ITT Spying on the Home Front

International Telephone and Telegraph, renowned for its efforts in the early seventies to sabotage Chile's Allende government, did not rest content after the Pinochet coup. With the Chilean political environment secure, ITT directed its activities at pro-Allende groups in the U.S., recently uncovered documents` reveal.

The documents, released by Chicago attorney Richard Gutman, detail ITT investigations of Chilean solidarity groups. Throughout 1974 and 1975, the corporation monitored various conferences and rallies organized by the groups.

An ITT source at a 1975 conference in Concordia, Illinois, for instance, described and photographed many of the individuals attending, and gave a detailed account of meetings held. Jon Rogeberg, the third ranking official in ITT's security department at the time, "debriefed" the source and then wrote a report that characterized the meeting as "a radical summit conference with a central theme of fascist oppression, crimes and atrocities in Chile . . . "

While ITT confirms the authenticity of the documents, the company denies that "any officers or executives of ITT ever authorized the infiltration of any political groups." Jim Gallagher, spokesperson for ITT, describes the company's actions as "following, through available sources of information, the action of groups seeking to organize a boycott as a protest against the organization."

Attorney Gutman argues that the Chilean solidarity movement "can only assume ITT was clandestinely infiltrating them in order to undermine their peaceful efforts to protest ITT's activities."

Although ITT maintains that all its actions were legal, there may be grounds for court action.

The documents Gutman discovered contain, evidence that ITT was communicating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York. Gutman inadvertently obtained the ITT documents among papers seized and impounded for another investigation of alleged spying involving the FBI and the Chicago Police Department. The documents were `on loan' from ITT's office to the Chicago FBI "for any suggestions on our handling of this," a hand-written note from a New York FBI agent indicates. '

Acting alone as a private corporation, ITT would have been within legal bounds in "collecting information" on the groups. Because of the apparent involvement of a government agency, however, attorneys for the Chilean solidarity groups are considering bringing a suit against ITT and the FBI for conspiracy to violate constitutional rights.