Papers show Nixon's concerns about Chile

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Papers show Nixon's concerns about Chile
Updated 28m ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior U.S. officials in the Nixon administration discussed a desire to stop the newly elected government of leftist Chilean President Salvador Allende from taking power in 1970, according to recently declassified transcripts of those conversations made public on Wednesday.

In one exchange, Nixon's former Secretary of State, William Rogers, cautioned about secret U.S. efforts to prevent Allende from taking power after the administration had stressed the importance of democratic elections. The CIA ended up supporting the kidnapping of Chile's top general in an effort to block Allende ascendance to the presidency.

"After all we've said about elections, if the first time a communist wins, the U.S. tries to prevent the constitutional process from coming into play we will look very bad," said Rogers, who died in January 2001.

A private group, the National Security Archive, published the transcripts on the eve of the 35th anniversary of a coup that resulted in Allende's death, one of the legacies of the Nixon administration.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-09-10-nixon_N.htm

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. I recall that in the 1960s, U.S. government officials and MSM always

harped on the idea that "no nation had ever freely elected a Communist government." (Never mind that Italy and Japan had elected Communists in local elections.) That was the proud slogan of the American establishment.

Then Chile went and elected a Communist president.

It was the biggest refutation of a U.S. government axiom until Gorbachev disproved Jeane Kirkpatrick's declaration that Communist governments could never change from within.

[L. Coyote]

3. "no nation had ever freely elected a Communist government." because

Apparently, we fixed all the elections in those countries, even if it meant killing the winner! Or, 30,000 activists.

[IndianaGreen]

4. Ho Chi Minh would have won an election in South Vietnam, had we allowed it.

Instead, we have a black marble monument with lots of names engraved on its walls to show for our folly.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. That's right

There were supposed to be country-wide elections in Vietnam in 1956, and when the U.S. realized that Ho Chi Minh, who was a national hero for fighting off both the Japanese and the French, was poised to win it, they suddenly declared "The Republic of Vietnam" in the south and installed Ngo Dinh Diem as president.

[heliarc]

20. You will note...

That Salvador Allende was not a Communist. He was a member of the Chilean Socialist Party... He was a Marxist certainly, and his coalition was made up of many left elements including the Communist Party, but he WAS NOT a member of the Communist party as you say. Please watch your words. As a matter of fact Pablo Neruda was suggested by the Chilean Communist party as a better candidate for President in order to apply pressure on the Unity Popular coalition.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. Thanks for the correction!

But the basic principle stands: As in Nicaragua a few years later, the U.S. couldn't stand for a popular Marxist government.

[heliarc]

22. Of Course...

that is the lesson that history teaches us... I simply have to point out that he wasn't a Communist. We Americans sometimes find the difference to be semantic, but then again we Americans only have 2 parties that really matter... most other countries with Parliamentary systems have parties that actually mean something. They have a real freedom of choice.

[Boojatta]

31. "only have 2 parties that really matter"

I recall that a number of people complained that Nader mattered in a monkey-wrench kind of way. Was he with the Democratic Party or the Republican Party? I can't recall, but if he mattered then surely he was with one of the only two parties that matter.

[heliarc]

38. Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman

are all we can show for third party representatives in the Senate... Nader had no say on policy... he never got to propose executive orders or legislation... he is not beholden to his constituency, he has no voice in politics except when an election year comes around. If we were a parliamentary system, he would have a more likely opportunity to govern (not that I think it would be a great idea necessarily).

Parliamentary systems have representatives in legislative bodies that represent the actual turnout for their party's election results... which means libertarians would be guaranteed 10% of the seats in the house if they got 10 percent of the vote...

Our system shuts out the third parties who may or may not have an influence on the election... they still have no influence in governance or legislation.

[Boojatta]

39. Did you mean "proportional representation voting systems" when you wrote "parliamentary systems"?

Parliamentary systems have representatives in legislative bodies that represent the actual turnout for their party's election results... which means libertarians would be guaranteed 10% of the seats in the house if they got 10 percent of the vote...

[heliarc]

41. You are correct...

I was conflating Parliamentary systems as a whole with their subset: proportional representation systems. Not all parliaments operate as I described... but many Parliaments do.

[MisterP]

24. Henry Luce was instrumental for the '54 Guatemalan coup, too n/t

[Nambe]

2. Amerika´s quest for dominion has negated all forms of morality.

Mother Earth has far greater WMDs and will prevail.

[Cleita]

6. He should have been concerned about the American and British corporations

who were robbing Chile blind of it's natural resources. If they had been reigned in, a communist would never have been elected.

[a la izquierda]

7. Allende wasn't a communist.

He was a founding member of the Chilean Socialist Party, fundamentally opposed to the Chilean Communist Party. The CCP had too much influence, he felt, from the Soviet Union.

Chilean politics during the era were based on forming coalitions. The Right was still quite powerful when Allende took power. The US tapped the Chilean Right's rage.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Ideologically he was no more left than FDR's New Deal

His government was toppled as Jacobo Arbenz's in Guatemala because neither of them were Communists. A communist would have recognized the threat posed by an American-allied military and would have taken steps to purge the military from the officer class, replacing them with officers and noncoms recruited from the masses.

[a la izquierda]

11. Yep. Exactly right. Communism was a dirty word.

Kind of like terrorist is today.

[struggle4progress]

25. "Communism" was a code word, using by US ruling elites, for anything threatening the global hegemony

of US corporate power

[AlphaCentauri]

28. well said

[L. Coyote]

33. For political enemy of unfettered capitalism and colonialism

and an excuse to kill liberals and social activists.

If your strategy is to murder your political opponents, first you must have
a demonizing classification scheme as justification, like "commie" or "terrorist."

If they are merely political opposition, you have to talk to them.
But devils, well every god Christian knows you can just kill devils! :sarcasm:

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

8. His concern has been noted. n/t

[change_notfinetuning]

10. Making the world safe for HYPOCRISY!

That's been the U.S. foreign policy since long before Allende. If I remember correctly, at that time Chile had the only democratically elected government in South America. (Check out "Endless Enemies" by Jonathan Kwitny, if you haven't read it already.)

I'd love to hear what Osara bin Lyin would have to say about our record of smashing democracies. I'll bet the question is on Gibson's list.

[Judi Lynn]

12. IHT has longer version of the same article:

New papers show secret concerns about Chile in '70

The Associated Press
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

~snip~
Transcripts were made possible because Henry Kissinger secretly taped all his phone calls when he became national security adviser in 1969. His secretaries transcribed the calls from tapes that later were destroyed. The Nixon presidential library declassified the newly released transcripts.

Some of the conversations occurred in 1970 in the run-up to Allende's inauguration as a democratically elected socialist leader.

In one conversation, Kissinger informed President Richard Nixon that the State Department had recommended an approach to "see what we can work out" with Allende.

"Don't let them do it," Nixon replied.

In another conversation, Kissinger told then-CIA director Richard Helms that "we will not let Chile go down the drain."

"I am with you," Helms replied.

In a subsequent conversation about Allende, Secretary of State Rogers agreed with Kissinger that "we ought, as you say, to cold-bloodedly decide what to do and then do it."

Rogers warned that it should be done "discreetly so that it doesn't backfire."

More:
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=16047124

[heliarc]

13. This was my family's 911

the coup on September 11th 1975 killed thousands of my parent's countrymen, and left another 80 thousand tortured and imprisoned... and on top of that: The United States had destroyed one of the continents oldest democracies..

I wear black on 911 every year, and was wearing black on September 11th 2001 as I watched and thought it was Chileans who brought down the towers, but it could have just as easily been Armenians, or someone from East Timor, or granada or El Salvador.... the Blood our United States has spilled all over the world made it hard for me to tell on that day who really did it.


And when people asked that rhetorical question "Why do they hate us?" unfortunately, I had a few thousand answers.

[dipsydoodle]

14. I truly wish

I could recommend your response.

"Why do they hate us? - what a lame and thoughtless question.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Thanks for your comments. Most Americans still haven't learned there was a 9/11 prior to 9/11.

Our right-wing has controlled our news far more completely, far longer than people realize. The Frank Church investigation proved this long ago in the Senate, but few people paid any attention. Pity, isn't it?

That date would have real resonnance with people who experienced the first one personally. Damned dirty shame.

[a la izquierda]

17. It's true...and few Americans know anything about it. N/T

[L. Coyote]

34. I'm still waiting for a discussion of Reagan bombing refugee camps

and a long list of other actions killing people in the context of why anyone would attack a US target.

I said it then, and have had to repeat it several times over, "When you start a war, you forfeit deciding when it ends."

[yellowcanine]

15. I still think Henry Kissinger has a lot of Chilean blood on his hands.

It is doubtful that Pinochet would have acted if Nixon and Kissinger had made it clear that the U.S. would not support a coup against Allende.

So Kissinger is indirectly responsible for the deaths of Allende, Letalier, and a lot of Chilean patriots who opposed Pinochet.

Letalier and Ronnie Moffit, an American, were assassinated by Pinochet's operatives in Washington D.C.

[heliarc]

19. So people can search his name... Orlando Letelier

Chilean diplomat killed by a car bomb planted by Cuban operatives in Washington DC. And we shouldn't forget Rene Schneider whose assassination in Chile can be directly linked to Kissinger and the Nixon White house.

Victor Jara .... ¡presente! ¡Ahora y para siempre!
Frank Teruggi ... ¡presente¡ ¡Ahora y para siempre¡

[AlphaCentauri]

29. There has been always a group of latinos that works against latinos

[heliarc]

30. Huh?

Seems to me that there have always been a group of fascists who work against protectors of democracy... In the case of Orlando Letelier there is all but a smoking gun linking the White house to the Cuban assassins... If you take Timothy McVeigh, Paul J. Hill into consideration than you might also think that there is always a white guy who works against white guys. But I prefer not to make ridiculous racial assertions about questions of clear political agenda.

[AlphaCentauri]

32. Latino Fascist have been around for a while NOT defending the interest of latin americans

[heliarc]

37. That was exactly my point...

but your interest in singling out latinos as typical infighters is what I was commenting on...

Are you trying to say that Pinochet is somehow a good Christian with that photo?

[L. Coyote]

36. A lot of American blood, Central America, South America ....

With the USA providing the communications hub for Plan Condor and other operations against progressives and social activists, that's tens of thousands of disappeared in each of various nations .....

We must never allow this to be redefined as just one political murder.
For decades anyone considered a liberal political activist was eliminated.

In my jungle village in Peru, Army Rangers loaded them on planes,
and they were not on the planes where the planes landed.

In El Salvador, they just shot you at the road blocks if you were a suspected leftist.
That's how one of the general's children was killed, by mistake, of course!!

Mistaken for a liberal? Bullshit. He WAS a liberal.
If you kill liberals, you have to kill your children too!
They didn't take enough care in drawing the line: "How far left is leftist?"

[Judi Lynn]

18. Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11,1973

Chile and the United States:
Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973
by Peter Kornbluh

September 11, 1998 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The violent overthrow of the democratically-elected Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende changed the course of the country that Chilean poet Pablo Neruda described as "a long petal of sea, wine and snow"; because of CIA covert intervention in Chile, and the repressive character of General Pinochet's rule, the coup became the most notorious military takeover in the annals of Latin American history.

Revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him," prompted a major scandal in the mid-1970s, and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate. Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified- -until recently. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records that shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976.

These documents include:

** Cables written by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry after Allende's election, detailing conversations with President Eduardo Frei on how to block the president-elect from being inaugurated. The cables contain detailed descriptions and opinions on the various political forces in Chile, including the Chilean military, the Christian Democrat Party, and the U.S. business community.

** CIA memoranda and reports on "Project FUBELT"--the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende's government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende's government

** National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts to "destabilize" Chile economically, and isolate Allende's government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.

** State Department and NSC memoranda and cables after the coup, providing evidence of human rights atrocities under the new military regime led by General Pinochet.

** FBI documents on Operation Condor--the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, DINA. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by DINA agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the carbombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, among other operations.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm

[redqueen]

23. And we tried it again in Venezuela... but the people wouldn't give in.

This country (among others) is in the business of subverting democracy in the name of mammon, and nothing will change until we stop letting them do it.

[struggle4progress]

26. U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile (Daniel Brandt, 1975)

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

[struggle4progress]

27. Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973 (Church Committee 1975)

94th Congress 1st Session COMMITTEE PRINT
COVERT ACTION IN CHILE 1963-1973
Staff Report of the Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities
UNITED STATES SENATE
December 18, 1975
Printed for the use of the Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 63-372
Washington: 1975

http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/chile/doc/covert.html

[L. Coyote]

35. You probably already know about all the links in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

[struggle4progress]

40. Thanx! Bookmarked!