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To what degree was the U.S. responsible for the tragic end of Chilean democracy in the September, 1973, coup? Congressional investigations, press leaks, and the publication of the secret Chile files of ITT have continued to provide new evidence for those on all sides of the question.Now, through the investigations of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, we have important new information about U.S. policy toward Chile.
The Committee has released an interim report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, which includes a detailed study of the U.S. relation to the kidnapping-murder of General René Schneider, Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army, in October, 1970.
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- Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1976
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* Forexamples of the debate see James Petras and Morris Morley. The United States and Chile: Imperialism and the Overthrow of the Allende Government (New York, 1975), ch. I; the exchange between Elizabeth Famsworth and me entitled “Chile, What Was the U.S. Role?” Foreign Policy (Fall, 1974); and Richard Fagen, “The United States and Chile: Roots and Branches,” Foreign Affairs (January, 1975).
* See my "The Invisible Blockade and the Overthrow of Allende," Foreign Affairs (January, 1974).
* The staff report, comprehensive and balanced as it is, contains some errors of fact and interpretation. The military revolt of October, 1969, was not called the Tacnazo because it took place in the city of Tacna (p. 36), but because it was carried out by the Tacna Regiment, stationed in Santiago. Track I and Track II were not as similar as the reports indicate, since the military intervention contemplated in Track I seems only to have involved the formation of a military cabinet to supervise new elections after the constitutionally permitted resignation of President Frei. Henry Kissinger's assertion in his testimony to the Select Committee that the two tracks "were merging" because they "were working on exactly the same problem" glosses over the important difference between maintenance and rupture of Chile's constitutional processes. The implication that the Christian Democrats did badly in the 1970 presidential elections because the CIA was not assisting them financially (p. 55) is unpersuasive to anyone who observed the inept campaign of Radomiro Tomic. The ITT eighteen-point anti-Allende plan was submitted to the White House in October, 1971 (after the "intervention" of their Chilean holdings) rather than in October, 1970 (p. 59). (The ITT and Tacna errors have been corrected in later reprintings of the report
* Besides the false information passed to a Chilean officer in 1971, the Assassination Report (p. 234) also quotes CIA Headquarters directives to its Santiago station in 1970 to "create a coup climate by propaganda, disinformation and terrorist activities" (October 9, 1970) and to prepare a "report based on some well-known facts and some fiction to justify coup which could be "planted" during raids planned by the Chilean national police (October 19, 1970).