Posted on 09/09/2001 6:16:45 PM PDT by Jean S
SANTIAGO, Chile -- The United States and Henry Kissinger were more deeply involved than was previously thought in a 1970 plot to prevent a left-wing politician from becoming Chile's president, CBS television news reported Sunday.
The program "60 Minutes" quotes an independent researcher as saying that the CIA sent a cable to its office in Chile instructing agents there to continue fomenting a military takeover. The cable came following a conversation with Kissinger, who at the time was President Nixon's national security adviser and later became secretary of state.
According to researcher Peter Kornbluh, the order also came a day after Kissinger has said he cut off any attempt to undermine Chile's democratic government.
The plot did not prevent the Marxist Salvador Allende, who had won a September 1970 presidential election, from taking office the next month. But the right-wing plotters killed Chilean Gen. Rene Schneider, described as an opponent of the Chilean military's involvement in politics.
Three years later, Allende committed suicide while his palace was being bombed by the Chilean military, and Gen. Augusto Pinochet took over as the country's military dictator.
Kissinger declined to appear on the "60 Minutes" program, CBS said. Kissinger's office late Sunday returned a message from The Associated Press but was unable to reach him immediately for comment.
However, the program aired Kissinger's testimony during a 1975 Senate investigation saying he ordered all contacts with the coup plotters to be cut off on Oct. 15, 1970.
Kornbluh told the program: "The very next day, the CIA sent a cable to the station in the Chilean capital of Santiago, based on its conversation with Kissinger, which is referred to in the very first line. This cable was absolutely explicit: It is the continuing policy of the U.S. government to foment a coup in Chile."
Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, an independent research institute which works at getting secret U.S. documents declassified, according to CBS.
The 1975 Senate investigation had already determined Nixon had wanted to incite a military takeover, but Kissinger's testimony indicated the United States had stopped any such attempt before Schneider's slaying.
Kornbluh also said newly revealed documents show that the U.S. intelligence community believed a coup could not be carried out in Chile in 1970.
Edward Korry, then the U.S. ambassador to Chile, said on "60 Minutes" that he also advised Kissinger that a coup would fail and boomerang against Nixon just as the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba had put the United States in a bad light a decade earlier.
Korry said he had already ordered all contacts cut off with the coup plotters in the Chilean military, but CBS cited what it said were minutes of an Oct. 7 meeting of a covert action committee in which Kissinger allegedly said that Korry's orders "should be rescinded forthwith."
Also appearing in the program was retired Col. Paul Wimert, a former military attache in Chile who CBS said was assigned the task of promoting a coup in Chile to block Allende.
Wimert told the program that he delivered weapons to the CIA to use in a plot to kidnap Schneider and send him to neighboring Argentina. The move was supposed to incite a military takeover of the government and prevent Allende from taking office, he said.
However, Schneider was shot during the kidnapping attempt on Oct. 22, 1970, and died two days later.
Schneider's son, also named Rene, said on "60 Minutes" that his family is planning to file a suit against Kissinger in the United States.
On Sunday, police in Santiago used tear gas and water cannons to scatter demonstrators marking the 28th anniversary of the start of Pinochet's dictatorship.
Police said some 7,000 people joined the march organized by human rights organizations, leftist groups and relatives of victims of repression during Pinochet's 1973-90 rule.
There were no reports of injuries or arrests.
Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press
On Sunday, police in Santiago used tear gas and water cannons to scatter demonstrators marking the 28th anniversary of the start of Pinochet's dictatorship.
What impression does this sentence convey? The truth, which I'm not going to bother to translate for those who don't care anyway:
www.emol.cl - SANTIAGO.- Unas 15.000 personas según los organizadores, 8 mil según carabineros, logró congregar hoy la marcha convocada por la Asamblea por los Derechos Humanos hacia el Cementerio General, en homenaje a las víctimas del 11 de septiembre de 1973 y a los caídos durante el régimen militar.
Los hechos de mayor violencia ocurrieron en las cercanías del campo santo, donde un grupo de aproximadamente 50 encapuchados instalaron barricadas y lanzaron bombas incendiarias contra los efectivos de fuerzas especiales de Carabineros.
En el lugar, los manifestantes -jóvenes en su mayoría- y que cubrían sus rostros con gorros pasamontañas y pañoletas, destruyeron un semáforo, dos telefónos públicos, luminarias y mantuvieron cortado el tránsito por avenida Recoleta por más de una hora y media.
Sin embargo, tras finalizar el acto desarrollado en el Memorial al Detenido Desaparecido del Cementerio General, que estuvo siempre vigilado desde el aire por helicópteros de la Prefectura Aeropolicial, personal de Carabineros actuó y en menos de cinco minutos disperso a los exaltados y normalizo el flujo vehicular.
Para ello utilizaron carros lanzaaguas y gases lacrimógenos.
La cincuentena de jóvenes que dijeron estar adscritos al denominado Grupo de Acción Popular (GAP), reivindicaron e hicieron apología a la lucha armada y anunciaron que su actuar se tornaría mas violento este martes, cuando se rememore un nuevo aniversario del asalto militar al palacio de La Moneda.
En esta ocasión los jóvenes lanzaron piedras contra locales comerciales, rayaron paredes de locales de comida y otros, y además provocaron destrozos en una sede del diputado Cristian Leay (UDI).
But not, it seems, a disaster for the rights of people to choose to enter into a disaster. no. those more wise like mr kissinger can step in and prevent others from making their own mistakes..
Everyone who could read knew that Kissenger was behind that.
What a stupid lie. We ALL already knew the US did what it could to stop Allende from running Chile into the ground.
If the communists hadn't been so obstinate, Pinochet wouldn't have had to kill them all.
And now Chile is better off from what Pinochet did.
Just click on this link, type "Allende" into the box, and then click on the very first link.
What credible evidence is there that he did not kill himself?
Too bad we didn't 'allende' Castro years ago.
And the reason they are free is, in part, due to the defeat of Allende. From the World Socialist Web Site (published by the international Committee of the Fourth International):
The Chilean tragedy is one of the major strategic experiences of the twentieth century. The overthrow of Allende's Popular Unity government and Pinochet's subsequent reign of terror delivered a body blow to the Latin American and international working class from which, in a sense, it is only now beginning to recover. . . .Chile was pregnant with the possibility of a successful socialist revolution, and such an eventuality would have had a profound impact on the movement of workers all over the world, just as the Russian Revolution did in 1917.
Is that what you would have preferred? Another Lenin but his time in our hemisphere?
Its a funny thing i've seen on FR. to agree with the writings of socialists when they aggrandize socialism and the socialist threat, but to disagree or dismiss them when they criticize capitalism, or promote other "socialist lies" etc...
Are you aware of the vibrancy of chile's opposition (ie, the side that carried out the coup) before the coup? are you aware of the intense breadth of chilean politics before the coup? I've often heard it here on FR that Allende only "pretended to allow opposition". I hope you're not coming from that angle, because the record is clearly against it. Chile was a less homogenous political society than pretty much all of the current western democracies. before the coup that is.
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