40 Committee

Excerpts from Harper's magazine, Feb 2001

The Case Against Henry Kissinger, Part 1: The Making of a War Criminal

by Christopher Hitchens.

pg. 40

A NOTE ON THE "40 COMMITTEE"

In these pages, I've found it essential to allude frequently to the "40 Committee," the semi-clandestine body of which Henry Kissinger was the chairman between 1969 and 1976. One does not need to picture some giant, octopus-like organization at the center of the web of conspiracy; however it is important to know that there was a committee that maintained ultimate supervision over United States covert actions overseas (and possibly, at home) during this period.

The CIA was originally set up by President Harry Truman at the beginning of the Cold War. In the first Eisenhower Administration, it was felt necessary to establish a monitoring or watch-dog body to oversee covert operations. This panel was known as the Special Group, and somtimes also referred to as the 54/12 Group, after the number of the National Security Council directive that set it up. By the time of President Johnson it was called the 303 Committee, and during the Nixon and Ford administrations it was called the 40 Committee. Some believe that these changes of name reflect the numbers of later NSC directives; others, the successive room numbers in the handsome Old Executive Office Building, now annexed to the neighboring White House, in which it met. In fact, NSC Memorandum 40 was named after the room in which the committee met. No mystery there.

If any fantastic rumors shroud the work of the committee, this may be the outcome of the absurd cult of secrecy that at one point surrounded it. At Senate hearings in 1973, Senator Stuart Symington was questioned by William Colby, then director of central intelligence, about the origins and evolution of the supervisory group:

SYMINGTON: Very well. What is the latest committee of this character?

COLBY: 40 Committee

SYMINGTON: Who is the chairman?

COLBY: Well, again, I would prefer to go into executive session on the description of the 40 Committee, Mr. Chairman.

SYMINGTON: As to who is the chairman, you would prefer and executive session?

COLBY: The chairman--all right, Mr. Chairman--Dr. Kissinger is the chairman, as the assistant to the president for national security affairs.

Kissinger held this position ex officio, in other words. His colleagues at the time were Air Force General George Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; William P. Clements Jr., the deputy secretary of defense; Joseph Sisco, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, and the director of central intelligence, William Colby.

With slight variations, those holding these positions have been the permanent members of the 40 Committee that, as President Ford phrased it in a rare public reference by a president to the group's existence, "reviews every covert operation undertaken by our government." An important variation was added by President Nixon, who appointed his former campaign manager and attorney general, John Mitchell, to sit on the committee, the only attorney general to have done so. The founding charter of the CIA prohibits it from taking any part in domestic operations: in January 1975, Attorney General Mitchell was convicted of numerous counts of perjury, obstruction, and conspiracy to cover up the Watergate burglary, which was carried out in part by former CIA operatives. He became the first attorney general to serve time in prison.

We have met Mr. Mitchell in concert with Mr. Kissinger, before. The usefulness of this note, I hope and believe, is that it supplies a thread that will be found in this narrative. Whenever any major U.S. covert undertaking occurred, between the years of 1969 and 1976, Henry Kissinger may be at least presumed to have had direct knowledge of, and responsibility for, it. If he claims that he did not, then he is claiming not to have been doing a job to which he clung with great bureaucratic tenacity. And whether or not he cares to accept the responsibility, the accountability is inescapably, his.

http://northwestvets.com/spurs/hk.htm