CIA had Nixon's authority to kill Allende, Hersh says

The Atlantic Monthly reported that former President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave the CIA ''a blank check'' to assassinate Chile's late Marxist President, Salvador Allende.

The magazine quotes a forthcoming book by Seymour M. Hersh, ''The Price of Power: Kissinger in Nixon's White House,'' and says Richard Helms, then director of central intelligence, lied about the plot in Senate hearings. Allende was killed in a military coup in 1973, but a Senate committee concluded there was no apparent link to the CIA.