Chile: Get Rid of Allende

excerpted from the book

The Price of Power

Kissinger in the Nixon White House

by Seymour M. Hersh

Summit Books, 1983, paper

p277
Chile: Get Rid of Allende

In the days that followed Richard Nixon's emotional charge to Richard Helms, the CIA reached deep into its resources to perform what many of its senior officers believed was a real-life "Mission Impossible." Without itself being exposed, and within six weeks of a closely watched congressional election in Chile, the Agency had to increase its direct involvement with leading members of opposition groups and provide arms, money and promises in support of a coup d'etat. The goal was to get rid of Allende, as the President demanded.

CIA contact was immediately intensified with two separate groups of military plotters whose members, just two days before the October 24 election, ambushed and assassinated General Schneider, a strong constitutionalist, m hopes of creating a climate for more violence. A few days earlier, a CIA agent, operating inside Chile with a false passport and a carefully constructed "cover," had passed thousands of dollars to a fanatical right-wing military officer whose declared aim was to murder Allende...

After the failure to stop Allende's election, the next step was economic. The administration would stop the flow of financial aid and loans from as many sources as possible, in an effort to cripple Chile's economy and force Allende out of office. On November 9, the White House promulgated National Security Decision Memorandum No. 93, "Policy Toward Chile," a top-secret paper that outlined the economic warfare. "Within the context of a publicly cool and correct posture toward Chile," the administration would undertake "vigorous efforts . . . to assure that other governments in Latin America understand fully that the United States opposes consolidation of a Communist state in Chile hostile to the interests of the United States and other hemisphere nations, and to the extent possible encourages them to adopt a similar posture."

The President ordered steps taken to:

A. Exclude, to the extent possible, further financing assistance of guarantees for United States private investments in Chile, including those related to the investment guarantee program or the operations of the Export-Import Bank

B. Determine the extent to which existing guarantees and financing arrangements can be terminated or reduced;

C. Bring a maximum feasible influence to bear in international financial institutions to limit credit or other financing assistance to Chile

D. Assure that United States private business interests having investments or operations m Chile are made aware of the concern with which the United States Government views the Government of Chile and the restrictive nature of the policies which the United States Government intends to follow.

The document also called for a review of possible steps to adversely affect the world price of copper, Chile's main export, and ordered a ban on all bilateral economic aid commitments. "Existing commitments will be fulfilled," NSDM 93 stated, "but ways in which, if the United States desires to do so they could be reduced, delayed or terminated should be examined."

Nixon had authorized an economic death knell for Chile. In the next few weeks, Kissinger took charge of a series of interagency meetings, mandated by NSDM 93, to work out the policy of economic retaliation. The goal was to make sure that the State Department bureaucracy carried out orders and cut off Chile without a dollar. "It stuck in my mind because Kissinger, in effect became a Chilean desk officer," says one senior State Department official "He made sure that policy was made in the way he and the President wanted ~t. Henry was showing the President that he was on top of it." The cutoff was a success: No agency in the government and none of the multilateral lending banks dared cross Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger. Before Allende's election, for example, the World Bank had lent Chile more than $234 million; afterward, not one loan was approved. Severe shutdowns took place at the

Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. American AID assistance to Chile, which averaged nearly $70 million annually during much of the 1960s, totaled just $3.3 million in the three years of the Allende presidency.

In his memoirs, Kissinger called NSDM 93, which he did not reproduce, "stern but less drastic and decisive than it sounded." Whatever policy the United States pursued between 1970 and 1973, Kissinger argued, "the creditworthiness of Chile would have dropped dramatically." The cutbacks had been ordered, of course, before Chile's credit rating began to fall-a drop due in part to the Nixon-Kissinger economic warfare.

Economic pressure was buttressed by continued CIA activity against Allende. Within months, a new chief of station and a new network of agents were in place. By late 1971, there were almost daily contacts with the Chilean military and almost daily reports of coup plotting. By then, too, the station ~n Santiago was collecting the kind of information that would be essential for a military dictatorship in the days following a coup-lists of civilians to be arrested, those to be provided with protection, and government installations to be occupied immediately. The CIA, aware that its men and activities were being closely monitored by the new Allende government, turned to its allies. In response to a formal request from the Agency, two operatives from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service were stationed inside Chile; the Australians were told that outsiders were needed because of the government's close surveillance. By 1972, the Australians had agreed to monitor and control three agents on behalf of the CIA and to relay their information to Washington. The bare fact of such involvement became known after an internal inquiry by the Australian government in 1977; just what the ASIS operatives were doing inside Chile on behalf of the United States was not made public.

In its published report on covert action in Chile, the Senate Intelligence Committee acceded to the Agency's request and permitted details of the post 1970 operations to be censored. The eliminated material included the fact that in early 1971 the CIA began an elaborate disinformation and propaganda program, "to stimulate the military coup groups into a strong unified move against the government." In addition, the censored material included information on a "long-term effort" to collect operational data that would be necessary for a military coup, such as illicitly obtaining government contingency plans in case of a military uprising. More than $3.5 million was authorized by Nixon and Kissinger for CIA activities in Chile in 1971; by September 1973, when Allende was killed during a successful military coup, the CIA had spent $8 million, or at least had officially reported spending that much, on anti-Allende plotting...

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