[The secret memo in which he plotted the murder of Chilean
democracy.]
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KISSINGER’S BLOODY PAPER TRAIL IN CHILE  
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Peter Kornbluh
May 15, 2023
The Nation
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_ The secret memo in which he plotted the murder of Chilean
democracy. _

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_As Henry Kissinger reaches 100 years of age on May 27, Chileans are
preparing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the bloody military
coup that the former US national security adviser helped orchestrate
in September 1973. Kissinger’s controversial career is littered with
scandals and crimes against humanity: support for mass murderers and
torturers abroad, domestic wiretapping, clandestine wars in Indochina,
and, as Greg Grandin reminds us, secretly sabotaging the quest for
peace in Vietnam. But his pivotal role in the covert US efforts to
undermine democracy in Chile, aiding and abetting the rise of the
infamous dictator Augusto Pinochet, will always be the Achilles’
heel of Kissinger’s much-ballyhooed legacy._

_The declassified historical record leaves no doubt that Kissinger was
the chief architect of US efforts to destabilize the democratically
elected government of Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende. Once
Allende was overthrown, Kissinger became the leading enabler of
Pinochet’s repressive new regime. “I think we should understand
our policy—that however unpleasant they act, this government is
better for us than Allende was,” he told his deputies as they
reported to him on the human rights atrocities in the weeks following
the coup. At a private June 1976 meeting with Pinochet in Santiago
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Secretary of State Kissinger offered platitudes rather than pressure:
“My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups
around the world,” he told Pinochet, “and that your greatest sin
was that you overthrew a government which was going communist.”_

❶ Between Allende’s election on September 4, 1970, and his
inauguration two months later, the CIA launched a major covert
operation to block his ascendance to the presidency. Ordered by
President Nixon and overseen by Kissinger, the operation—code-named
FUBELT—led to the assassination
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Gen. René Schneider, the pro-constitution commander in chief of the
Chilean Army. But the operation failed to foment a military coup.

The day after Allende’s inauguration, Nixon scheduled a meeting of
his National Security Council on November 5 to establish what US
policy toward Chile would be. But Kissinger requested that the meeting
be postponed by a day to give him time to personally present this
pivotal memorandum to Nixon and persuade him to reject the State
Department’s position that Washington could establish a modus
vivendi with an Allende government. Kissinger lobbied the president
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adopt an aggressive, if covert, effort to “oppose Allende as
strongly as we can.”

❷ In his presentation to the president, Kissinger acknowledged that
Allende had been legitimately and democratically elected—“the
first Marxist government ever to come to power by free
elections”—and would adopt a moderate position toward the United
States. In Kissingerian logic, that made Allende even more of a
threat. Among the rationales Kissinger presented for destabilizing
Allende’s new government was one key factor: “The example of a
successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an
impact on—and even precedent value for—other parts of the world,
especially in Italy. The imitative spread of similar phenomena
elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our
own position in it.” As Kissinger advised the president, “its
‘model’ effect can be insidious.”

❸ Kissinger successfully persuaded the president to approve this
clandestine destabilization policy. At the NSC meeting the next day,
Kissinger reiterated his arguments for intervention. “Developments
in Chile are clearly of major historic importance, and they will have
ramifications that go far beyond just the question of US-Chilean
relations,” his talking points for the NSC meeting dramatically
began. “The question therefore,” Kissinger stated after outlining
the purported threats to US interests of a successful Allende
government, “is whether there are actions we can take ourselves to
intensify Allende’s problems so that at a minimum he may fail or be
forced to limit his aims, and at a maximum might create conditions in
which collapse or overthrow might be feasible.”

Related:

THE POSSIBLE MURDER OF PABLO NERUDA
[[link removed]] Peter
Kornbluh (February 23, 2023)

HENRY KISSINGER, WAR CRIMINAL—STILL AT LARGE AT 100
[[link removed]] Greg
Grandin (May 15, 2023)

At the NSC meeting the next day, according to a secret summary, Nixon
backed Kissinger and parroted his position. “Our main concern in
Chile is the prospect that he [Allende] can consolidate himself and
the picture presented to the world will be his success,” the
president informed his top national security managers.

❺ The objective of Kissinger’s policy of hostile intervention
came to fruition on September 11, 1973—Chile’s own 9/11. Kissinger
then ushered in a policy of assisting the new military regime, which
would become renowned for murder, torture, disappearances, and even
international terrorism on the streets of Washington, D.C.

“The Chilean thing is getting consolidated,” Kissinger informed
Nixon a few days after the coup, “and of course the newspapers are
bleating because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.”
“Isn’t that something,” Nixon mused
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what he called “this crap from the Liberals” on the denouement of
democracy in Chile. “Isn’t that something.”

Kissinger also lamented the failure of the US press to celebrate their
Cold War accomplishment. As he told Nixon, “in the Eisenhower period
we would be heroes.”

_Copyright c 2023 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without__ permission_
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Distributed by__ _PARS International Corp
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_PETER KORNBLUH, a longtime contributor to The Nation on Cuba, is
co-author, with William M. LeoGrande, of Back Channel to Cuba: The
Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and
Havana. Kornbluh is also the author of The Pinochet File: A
Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability._

_THE NATION [[link removed]] Founded
by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and
depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph
to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and
progressive voice in American journalism._

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* Chile
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* Henry Kissinger
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* Richard Nixon
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* U.S. intervention
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