[4] Despite this recognition, Gonzalo Vial has been widely criticized for his work White Book on the Change of Government in Chile, written immediately after the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and supervised by Admiral Patricio Carvajal, which described the so-called "Plan Zeta".

Plan Zeta disseminated the false idea that left-wing elements were organizing a self-coup against President Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular, and for years this was the main justification of the coup and subsequent establishment of a military government.

[8] During the second administration of President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, Vial was private secretary to Finance Minister Jorge Prat.

He begins this work with a criticism of the development of Chile and of the total incompetence of the whole political class, especially the legislature, in the era between the suicide of two presidents.

[1] As a columnist for the daily newspaper La Segunda he strongly criticized the governments of the Concertación for their educational policies and their so-called "agenda of values".

[9] Vial, on the other hand, insisted that documents relating to Plan Zeta were genuine, pointing out that the Revolutionary Left Movement itself had publicly proposed a coup d'état and a dictatorship of the proletariat with the support of willing factions within the military.

[11] He also took part in the Round-Table Discussion of 1999 to 2000, but did not sign the final declaration because he felt that it did nothing to further the objective of the undertaking, which was to find the bodies of people who had been "disappeared" by the regime.