copper interests. Mr. Kissinger told the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee that "to the best of my
knowledge and belief," the C.I.A. "had nothing to do"
with the military coup that overthrew Dr. Allende.
! f ;
It is now up to President Ford to find out who is
actually in charge of United States foreign policy in
sensitive areas of the world, and whether anyone in
fact controls the operations of the C.I.A.
Of far greater importance than the bizarre spectacle
of two United States agencies trying simultaneously
to stabilize and "destabilize" an elected Government is
that fact that an inadequately controlled C.I.A. badly
served the American national interest by its dirty work
in Chile. It r:attcrs not that the Soviet Unix i does iar
worse, that Fidel Castro intervened far. more out-
rageously in Chile than did the United States, or that
extremists in Dr. Allende's camp wou'.d in any evens
have destroyed the Chilean democracy on their own.
Clearly, the so-called C.I.A. "oversight" committees in
Senate and House are failing to do their job. Representa-
tive Harrington of Massachusetts has asked the House
Foreign Affairs Committee for hearings on the C.I.A.'s
role in Chile. Senator Church of Idaho will ask similar
action from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
If this enormously powerful agency is ever to be
brought under effective oversight, Con;-ress must rise
to this distasteful but imperative responsibility.
00795
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020107-5