Good article in today's Guardian re this, as follows:
Secret files bury facts of CIA dirty tricks against Allende's regime
By Michael Ellison in New York
The CIA has a quotation from the Gospel of St John displayed proudly in the foyer of its Washington headquarters: You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
But the truth of the agency's involvement in the coup which brought Augusto Pinochet's regime to power 25 years ago is still not fully known. One fact, though, is certain - when classified papers on America's involvement are finally published, the freedom of the people of Chile will not figure strongly.
Henry Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser, was unequivocal about the general principle guiding United States policy. "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people," he said.
Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist in Latin America when he was elected president in November 1970, presented an ideological and economic affront to the Nixon regime. The answer was to pump $8 million and 400 'special advisers' into destabilising the unruly brat in America's backyard over the next three years.
Nixon tried to prevent Allende's victory by ordering the CIA to 'make the economy scream'. Later, Kissinger told the CIA that "it is firm and continuing policy that Allende should be overthrown by a coup". Three years later he had his way and Allende was dead. CIA director Richard Helms told a Senate investigating committee in 1975 that his agents tried to bribe the Chilean Congress and its military, and paid extreme right-wing groups to assassinate General Rene Schneider, Chile's chief of staff. After Allende's inauguration, it set about undermining his government by backing strikes, promoting violence and initiating media smear campaigns.
The coup came in September 1973, stimulated by the agency's success in creating social unrest. US Navy ships appeared off the coast of Chile and intelligence officers kept in touch with the leaders of the military takeover. Congress, the press and the trade unions were destroyed, 'subversive' books were burned, and up to 3,000 Chileans died in the subsequent seven-year reign of terror.
Allende supporters were not safe even when they fled abroad. A year after the coup, General Carlos Prats, the former chief of staff, and his wife were blown nine storeys high in Buenos Aires. The CIA was well informed about the operation and even supplied Pinochet's secret police with a computer.
Two years later the former diplomat Orlando Letelier was assassinated with a car bomb in Washington - an operation thought to be beyond Pinochet's henchmen working independently.
In the United States, these matters are considered as history. In Argentina, as Allende's neice, Isabel, said recently, talk of the events of 25 years ago is taken to be in very bad taste.
[end of article]
Carl Remick