{"id":137338,"date":"2023-09-29T16:12:58","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T23:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=137338"},"modified":"2023-09-29T16:13:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T23:13:47","slug":"137338","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/09\/29\/137338\/","title":{"rendered":"CHILE’S COUP at 50 : Countdown Toward a Coup and Lessons for Lanka as the IMF \u2018Makes the Economy Scream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/a>National Security Archive<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Officials: Our Policy on Allende Worked Very Well\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kissinger joked that the President is worried that we might want to send someone to Allende\u2019s funeral.
I said I did not believe we were considering that.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Documented U.S. Role in the Months, Days and Hours Before the Overthrow Of Allende<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 September 8, 2023, Washington D.C. – <\/strong>In the Eisenhower period, we would be heroes,\u201d Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon several days after the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, lamenting that they would not receive credit in the press for this Cold War accomplishment. Fifty years later, as Chileans and the world commemorate the anniversary of the U.S.-backed military takeover that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, a fierce debate over the extent of the U.S. contribution to the coup continues. On September 6, a leading Chilean television channel, Chilevision, broadcast a major documentary film titled Operation Chile: Top Secret<\/a>,\u201d featuring dozens of U.S. declassified records obtained by the National Security Archive\u2019s Chile Documentation Project, including recently obtained documents published in the new Chilean edition of Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh\u2019s book, Pinochet Desclasificado.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the eve of the 50th anniversary, the Archive is posting an edited section of Kornbluh\u2019s book\u2014The Pinochet File<\/em>\u2014on the Countdown Toward the Coup.\u201d The essay records U.S. government actions, internal debates and policy deliberations as conditions for the coup evolved between March and September 1973. This is an intricate, complicated and extraordinarily revealing history,\u201d Kornbluh said, that holds many lessons on the secret abuses of U.S. power and the danger of dictatorship over democracy for today\u2019s world community.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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COUNTDOWN TOWARD A COUP<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On September 12, 1973, a day after the Chilean military violently took power, State Department officials met to discuss press guidelines for Henry Kissinger on how much advance notice we had on the coup.\u201d Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Jack Kubisch noted that one Chilean military official had told the embassy that the plotters had withheld from their U.S. supporters the exact date they would move against Allende. But Kubisch said he doubted if Dr. Kissinger would use this information, for it would reveal our close contact with coup leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the months leading up to the coup, the CIA and the Pentagon had extensive contacts with Chilean plotters through various assets and agents and at least three days\u2019 advance knowledge of a concrete date for a military takeover. Their communications derived from refocused covert operations targeting the military after the March 1973 congressional elections in Chile. The dismal electoral outcome convinced many CIA officials that the political and propaganda operations had failed to achieve their goals, and that the Chilean military, as Agency documents suggested, was the final solution to the problem posed by Allende\u2019s Popular Unity alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until the spring of 1973, the political operations and propaganda generated by El Mercurio and other CIA-funded media outlets focused on a major political opposition campaign to decisively win the March 4 congressional elections, when all Chilean representatives and half of Chilean senators were up for reelection. The CIA\u2019s maximum goal was to gain a two-thirds majority for the opposition in order to be able to impeach Allende; its minimum goal was to prevent Popular Unity from obtaining a clear majority of the electorate. Of the 3.6 million votes cast, the opposition polled 54.7 percent; Popular Unity candidates garnered 43.4 percent, picking up two Senate seats and six seats in the Congress. Actions undertaken by CIA in the 1973 elections have made a contribution to slowing down the Socialization of Chile,\u201d proclaimed a Briefing on Chile Elections\u201d written at Langley headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality was quite different, as both CIA headquarters and the Santiago Station understood. In the first national test of its popularity since Allende took office, his Popular Unity government had actually increased its electoral strength\u2014despite concerted CIA political action, a massive, covert anti-Allende propaganda campaign, and a U.S.-directed socioeconomic destabilization program. The UP program still appeals to a sizeable portion of the Chilean electorate,\u201d the Station lamented in one cable. The CIA now had to reassess its entire clandestine strategy in Chile. Future options,\u201d headquarters cabled on March 6, now being reviewed in light of disappointing election results, which will enable Allende and UP to push their program with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Station, now under the direction of a new Chief of Station, Ray Warren, took a forceful position on what future options\u201d would be necessary. In a pivotal March 14 postmortem on the congressional elections, the CIA Station articulated plans to reinforce its focus on the military program. We feel that during foreseeable future, Station should give emphasis to [covert] activity, to widen our contacts, knowledge, and capability in order to bring about one of following situations:\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Consensus by leaders of armed forces (whether they remain in govt or not) of need to move against the regime. Station believes we should attempt induce as much of the military as possible, if not all, to take over and displace the Allende govt ….<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Secure and meaningful Station relationship with a serious military planning group. Should our re-study of the armed forces groups indicate that would-be plotters are in fact serious about their intentions and that they have the necessary capabilities, Station would wish to establish a single, secure channel with such elements for purposes of dialoguing and, once basic data on their collective capabilities is obtained, to seek HQS authorization to enter into an expanded … role.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    At the same time, the Station also reaffirmed the need to refocus attention on creating a coup climate\u2014the long-standing goal of U.S. policy. While the Station anticipates giving additional impetus to our [military] program\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Other political power centers (political parties, business community, media) will play an essential support role in creating the political atmosphere which would allow us to accomplish objectives (A) or (B) above. Given the outcome of the election results, Station feels that creation of a renewed atmosphere of political unrest and controlled crisis must be achieved in order to stimulate serious consideration for intervention on part of the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Station\u2019s gung-ho position, which clearly influenced its attitude and actions on the ground in Chile, was supported by a number of hardliners within the Western Hemisphere directorate who pushed for a far more aggressive, violent approach\u2014an approach that clearly did not count saving democracy\u201d in Chile as an objective. In a bald and blunt internal challenge to the strategy of pursuing political operations, on April 17 a group of CIA officers sent a memorandum to WH\/C Shackley on Policy objectives for Chile\u201d calling for cutting covert support for the mainstream opposition parties. Such support lulled\u201d those parties into believing they could survive until the 1976 election. Moreover, if the CIA helped the opposition Christian Democrats win in 1976, the authors argued, it would be a pyrhic victory\u201d [sic] because the PDC would pursue leftist communitarian policies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    <\/a>Instead, the CIA should directly seek to develop the conditions which would be conducive to military actions.\u201d This involved large-scale support\u201d to the terrorist elements in Chile, among them Patria y Libertad and the militant elements of the National Party\u201d over a fixed time frame\u2014six to nine months\u2014during which time every effort would be made to promote economic chaos, escalate political tensions and induce a climate of desperation in which the PDC and the people generally come to desire military intervention. Ideally, it would succeed in inducing the military to take over the government completely.\u201d [42]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But the position of the Station and the hardliners at Langley was not shared by the State Department, nor by key senior CIA officials who feared the consequences of precipitous military action and believed in the prudence of caution given the ongoing congressional committee investigation into ITT (International Telephone & Telegraph) and covert operations in Chile. There was disagreement on a number of fundamental and strategic questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n