Chile: the balanced view : a recopilation of articles about the Allende years and after

privy, chapter and verse, because we had penetraled Ihe Chilean Communíst Party al the highest levels, were privy to everything they díd, long before Allende's election, knew exactly what they were planning and how -1 knew the Socialists as well- how they were going to gradually wipe out democracy as we understood it and in whích the American public had demonstrated and awfully large per capíta investment íts faith in it, wípe out and convert a democracy ínto a people's democracy. Now I said when I first got to Chile in 1967 that if the United States was indifferent to the fate. of that kind of extraordinary democracy... BUCKLEY: It would have vast repercussions. KORRY: Not only tha!. but Americans, it would affect how Americans practiced their own democracy. I'm not claiming any prescience about Watergate. But I am saving that if you become índifferent to that cal iber of democracy -and it only exists ín four or five places in the world- that you will then become very coarse in your appreciation of your own democracy. BUCKLEY: Professor Cliff Thompson is with the law school at Southern Methodist University. Protessor Thompson. CLlFF THOMPSON: Thank you. I think it'd probably be useful to have on the record some of what the Ambassador said, .but I think we probably strayed from the fine líne that you started, Mr. Buckley. In particular I wish more time had been spent on some of the íssues that I thínk concern representatíves of our country, and our country, ín terms of how we thínk about thís kind of problem. For example, people ín thís room may have the opportuníty to become an ambassador And what is the moral issue that has to be faced up to in thís? H there are going to be covert acts, on what kínd of standard should they be based, íf they should happen at all. I want to ask you a question, and I want to raise the question of whether or not perhaps the standards that Mr. Buckley has suggested in his colum this week are fríghteníng in terms of U.S. domestíc polícy, ín the Watergate sense that you suggested, Mr. Ambassador. Let me ask the questíon. They're goíng to become an ambassador. Can they do their job competently íf they don't know about the secret operations that are goíng on? I would have thought no!. Therefore, íf asked about them, as the ambassador, what does that person sayo Would he have to líe? Would you advise the person to líe? KORRY: No, let me be very clear. I told the Senate subcommittee that I kn~w and took full responsibílity for what the CIA was doing in my country because President Kennedy spelled out the obl igation that an ambassador had both to know and to follow. So I would have been dishonest íl I had answered any other way. The question that I refused to ansÍNerwas the specifícs ofwhat they did. AII right? That's numberone. Number two, I have tried unsuccessfullyto get on the record, and I'm delíghted to have this opportunity. But I think it is high time that the Congress stopped brushing 'Jnder the rug and acting as if it didn't know what it should know, and the obligations that it has to the American publ ic. That is, il should determine what the proper function of the CIA is, what the oversíght responsibilities of the Congress with regard to the CIA are. Whal an official secrets act is. I think it's outrageous that the men in the Congress have eulogized people who have stolen information from the State Department and profited by it -Iha! is, to sell the informa– tion. I think it is disgraceful. THOMPSON: Well, if in fact that's a phenomenon, that's interesling. If things are sto len al the rate they are stolen, can you have a secret operation at all? KORRY: No, I think that these are proper matters to discuss right now. Because the United States has gone through a kind of counter-revolution. Now I'm no! in favor of a pomo type approach, pomo flick type of approach to foreign policy. That is tha! you convert everything into dung, including yourself. I think that's horrible. I think there is a balance between everything being a soap opera, and everything being pornographic. I think there is a mature approach. But I reject in its entirety that civil servants -not myself because I was a polítical 295