Kissinger Misled President, Cabinet and Reporters on CIA Role in Chile, Documents Show;
Told Journalist Ted Koppel the Issue Was “Total Nonsense”
New York Times Exposé Prompted White House Anger, Panic Over Revelations
Secret White House Memo Documented Kissinger’s Attitude: “I Don’t See Why We Have to Sit Around and Let a Country Go Communist Due to the Irresponsibility of its Own People”
Archive Calls for Release of Still-Secret Colby Testimony and Church Committee Records
Washington, D.C., September 9, 2024 – Fifty years ago, as the New York Times prepared to break a major exposé on CIA covert operations in Chile, the architect of those operations, Henry Kissinger, misled President Gerald Ford about clandestine U.S. efforts to undermine the elected government of Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende, documents posted today by the National Security Archive show. The covert operations were “designed to keep the democratic process going,” Kissinger briefed Ford in the Oval Office two days before the article appeared fifty years ago this week. According to Kissinger, “there was no attempt at a coup.”
“I saw the Chile story,” Ford told Kissinger on September 9, 1974. “Are there any repercussions?” Kissinger replied: “Not really.”
In fact, the front-page story written by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh—“C.I.A. Chief Tells House Of $8 Million Campaign Against Allende in ‘70-’73”—set in motion the biggest scandal on covert operations the intelligence community had ever experienced. Hersh’s September 8, 1974, article led directly to the formation of a special Senate committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, that conducted the first major investigation of CIA covert actions in Chile and elsewhere and that was the first congressional body to evaluate the role of secret, clandestine operations in a democratic society. The political repercussions forced President Ford to publicly acknowledge the CIA operations in Chile while forcefully denying they had anything to do with fomenting a coup. The president’s White House lawyer subsequently advised Ford that his statement “was not fully consistent with the facts because all the facts had not been made known to you.”
At a September 16th press conference, Gerald Ford became the first president to publicly acknowledge and defend CIA covert operations, which he characterized as limited to protecting Chilean democratic institutions from the threat of Allende. He stated that the CIA actions were "in the best interest of the people in Chile, and certainly in our best interest." (See timecode 11:55 in tape for Ford's statement.)
The Senate investigation, which also revealed CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders, and a similar investigative effort in the House of Representatives led to legislation to enhance checks and balances on CIA operations and curtail the ability of future presidents to “plausibly deny” covert action programs abroad. White House documents reveal the acute consternation expressed by Ford and Kissinger that covert operations might be restrained. “We need a CIA and we need covert operations,” Ford told his Cabinet nine days after the Times exposé was published. The article and a flood of follow up CIA stories by Hersh, as Kissinger later conceded in his memoirs, “had the effect of a burning match in a gasoline depot.”
THE LEAK THAT CHANGED HISTORY
The Hersh story was based on a summary of secret testimony by CIA director William Colby and a legendary agency official, David Atlee Phillips, who provided an overview of covert operations against Allende in Chile during an executive session of the House Armed Services Committee on April 22, 1974. According to the summary, Colby informed the Committee that between 1962 and 1973, the ultra-secret “40 Committee,” which oversaw covert operations, had authorized the CIA to spend $11 million in Chile, including $8 million to “destabilize” the Allende government and “to precipitate its downfall.” The summary stated that “the agency activities were viewed as a prototype, or laboratory experiment, to test the techniques of heavy financial investment in efforts to discredit and bring down a government.”
The summary was drafted by a liberal congressman from Massachusetts, Michael J. Harrington, who had heard about Colby’s TOP SECRET testimony and requested special permission to review it. Harrington read the 48-page hearing transcript twice—on June 5, and June 12, 1974—and realized Colby’s testimony clearly contradicted previous denials by Kissinger and top CIA officials (during earlier hearings on the CIA and ITT’s operations in Chile) that there had been any covert efforts to undermine Allende.
Harrington shared his concern that CIA officers had committed perjury with Senator Frank Church’s staff director, Jerome Levinson. In his unpublished memoir, Levinson recalled that Harrington “asked what I thought he should do.” Levinson recommended that Harrington write a letter to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator William Fulbright, requesting a full inquiry into the CIA’s role in Chile. On July 18, 1974, Harrington sent a lengthy letter to Fulbright, providing a summary of the secret CIA testimony and concluding that Congress and the American people “have a right to learn what was done in our name in Chile.”
After it became clear that Fulbright was not inclined to order a major investigation into the CIA role in Chile, Levinson decided to take the audacious step of calling attention to Colby’s still-secret testimony: he leaked the Harrington letter to Seymour Hersh. In early September, after lunch with Hersh at Jean-Pierre’s, a swanky D.C. restaurant, Levinson slipped Hersh a copy of the Harrington letter. On September 5, 1974, Hersh began calling State Department officials for comment on his forthcoming scoop, setting in motion a flurry of White House meetings, briefings and reports on what information Hersh might have obtained. On September 8, the Times published the story on the front page of its Sunday newspaper, generating a major scandal and eventually resulting in the prosecution of former CIA director Richard Helms for lying to Congress.
REACTION OF THE CIA’s CHILEAN AGENTS
The leak of Colby’s testimony forced the CIA to urgently contact its Chilean agents to ascertain the repercussions of the Hersh revelations on its network of assets and informants. In a revealing secret report four days after the Times article appeared, the CIA station transmitted the reactions of several Chilean operatives—identified by codenames such as FUBARGAIN, FUPOCKET and FUBRIG—who were embedded inside the Chilean military, the Chilean Christian Democrat political party, and the El Mercurio newspaper, which the CIA had financed as a bullhorn of opposition to the government of Salvador Allende. “Following Station agents were contacted, period 8-10 September, in connection with referenced revelations,” the Santiago Station informed CIA headquarters.
The agent codenamed “FUBRIG-2 “took the news calmly but was most concerned about implications of efforts of revelations and expressed opinion that system in Washington should be changed to prevent such leaks,” the CIA reported. “He was relieved that El Mercurio was not mentioned by name.”
According to this cable, the agent inside the Chilean military, FUBARGAIN-1, told the CIA that “General Pinochet did not seem very upset but [had] commented … that the disclosure ‘seemed to be a dumb thing to do.’” But the same agent told the CIA that other younger Chilean military officers interpreted the leak as a deliberate attempt to “damage [the] Junta and falsely cast doubt on their independence and role in bringing down Allende.” “Sum is that Chilean officer corps becoming increasingly baffled and resentful about U.S., according to this source.”
STILL-SECRET DOCUMENTS
Fifty years after the scandal broke over CIA operations in Chile, Colby’s original testimony before the House Armed Services Committee remains classified, as does the entire 48-page transcript of the closed hearing. Last year, the Chilean government officially requested that the Biden administration declassify those records as a gesture of “declassification diplomacy” for the 50th anniversary of the coup, but the CIA proved to be uncooperative.
“For the sake of historical accountability, it is imperative that the CIA declassify Colby’s testimony on Chile, as well as other relevant documentation,” stated Peter Kornbluh who directs the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project. As the 50th anniversary of the formation of the special Senate Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities approaches in January 2025, the Archive also called on Senate leaders to initiate the release the Church Committee’s voluminous investigative archives on Chile and other countries targeted for covert regime change operations.
“A half century of secrecy surrounding these records,” Kornbluh noted, “must come to an end.”
Document 1
U.S. Congress
In April 1974, CIA director William Colby appeared at a closed, executive session of the House Armed Services Committee and provided a lengthy summary of CIA covert operations in Chile between 1970 and 1973. Representative Michael J. Harrington, a liberal congressman from Massachusetts, obtained permission from committee chairman Lucian Nedzi to review Colby’s classified testimony. Harrington then wrote this summary of the testimony in the form of a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, William Fulbright. The summary describes the CIA’s $8 million clandestine campaign to “destabilize,” according to Harrington, the elected government of Salvador Allende. It identifies, for the first time, the “40 Committee” chaired by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger as overseeing these covert operations to undermine Allende.
When Senator Fulbright failed to respond to Harrington’s call for hearings and a major investigation into CIA operations in Chile, in early September 1974 a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations staff, Jerome Levinson, quietly slipped a copy of the Harrington letter to investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh. Hersh’s September 8, 1974, front page story in the New York Times—“C.I.A. Chief tells House Of $8 Million Campaign Against Allende, 70-73,”—was based on Harrington’s summary in the letter.
Document 2
National Security Archive Kissinger Telcon collection
As Hersh began to place calls to the State Department for comment before publishing his article, Henry Kissinger calls CIA Director William Colby to discuss the leak. Kissinger wants to know how Hersh got the information on the 40 Committee decisions on covert operations in Chile and what the CIA did there. Colby promises to “try to get a hold of Hersh and see what he has.”
Document 3
National Security Archive Chile Collection
After State Department officials receive calls from Hersh for comment, the Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research reviews the 40 Committee decisions on Chile to assess possible damage from forthcoming revelations. INR officer James Gardner notes that the Kissinger-chaired committee overseeing covert operations had “inquired in this period about the feasibility and possibility of support to the Chilean military should it engineer a coup attempt against Allende [and] discussed the possibility of creating anti-Allende pressures by precipitating an economic crisis in Chile.”
Document 4
Clinton Chile Declassification Project
In an Oval Office briefing for President Ford and Vice President Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger advises them on the forthcoming New York Times article. He misleadingly describes covert financial efforts to block ratification by the Chilean Congress of Allende’s elections and then states that “after the elections we put money into opposition parties and newspapers” that was “designed to keep the democratic process going.” According to Kissinger, “there was no attempt at a coup. Though there could have been if in ’70 we hadn’t failed.” Ten days later, on September 16, 1974, after the Hersh article has generated a major scandal, President Ford re-states this misrepresentation of CIA operations in Chile during a press conference.
Document 5
National Security Archive Kissinger Telcon collection
The day after the New York Times article on Chile is published, ABC News reporter Ted Koppel speaks to Kissinger on the phone at 4:30pm and again at 4:45pm to find out if Hersh’s story is “essentially accurate as far as it goes.” Kissinger dismisses the allegations. “Look, none of this has anything to do with a coup anyway. So this is all total nonsense,” he claims. “It has nothing to do with the coup, Ted, believe me.”
Document 6
National Security Archive Chile collection
As Ford administration officials are forced to talk publicly for the first time about the 40 Committee, White House aides become concerned about the public attention and inaccurate official descriptions of this ultra-secret entity. Until now, notes this memo for deputy national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, “the name, existence and membership of the Committee has been treated as classified information and had not been officially confirmed.” Although a State Department spokesman has stated that 40 Committee covert projects are approved unanimously, the memo clarifies, there have been numerous examples of disagreement on operations in Chile, and Kissinger as chairman, has been the “final arbiter” of key decisions.
Document 7
JFK Assassination Records Act Archives
The day Hersh’s article appears in the New York Times, the CIA station in Santiago, Chile, begins contacting its Chilean agents to assess any damage to their operations and their reactions to the revelations. The Station then transmits the conversations with several Chilean assets identified by codenames such as FUBARGAIN, FUPOCKET and FUBRIG—codenames which reflect their positions in the Chilean military, the Chilean Christian Democrat political party, and the El Mercurio newspaper, which the CIA financed as a bullhorn of opposition to the government of Salvador Allende.
According to this report, an agent inside the Chilean military, FUBARGAIN-1, told the CIA that “General Pinochet did not seem very upset but [had] commented … that the disclosure ‘seemed to be a dumb thing to do.’” The same agent told the CIA that other younger Chilean military officers interpret the leak as a deliberate attempt to “damage [the] Junta and falsely cast doubt on their independence and role in bringing down Allende.”
Document 8
Gerald Ford Presidential Library
One day after publicly acknowledging and defending CIA covert operations in Chile, President Ford holds a Cabinet meeting devoted to the issue of covert operations and the impact of the leaks about the CIA in Chile. After the President defends covert action, Kissinger briefs the cabinet on the need for covert operations and measures to stop the leaks about them. He implies that the U.S. should consider a British Official Secrets Act to restrain public information about the CIA. “We face over the world threats to democratic institutions, and we need covert action to deal with them. By their nature, we don’t talk about these,” he informs the cabinet. “So how do we deal with leaks? Britain is certainly a democracy, yet a British paper couldn’t print this stuff.”
Speaking about Chile, Kissinger blames Allende’s mismanagement for the coup and denies that covert operations or economic pressures played any role. “The effort of the 40 Committee,” he falsely claims, “was not to overthrow Allende but to preserve the democratic system for the 1976 elections.” “Remember, [Allende] was an opponent of the U.S.,” he tells Ford’s Cabinet members, “and one can ask, why shouldn’t we oppose him?”
Document 9
National Security Archive Kissinger Telcon Collection
As the New York Times publishes another Hersh article about the CIA’s role in Chile, Kissinger complains to CIA Director Colby about leaks that appear to be coming from the CIA itself. “I am getting sick and tired of the way the Intelligence Community … if this keeps up we’ll have to talk to the President to see how to keep it under control,” he admonishes Colby. “The 40 Committee has existed for years [and] the SOB leaders in this country know this is the case and they are all letting us take it as though this is a scandal.”
Document 10
Gerald Ford Presidential Library
As the Senate investigation into the CIA’s role in Chile progresses, it becomes clear to the White House that the Church Committee has uncovered significant wrongdoing, including the CIA-supported assassination of the Chilean commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General René Schneider, that go far beyond the official claims of the Ford administration.
President Ford’s White House counsel, John Marsh, sends him a set of recommendations on unprecedented open hearings that the Committee plans to hold to publicly air the recent history of U.S. clandestine intervention against Allende. Marsh warns Ford that his account of what the CIA did in Chile, given at the September 16, 1974, press conference, misrepresented the extent and purpose of the covert operations. “It has been brought to my attention,” he advises the President, “that you should exercise extreme care because of a response you made to a press question in one of your press conferences shortly after becoming President. This question related to Chile and I am advised that the response is not fully consistent with the facts because all the facts had not been made known to you.”