ITT Corporation

The International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, under its chairman Harold Geneen, owned the Chilean telephone company and in 1970 offered money to the CIA and the White House to keep Salvador Allende from taking office in Chile. One of its directors, John McCone, had been director of central intelligence until 1965 and testified that he remained "a consultant to the Agency." The columnist Jack Anderson published the company's internal memoranda in March 1972, Chile expropriated its holdings that April, and the Senate's Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations under Frank Church held hearings in March 1973. The company claimed more than 92 million dollars from the government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation for the loss.¹²

The Offers

In July 1970 a CIA officer in Santiago told ITT representatives that the conservative candidate, Jorge Alessandri, could use money, and suggested a secure channel. McCone telephoned Director Richard Helms, and Geneen met William Broe, the chief of the agency's Western Hemisphere Division, and offered up to one million dollars. The agency declined to act as the conduit and advised the company how to pass money safely. ITT gave at least 350,000 dollars to Alessandri's campaign, and other American companies gave about as much.²

After Allende won the popular vote on September 4, Geneen told McCone at a board meeting in New York that he would put up as much as one million dollars for any government plan to form a coalition in the Chilean Congress against Allende. McCone carried the offer to Henry Kissinger and to Helms. On September 17 the company's men in Latin America, Hal Hendrix and Robert Berrellez, recommended that ITT and other firms "pump some advertising into Mercurio," revive some twenty radio and television propagandists formerly paid by "the Matte and Edwards groups," finance a relocation center in Mendoza or Buenos Aires for the families of "key persons involved in the fight," and press the U.S. Information Service to circulate El Mercurio's editorials abroad. Senior vice president Edward Gerrity reported to Geneen that the plan had "been confirmed" by the man in Washington to whom Geneen had introduced the company's representative. On September 29 Broe, on Helms's instruction, proposed to a company representative a plan to accelerate economic disorder in Chile. The company declined it, and later submitted to the White House an eighteen-point plan to ensure that Allende "does not get through the crucial next six months."¹²

The 1971 Meeting

On February 9, 1971, the head of ITT's Washington office, William Merriam, convened representatives of Anaconda, Kennecott, W.R. Grace, Ralston Purina, and the Bank of America, all of them facing nationalization in Chile. The bank's memorandum of the meeting records ITT's view that "the place to apply pressure is through the office of Henry Kissinger," since that office and the CIA "are handling the Chile problem." Three days earlier Arnold Nachmanoff of Kissinger's staff had told ITT and Anaconda that the policy was "a quiet, but strong" one of economic pressure.¹

The Perjury Cases

In late 1977 the Justice Department investigated Geneen, Gerrity, and Berrellez for perjury and obstruction in their 1973 testimony. On the Thursday before charges were filed, CIA Director Stansfield Turner went to Attorney General Griffin Bell to express the agency's concern. On March 20, 1978, the department charged Gerrity and Berrellez by information, each with perjury and obstruction of the Senate inquiry and with further counts arising from 1974 hearings of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Berrellez was charged in addition with conspiracy, and Gerrity with encouraging Hendrix, named as an unindicted co-conspirator, to testify falsely. The grand jury was discharged without indicting anyone. "The department decided not to prosecute ITT Chairman Harold Geneen," the wire report said.³

The defense sought classified material. Bell said: "You cannot decide never to prosecute these cases that might involve national security. To do so gives people a license." On August 9, 1978, the prosecutor told Judge Aubrey Robinson that the government would not pursue three of the six counts against Gerrity "to safeguard national security and U.S. foreign intelligence interests." An unmarked envelope delivered to The Nation contained the sealed transcript of a closed hearing that October, in which it was alleged that Berrellez "lied at the behest and with the aid of the C.I.A." The government dropped the charges against Berrellez on February 8, 1979, and against Gerrity on March 8. Helms had pleaded no contest in 1977 to two misdemeanors for his own testimony about Chile and was fined 2,000 dollars.⁴⁵⁶