810.74/898: Airgram
The Ambassador in Chile (Bowers) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 30—5 p.m.]
A–142. Your A–442 of January 12, 5:30 p.m. It should not be construed from the statement contained in despatch No. 5107 of December 344 that Transradio itself has been furnishing copies of telegrams received to the German Embassy. If the latter has a copy of the message in question, which was en claire, 1) it may have been taken off the air by individuals monitoring Transradio radio circuits for the Axis representatives or 2) a copy may have been obtained by bribing some minor employee of the company although there is no proof that this has actually occurred.
Numeral 2) represents a problem confronting all the communications companies here and it is extremely difficult to control. To circumvent such a possibility the Embassy takes delivery of and delivers all its messages to All America.
While it is true that German and French interests have a large-ownership in Transradio the voting of shareholdings is fully controlled by individuals friendly to the United Nations. These individuals and the management of the company have been cooperating fully with the Embassy to make it a “safe” operating company and [Page 912] have given their renewed assurances that they will take any further steps the Embassy may suggest to guarantee both its reliability and responsibility. The Embassy has… not succeeded in obtaining any evidence that it has continued to employ individuals of questionable loyalty.
When the Department was endeavoring to stop communication with the Axis territories through Chile and Argentina, the President of Transradio tried his best to comply with our views but was not permitted to do so by the Chilean Government and thereupon at a great sacrifice of revenues to his company devised the formula whereby it decided to refuse communications to all non-American countries because that was the only formula which would be accepted by the Chilean Government. The drop in revenues was great and most of the business went to All America and the West Coast Cables. Feeling that we do owe a debt of gratitude to Transradio, I made the suggestion contained in my A–441, December 8, 6:30 p.m.,45 and which I repeat here that the Department instruct me to route a proportion of our nonconfidential messages through Transradio and/or arrange to forward a portion of such messages to Chile over RCA circuits.