2023-09-03 20:08:48
The protagonist of the new documents is Richard Nixon, then president of the United States and who, according to official reports known in the past, in 1970 ordered a direct and hidden intervention to prevent Allende from reaching La Moneda or “unseat” him if there is one way to do it.
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The first document is dated September 8, 1973. In it, Richard Nixon’s advisers report on a “possible coup attempt” in Chile.
While in the second document, from September 11, 1973, Nixon is informed that several “key military units” support the coup attempt.
Photos of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger displayed at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights during the exhibition “State Secrets: The Declassified History of the Chilean Dictatorship” in Santiago on October 24, 2017. (MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP).
/ MARTIN BERNETTI
Through a statement, the State Department indicated that the United States has declassified and published portions of the President’s Daily Briefs related to Chile, “in accordance with our commitment to increase transparency.”
“Along with the thousands of previously declassified documents, today’s release demonstrates our enduring commitment to the United States-Chile partnership, which is consistent with our efforts to promote democracy and human rights in our own countries and around the world. ”, the statement states.
The US Department of State added that “the declassification of documents is a complex, multi-agency process, in which the United States government takes into account numerous factors, including national security, the protection of the sources and methodology, and other risks and benefits of disclosing specific information. Taking these factors into account, the United States government completed this declassification review in response to a request from the Chilean government and to allow for a deeper understanding of the history we share.”
In Chile, the government of President Gabriel Boric thanked the United States on Friday for declassifying the two presidential reports and assured that the publication of secret documents “promotes the search for the truth.”
“A few weeks following the commemoration of the breakdown of democracy in Chile, we are especially grateful to the administration of President (Joe) Biden for its willingness to accept the request to declassify files related to our country,” said the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs. , Glory of the Source.
“50 years following the military coup, the declassification of files promotes the search for truth and reinforces the commitment of our countries to democratic values because democracy is memory and it is also the future,” he added.
On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet carried out a military coup in Chile once morest President Salvador Allende, who committed suicide in La Moneda, and imposed a dictatorship that lasted until 1990.
General Augusto Pinochet (left) poses with Chilean President Salvador Allende on August 23, 1973 in Santiago, shortly following Allende named him head of the army. (AFP PHOTO/FILES).
The Pinochet dictatorship left nearly 40,000 people tortured and imprisoned and more than 3,000 opponents executed, of whom a third are still missing, according to official data.
The Chilean State will assume
for the first time the search for 1,162 detainees disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship, President Gabriel Boric announced on Wednesday.
Pinochet’s defenders argue that the coup saved Chile from civil war and from becoming a communist state.
Even in a surprising survey published in May of this year, 36% of Chileans said they believed that the military “were right” to carry out the coup.
Not only that, the same CERC-Mori Policy Barometer survey concluded that the justification for that coup grew by 20 percentage points since 2013 and that today 47% of Chileans believe that the Pinochet regime was “partly good and partly bad.”
This is the context in which Chile will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the military coup.
What do the latest declassified reports say?
September 8, 1973. “Several reports have been received from Chile indicating the possibility of a soon attempted military coup […] The unrest is centered on the Navy, whose staff have been nervous regarding the imminent appointment of a new service chief. Navy men plotting to overthrow the government now claim the support of the Army and Air Force.
There is no evidence of a coordinated three-service coup plan. In fact lately we’ve been talking […] of ways to build inter-service unity with a view to increasing the influence of the military in government. If Navy bosses act in the belief that they will automatically receive support from the other services, they might find themselves isolated.
There are also indications that naval officers may be planning joint anti-government actions with civilian anti-regime militants. The far-right movement Patria y Libertad has been blocking roads and provoking clashes with the national police, adding to the tension caused by ongoing strikes and opposition political movements.
President Allende […] earlier this week […] He said that he believed that the Armed Forces would ask for his resignation if he did not change his economic and political policies. He raised the prospect of an armed confrontation between his followers and the military. Allende says that his supporters do not have enough weapons to prevail in such an event and that there would be no point in trying to distribute more weapons now, since the military would not allow it. He concluded that the only solution is political.
Allende seemed to be trying to convince […] that the situation is serious and requires cautious management, and that some tactical political withdrawals may be necessary. He is concerned regarding the opposition’s sustained pressure once morest him and, especially, the intentions of the military.”
September 11, 1973. “In Chile, the plans of the Navy officers to unleash a military action once morest the Government of Allende […] they have the support of some key units of the Army […]. The Navy also has the support of the Air Force and the national police.
Although military officials are increasingly determined to restore political and economic order, it can still seem like an effectively coordinated plan that would take advantage of widespread civilian opposition.
Socialists, left-wing extremists and communists are equally determined not to budge. They are betting that the military and political opposition will not be able to carry out measures to overthrow the government or even impose restrictions on it. President Allende, for his part, still hopes that appeasement will avoid a confrontation.”
Opinion
The documents confirm the conjectures and hypotheses regarding the participation of the United States in Chile
By Andrés Gómez de la Torre, specialist in Defense issues
There is a clear policy of democrats in USA of distance itself from the hemispheric policy elaborated by the Republicansparticularly for the binomial Nixon- Kissinger. And this comes from the human rights policy of Jimmy Cartera policy of openness and questioning of the national security dictatorship.
Then Bill Clinton starts with a document declassification policy regarding Chile. After Barack Obama makes gestures in Argentina once morest US participation in the national security government established in 1976. Finally we have this policy of Joe Biden to accede to the requests of the Chilean Government due to the emblematic nature of the 50th anniversary of the coup to clarify things.
the latest documents confirm the conjectures and hypotheses that were held regarding the participation of the United States in the destabilization of Chile. It must be emphasized that they are not all there is still more because declassification is always a very complicated issue for Washington, since it exposes sources and methods.
Without a doubt, during the Cold War, the containment of communism, especially the policies of the Republicans, of the so-called hawks of both the CIA and the State Department, have been a US modus operandi. That is, for the logic Of the security sectors of the United States, democracy did not matter, destabilizing democratic regimes did not matter to achieve their greater objective of neutralizing communism and Soviet and Cuban penetration in Latin America.
Washington considered that civilian governments were not capable enough to stop those processes that they considered subversive and that marked Latin America from the 1950s onwards.
Now, following knowing what really happened, there has not been a clear policy of public apologies by the United States towards Chile. But I do believe that decalcifying documents 50 years following the coup are important gestures.
A man burns an American flag in the streets of Santiago, Chile during demonstrations marking the 25th anniversary of the death of Chilean President Salvador Allende. (Photo by ORLANDO BARRIA / AFP).
/ ORLANDO BARRIA
The other documents that the United States has declassified
according to a article published in the United States National Security ArchiveOn September 15, 1970, during a 20-minute meeting in the Oval Office (in the White House, USA) between 3:25 pm and 3:45 pm, President Richard Nixon ordered the CIA encourage a coup in Chile. According to handwritten notes by CIA Director Richard Helms, Nixon gave explicit instructions to prevent Chile’s newly elected president, Salvador Allende, from taking office from him in November. Or to create conditions to overthrow him if he did. “One chance in 10, maybe, but saving Chile.” “He’s not worried regarding the risks involved,” Helms noted in his notes as the president demanded regime change in the South American nation that had become the first to the world to freely elect a socialist candidate. “Full-time job: the best men we’ve got.” “Make the economy scream.”
Pinochet receives Kissinger in his office, in a photo from June 8, 1976, in Santiago, Chile.
“Fifty years following it was written, Helm’s cryptic conversation memo with Nixon remains the only known record of a US president ordering the covert ouster of a democratically elected leader abroad. Since the document was first declassified in 1975 as part of a major Senate investigation into CIA covert operations in Chile and elsewhere, Helms’ notes have become iconic representations of US intervention in Chile and an enduring symbol of Washington’s hegemonic arrogance toward smaller nations,” the document says.
The thousands of documents that have been declassified since the government of President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) show that Nixon and his right-hand man Henry Kissinger did not want Allende to assume power in Chile. It is also now known that the CIA supported and financed groups to destabilize the socialist.
Announcing the release of the 23,000 declassified documents, the Clinton administration said the public might “judge for themselves the extent to which the actions of the United States undermined the cause of democracy and human rights in Chile.”
“Actions approved by the United States government during that period aggravated political polarization and affected Chile’s long tradition of democratic elections and respect for constitutional order and the rule of law,” the White House said.
In 2016, the then President of the United States, Barack Obama (2009-2017), ordered the declassification of documents related to the 1976 attack once morest Chilean politician Orlando Letelier in Washington.
The document proved what for many had always been an open secret: that Pinochet ordered the assassination of Letelier in Washington on September 21, 1976.
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