Secret C.I.A. payments to Italian leaders

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34045, 8 January 1976, Page 9

Secret C.I.A. payments to Italian leaders

fßy SEYMOUR HERSH. of the New York Times News Service, through N.Z-P.Aj WASHINGTON, January 7. The Central Intelligence Agency has tunnelled at least S6m in secret cash payments to individual antiCommunist political leaders in Italy since December 8 in an effort to preTent further Communist Party gains in national elections there, according to well-informed Washington sources.

They say that final approval for the payments was given by President Ford on December 8. The names of the individual political figures receiving the funds could not be determined today, neither can it be confirmed that the 40 Committee — the Government’s high-level intelligence review panel — formally approved the payments. A number of sources say, however, that the C.I.A. programme was strongly 7 supported bv the Secretarv of State (Dr Henry Kissinger). Dr Kissinger is known to have been extremely concerned about the Communist Party's gains in the Italian regional elections last June, when it won more than 3,3 per cent of the total popular vote

The financing of Italy’s political parties, which now total seven, has always been complex. The Soviet Union is known to have supported the Communists in the past, and the United States the nonCommunist parties One American official, noting that the political parties

I ieic changed The French philosopher. Jean-Paul Sartre, acclaimed j •n the 1955 edition of the ' ’Great Soviet Encylopedia”, as a champion of peace, is described in the latest edi-|, tion of the work as a con- 1 fused intellectual. Between the two editions. Mr Sartre' condemned the Warsaw Pacti invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1965. and called for zreater human rights in the" Soviet Union. The twentv- I -econd v.lume of the third edition of the encyclopedia—•he -randard Kremlin refer- • *nce book — devotes more than one column and a half to the French philosopher. 1 hr, is 70. and ' hi« mfliience on intellectual life—Moscow. <

11 in Italy are now spending ! tens of millions of dollars' a year, described the C.1.A.! effort as "peanuts.” He char-’ • acterised the covert opera-1 tion there as secondary to the main American goal of) ■ urging the non-Communist I Italian political parties to re-1 ;'vitalise themselves in an ef-j i; fort to prevent the Commun-1 l ists from eventually entering! • a governing coalition. : “Six million dollars is ab-j solutely nothing,” the official! said. “The funds are really I ■lto help some non-Communist | politicians obtain publicity. If: 1 you go to politicians and say, \ ’Look, we really' want to help 'you.’ and they say* We’re ’; broke and can’t pay for an ! I advertisement,’ then you help : jthem. But what can you buy ' for S6m? You can help them ;' to print posters, run ads, . print their speeches — just help them get off they ground." ‘