Shadow Warrior (68 page)

By the fall of 1974, Colby's chief preoccupation had become defense of his beloved CIA from its growing number of critics. With President Richard Nixon's resignation in August over charges that he had obstructed justice in the Watergate affair, many Americans concluded that the government itself was not to be trusted. But what had gone wrong? There was a constitution, one of the most respected in the world; the United States, for better or worse, was a democracy. There must be an evil force working outside the grid, unseen and unaccountable to anyone. Perhaps what was wrong with American politics and foreign policy was that it was controlled by that “invisible government” that David Wise had talked about. The onslaught that had begun with the 1967
Ramparts
article exposing CIA front organizations, then the Phoenix probe and Watergate, would continue with a massive congressional and media examination of America's role in the rise and fall of Salvador Allende.

In the spring of 1973, while Colby was still deputy director for plans, Senator Frank Church (D-ID), a key figure in the congressional anti–Vietnam War movement, had launched an investigation of multinational corporations. Chairing a special subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Church and his team of investigators uncovered the fact that International Telephone and Telegraph had played a role in aiding opponents of Salvador Allende in Chile's 1970 presidential elections. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, under J. William Fulbright, had long had its knife sharpened for what it considered illegal and immoral interference by the United States in the political affairs of other nations. Indeed, in 1970, as Richard Helms was leaving after testifying before the committee, Fulbright had pulled him aside and said, “Dick, if I catch you trying to upset the Chilean election, I will get up on the Senate floor and blow the operation.”
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DCI Schlesinger did not appear before the Church subcommittee, but he had testified to the CIA's oversight committees on the relationship between the Agency and ITT during the 1970 Chilean elections. He omitted any discussion of Track II, which, among other things, referred
explicitly to US support for a coup. The previous month, Helms, during his confirmation hearings to be ambassador to Iran, had been asked by members of the Fulbright committee about the CIA's role in Chilean politics. Stuart Symington, who was a member of both the Senate Armed Services Committee, a CIA oversight body, and the Foreign Relations Committee, put the questions:

Later, Helms would recall that in authorizing Track II, Nixon had ordered him to keep it secret from anyone not directly involved, including the secretaries of state and defense. Perhaps so, but the CIA had clearly supplied funds to opposition parties under Track I, the plan to prevent Allende's election. Depending on one's interpretation of the law, Helms had perjured himself.

There matters rested until Allende's bloody overthrow on September 11, 1973. Allende's ouster, as luck would have it, occurred during Kissinger's confirmation hearings to be secretary of state. Fulbright and his colleagues asked him about Chile. “The C.I.A had nothing to do with the coup, to the best of my knowledge and belief,” he said, “and I only put in that qualification in case some madman appears down there who without instructions talked to somebody. I have absolutely no reason to suppose it.”
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At this point, Representative Michael J. Harrington (D-MA), long a critic of US foreign policy in Central and South America, decided to make the CIA and Chile his personal crusade. Convinced that the Agency, in alliance with multinational corporations and the Chilean military, had intervened to overthrow a democratically elected government, he persuaded the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs to hold hearings on Chile. Colby testified but would not discuss CIA activities in Chile. Frustrated, Harrington persuaded Lucien Nedzi, chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee (a CIA oversight body),
to hold full hearings on US activity in Chile. Nedzi, who knew of Track I, was not enthusiastic, but he felt he had no choice. On April 22, 1974, Colby appeared before the Nedzi subcommittee in secret session. Harrington was not present. The DCI began with Track I, revealing that the United States, acting through the CIA, had funneled $8 million to Allende's opponents and, following Allende's election, had worked to make conditions in Chile so uncomfortable that its citizenry would rebel against the new president. Colby made it clear that the CIA was not acting on its own but at the behest of President Nixon and the 40 Committee chaired by Henry Kissinger.

On his way to the hearing, Colby had debated what to do about Track II, which linked the United States to a coup attempt. Nixon had ordered Helms and the Agency to hold Track II in strictest confidence, but Colby had given assurances during his confirmation hearings that he would be absolutely frank with the oversight committees. “I considered it my responsibility to keep them informed,” he wrote in
Honorable Men
, “even about CIA matters that they would have no way of even suspecting, and therefore would be unable to question me on.”
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Thus, after the formal hearings were over, Colby took Nedzi and the committee counsel aside and told them about Track II. The chairman, taken aback, paused and then demanded assurances that Track II had ended after Allende's election and that the Agency had had nothing to do with the coup that overthrew him in 1973. Colby gladly gave those assurances, and both men hoped that the matter had ended there.

Harrington had planned well. Taking advantage of the long-standing House rule that entitled any member to review the transcript of any committee of the House, he demanded to see Colby's secret testimony. Grudgingly, Nedzi agreed. On September 7, Harrington summarized Colby's testimony in a letter to Representative Thomas E. Morgan (D-PA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and offered it as proof that the CIA had indeed worked to “destabilize” the Allende regime. Harrington subsequently had his letter published in the
Congressional Record
.
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Smelling new blood in the water, reporter Seymour Hersh launched himself. In September and October, claiming to have obtained the minutes of 40 Committee meetings, he wrote a series of articles in the
New York Times
on the CIA and Chile. This was the first the American public had ever heard of the 40 Committee's existence. With Kissinger once again threatened by the undertow of negative media coverage, his team at the
State Department pressured Colby to deny everything. Instead, the DCI gave an exclusive interview to
Time
magazine writer Strobe Talbott, admitting US interference in Chilean affairs but justifying it in the context of the Cold War.
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The previous summer, Colby had agreed to participate in a conference entitled “The Central Intelligence Agency and Covert Actions,” sponsored by the Center for National Security Studies. The center was dedicated to uncovering the secrets of a presumably nefarious national security state; it was, among other things, an instrument of the New Left, and particularly the anti–Vietnam War movement. Colby was aware that he would be Daniel before the lions, but he had, “somewhat defiantly,” as he put it, decided to make an appearance at the coliseum. Senator James Abourezk (DSD) chaired the meeting, which was held in the cavernous congressional conference room on September 13. Other panelists included Daniel Ellsberg; Fred Branfman, a leading critic of the US air war in Indochina; David Wise; historian Richard Barnet; Congressman Harrington; and former CIA covert operative Paul Sakwa. Sakwa, whom journalist Neil Sheehan described as “nuts,” had long believed that Desmond FitzGerald, Colby, and others were fathers of a scheme to deepen the crisis in Vietnam in order to provoke a showdown with Communist China. The audience ran the gamut of the antiwar movement, from hippies, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Quakers to Black Power advocates.
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The DCI led off with a short speech justifying the CIA and covert action from World War II through the Chilean election. He observed that thus far, the US clandestine services had succeeded in preventing World War III, implying that if there had been a CIA following the Great War, World War II might have been avoided. He then took questions. In response to a query from Harrington, Colby declared that the CIA had had nothing to do with the coup in Santiago. “We did look forward to a change in government,” he said, an observation met with laughter and derisive hoots. “How many did you kill in Phoenix?” a young woman shouted from the audience. “I'd like to answer that,” Colby said, “I didn't kill any.” Another collective guffaw. He persisted: “The Phoenix program was designed and started in about 1968 in order to bring some degree of order and regularity to a very unpleasant, nasty war that had preceded it.” Colby was asked if the CIA was above the law: Should Agency operatives be held to US
statutes for actions taken outside the country? “There are a lot of illegal things done overseas by our standards,” he retorted.
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Ellsberg was next. He questioned his old counterinsurgency colleague about the break-in to his psychiatrist's office. Why had the CIA destroyed taped conversations dealing with the incident? Standard procedure, the DCI replied. What about the “tiger cages” on Con Son Island? The Agency had moved expeditiously to get the South Vietnamese to end mistreatment at the facility, Colby replied. More laughter and catcalls. “What exactly was the morality of torture?” Branfman asked. “My morality is to try to help produce a better world,” the former Jedburgh declared, “and not to insist on a perfect one, Mr. Branfman.” At this point Branfman's wife, whom Sheehan described as “a skinny Vietnamese bitch,” rose and began abusing Colby in “her strident, Vietnamese market-place voice.” Another panelist: “The techniques of covert action include blackmail, burglary, subversion, and assassination. . . . Are these techniques justified in the name of national security?” Colby was unequivocal: “I think the use of an atomic bomb is justified in the interests of national security.” Stunned silence. The gathering closed with another denunciation from an audience member: “You're not only a liar, you're not only a racist, you're a Nazi war criminal.”
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That the director of the Central Intelligence Agency should be treated in such a manner in a public venue was stunning, almost as astounding as Colby's decision to volunteer for such punishment. Sheehan, who was as close to an unbiased observer as there was in the conference room, painted a picture of the DCI under fire and speculated on his motives: “Sharp features with a slightly receding hairline, piercing grey eyes, pursed lips and folded hands.” Dressed in a light gray suit and a pink and red regimental tie, the DCI had remained the picture of composure, his hands trembling only slightly during one of the Phoenix queries. His facial expressions alternated between bemusement and sincerity. “He is really tough, extraordinarily tough,” Sheehan wrote, “to stand up to that group and keep his cool. . . . There was an incredible venting of rage in that room, particularly from the young people, who really wanted Colby's blood.” Sheehan and his wife, Susan, also a writer, speculated that Colby felt guilt over what he had been involved in, particularly the Phoenix program, and as a good Catholic was seeking redemptive punishment. Marcus Raskin, who, along with Barnet, had founded the Institute for Policy Studies, disagreed. “He's a cold-blooded killer,” he told Sheehan. “Just look at those eyes.”
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In the end, Sheehan returned to his thought of Colby as the American Felix Dzerzhinsky, the notorious founder and first head of the Soviet intelligence apparatus. Anything was permissible as long as it was authorized by the “duly constituted authority.” Colby would not have disagreed with this last observation, but he would have pointed out that the duly constituted authorities he and Dzerzhinsky were serving were vastly different. And, in truth, Colby's actions in the ensuing days were designed to affirm the rule of law and the intelligence community's commitment to a liberal democratic system (in the United States, if not abroad), even above a White House determined to protect itself at all costs or a cold war against the Kremlin.

Chile continued to dominate headlines, columns, and editorials. The
Christian Science Monitor
in September 1974 accused the Agency of a double standard, acting against governments it did not like—usually left-leaning regimes such as Allende's—but abiding and even aiding governments it did like—generally rightwing regimes such as those in Greece and South Korea. The question is, columnist Tom Wicker declared in the
New York Times
, whether an administration had “the constitutional authority to order taxpayers' money spent for clandestine warfare against the legitimate government of a sovereign country.” Daniel Schorr, a reporter who had covered Watergate for CBS, launched his own investigation, which led to a two-part television documentary on Chile, Allende, and the CIA. At a news conference on September 16, President Ford affirmed that CIA activities in Chile had been authorized by the White House; a few days later, he and Kissinger briefed top congressional leaders on Tracks I and II. Congress was not appeased. It subsequently enacted the Hughes-Ryan Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, stipulating that no funds could be expended on a covert operation unless the president declared it vital to the national security and the activity was vetted in advance before no fewer than eight congressional committees.
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