Mission Impossible

The story sounded straight out of Mission: Impossible. The nation's largest conglomerate wanted to use some of its great financial power to prevent the freely elected but radically leftist President of a Latin American country from taking office. Moreover the company sought to merge with the Central Intelligence Agency in this endeavor.

The tale of the attempt by the International Telephone & Telegraph Co. to overthrow Chile's Marxist Salvador Allende unfurled last week before a Senate subcommittee. Armed with reams of memorandums, working papers and personal letters from ITT's files, a Senate subcommittee established that the strange tale essentially began in September 1970, immediately after Allende garnered a plurality of 36% of the vote in Chile's popular presidential election, virtually assuring him of victory in the three-way runoff in Congress the following month. ITT officials, motivated by both misplaced patriotism and fear for the future of the company's more than $150 million capital investment in Chile, determined that Allende had to be stopped before the vote in Congress. In that attempt, the company tried its best to enlist the support of other U.S. corporations in Chile as well as the CIA and the White House.

John McCone, an ITT director and former head of the CIA, testified last week that he had offered as much as $1,000,000 in corporate funds to CIA Chief Richard Helms and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger at the behest of ITT Chairman Harold Geneen. The money, he said, was to help bankroll whatever plans the U.S. Government might have to "encourage the formation of an anti-Allende coalition in Chile." McCone, who is still a consultant to the CIA, explained that what Geneen had in mind was not to create "chaos," but to channel money "to people who support the principles and programs that the U.S. stands for against the programs of the Allende Marxists."

ITT documents painted a far more detailed picture. One plan that company executives had supported was the bizarre "Alessandri formula," in which Jorge Alessandri, a former Chilean President, would receive full but covert U.S. political help and thereby--if all went well--win the vote in the Chilean Congress. Soon afterward he would agree to resign. A new popular election would be called, in which former President Eduardo Frei, a moderate liberal, would, it was hoped, defeat Allende. Under Chilean law, Frei could not succeed himself, and therefore did not compete in the original vote.

Quietly. Helms and Kissinger turned down ITT's ideas and its cash. Yet ITT did not give up. Nearly a year after Allende came to power, company officials were still plotting to discredit him. William Merriam, then head of ITT's Washington office, sent to Peter G. Peterson, then Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs, an "18-point program." In a letter, Merriam suggested that "everything should be done, quietly, but effectively, to see that Allende doesn't get through the next six months." Among the recommendations: cut off U.S. aid and credit to Chile, financially support Chile's opposition newspapers and "get to reliable sources within the Chilean military." Merriam met repeatedly with the chief of the CIA's clandestine services branch for the Western Hemisphere to discuss alternatives.

Jack Neal, ITT's international relations director in Washington and a 35-year veteran of the State Department, testified that ITT officials "had not only an obligation to ourselves, but to the Chilean people ... to prevent another Cuba. They're great democrats." He claimed that his program would have "disrupted the economy" and "strengthened the people." When Idaho Senator Frank Church asked Neal if he saw any difference between Cuba, which became Marxist through a revolution, and Chile, which became semi-Marxist through free elections, Neal replied that he did not.

ITT's plans totally backfired. Allende not only won but also expropriated ITT's interests in Chile. In the eyes of Chileans, that move seemed to have been eminently justified when ITT's desire to interfere in Chilean politics was revealed last spring by Columnist Jack Anderson. In fact, because of its clumsy attempts, ITT may now lose some or all of the compensation it would otherwise be entitled to from the federally financed Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Reason: if there is evidence that ITT lost its property as a result of meddling in internal Chilean politics, OPIC may reject its claim.

The conglomerate's troubles are not confined to the Senate's investigation of its Chilean involvement. In separate investigations, a House subcommittee and the FBI last week were looking into other ITT affairs:

West Virginia's Harley Staggers, chairman of a House commerce subcommittee, released more than 70 pages of working papers from the files of the Securities and Exchange Commission that shed more light on ITT's attempts to win a favorable decision in a Justice Department antitrust suit. The papers, comprising SEC notes and summaries of more than 34 boxes of ITT papers, indicated that ITT had pressed its case with unseemly vigor.

The roster of men who had been feted and pleaded with on the case by ITT Chairman Harold Geneen and other company executives included Vice President Spiro Agnew, former Cabinet Members John Connally, John Mitchell, Maurice Stans and Peter Peterson, Interior Secretary Rogers Morton, Presidential Aide John Ehrlichman and former Presidential Aide Charles Colson. The letters between ITT and Government officials suggested that ITT wanted to drive a wedge between the Administration and Richard McLaren, then head of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. ITT, in effect, was marshaling strength at the highest levels of Government to run over an Assistant Attorney General and the antitrust code. ITT eventually received a favorable ruling--it was allowed to retain control of the rich Hartford Fire Insurance Co. and ordered to sell off lesser companies. The fact that the decision was favorable does not prove that it resulted from open access to top Government officials. But it suggests that ITT had a strange and wonderful entree to the inner sanctums of the Republican Administration that was in no way cut off during the antitrust proceedings.

FBI agents since December also have been looking into testimony in the tangled ITT antitrust case. They want to determine whether officials of either the company or the Government--or both--had perjured themselves during any of the various hearings. Among other things, the FBI will presumably investigate seeming discrepancies in the testimony of John Mitchell. Last spring the former Attorney General testified under oath that he had never discussed with Nixon any antitrust case in the Justice Department. Yet ITT documents suggest that Mitchell had conveyed to ITT executives what they took to be the substance of talks he had had with the President on their case. Mitchell has claimed that he was simply relaying his knowledge of Nixon's overall antitrust philosophy, which he had discussed with the President before the ITT suit ever came up.

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