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Hart Asks Probe Of CIA

Hart Asks Probe Of CIA image
Parent Issue
Day
13
Month
September
Year
1974
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Copyright Protected
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OCR Text

WASHINGTON- Sen. Philip A. Hart, D-Mich., called Thursday for a congressional investigation of clandestine operations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the top-secret "40 Committee's" role in setting foreign policy. "The time has long since come for Congress to take a more intensive look at this issue and to devote greater attention to the implications of such covert operations, not only on our foreign policy but also, in the long run, upon the kind of society we have at home," Hart said. He spoke at the opening of an informal conference on Capitol Hill to discuss CIA covert operations. Daniel Ellsberg, the former national security aide who leaked the Pentagon Papers, charged that an "invisible government" made up of CIA Defense and State Department personnel exercises undue influence on foreign policy without being accountable to Congress. Hart said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should probe two apparent contradictions that recently came to light: -The "40 Committee," headed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, monitors CIA covert operations and must approve projects such as the $8 million campaign in 1970-73 to undermine the Marxist government of the late Chilean President Salvador Allende. Yet, said Hart, Kissinger testified under oath last year before the Foreign Relations Committee that the "CIA had nothing to do with the (Chilean) coup, to the best of my knowledge." How could Kissinger not have known of the CIA effort to "destabilize" Chile when he chaired the committee which approved it? Hart asked. "It is a little difficult to understand how the CIA had 'nothing to do' with the overthrow of a government it had been so actively working to 'destabilize' for three years," he said. - Former Assistant Secretary of State Charles Meyer told the Foreign Relations Committee last year that the United States "bought no votes, funded no candidates, provoked no coups," Hart said. Yet, he noted, secret testimony by CIA Director William Colby revealed that "several million CIA dollars were secretly paid out to finance Allende's political opponents."