http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/cia4.htm
When the socialist Salvador Allende came within 3% of winning the Chilean presidency in 1958, the United States decided to take action to prevent Allende winning the next election in 1964. Allende had run on a broad leftish programme calling for a more equitable distribution of Chile's wealth to help tackle the widespread poverty in the country. He planned to nationalise the copper mines and institute a programme of reforms to improve conditions for the country's workers and peasants. This was seen as a dangerous threat to American multinational interests.
From the outset of the Kennedy administration in 1961, committees were set up in Washington and Santiago, composed of top-level officials and CIA people determined to undermine the Chilean elections. One intelligence officer strategically placed at the time commented: "US government intervention in Chile in 1964 was blatant and almost obscene. We were shipping people off right and left, mainly State Dept. but also CIA, with all sorts of covers." As many as 100 American operatives were assigned to the operation. A Senate investigating committee disclosed that the CIA's campaign began "by establishing operational relationships with key political parties and by creating propaganda and organisational mechanisms capable of influencing key sectors of the population." Projects were undertaken "to help train and organise 'anti-communists' among peasants, slum dwellers, organised labor, students, the media, etc."
The CIA channelled tens of millions of dollars to fund several non-leftist parties before settling on the Christian Democratic Party led by Eduardo Frei, as the party most likely to block Allende's rise to power. The Agency funded more than half of Frei's total campaign costs, an estimated $20 million (much more per voter than that spent by the Johnson and Goldwater campaigns combined in the same year in the United States). The CIA mounted a massive anti-communist propaganda campaign making extensive use of the press, radio, films, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, direct mailings, paper streamers and wall paintings. The Agency founded and/or subsidised entire magazines, right-wing weekly newspapers and wire services. The scare campaign focused heavily on images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the anti-communist pastoral letter of Pope Pius XI were distributed. Disinformation and black propaganda (purporting to originate from the communists) were used as well.
During a single week of the campaign, one CIA-funded propaganda group produced twenty radio spots per day in Santiago and on 44 provincial stations, twelve-minute news broadcasts five times a day on three Santiago stations and 24 provincial outlets, and 3,000 posters were distributed daily, together with thousands of cartoons and a great deal of paid press advertising. One radio spot featured the sound of a machine gun, followed by a woman's cry: "They have killed my child - the communists." The announcer then added: "communism offers only blood and pain. For this not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president." The operation worked beyond the CIA's expectations. Frei received 56% of the vote to Allende's 39%. The Agency regarded its anti-communist scare campaign in Chile as "the most effective activity undertaken."
When the 1970 Chilean elections approached, Nixon made it clear that a Chilean government formed by Allende's coalition of Popular Unity would be unacceptable to America and a similar propaganda campaign was launched by the CIA. The Agency prepared a series of propaganda articles to sow discontent about Allende. An anti-Allende newsletter was mailed to 2,000 Chilean journalists warning of catastrophes to come should he win. The Agency financed the hiring of sign-painting teams that covered some 2,000 walls depicting firing squads if Allende got into office. CIA-dictated editorials and news reports in many Chilean newspapers all regularly assailed Allende. A Senate report later stated that in the course of a six week period, "726 articles, broadcasts, editorials and similar items in the Cuban media resulted from CIA activity." Black propaganda was employed to sow dissent between the communist Party and the Socialist Party (the main members of the coalition). Nonetheless, on September 4th, Allende won a plurality of the votes.
On 24th October, the Chilean Congress would meet to choose between Allende and the runner-up, Jorge Alessandri of the conservative National Party. By tradition, Allende was certain to become president. The United States had seven weeks to prevent him from taking office. A furious President Nixon met with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, CIA Director Richard Helms and Attorney General John Mitchell. Nixon ordered Helms to "make the economy scream" and said that he would authorise "$10 million, more if necessary", to pay for whatever was needed to smash Allende. Helms' hand-written notes of the meeting have become famous: "One in ten chance perhaps, but save Chile!" and "Not concerned with risks involved." Nixon and Kissinger even made it clear to the CIA that an assassination of Allende would not be unwelcome and one White House options-paper discussed various ways this could be carried out.
Funds were authorised to bribe Chilean congressmen to vote for Alessandri, but this was soon abandoned as unfeasible. American efforts were then concentrated on inducing the Chilean military to stage a coup and then cancel the congressional vote altogether. The CIA undertaking, first known as Track l and then Track II, included everything from the murder of generals and civilians to sabotage of the economy. A fresh propaganda campaign was launched to impress upon the Chilean military, amongst others, the catastrophe that would befall the country should Allende take office. Horror stories were planted that everything down to small shops would be nationalised, and that there would be economic collapse. In private, the CIA warned Chilean military officers that American military aid would come to a halt if Allende were seated. The CIA was in active consultation with Chilean military officers who were receptive to the idea of a coup, and assured them that the United States would give them full support short of direct military involvement. The immediate obstacle was the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Rene Schneider, who insisted that the constitutional process be followed. He had to be removed. In the early hours of October 22nd, the CIA passed machine guns, ammunition and tear gas to the conspirators. That same day, Schneider was mortally wounded in an attempted kidnap. However, the assassination only served to rally the army around the flag of constitutionalism and two days later, Salvador Allende was confirmed by the Chilean Congress. On November 3rd, he took office as president.
Shortly before Allende's confirmation, American Ambassador Edward Korry warned: "Not a nut or bolt will be allowed to reach Chile under Allende." The U.S. vetoed bank loans and credits for foreign debts, and blocked the import of food-stuffs and spare parts for machinery and transport equipment. Buses were put out of commission and a third of Chile's transport system was paralysed. Export-Import Bank credits, which had totalled $234 million in 1967 fell to zero in 1971. A major financial panic ensued. Heavily dependent on trade with the United States, the effects on the Chilean economy were devastating. The boycott led to serious difficulties in Chile's copper, steel, electricity and petroleum industries due to a lack of replacement parts. American suppliers refused to sell needed parts, despite Chile's offer to pay cash in advance. There were shortages of foodstuffs, toilet paper, soap and many other essential items.
CIA agents organised a strike of private truck owners aimed at disrupting the flow of food and other important commodities. The Agency's propaganda merchants had a field day with newspaper headlines proclaiming "Economic chaos! Chile on brink of doom!" and exacerbating the food shortages by encouraging panic buying. CIA-supported newspapers alleged communist plots to disband or destroy the armed services, and told of Soviet and North Korean plans to establish bases in Chile. Textile mills were set ablaze, industrial plants bombed and mining machinery sabotaged. In May 1972 the Chilean embassy in Washington was burgled by some of the same men who the following month staged the Watergate break-in.
William Broe, chief of the Western Division of the CIA's Clandestine Services, met several times with officials of ITT (the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation) and other U.S. corporations with substantial financial interests in Chile. Broe proposed to them a four-part plan of economic disruption to weaken the Chilean government to the point where the Chilean military would move to take over the government. A 1970 ITT memorandum stated: "A more realistic hope among those who want to block Allende is that a swiftly-deteriorating economy will touch off a wave of violence leading to a military coup." Three years after Allende's election, this was indeed what happened. Allende's government was ousted in a bloody coup d'etat by the CIA-backed forces in the army and replaced by a military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet. Under the new junta, thousands of Allende's supporters and leftish suspects were rounded up in the national football stadium at Santiago and tortured; bodies piled up in the streets and floated in the river, and the country was beset by disappearances, executions and vicious political repression.
"We find ourselves faced with forces which operate in the shadows, without a flag, with powerful weapons, posted in the various places of influence... From the very day of our electoral triumph on September 4th 1970, we have felt the effects of a large scale external pressure against us which tried to prevent the inauguration of a government freely elected by the people, and has attempted to bring it down ever since, an action that has tried to cut us off from the world, to strangle our economy and paralyse trade in our principle export, copper,
and to deprive us of access to sources of international financing . We are the victims of virtually imperceptible activities, usually disguised with words and statements that extol the sovereignty and dignity of my country. We know in our own hearts however the distance that separates these words from the specific activities that we have to face."
- PRESIDENT ALLENDE, addressing the United Nations, December 4th 1972.
Allende was murdered on September 11th 1973 by American-backed forces.
All CIA stations in Latin America have a common programme, the so-called Subversive Control Watch List, a file on the CIA's most important political enemies, with details about their lives and movements so that they could be found and arrested quickly. The Agency gave this information to the Chilean military at the time of the coup, and this was responsible for many of the immediate arrests, tortures and summary executions. Altogether, hundreds of thousands of suspected opponents of the military regime were jailed and tortured, and an estimated 35,000 people "disappeared".
CIA director William Colby later admitted in secret testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the CIA had "penetrated" all of Chile's major political parties, that it had secretly furnished "some assistance" to certain Chilean groups and that the executions carried out by the junta after the coup had "done some good". In 1972 at a University lecture, ex-CIA director Helms was asked by a student if the Agency had intervened in the 1970 Chilean election. He replied, "Why should you, care? Your side won". State Department officials testifying before Congress explained that it was the Nixon administration's wish that the Allende regime collapse economically, thereby discrediting socialism in general.
Santiago National Stadium, Where Thousands of Pro-Allende Suspects were Tortured and Executed.
Aping the Nazis, Junta Soldiers Began "Purifying" Chilean Culture Through Book-Burning Sprees.
The United Nation's General Assembly, with substantial majorities, consistently denounced the military junta in Chile for it's "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of its people", for its violations of human rights, its torture practices and the unexplained deaths of political prisoners. The U.S. consistently voted against these condemnations - the only major power to do so. A year after the coup, President Gerald Ford declared that what the United States had done in Chile "was in the best interest of the people in Chile and certainly in our own best interest." In July 1981 the U.S. voted for a $161 million loan package to Pinochet's dictatorship; in a two year period the International Monetary Fund and the Inter American Development Fund lent Chile over a billion dollars. The U.S. also sent gifts to Pinochet and received Mrs Pinochet for tea at the White House, while banning Hortensia Allende (widow of the last democratically elected President of Chile) from visiting the United States to give a speech on human rights abuses in her country.
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