Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [220]
Helms believed that the extreme limits that President Richard M. Nixon had put on who was allowed to know about this effort (the secretaries of state and defense were excluded) precluded his answering. Helms also believed that his testimony was accurate, in that the CIA had tried to prevent Allende’s election but had not been part of the plot to overthrow him once he was in office. This fine line notwithstanding, what options did Helms have when he was asked about CIA activity in Chile?
Under the National Security Act at that time, the DCI was personally responsible for protecting the sources and methods of U.S. intelligence. (This responsibility has now passed to the director of national intelligence.) Helms found himself caught between that obligation and his obligation to testify fully and honestly before Congress. If he had stated that the CIA was involved in some way, he would have revealed operations in an open, public hearing. Alternatively, had he expressed the wish to answer that question in private, or in a closed session (although he had also not answered when in a closed session), it would have been tantamount to admitting CIA involvement. After all, if the CIA had not been involved, why not answer in public? Helms opted for a third choice: to view the question within narrow bounds, preserve secrecy, and deny CIA involvement. There may have been a fourth choice: to respond as he did in public and then visit the senators privately to discuss the realities of CIA activity in Chile. Helms apparently did not consider this choice. In 1973, oversight of CIA activity was the prerogative of a small group of members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not those on Foreign Relations. Thus, he also construed his oversight responsibilities within a narrow spectrum.
Did Helms make the right choice? Should he have been prosecuted for perjury under these circumstances? How responsible were the senators for asking such questions in an open session (particularly Sen. Stuart Symington, D-Mo., who knew the facts of the matter because he was also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which then had oversight of the CIA)?
THE TORRICELLI CASE. In 1995 Rep. Robert G. Torricelli, D-N.J., a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton accusing the CIA of having misled Congress about its activities in Guatemala and having had on its payroll a Guatemalan officer involved in human rights violations. Torricelli also made his letter available to the New York Times. He admitted having leaked the information to the press but argued that his duty as a member of Congress to preserve the integrity of government was greater than the oaths to preserve secret information that he had taken as a member of the House and the Intelligence Committee. Torricelli also argued that he had not violated committee rules, because he had received the information from a State Department officer in his personal office—that is, not within the House Intelligence Committee—and it was not clear to him that the information had been properly classified.
The chairman of the Intelligence Committee filed ethics charges against Torricelli, which were adjudicated by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (popularly known at the Ethics Committee). The committee decided that House rules concerning the handling of classified information were vague and ordered that in the future members would have a positive obligation to ascertain the true classification of information before releasing it. The committee went on to say that, had this ambiguity been resolved at the time Torricelli released the information, he would have been guilty of violating House rules.
Torricelli believed that the information provided by the State officer, a former employee on his House staff, revealed CIA duplicity. Having written to the president, was it necessary to release the information to the New York Times