Reply #26: U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile (Daniel Brandt, 1975) [View All]

[struggle4progress]

Author's note, November 28, 1998: Recent news reports tell us that some U.S. officials want to pursue an extradition request for Pinochet, because of the junta's role in the assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington DC, in September 1976. Other reports indicate that if Spain ends up pursuing its case against Pinochet, their investigators will come to the U.S. and petition officials for CIA and other documents about Chile.

Meanwhile, only an occasional news report in the U.S. even bothers to acknowledge our role in Chilean affairs. Pinochet took tea with his friend Margaret Thatcher just before he was arrested in Britain, and it's safe to assume that Henry Kissinger will get involved if this thing goes much farther. As Henry's Rolodex spins, so spins our media.

It will be interesting to see how major U.S. players come down on the issue of the globalization of human rights, as personified so dramatically in the current Pinochet affair. But it will be much more instructive if one has a bit more background on the U.S. role in Chile.

Accordingly, I dug out a paper I wrote in 1975,1 and keyed in two sections. The first section is on U.S. economic policy in Chile, and the second is on U.S. covert activities in Chile. They may seem disjointed, having been ripped from the context of the paper, but that context is unimportant today. Moreover, it was contrived primarily to justify the research I wanted to do for these sections ...

http://www.namebase.org/chile.html