Project FUBELT

Project FUBELT (also known as Track II) is the codename for the secret Central Intelligence Agency operations that were to prevent Salvador Allende's rise to power before his confirmation and to promote a military coup in Chile.

[1] This project came after the circumstantial failure of Track I, which involved making president Eduardo Frei Montalva interfere with the 1970 national election in opposition to Allende.

The highlights of Project FUBELT are cited in declassified US government documents released by the National Security Archive on September 11, 1998, 25 years after the coup, as well as in papers uncovered by a 1975 congressional inquiry.

Taking place during the Cold War and after the Cuban Revolution, then US president Richard Nixon was worried that Chile would become another communist link in Latin America.

[5] To this day, this is the only record in US history of a US president ordering the overthrow of a democratically elected leader in a foreign country.

[6] Then commander in chief, Gen. René Schneider, stood in the way of this operation because he was a constitutionalist and thus did not support a coup to overthrow Allende.

General René Schneider , whose kidnapping and killing was sponsored by the CIA