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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/40 Committee.md

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+---
+category: "U.S. Government"
+tags:
+  - Organization
+  - 40Committee
+  - NationalSecurityCouncil
+  - CovertAction
+  - Chile
+  - HenryKissinger
+  - CIA
+alias:
+  - Forty Committee
+summary: "National Security Council subcommittee that approved CIA covert action under Nixon, chaired by Henry Kissinger, which voted 1.665 million dollars to El Mercurio and was never told of the 1970 order for a coup in Chile."
+location: "Washington, D.C."
+created: 2026-09-21
+updated: 2026-09-21
+---
+
+The 40 Committee was the subcommittee of the [[National Security Council]] that reviewed and approved covert operations of the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] during the administration of [[Richard Nixon]]. It succeeded the 5412 Panel of the 1950s, the [[Special Group]], and the [[303 Committee]], and was chaired by the president's national security adviser, [[Henry A. Kissinger|Henry Kissinger]].[^1]
+
+### Chile
+
+The 303 Committee approved the campaign against [[Salvador Allende]] in the Chilean election of 1964 on April 2 of that year. In 1970 the 40 Committee approved 125,000 dollars for a "spoiling operation" against Allende's coalition and then 300,000 dollars more for propaganda. After Allende's plurality on September 4 it met on September 8, where Kissinger asked for a "cold blooded" assessment of the prospects of a military coup, and approved 250,000 dollars for Ambassador [[Edward Korry]] to use on the Chilean congress. It also approved 60,000 dollars for Korry to buy a radio station, which was never spent.[^1][^2]
+
+On September 15 Nixon ordered the agency to organize a coup. The Senate's report states: "the 40 Committee was never informed of this direct CIA role." The operation, [[Project FUBELT]], reported to Kissinger or his deputy, and the agency's instruction of September 16 was that it never be discussed at a committee meeting. Korry, who told the Senate "I even attended a 40 Committee meeting," was not told either.[^3]
+
+The committee authorized 700,000 dollars for the newspaper [[El Mercurio]] on September 9, 1971, and 965,000 dollars more on April 11, 1972. In September 1972 it gave 24,000 dollars to a "powerful businessmen's organization" and declined to fund others "because of their possible involvement in anti-government strikes." That October it approved 100,000 dollars for three private groups within a 1.5 million dollar program for the opposition. On the truckers' strikes the Senate staff wrote: "The 40 Committee did not approve any such support. However, the U.S. passed money to private sector groups which supported the strikers. And in at least one case, a small amount of CIA money was passed to the strikers by a private sector organization, contrary to CIA ground rules." On August 20, 1973, it approved a further million dollars. None of it had reached the private groups when the armed forces took power on September 11.[^1]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, staff report, *Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973,* December 1975. https://archive.org/details/CovertActionInChile196373
+[^2]: National Security Archive, "'Extreme Option: Overthrow Allende,'" Electronic Briefing Book, September 15, 2020. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2020-09-15/extreme-option-overthrow-allende
+[^3]: Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,* interim report, S. Rept. 94-465, November 20, 1975. Testimony of Edward M. Korry, *Hearings,* vol. 7, *Covert Action,* 1975.

20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.md

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+---
+category: "U.S. Government"
+tags:
+  - Organization
+  - MississippiStateSovereigntyCommission
+  - Segregation
+  - DomesticSurveillance
+  - CitizensCouncils
+  - WickliffeDraper
+  - CivilRightsAct
+alias:
+  - Sovereignty Commission
+  - MSSC
+summary: "Mississippi state agency that from 1956 to 1973 paid informants to watch civil rights workers, financed the Citizens' Councils, and passed a New York heir's anonymous stock gifts to a lobby against the Civil Rights Act."
+start: 1956-03-29
+location: "Jackson, Mississippi"
+created: 2026-09-21
+updated: 2026-09-21
+---
+
+The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was created by an act of the [[Mississippi]] legislature on March 29, 1956, after the [[Brown v. Board of Education]] decision, with the governor as chairman ex officio. It kept files that eventually named more than 87,000 people. Its doors closed on June 30, 1973, it was abolished in 1977, and its records were sealed by statute until 2027. A federal court opened them in 1998.[^1]
+
+### Informants
+
+Staff investigators were supplemented by informants, a practice begun under Governor [[J.P. Coleman]] and expanded under Governor [[Ross Barnett]]. The state archive's history of the agency records that "payment to informants varied from a few dollars to cover expenses to regular monthly sums of $500," and that the commission "also employed private detectives, who often acted as intermediaries with informants." An investigator, [[A.H. Hopkins]], photographed activity on the campus of [[Tougaloo College]] on June 4, 1963.[^1]
+
+### The Citizens' Councils
+
+In 1960 the commission voted 20,000 dollars to the [[Council Forum]] of the [[Citizens' Councils]]. Monthly grants to the councils continued until December 1964 and came to 193,500 dollars.[^1]
+
+### The Anonymous Donor
+
+In the summer of 1963 [[John C. Satterfield]] of [[Yazoo City, Mississippi|Yazoo City]], a former president of the [[American Bar Association]], organized the [[Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms]] in Washington to oppose the pending civil rights bill. The state archive credits the commission with "establishing and providing funds for" the committee. On July 22, 1963, a cashier's check for 10,000 dollars from [[Morgan Guaranty Trust]] in [[New York City|New York]] went to Satterfield. On September 12 a vice president of the bank, [[Arthur W. Rossiter Jr.]], telegraphed the commission offering a gift of stock worth about 100,000 dollars from a client who required that his name be kept confidential. Barnett accepted the same day. The shares, in [[R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company|Reynolds Tobacco]], [[General Motors]], [[Standard Oil|Standard Oil of New Jersey]], and [[Addressograph-Multigraph]], brought about 98,612 dollars. The client was [[Wickliffe Draper]], founder of the [[Pioneer Fund]], who had banked with [[Guaranty Trust Company|Guaranty Trust]] since the 1930s. His gifts through Morgan to the commission's campaign came to nearly 215,000 dollars, of a budget of about 300,000.[^1][^2]
+
+An internal memorandum by Satterfield described the case against the bill as resting on "heredity" and on "the intelligence, criminality and immorality of the Negro." On June 2, 1964, Draper gave a further 50,000 dollars toward a permanent national organization that Satterfield proposed to build after the bill passed. [[James Chaney]], [[Andrew Goodman]], and [[Michael Schwerner]] were murdered in [[Neshoba County, Mississippi|Neshoba County]] that month. A state appropriation of 200,000 dollars for the plan was returned, and the 50,000 dollars was returned to an escrow account at the law firm of Draper's attorney, [[Harry Weyher]]. When the transfers were reported in 1999 a managing director of the bank, [[Hildy J. Simmons]], called the handling of such gifts "a privilege of being rich in America."[^2]
+
+### Cleaning the Files
+
+[[Erle Johnston]], director under Governor [[Paul B. Johnson Jr.]], instructed the removal of all "incriminating" reports, "especially those that indicated the Commission helped county registrars stop African-Americans from registering to vote." He proposed renaming the agency the Mississippi Information Agency, called its work "preventative medicine," and denied that it was "a super snooping agency." In 1966 a bill to abolish it and another to rename it both failed, and the legislature made a reduced appropriation conditional on the governor's formally activating the commission. He did so at a meeting on August 8, 1966, which he did not attend.[^1]
+
+### Closure and Opening
+
+At its last official meeting the commission voted to seal its files and transfer them to the secretary of state. Governor [[Cliff Finch]] signed the bill abolishing it on March 4, 1977. The archive received "six filing cabinets, two unsealed pasteboard boxes said to contain fiscal records, two separate folders in a manila envelope, and a bound volume which was said to be a minute book," locked and bound with metal bands. The [[American Civil Liberties Union]] of Mississippi, the [[Delta Ministry]], and individual plaintiffs including [[Edwin King]] and [[John Salter]] had sued for the records that year. Judge [[William H. Barbour Jr.]] ordered them opened in 1989, and appeals and the design of a procedure allowing the people named to assert privacy claims took nine more years. Records not in litigation were opened on March 17, 1998, and further releases followed on July 31, 2000, and January 18, 2001. The archive put the collection online in 2002. The Morgan Guaranty telegrams were found in it.[^1][^2][^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, "Agency History," Sovereignty Commission Online. https://da.mdah.ms.gov/sovcom/scagencycasehistory
+[^2]: Blackmon, Douglas A. "Silent Partner: How the South's Fight to Uphold Segregation Was Funded Up North," *The Wall Street Journal,* June 11, 1999, p. A1.
+[^3]: American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, Inc. v. Mabus, 719 F. Supp. 1345 (S.D. Miss. 1989); American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi v. Fordice, 969 F. Supp. 403 (S.D. Miss. 1994); American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, Inc. v. King, 84 F.3d 784 (5th Cir. 1996).