AN INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR FRANK CHURCH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020050-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 50
• Publication Date: September 26, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS. INC.
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM Capitol Cloakroom STATION WTOP Radio
CBS Network
DATE September 26, 1974 12:30 AM CITY Washington, D.C.
AN INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR FRANK CHURCH
HAL WALKER: Senator Church, welcome again to Capitol
Cloakroom. A Democrat from the state of Idaho, you came to
the Senate in 1957; you're now serving your 18th year on Capitol.
Hill. Your name has been closely associated with the forces
opposing the war in Vietnam. You'r'e'a co-author of the legislation
which finally brought an end to American bombing in Cambodia
by cutting off funds. You're an outspoken opponent of domestic
gun control, and you currently head a committee on emergency
powers which is investigating the question of concentrated
powers in the Executive. Your other committee assignments
include Interior and Insular Affairs and Foreign Relations.
On Foreign Relations, in light of recent disclosures
of the CIA's involvement in the internal affairs of Chile,
and stacked against State Department testimony to the contrary,
what are the chances of perjury citations being brought against
present and former State Department officials accused of misleading
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?
SENATOR FRANK CHURCH: That matter is under investigation
now by the committee's staff, and the committee will meet
soon to review the testimony, all of it, which heretofore
has not been assembled for a review by the members. And then
the committee will have to decide what action to take.
I can't forecast what that decision will be, but
possible referral to the Justice Department, in appropriate
cases, for perjury is one possibility, depending on whether
or not the evidence will sustain it. Another is the possibility
of citing certain witnesses that appeared before the committee
earlier and gave sworn testimony that turns out to be untruthful
for contempt of the Congress.
I think that this decision will have to be left
to the committee, and I wouldn't want to prejudge it.
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WALKER: Well, Senator, do you feel that the American
public now has complete information about the CIA's and America's
role in Chile in the overthrow of the Allende government?
SENATOR CHURCH: No, I do not. So far, the revelations
that have been made really constitute a long procession of
prevarications, and every time a new cover story is developed,
it's soon uncovered by later disclosure of new facts. And
I'm not prepared to say that we know all the facts yet. I
don't feel in my own heart that I've been told all of the
truth about the extent of the American intervention in that
country.
DANIEL SCHORR: Senator Church, covert activities
traditionally have cover stories to go with them. Let's discuss
the broader issue that's involved here. There has been a
tradition set up in which there are competitive covert activities
that have gone on between the Soviet Union and the United
States. Are you against covert activities by the CIA?
SENATOR CHURCH: Yes, I'm-very much against the
kind of covert action that was taken in Chile. I'm not prepared
to say that there could be no set of circumstances that would
not justify covert action if the vital security interest,
the safety of the American people or the avoidance of nuclear
war or the survival of the country depended-on it. Then,
you know, you have to remove all restraints and do whatever
can be done, including covert action.
So, I don't draw a hard-and-fast rule and say never.
But on the other hand, what's been going on in Chile, and
I'm afraid in other places, has been quite a different matter.
There were no overriding security considerations in the case
of Chile. And besides, we intervened there to bring down
a government that had been constitutionally elected by the
people of Chile. And you know the outcome of the whole bloody
business is a military government imposed by force of arms,
and the destruction of all freedom in Chile.
I just don't think that what we did there can possibly
be reconciled with the principles that we normally stand for
as a nation, including the right of self-determination of
foreign peoples.
JOHN MEYER: Even with overriding security considerations,
how can we, as a democracy, ever tolerate our meddling with
the governments of other countries, covertly or otherwise?
SENATOR CHURCH: Well, as I say, the only circumstances
that might possibly excuse such an action would be those intimately
associated with our own national survival or the avoidance
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of. a nuclear catastrophe, something of that kind. But in
the normal course of our relations, we can't possibly justify
such interventions as that which took place in Chile, nor
can we reconcile them with the traditional principles we say
we uphold. That includes the treaty laws that we have entered
into, the solemn obligations we have taken by treaty. That
includes all principles of international law of which I am
familiar. These are all contrary to the covert action taken
by the CIA in the case of Chile.
MEYER: But allowing that one exception you cite,
doesn't that open the Pandora's Box to the sort of situation
we see in Chile?
SENATOR CHURCH: Not if the CIA can be brought
under effective restraint. If we go on, as we have in the
past, assuming here on Capitol Hill that the Congress has
no business knowing what the CIA is doing, if we go on, as
we have in the past, appropriating money and not knowing how
much is even being spent by the CIA,. if we go on in the Congress
wearing blinders, then we ought not to be surprised when from
time to time we discover how far astray the CIA has gone.
And I know there are those who say, "Well, we must
leave this up to the President." But it seems to me, in the
light of abuses that have now been revealed, that the Congress
can no longer shirk its responsibility to establish some sort
of checkrein over the CIA.
SCHORR: Senator, we have been talking about the
CIA. The evidence, however, is that the CIA acts on instruction
from something called the 40 Committee, which is a high-level
committee headed by the President's national security adviser.
Are you not storming against the wrong door? The CIA, as
far as I know, doesn't go off on operations on its own volition.
It goes off carrying out actions which it's been instructed
to do.
Isn't it a larger question of what our foreign
policy is and what the administration is trying to do?
SENATOR CHURCH: Yes, it is a larger question,
and I would hope that the Foreign Relations Committee, in
addition to determing what action is appropriate where sworn
testimony has been given to us that we later find to be wrong,
to be untruthful, would proceed further and would examine
the full implications of this kind of covert action to subvert
and bring down a foreign government in the context of our
overall foreign policy. I think that's a very important issue
and we have to face it, and I hope that the Foreign Relations
Committee will undertake a thorough study of this very question.
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SCHORR: Let me press you with one more question,
because we've been talking in generalities about avoiding
covert operations save for trying to prevent nuclear war,
nuclear holocaust. But let's take oil and our present need
for oil.
One of the operations with which the CIA was credited
was helping to bring about the downfall of Premier Mossadegh
in Iran and therefore perhaps saving for the -- what we call
the Free World the oil supplies of Iran, which turn out to
be rather useful right now.
Suppose, hypothetically -- maybe it's not so hypothetical --
that the 40 Committee is now mounting a contingency operation
to make sure that we do not lose the oil resources of the
Middle East. Would that be consistent with what you call
our vital national security interest?
SENATOR CHURCH: Well first of all, let's look
at the situation in the Middle East. We're being gouged to
death by these oil-producing countries, including one government
that you've just referred to that we`-once saved by covert
operations. So I don't think the dividend has been all that
grand. In fact these bloated oil prices are the principal
cause for runaway inflation in the Western World that's carrying
us to the brink of a very serious collapse.
Now the worst thing we could do under these circumstances
is to start to tamper with one of these governments and then
have it come, as it frequently does, and then face the general
recriminations that would follow on the part of all the other
governments in the Middle East. I would think that's the
worst and the most risky possible thing to do under these
circumstances.
What we should be doing is not playing around under
the table, but playing above the table and telling these governments
that we cannot tolerate prices that can wreck the economy
of the Western World, and that we are prepared to retaliate
in kind.
Take, for example, the aid bill that is presently
before the Congress. It's hard for me to believe it; it's
incredible, but that aid bill contains $270 million which
the Administration plans to give to OPEC countries, the very
countries that have joined in this cartel, have hiked the
price of petroleum 500%, and have said that they will reduce
production in order to keep the price at that unrealistic
level. I just can't imagine our doling out money to these
very governments. It's just like pushing money in the pockets
of a guy that's got you by the neck, strangling you.
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And I think that the way we must begin to deal
with these countries is to prove to them that the President
and the Secretary of State aren't simply jawboning when they
talk about the disastrous effect of these prices, but that
the Congress and the Administration is prepared to back this
up by cutting off aid through our direct programs and through
the loans of the international banks to which we have given
the bulk of the money, and to make it clear that we're parepared
to take further retaliatory action unless something is done
about bringing down the price of oil.
WALKER: Beyond jawboning, do you have a legislative
vehicle for doing that with regard to funds for the OPEC countries?
SENATOR CHURCH: Yes. I have offered an amendment
in the Senate which would cut off all aid, both through our
own aid agencies and, to the extent that we can influence
it, through the multinational banks -- the World Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Bank -- to all
countries who are members of OPEC unless the President has
first certified that the government...in question is making
a bona fide effort to bring down the price of oil.
WALKER: [Unintelligible] this winter? I mean
wouldn't retaliation suggest that there's going to be less
heating fuel for...
SENATOR CHURCH: We've got to begin to make choices,
and one of the choices that faces us is complete economic
collapse, with all of its dire consequences. Inflation is
way out of control. It's the worst single problem that faces
the American people.
Now are we going to continue to blink at it and
let it get worse month by month until it brings down the major
international banks? Already two have collapsed in Germany.
One big bank has collapsed in this country.
[Interruption]
SENATOR CHURCH: ...of a very serious depression.
The Western World has got to wake up. And I think that the
time for jawboning has passed.
MEYER: The reaction of the Arab states which produce
oil has been rather negative to the initial jawboning we've
seen from the White House. If such legislation as you have
suggested and other such actions should fail, the jawboning
should fail, should a military solution be sought?
SENATOR CHURCH: A military solution is out of
the question in the Middle East. In the first place, there
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is-'a confrontation there between the United States and the
Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has made it plain that it
extends a measure of protection to the countries in the Middle
East, certainly those countries that have arrayed against
Israel. It provides them, as you know, with large quantities
of military equipment and supplies. And given that situation,
military intervention is not a matter that would pertain to
one of these Arab sheikdoms or to a given oil-producing country
of small size, but it's a matter that could easily ignite
the Third World War.
SCHORR: That leads me to my next question. You
are a great supporter of the policy of detente, which has
been variously interpreted. But we have a policy called detente.
Is' that policy likely to survive in its present form under
the pressures of both the oil crisis and the world food crisis?
SENATOR CHURCH: Well, I don't know. I would hope
that it can survive because I don't see any other policy that
makes any sense in terms of our relationship with the Soviet
Union.
The economic crisis that has been brought on by
these hijack oil prices is the direct result of a joint policy
that the Arab governments and the other oil-producing governments
have imposed upon the Western World.
SCHORR: In a sense, under the umbrella of the
Soviet Union.
SENATOR CHURCH: It is in the sense that no military
solution is feasible to this. problem,. and I'm suggesting that
therefore we should look to ways that we can retaliate that
will get the message across to these countries that this is
far too serious a matter, that the Western World means what
it says, and that if some good-faith negotiation does not
occur to bring down these oil prices, then we are prepared
to take actions to back up our words, and these are economic
actions.
After all, we're faced with a kind of economic
offensive against the Western World, and I think we can defend
ourselves against such an offensive only by taking economic
reprisals.
SCHORR: I'm not getting my question across. My
question is on detente, and if detente today meant anything
and we were faced with a possibility of a worldwide depression
of what is happening in the oil-producing states, could we
not legitimately expect to get some kind of cooperation from
the Soviet Union instead of a deterrent from our taking any
action?
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SENATOR CHURCH: I don't think that the Soviet
Union worries too much about the problems of the Western World.
Even a depression I don't think would concern them greatly
unless they felt that they too would be drawn into the maelstrom.
I don't think that Russia looks at detente in terms
of giving us affirmative help in solving our economic problems
with other countries, like the Arab countries. Rather, detente
to them means improved relations with the United States in
terms of expanded trade, in terms of some progress in reducing
the pace of the arms race and the danger that this poses to
both the Soviet Union and the United States.
In other words, I think they look at detente as
a bilateral thing between the United States and the Soviet
Union, and they measure it in what action these two countries
can take in solving the serious problems that face us due
to arms and that kind of thing.
SCHORR: But is it bilateral? I mean we had --
detente had reached a certain peak. ,_When the October War
came, there was a worldwide American alert directed at the
Soviet Union because of what was happening in the Middle East.
Now how can you consider detente bilateral?
SENATOR CHURCH: Well, I consider it -- I said
I thought the Russians looked at detente in this way, and
I think that's so.
As far as their action in the Middle East is concerned,
it was certainly not friendly action, yet the Secretary of
State has said that they did restrain themselves. The confrontation
was avoided, and that in the end, though they didn't help
us in our negotiations to secure the disengagement agreements
that now exist between Israel, Egypt and Syria, they also
did not make an effort to block those negotiations.
SCHORR: ...count our small blessings.
SENATOR CHURCH: So those are small blessings indeed,
but one can look back on the earlier period of the Cold War
when the Russians would have been much more aggressive in
blocking actions of this kind. To that degree, I think there
was a little bit of fallout of detente on the Middle East.
It's not much, but it's something.
MEYER: You sit on the Subcommittee on Arms Control
of the Foreign Relations Committee. What is your opinion
of what appears to be a pouring of U.S. arms into the Middle
Eastern countries, the OPEC countries?
SENATOR CHURCH: Well, I think' it's very unfortunate,
but I don't see any way to stop it. These countries are anxious
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to purchase arms. The price that they're selling oil for
is so high that all of the balance of payments of the Western
countries have gone into serious deficit. And I think that
as a result, the United States will sell arms in order to
buy oil. And if we don't, the English, the French, the Germans
will. And I suspect that in the end, all of these Western
countries will be selling arms into the Middle East.
I think it's one of the tragedies that is the direct
result of this situation.
MEYER: Doesn't history teach that catastrophe
is the end result of such massive arms sales?
SENATOR CHURCH: Yes, history does teach that
massive
arms
buildups usually lead to war. The countries of the
Middle
East
have not learned that lesson, but then neither have
we.
What
are we engaged in today but a tremendous arms race
that
our
best efforts have yet not been able to check.
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