NEWS RELEASE FROM MIKE HARRINGTON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP77M00144R000400020027-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 17, 2004
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: July 8, 1975
• Content Type: PREL

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7M001 44R000400020027-0
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VJnshington, D.C. 20515
[phone]
hULD FOR RELEASE
11:40 a.m. Tuesday, July 8, 1975
HARRINGTON TAKES STEPS TO CHALLENGE "CONGRESSIONAL COYER-UP"
U.S. Representative Michael J. Harrington (D-Mass.) today launched a
series of actions that challenge the motives, rules and assumptions
behind the recent house Armed Services Committee move to deny him
further access to its files.
Calling the committee's unprecedented action "a case of astonishing
hypocrisy," Harrington said he would not allow the controversy to
center on the narrow question of parliamentary procedure, although he
believes the committee vote violated the rules of the House. In a
letter to House Speaker Carl Albert, Harrington said that Congress
must face a broader issue: "What is the responsibility of a Member
who discovers in classified records a clear indication that his govern-
ment has broken the law?"
arrington told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference that a
congressman has a duty to disclose evidence of criminal activity to
colleagues or other appropriate authorities, regardless of agreements
to abide by secrecy rules. "Ordinarily those who sign such agreements
expect to see references to secret but legal activities," Barrington
said. "The enforcement of such an agreement to keep illegal activities
secret is itself illegal."
The controversy over harrington's handling of classified material a-
rose last year when he told a number of his colleagues about the
secret testimony of CIA director William Colby, which indicated that
the United States had spent about $8 million to block the election of
Salvador Allende Gossens as President of Chile and then to "destabilize'
his government after he won. (Allende was overthrown and killed in
September of 1973, and Chile became a military dictatorship.) The
Armed Services Committee, which holds the Colby testimony in its files,
resurrected the incident on June 10 and 16 (nine months after the
story of the CIA in Chile appeared in the New York Times), at the
height of the controversy over congressman Lucien Nedzi's continuation
as chairman of the newly formed House Select Committee on Intelli-
gence. As chairman of the standing Armed Services Subcommittee on
Intelligence, Nedzi had failed to take action on the U.S. involvement
in Chile and on secret word of CIA assassination schemes.
harrington said he has asked the Speaker to call. a special session of
the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee to discuss the secrecy
issue, saying that all Members of Congress have become "accomplices,"
to some degree, in improper covert activities because of their
pledges of silence. The only way out of the problem, Barrington said,
is to "challenge the basic assumptions of a classification system gone
While restating his belief that the United States needs a "first--rate'
intelligence gathering system which does require some secrecy,
harrington said the Top Secret stamp has been used to cover up
improper interference in the affairs of other antions and violations
of constitutional rights in the U.S. "The mindless rubber-stamping of
every conceivable document as SECRET and the facile attachment of the
'national security' label to any official. action, no matter how
illegal or anti-uemocratic, is the greatest threat to freedom we
have yet encountered," Barrington said.
Approved For Relyase;2OO5I1;1IZt E,GIArRQP77MOO1.44R000400020027-0
 Approved For Release 2005/11/21 : CIA-RDP77M00144R000400020027-0
In addition to calling for the Steering and Policy Committee meeting,
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