SPRING IN THEIR STEPS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020012-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: October 11, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Spring in
Their Steps
THE DAY Senator Edward Ken-
nedy announced his "firm,
final, and unconditional" decision not
to seek the Presidency in 1976, a news-
man asked Mr. Ford if he had a com-
ment on the Senator's announcement.
Mr. Ford said nothing. He shook his
head. Then he smiled broadly. In 25
months we will know at least a little
more about whether Mr. Ford's politi-
cal judgment was sound when he evi-
dently decided, smiling, that he will be
better off running against someone
other than Mr. Kennedy. But at this
point-two years from the election,
which is an eternity in American poli-
tics these days-it doesn't make much
sense to worry about who the Demo-
crats will cough up as a candidate. The
important point today, as usual, is that
candidates rarely win the Presidency;
other candidates lose it.
Americans vote against. And there
may be plenty of things about Mr. Ford
that people will want to vote against in
1976. Mr. Ford's performance in the
two weeks that began with his pardon
for Mr. Nixon caused serious concern
among his many supporters in this
town, and put a spring in the step of
the many Democratic presidential
candidates.
Obviously the pardon, whatever else
you may say about it, was ill-timed.
Some of Mr. Ford's senior aides are
letting reporter friends know that they
thought so from the start. (President
Kennedy acquainted the nation with
this nice axiom: "Success has a thou-
sand fathers, but failure is an orphan."
He said that after the Bay of Pigs ad-
venture had marred his Administration's
first months. He was aware that some
members of his Administration were
tellin friendly reporters that they had
really opposed the Cuban invasion.)
clr. Ford knows he has had his. Bay of
Pi-s. Al his most recent press con-
feren, e he admitted that he was startled
NIATIOi AL REVIEW
11 OCT 1974
Capitol Issues GEORGE F. WILL
by the intensity of the public reaction
against his pardon decision. (This ad-
mission was to his credit, and it was
startling, given the unwillingness of
recent Presidents to admit that there is
anything in the world that catches them
by surprise. Speaking of splendidly
startling candor, the White House, when
asked, acknowledged, without beating
around the bush, that the telephone
calls, telegrams, and letters were run-
ning heavily against Mr. Ford's deci-
sion. The previous White House would
have lied about it, or would have il-
legally used leftover campaign funds to
finance an avalanche of phony tele-
grams and newspaper ads supporting
the decision. The more things change,
the more they do not remain the same.)
It is now clear (actually, it was clear
even before Mr. Ford acted) that the
American people wanted to make a
sensible distinction between prosecu-
tion and punishment. They favored the
former, opposed the latter. But they
would have gone along with anything
Mr. Ford wanted to do if he had just
prepared the ground a bit before he
went ahead.
Instead, two weeks before what he
did, he seemed to tell a press con-
ference that he would not do it. This
raised dark suspicions about a deal
having been struck with Mr. Nixon.
I do not credit those rumors. I be-
lieve Mr. Ford acted impulsively, with
compassion but without good judgment,
to do what his conscience told him to
do. But Mr. Ford is not paid to see
that his conscience is faithfully ex-
ecuted. And his judgment, including
his political judgment, is the big ques-
tion mark troubling the nation as it
watches its first selected, not elected,
President.
AND THEN came those remarks about
Chile, and the CIA's covert operations
therein. The remarks came at a press
conference called to allow Mr. Ford to
comment on the pardon decision. The
press conference certainly helped eclipse
the pardon controversy. Mr. Ford need-
lessly did with the question of Chile
what he did with the matter of Rho-
desian chrome: he put himself squarely
in the middle of a hot dispute. If Mr.
Ford felt that, as President, he could
not support, as he did when in Con-
gress, opposition to the UN sanctions
against importation of Rhodesian
chrome, he at least could have bucked
the matter over to the State Depart-
ment, which would have taken the heat.
Similarly, once the report about CIA
involvement in Chile leaked to the
press, Mr. Ford could have just said
that the whole matter was the business
of the last Administration, and he
would "study" the general subject. etc.
Instead, he gave a flawed description
of what the CIA did in Chile, and
wrapped himself in the principle that
covert operations are a distasteful
necessity in this troubled world, etc.
That principle may be.sound, but, now
that it has been given a presidential pat
on the head, it will be the subject of a
noisy Senate examination. So brace
yourself for a wallow in Chilegate.
WHEN the Chile story began to
break, it became apparent that those
who are going to be most unhappy
about it-e.g., the )iberal senators on
the Foreign Relations Committee and
kindred spirits in the intelligentsia-
would be the persons who have pro-
vided the most adoring and uncritical
support for Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger's vision of detente with the
Soviet Union. Mr. Kissinger's position
has become increasingly uncomfortable
during the last 12 months, what with
the Mideast war, the general ugliness of
the Soviet government's deeds at home
and abroad, and all that disagreeable
talk about Mr. Kissinger's having some
disreputable connection with the wire-
tapping of his friends and staff. Now
comes word that he had some connec-
tion with the CIA's Chilean enterprises.
And with it comes more of what Mr.
Kissinger will not sit still for-criticism.
So, suddenly, Mr. Ford is at the UN,
departing from his text and the subject
(the world food shortage) to announce
his unswerving devotion to Mr. Kis-
singer. As he spoke the soothing words,
the television cameras swung to Mr.
Kissinger, who looked as content as
you, too, would look if you could re-
ceive, on demand, such endorsement
from the President of the United States.
As for the President, he just looked
easily put upon. 0 00,589
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NATI011TAL REVI .7
11 O CT 1974
The Chile Connection
The current flap in this country over CIA operations in
Chile is not an isolated incident. In global perspective,
it appears, rather, as the U.S. contribution to an inter-
national pageant coinciding with the first anniversary
of the overthrow of the Allende government by the mili-
tary Junta.
country. There are all sorts of committees to save the
victims of the Junta, restore democracy to Chile, help the
Chilean refugees, and so on. In the U.S. as well as in
Europe, there has been an enormous quantity of articles,
columns, and editorials expended on the crimes of the
Junta and the virtues of Allende. On the September 15
anniversary, 10,000 leftists gathered in London's Tra-
falgar Square to denounce the Junta and the U.S. as its
Svengali, and many thousands marched and made
speeches in the other European capitals. And at just
about the same time, Representative Michael Harrington
leaked the secret Colby testimony about the CIA in
Chile, the New York Times and. the Washigton Post
published it for the world audience, the U.S. Congress
developed an attack of hysteria on the subject, and the
UN critics and enemies of the U.S. prepared to make the
General Assembly resound with Chilean echoes.
What is going on, thus, is a powerful global political
The Left had a big stake in Allende. Chile's Com-
munist Party was the largest in Latin America, and has
always remained faithful to the Kremlin. For the Soviet
Union and for the Chilean Party, the Allende regime
promised to be the highroad to the first Communist state
on the Latin American continent. The non-Communist
Left was no less closely involved with Allende, though
as usual it saw Chile through its rose-tinted glasses.
Allende was going to show the world how to achieve
"democratic socialism" peacefully. The Junta's takeover
thus struck a devastating blow at the strategy of the
Communists and at the illusions of the non-Communist
Left. Both, ever since, have been trying to re-form and
counterattack.
In Europe the Left's propaganda and mass actions on
the Chile issue have been more conspicuous than in this
warfare campaign, directed nominally against the Chilean
Junta but basically against the U.S., in which Moscow,
the Communist parties, and some sections of the Left
are conscious participants, and the rest of the Left, many
liberals, much of the media, and too many members of
Congress are sincere or opportunistic dupes.
We do not mean to suggest that there are not serious
issues involved in this dispute, concerning which intelli-
gent Americans can have honest and objective differences
of opinion. There are many such: Can and should a
democracy conduct secret operations? Is the CIA the
right sort of agency to conduct them? Can operations be
kept secret in a democracy? Granted the propriety of
secret operations in the abstract, were those conducted
in Chile justified? How can a democratic society super-
vise secret operations without blowing them? We have
discussed these questions in the past and shall often
return to them. But in this world we live in, it is
always also prudent to note who is doing what to whom.
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ITATIG
i I OCT '1974
^ Forced by the simultaneously posed issues of detente
and Chile, Secretary of State Kissinger has painted him-
self into something of a contradiction, and will have to
squirm a little to make a convincing exit. On the one
hand he upholds our intervention, through CIA opera-
tions, in Chile's internal affairs. On the other, he argues,
in defense of going ahead now with detente, that it
would be improper for us to attempt to meddle in the
internal affairs of the Soviet Union. Why the double
standard? Because the Allende government was worse
than the Soviet government? Because it was more of a
threat to us? Because destabilizing the Allende govern-
ment was "in the best interest of the people of Chile" (as
the President put it in his press conference), whereas de-
stabilizing the Soviet government would not be in the
best interest of the people of the Soviet Union? Or
maybe because Chile is sufficiently weak for us to get
away with interference and the Soviet Union too strong
for us ~to meddle with? None of the alternatives is very
satisfactory.
^ When quote nonconformist painters set up an un-
authorized art show on the sidewalks of Moscow last
week, cultural integrity was preserved at the last mo-
ment by quote vigilantes armed, ever so conveniently,
with bulldozers and firehoses, who routed the artists.
Five of the painters were fined and put in the work-
house until, uh, unfortunate publicity in the foreign
press effected their release. Some light on this seeming
overreaction to sidewalk art was shed by fellow vigilante
and art critic Gus Hall, who says: "One would have to
be totally naive not to see the fine hand of the CIA in
this affair."
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11 OCT 1974
^ Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt
in his memoirs, says that Mr. Nixon's
lawyers invited him to the White House
last spring to chat about Mr. Nixon's
defense. One of Mr. Nixon's lawyers
at the time, J. Fred Buzhardt, says "we
were trying to ascertain some facts that
were in doubt." Hunt says the invita-
tion was "outrageously inappropriate.".
^ The Senate Special Committee on National Emergen-
cies has concluded that many of the most significant
decisions of the last three Presidents have been withheld
from Congress and the public. While presidential "proc-
lamations" and "executive orders" must be published in
the Federal Register, the law has been evaded by calling
the measures by some other name, e.g., Kennedy's and
Johnson's "national security memoranda" and,Nixon's I
"national security directives." At last, Nixon is no longer
the only object of the Senate's Watergate-inspired in-
terest in excessive presidential power.
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