362. Memorandum from the Director of Operations Policy, Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Gardner) to Deputy Director for Coordination, Bureau of Intelligence and Research (McAfee)1
SUBJECT
- ARA/CIA Meeting, 20 September 1973
PARTICIPANTS
- ARA—Messrs. Kubisch, Bowdler and Shlaudeman;
- CIA—Messrs. Phillips and [name not declassified]; INR—Mr. Gardner
Chile
Mr. Kubisch said he was slated to testify before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and needed guidance.2 Thus far he had been extremely lucky in not having been pressed on whether the USG had given assistance to the opposition parties in Chile. At one point, on September 20 [12], he had been asked in a Congressional hearing whether we had helped the political opposition during Allende’s regime, but had been able to fend off the question by concen [Page 938] trating on the point that we had had nothing to do with the coup.3 He did not however expect to elude the question indefinitely.
Mr. Phillips advised Mr. Kubisch that if he were asked in Congress about the activities of CIA, he should refer his interrogators to CIA. Mr. Kubisch agreed after receiving Mr. Phillips’ concurrence that he was however fully authorized to say that no element of the CIA had been involved in the coup. To Mr. Gardner’s point that this ploy would not be a suitable riposte to questions from the press, he said that he believed that he could fend off questions from this source. Mr. Kubisch then noted that this left the question of what he should say were the question not focused on CIA, and was phrased in terms of what the USG had done. After some thought about this possibility, the best answer the group could come up with was that Mr. Kubisch should merely assert that he was not prepared to go into the history of our relations with Chile. If hard pressed, he would refer his interrogators to his superiors in the Department.
Mr. Phillips, in response to Mr. Kubisch’s query about how much of the roughly [dollar amount not declassified] dollars approved by the 40 Committee in August to aid the Chilean opposition had actually been paid out,4 said that [dollar amount not declassified] had been spent. Mr. Phillips added that this brought up another question: the Ambassador had suggested, shortly after the coup, that payments to the private sector might be resumed. Agency headquarters had instructed the station to hold off until the matter had been discussed with State. Mr. Shlaudeman said that in his view no such disbursement should be made without specific authority from the 40 Committee. I said that I thought the whole August authorization of the 40 Committee should be regarded as a dead letter; the situation to which that authorization had been addressed had wholly altered. Mr. Shlaudeman concurred; Mr. Kubisch, who had been out of the room during this part of the discussion, strongly agreed when he returned. (Note: I have since suggested to Messrs. Phillips and [name not declassified] that, in order to clean up the record, a formal cancellation of its August action should be sought from the Committee).
[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to Chile]
- Source: Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, INR/IL Historical Files, Box 1, Chile, 40 Committee Action After September 1970. Secret.↩
- For Kubisch’s opening statement before the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on September 20, see the Department of State Bulletin, October 8, 1973, pp. 464–466.↩
- Kubisch testified before the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 12; see footnote 2, Document 352.↩
- See Document 342.↩