INTERVIEW WITH SEYMOUR HERSH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830029-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 28, 2012
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: November 23, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830029-7
"RADIO IV RbPUR I S,- INC
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
FOR
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM
The Today Show
SiA1ON
WRC-TV
NBC Network
GATE
November 23, 1982
7:00 A.M.
pTy
Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT
Interview with Seymour Hersh
TOM BROKAW: There are new charges out this morning that
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were responsible for the death
of President Salvador Allende of Chile. Judy Woodruff is in our
Washington studio with the reporter who broke that story.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We are with Seymour Hersh, who is
working or a book right now on Henry Kissinger.
You have an article coming out in The Atlantic magazine
this month. Its being released today. And what exactly are you
accusing Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon of doing?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, let me make clear I'm not accusing
them of the death of Allende in '73. We don't know what happened
in '73, if he was overthrown and killed or committed assassin-
ation [sic] during the overthrow. What I'm saying is we've been
looking at the wrong issue. The real story isn't what happened
in '73. It seems to me one of the stories we could look at is
what happened in 1970 when Allende was elected.
WOODRUFF: And what are you saying their precise
involvement was?
HERSH: I'm saying that I started out writing a book
about Kissinger, Nixon, and their foreign policy, and I decided
to take a good hard look at how policy is made, what really
happens. And I've discovered that in Chile in 1970 the CIA
thought, Richard Helms and others...
WOODRUFF: Excuse me. Now we're seeing pictures of
Allende's inauguration, and this was in November of 1970.
STAT
M ,WK, supp ea by Room T. GepOrts ir1C rno~ be use!; to file one reference ourposes onry tf rncy no' be rtspro3Jceo. sAj or publicly dengruhoted a ex?bre.;
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830029-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830029-7
, . .
HERSH: November, early November. He'd been elected
September -- in early September by the Chilean people by a few
percentage points, a very small plurality. And the White House
was very upset about this. They thought he would not win. He
was a Marxist, so they thought, socialist. And about 11 days
after his election there was a meeting in the White House. None
of us will ever know what happened at that meeting: Nixon,
Kissinger, Helms, John Mitchell, the Attorney General.
What I do know is that Dick Helms, Richard Helms, the
head of the CIA, afterwards thought that he had been authorized
to assassinate Allende if necessary.
WOODRUFF: Now, how do you know that? Helms, himself,
has denied that the President directly ordered him to go after
Allende.
HERSH: He was asked at the Senate Intellignece
Committee, which investigated this incident in 1975, he was asked
whether or not assassination was talked about. And he said --
it's a very interesting answer. He said, "Well, sir, not in my
mind."
And anyway, I'll give him some credit for being a lot
more interesting than I thought. But the fact is Helms did tell
associates later -- and I can't -- this is one of the problems.
As you know, I've been a journalist a long time in Washington and
written many stories. I don't write things like this lightly.
He did say that he'd been under terrific pressure from the White
House to get something more -- get something done against Allende
personally.
And I think this information has been provided to his
lawyer. I know his lawyer at one point was talk -- Edward
Bennett Williams was talking about Helms having memcons -- that
is, conversations, notes on conversations -- in which Kissinger
was pushing him very hard on this issue.
And let me take it another step further. What I've done
is also found that the people in the field for the CIA -- and
that's the thing I can talk about with the most certitude -- they
thought they were under pressure. And in fact, one person for
the CIA was recruited especially for a job, a sensitive job,
given a false passport, sent into Chile, and passed money to
somebody whose sole mission in life at that point was to kill
Allende.
WOODRUFF: Now, some of that came out in the Senate
Intelligence Committee hearings in 1975.
HERSH: Well, not the assas -- yes, certainly. Oh, my
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830029-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830029-7
Cod, the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings were absolutely
first rate and they got very far into it. But there were a lot
of things they didn't get into. One of the things is they didn't
get into this issue of what was really authorized.
WOODRUFF: But isn't it one thing to say that the people
in the field thought they were under pressure to do these things
and then to directly tie it to the President?
HERSH: That's the Becket question., I guess. You know,
it's almost impossible to recreate a meeting in the White House.
There was no White House taping system at that time. And the
best one can do is report what one finds. And what one finds is
that an awful lot of responsible people thought they were working
for Nixon and Kissinger, that the head of the CIA was talking
about pressure, that basically -- in fact, I will tell you there
was an internal investigation, about which I write at great
length in my magazine article, in which a CIA officer
investigating this at the time, about a few months later,
concluded that the Chilean general who'd been allegedly kidnapped
and then killed during the kidnapping had in fact been executed
by the CIA.
HERSH: Oh, who knows? I mean I don't know. Laws
against mankind, I guess. I mean technical laws? Oh, I'm sure
the law in Chile was broken by our government. Conspiracy to
murder, I think. In fact, you ask a good -- you know, instead of
wondering about sources, I wish somebody would say, "Maybe we
should get a grand jury going and look into these things."
WOODRUFF: Is this sort of thing still going on?
HERSH: In Central America today? Is the President
authorizing assassinations? No, I doubt that. But are people
being murdered? Yes.
WOODRUFF: All right. On that note, thank you, Seymour
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830029-7