CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE: CONGRESS, CHILE, AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020006-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 5, 2011
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: November 1, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020006-7
Nov. 197
Criminal Negligence:
Congress, Chile, and the CII
JUDITH MILLER
Though political purists may bridle at the comparison,
the late president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and the
Democratic Senator from South Dakota, George
McGovern, had much in common. Both aspired to the
presidency of nations with long democratic traditions.
Both publicly espoused a more equitable distribution of
wealth and greater governmental control of giant cor-
porations. Both were feared by the middle classes, who
believed their own economic power and prestige would
decline to the extent that the lot of the poor was
improved. Most fundamentally, however, both were
victims-targets of a White House-directed effort to
prevent their election to office; targets of vast con-
spiracies to subvert the free election process through
which citizens exercise the right of self-determination.
Many of the tactics brought into play in the Nixon
Administration's secret intervention in the Chilean
election of 1970 were also employed in the U.S. Presi-
dential election two years later. The dirty tricks that
Allende had managed to overcome-funding of opposi-
tion candidates, manipulation of the media, violations
of individual privacy, illegal campaign contributions-
all.were componentsof the corruption now categorized
in our national shorthand as "Watergate." What the
United States unknowingly experienced in 1972, and
ultimately exposed and repudiated two years later, was
the "Chileanization" of American politics.
Although Congress has now seemed to repudiate
such activities at home, it has not rejected their, use in
Chile or in other nations unfortunate enough to be
considered even marginally significant to American
Judith Miller is The Progressive's Washington
correspondent.
"national security." In the Watergate affair, Congress
was compelled to begin impeachment proceedings
against Richard M. Nixon for his orchestration of the
White House coverup of illegal activities. In the case of
Chile, however, the coverup of similar White House-,
inspired activities is being carried out by Congress;
itself.
By rejecting a thorough investigation of the Central
Intelligence Agency's role in the "destabilization" of
the Allende regime, Congress is adopting the Nixon
technique of "stonewalling." Moreover, by refusing to
conduct a broader investigation of the origins of the
U.S. Government's anti-Allende policy, the Senate is
abandoning its constitutional responsibility for advising
and consenting to the Executive's foreign policies.
Finally, through inaction, Congress is inviting another
Watergate, a second round of domestic internalization
of the cloak-and-dagger activities commonly deployed;
abroad by the American intelligence establishment. Asl
Senator Frank Church, Idaho Democrat, warned six 1
months before the CIA intervention in Chile was ptib- i
licly disclosed, "Is it possible to insulate our constitu-
tional and democratic processes at home from the kind
of foreign policy we have conducted . . . a policy ofi
almost uninterrupted cold war, hot war, and clandes- i
tine war?"
The Congressional effort to shield the CIA from
public scrutiny in this case is all the more baffling in
view of what CIA Director William Colby and President
Ford have already acknowledged about covert CIA
intervention in Chile. In the past, Congress could rely
on its traditional rationale for unwillingness to exercise
oversight: "The agency never fully briefs us; we (lid not
0'0553
Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020006-7 ^Oritlnued.
 Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020006-7 ?'
t
know." But in the last year and a half, Colby has made
a deliberate attempt to expand and improve contacts
with Congress and the public in the aftermath of the
exposure of CIA involvement in illegal, covert Water-
gate activities. Colby's "Operation Candor" has meant
that more legislators than ever before have been
informed about covert operations, whether or not they
wanted to be told.
In the case of CIA intervention in Chile, several
powerful Senators and Representatives, in addition to
the usual agency "oversight" subcommittee members,
were privy to details of the Administration's anti-
Allende policy and the CIA's consequent operations. At
least two Congressional subcommittees were fully
briefed about covert U.S. activities in Chile.
On April 22, 1974, Colby delivered sixteen pages of
testimony concerning his agency's operations in Chile
before a closed session of the House Armed Services
Special Subcommittee on Intelligence. He testified that
the Forty Committee, the covert policy-making group of
the National Security Council, had targeted $8 million
in clandestine action funds against Allende since
1970-$350,000 to bribe the Chilean Congress in the
presidential runoff election, $1 million to support op
position party personnel and anti-Allende forces; $1.5
million for the 1973 municipal elections; $5 million for
"destabilization" (though Colby denied having used
that word). and financial support for anti-Allende news-
papers and media.
The session at which Colby presented his remarkably
candid and detailed exposition of the anti-Allende
program was attended only by the chairman of the
subcommittee, Representative Lucien Nedzi, Michigan
Democrat, and by Frank Slatinshek. chief counsel to the
House Armed Services Committee. The Colby testi-
mony, however, was available to all members of the
oversight subcommittee, if they cared to examine it,
and Nedzi has said privately that the Colby transcript
was available for perusal by any House member who
requested access. Only one member did: Representa-
tive Michael Harrington, Massachusetts Democrat. In
:June, House Armed Services Chairman F. Edward
Hebert, Louisiana Democrat, and Nedzi permitted Har-
rington to read the testimony, but only after Nedzi had
asked for Colby's consent to Harrington's review of the
transcript. A seasoned and adroit bureaucrat, Colby
told Nedzi that access to his testimony was purely a
Congressional affair; Nedzi could do whatever he
wished with the material.
'Harrington reviewed the Colby testimony twice, but
was not permitted to make notes. Shocked by the
nature and extent of the CIA operations and the policy
that authorized them. Harrington sent seven-page
letters to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman
Thomas Morgan, Pennsylvania Democrat, and to Sen-
ate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William
Fulbright, Arkansas Democrat. The letters detailed the
essence of the Colby testimony and requested help in
opening a thorough investigation of U.S. involvement
in the overthrow of the Allende government. Harring-
ton's previous efforts to elicit help from Nedzi's sub-
committee and from the House Foreign Affairs Sub-
committee on Inter-American Affairs, chaired by
Representative Dante Fascell, Florida Democrat, had
been unsuccessful.
"I turn to you as a last resort," Harrington wrote
Morgan, "having despaired of the likelihood of any-
thing productive occurring as a result of the avenues I
have already pursued. I wish to share this information
with you in the hope that you will feel the same sense of
conviction that I experienced upon learning the full
details of significant U.S. activities in the affairs of
another country without any prior consultation of even
the committee charged with overseeing such opera-,
tions."
Harrington's "sense of conviction" and outrage,
however, were not shared by many of his colleagues.
Fulbright, eloquent in the past on America's "arro
gance of power," replied to Harrington: "I share your
frustration in this situation, but, as you know, this has
been going on in places other than Chile for many
years." The Senator outlined his past efforts to create a
joint oversight committee to exercise effective control
over CIA activities, and noted the lack of Senate l
interest in such proposals. Returning to the matter of
Chile, Fulbright wrote: "I do not believe that a
thorough investigation by the Foreign Relations Com-
mittee would produce very much beyond that which we
already know. and if it did, unless there is a tremeti
dous change in the attitude of members of the Senate,
nothing could be done about it."
The Congressional coverup of U.S. involvement in
Chilean politics might have succeeded had copies of
Harrington's letter to Morgan not found their way to
The Washington Post and The New York Times. On'
Sunday, September 8, both newspapers published
front-page articles disclosing the covert CIA operations
in Chile as outlined in Harrington's letter.
The response was predictable: statements of outrage
from those who had previously eschewed any interest in
a public exploration of U.S. covert operations in Chile.
Morgan, who had not even formally responded to'
Harrington's appeal, vowed to take up the Chile issue.
"This is our one chance to get oversight of the CIA," he'
told The Post, "and we're going to grab it."
What followed was equally predictable: Instead of
taking up the substantive issue of CIA intervention,
Congress directed most of its outrage at the leak of the
Harrington letter to the press. Adopting a Nixon tactic
that had often proven effective, Congressional leaders
began shifting the focus of controversy from the lack of
meaningful oversight of CIA activities and American
foreign policy to the identification and punishment of
the letter leaker. Although Harrington denied that he
was the source of the stories in The Post and The
Times, he was regarded as the most obvious suspect.
On the Thursday following the disclosures, President
Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09T00207RO01000020006-7 COntinuea
 Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020006-7
Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the ranking
members of the House and Senate Armed Services
committees (who are responsible for overseeing covert
CIA operations). and- Congressional leaders held a
two-hour meeting. Although the White House claimed,
in proper dip!on atic language, that the group had
engaged in "full and frank" discussion of CIA covert
activities in Chile and elsewhere, several sources report
that the major topic of conversation was the danger
supposedly posed to "the national interest" by such
incidents as the Harrington leak, and the problem of
safeguarding future "sensitive" testimony before leg-
islative committees. "They really had a rope with
Harrington's name on it," says one Capitol Hill source.
In briefings of top Congressional Republicans and
the Senate Democratic Caucus, Kissinger also empha-
sized the importance of safeguarding delicate CIA
testimony before Congressional committees.
The House demonstrated little enthusiasm for the
kind of investigation Harrington had requested. Fas-
cell, whose subcommittee had been holding innocuous
hearings on Chile for a year, expressed no interest even
in obtaining a transcript of Colby's actual testimony
before the Nedzi oversight group. "That's not the way I
want to run my subcommittee," Fascell told me.
There has been continuing interest, however, in
identifying the source of the leak of Colby's testimony.
On September 25, Harrington appeared before the
Nedzi oversight subcommittee to testify about the leak
of his letter. Although Harrington made it clear that he
had volunteered to appear, subcommittee members
made it equally clear that the panel had power to
subpoena him if he were to refuse. Instead of discuss-
ing the substance of Harrington's complaints about the
lack of oversight .of the CIA, the subcommittee pre-
ferred, in closed session, to take up the issue of
whether Harrington ought to he censured for citing
details of Colby's secret testimony in confidential let-
ters to Representatives and Senators ostensibly respon-
sible for foreign affairs.
With one major exception, the Senate's reaction to
the disclosures has closely paralleled that of the House.
The exception, Senator Frank Church, is chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multi-
-national Corporations, whose hearings on the Interna-
tional Telephone and Telegraph Company's involve-
ment in the 1970 Chilean elections had previously
produced testimony revealing some degree of CIA
cooperation with ITT efforts to prevent Allende's elec-
tion. But Colby's April 22 testimony, as disclosed in the
Harrington letter, clearly contradicted some of the
testimony CIA and State Department officials had given
(luring the Church subcommittee's hearings.
incensed over the apparent discrepancies, Church
announced he would turn over any "misleading" testi-
mony to the Justice Department for investigation and
possible perjury charges. He also said he would for-
mally ask the full Foreign Relatioliis Committee to
review the propriety of covert operations against the
constitutionally elected Allende government. In addi-
PTO
Engelhardt in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
'How Else Can We Protect Our Democratic
Ideals If We Don't Beat The Commies At Their
Own Game?'
tion, Church instructed the chief of his subcommittee
staff, Jerome Levinson. to write a report based on a
review of the apparently contradictory testimony.
Senator Fulbright, preoccupied in the last months of
a lame duck term with hearings on Soviet-American
detente, was less than eager to mount a full-fledged'
investigation of U.S. policy towards the former Allende
government. Nevertheless, the revelations in the press)
forced the Foreign Relations Committee to take up the
issue in secret session.
On the morning of the scheduled committee meeting.'
The Washington Post and The New York Times carried
stories disclosing the recommendations of the confiden-
tial report Church had rcqu~~t .& thk ommittee
staff chief to prepare. Th
Levinson repori
mended that a perjury investigation ' ' ed against
former CIA Director Richard M. Helms. In addition, it
accused Kissinger of having "deceived" the Foreign
Relations Committee in sworn testimony about the
scope and objective of CIA operations in Chile. The
memo further questioned the testimony of the former
Assistant Secretary of State for inter-American Affairs,
Charles A. Meyer; former U.S. Ambassador to Chile
Edward M. Korry; and the former chief of the CIA's
00555
Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020006-7ontnu
 Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020006-7 -,
Latin American Division, William V. Broe. "Whether
or not there was perjury committed," Levinson wrote,
"it 'seems clear that the testimony of Meyer, Korry,
Broe, and Helms acious."
embers o the Foreign Relations ommittee me
that morning, enraged at the leak or the Levinson
report. Once again, a Senator told me, the outrage was
directed at the leak rather than at the substance of
Levinson's conclusion that several members of the
Executive branch had lied in sworn testimony before
Senate panels. The Senate Minority Leader. Hugh Scott
of Pennsylvania, and Senator Gale McGee, Wyoming
Democrat, subjected Levinson to a hostile grilling.
Fulbright was also furious about the leak, particularly
because the report was highly critical of Kissinger,
who shares the outgoing chairman's high hopes for
detente. Church defended Levinson and tried in vain to
persuade his colleagues to return to substantive issues.
The substantive issues, in fact, had become even
broader than the mere questions of CIA oversight or
even U.S. policy towards the Allende regime. At issue
now was whether the Senate would exercise its consti-
tutionally mandated role by taking action against those
Government officials who felt free to deceive or mislead
Congress. More broadly still, the issue was whether
Congress was willing and able to supervise the nation's
foreign policy.
The Senators, however, were not inclined to consider
such matters. The Levinson memo was set aside. 1he
For Relations Committee heard instead from at
Holt, the chief of the full co nrni f whose re ort
id not recommend the launchin of possible er' y
roccc wigs against anyone. Holt was instructed to
continue his investi ation a o't ie committee
at is next executive session. The next session came and
Wen ,- on again w11 ou ac ion.
e m n tine, re a wns between Fulbright and
Church had deteriorated as a result of their disagree-
ment about the importance of the debate on Chile.
During Kissinger's testimony before the Foreign Rela-
tions Committee's hearings on detente, Church
attempted to raise the issue of covert U.S. intervention
in the affairs of other nations. He asked Kissinger how
he could justify, in view of the spirit of detente and the
political values for which the United States has tradi-
tionally stood, a policy of "unfettered intervention"
against a democratically elected government. This line
of questioning, however, was abruptly cut off by Ful-
bright, who protested crankily that Church's question
had "nothing to do with detente, the subject of these
proceedings." Church. whose sharp intellect and sound
instincts are not always accompanied by political gump-
tion and perseverance, firmly stood his ground. Refus-
ing to be interrupted, Church replied that detente had a
"hollow ring" when applied to such nations as Chile,
and that U.S. actions against the Allende government
were "a very sad commentary, indeed."
Church received limited support from Senator Stuart
Symington, Missouri Democrat, a member of both the
Foreign Relations Committee and the oversight sub-
committee of the Armed Services Committee. Syming-
ton, a supporter of the CIA's intelligence gathering and
analysis functions, complained privately that the
Senate oversight panel had not received much detail
about the complete scope of the CIA's Chilean inter-
vention.
On the other hand, at least one other Senate sub-
committee had been fairly well briefed. On November.
26, 1973, Colby confirmed in closed testimony before
McGee's Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western
Hemisphere Affairs, according to the confidential
Levinson report, that "the agency did more than
merely keep the democratic political opposition alive."
During questioning, Levinson noted, Colby, "in effect,
acknowledged that the agency supported demonstra-
tions and funded opposition press."
Since the recent disclosures, the CIA has once again
been -under heavy criticism, but Symington and others'
argue that most of the criticism is misguided. In the
Chilean affair, after all, the CIA has been more candid
than Kissinger and lesser State Department officials. In
the midst of the revelations about CIA activities in
Chile, Colby appeared before a two-day conference
former agents, government officials, and journalists
discuss "The CIA and Covert Operations." Although
many in the audience were understandably antagonistic
towards the former head of the CIA's Vietnam-based
Phoenix program, Colby spent two imperturbable hours
answering questions that were sometimes penetrating
and sometimes merely hostile. As a spy trained in the
covert operations division, Colby said that though such
operations might be useful in the future, U.S. national
interests would not be seriously endangered if Con-
gress were to ban covert operations. He also expressed
willingness to testify fully before any oversight or
special committee duly- authorized by Congress-a
concession that the State Department officials who
testified at Church's ITT/Chile hearings were unwilling
to grant.
The CIA's supporters and apologists have always
maintained that the agency is, essentially, an instru-
ment of American foreign policy-the obedient servant
of the President and the Executive branch. This ration-'
ale has been strengthened by President Ford's unprec-
edented acknowledgment and defense of the clandes-
tine operations in Chile: "Our Government, like other
governments, does take certain actions in the intelli-
gence field to help implement foreign policy and protect
national security. I ani informed reliably that Commun-
ist nations spend vastly more money than we do for the
same kind of purposes." If critics wish, therefore, to
assign responsibility for the American intervention in
Chile and other disastrous "dirty tricks," the place to
start is the White House and its Forty Committee,
chaired by Kissinger.
Nonetheless, the recent disclosures have prompted
an array of proposals aimed at tightening Congres-
biontfnued
/4
Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020006-7
 Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020006-7
sional oversight power of the intelligence agencies
themselves (though Congress has rejected about 150
such efforts in the past). Senator Symington contends
that the Senate's ability to ride herd on CIA covert
activities has actually diminished over the years. When
the late Senator Richard Russell, Georgia Democrat.
was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Commit-
tee, Symington notes, high-ranking members of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee were occasionally
invited to attend CIA oversight sessions. These invita-
tions ceased, however, when Senator John Stennis,
Mississippi Democrat, succeeded Russell as chairman,
and oversight meetings became a rarity. As a result of
this experience, many Senators believe that any over-
sight procedure must be written into legislation rather
than remain dependent upon a "gentlemen's agree-
ment."
The Administration, clearly, would prefer to head off
legislation. Toward that end, Kissinger offered early in
October to have Colby provide detailed briefings on
future clandestine operations to the House Foreign
Affairs Committee as well as to the Armed Services
Committee. Whether Congress-and particularly the
Senate-will be content with this arrangement remains
to he seen. Representative Harrington dismissed it as
"a small step for the Foreign Affairs Committee and a
smaller step still for the cause of Congressional control
over the CIA, but so far still more illusion than reality."
Proposals now pending range from one by Senator
James Abourezk, South Dakota Democrat, who would
abolish the CIA's covert operations branch, to a biparti-
san plan to establish a fourteen-member joint Congres-
sional oversight committee for all intelligence organiza-
tions. Senator Walter Mondale, Minnesota Democrat,
has called for formation of a Select Committee on
intelligence, fashioned after the Select Committee on
Emergency Powers, to study the most effective means
of overseeing the intelligence community.
Ultimately, however, Congress is likely to do what it
has done in the past-nothing. As the Chilean experi-
ence demonstrates, most Senators and Representa-'
tives-and certainly most of those in leadership posi-
tions-favor the maintenance of a U.S. capability for;
clandestine operations against foreign governments in
general, just as they supported the intervention against
Allende in particular.
Congress has had an excellent opportunity to conduct
a searching inquiry of the American involvement in
Chile and the foreign policy that encouraged such,
involvement. It has passed up that opportunity on the'
shopworn pretext that to pursue it might endanger'
"national security." Although a number of legislators
criticized Ford's justification of the intervention in
Chile, most accepted his rationale: all powerful nations
conduct such shady operations; we spend less money
on them than do others.
The United States spent only $8 million to undermine
the elected government of Chile. According to Ford's
logic-logic that Congress accepts and tacitly sup-
ports-it was a cost-effective coup. ^
Approved For Release 2011/08/05: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01000020006-7