Robert Berrellez

Robert Berrellez was born at Nogales and educated in Arizona. He joined the Associated Press in Phoenix and became its roving correspondent for Latin America, based in Mexico City. "He was in Cuba when Fidel Castro came to power, and spent six months in jail for the crime of being an American newsman." He went to the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation as its public relations man for Latin America, working from Buenos Aires.¹

September 1970

With Hal Hendrix he sent headquarters the memorandum of September 17, 1970, which 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," and relocate the families of "key persons involved in the fight" to Argentina. He had told Arturo Matte, of the camp of Jorge Alessandri, that ITT was "ready to contribute with what was necessary" to keep Salvador Allende from office. Before the Senate subcommittee on multinational corporations in March 1973 he explained the phrase as "essentially a courteous expression of concern." A CIA officer, Jonathan Hanke, wrote the next day: "Berrellez apparently got safely over the question of his discussion with Arturo Matte reported in 17 September message." The agency's own review of the hearings found him "crisper and more solid in his answers" than his superiors.²³

United States v. Berrellez

On March 20, 1978, the last day before the statute of limitations ran, the Justice Department charged Berrellez, then 58, of Chatsworth, and ITT's southwest regional public relations director, and Edward Gerrity with perjury, obstruction, and false statements. Harold Geneen was not charged. Benjamin Civiletti said the plea bargain given Richard Helms for the same offense had been accepted "because of fear that national security secrets might be disclosed if a trial were held," and that the two ITT men "did not have the same access to the nation's secrets." Attorney General Griffin Bell said: "You cannot decide never to prosecute these cases that might involve national security. To do so gives people a license."⁴⁵

The prosecutors struck from the charge a reference to Hernán Cubillos, formerly of El Mercurio and by then foreign minister of Chile. Berrellez's lawyer, Patrick Wall, protested that the CIA had censored his own notes. "The government said there was no national security in this case." Judge Aubrey Robinson said: "The government plays games at its peril." He refused an order confining the testimony, and the jury was dismissed the day after it was sworn. The government dropped the case on February 8, 1979. Sealed transcripts of a closed hearing of October 1978, sent anonymously to The Nation, recorded the allegation that Berrellez had "lied at the behest and with the aid of the C.I.A." One reporter wrote that the Hanke memorandum raised "the question of whether the CIA helped organize the effort to mislead the subcommittee."³⁵⁶