Former Ambassador Alleges Cover-Up Of Illegal American Activities in Chile

Edward M. Korry, who served as U.S. ambassador to Chile during the period of the Allende government, last night told the Law School Forum that the Senate investigation into the American role in Chile has been a political cover-up of the subversive activities of the past four U.S. administrations.

Korry said moves by the Senate select committee chaired by Frank Church (D.-Idaho) to quash perjury indictments against former Central Intelligence Agency director Richard Helms and Harold Geneen, president of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT), are not for "legitimate reasons of national security." Instead, he characterized them as an effort to avoid revelations of "bribery, felonies, and conspiracies to murder" perpetrated at the highest levels of government.

Korry said The New York Times and The Washington Post, which he compared to government organs like the Russian newspaper Pravda, had cooperated in the cover-up by not reporting information which he supplied to them.

Korry said Church has suppressed his testimony before the Senate committee, initiated a "whispering campaign" against him in the press, and accused him of having perjured himself and having suffered a "nervous breakdown."

Alliance for Progress

He added that in testimony before the committee in February of 1976, he revealed that President John F. Kennedy '40 illegally funnelled millions of dollars through the Agency for International Development, the CIA, and various anticommunist Jesuit organizations to support Eduardo Frei's 1963 presidential campaign against Dr. Salvador Allende.

Korry charged Kennedy with enlisting the support of David Rockefeller in establishing the Business Group for Latin America, which he said was involved in the CIA's operations in Chile several years before the co-operation between ITT and the CIA.

Several times in his speech, Korry said there is a "cohesive" relationship between the U.S. government and business interests.

Compromise

Korry said his testimony before the Senate committee, which was kept secret for national security reasons, revealed that the United States had tried to come to terms with Allende, even offering to underwrite bonds to pay for Chile's nationalization of American copper interests.

The speech, which Korry said would "break open the first major scandal of the Carter administration," was delayed for approximately 15 minutes by a bomb threat reported to the Harvard Police.

Officers evacuated the lecture hall in Langdell and led the audience through tunnels to a new location in Austin Hall.