Office of the Historian

172. Memorandum of Conversation1

Washington, September 6, 1974.

PARTICIPANTS

  • President Ford
  • Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
  • Nelson Rockefeller, Vice President-Designate
  • Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

SUBJECTS

  • Visits; 40 Committee; NSC Meeting on Israeli Requests; Preparation for Rabin Visit

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to Chile.]

Kissinger: The New York Times has a copy of something on 40 Committee operations in Chile. We will brief the 40 Committee next week. What happened is this: Johnson put money in the ’64 elections. We put $500,000 into the ’70 elections and spread it out. We then put more in to influence the Congressional elections and that failed too. After the elections we put money into opposition parties and newspapers. It was designed to keep the democratic process going. This was not a regular covert activity. There was no attempt at a coup. Though there could have been in ’70 if we hadn’t failed.

[Page 462]

There are two problems: The substance is embarrassing but we can ride it out. The other is the leaks. The 40 Committee has followed the same procedures since President Eisenhower.

Rockefeller: I was on it.

Kissinger: All these activities are approved by the Deputies in regular but secret process. If these things leak, we haven’t a government.

President: Who did it?

Kissinger: I want to think about that. The Committees are briefed on these activities. The problem is this is the most secret activity we have. If there are minutes, we should be able to track it. We might have terHorst make a statement, not on the facts but on the principle.

President: Let me know Monday. If the committees were informed it shouldn’t be a problem.

Kissinger: They were regularly informed.

President: Let’s ride it out and we’ll see.

Kissinger: We have to have these things.

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to Chile.]

  1. Summary: Ford, Kissinger, and Rockefeller discussed how to mitigate the problem of leaked information on U.S. covert action in Chile.

    Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversations, Box 5, September 6, 1974, Ford, Kissinger, Rockefeller. Secret; Sensitive. According to the President’s Daily Diary, the meeting took place in the Oval Office and lasted from 9:26 to 10:30 a.m. (Ford Library, President’s Daily Diary). A September 8 article in the New York Times entitled, “CIA Chief Tells House of $8 Million Campaign Against Allende in 70–73,” referred to a letter from Harrington to Morgan which contained confidential information from a closed session of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. During a September 9 meeting with the President, Kissinger informed Ford that the leak had come from Congress and that it had not had significant repercussions. (Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversations, Box 5, September 6, 1974, Ford, Kissinger, Rockefeller)

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