United States intervention in Chile
He had been sent by President James Madison in 1809 as a special agent to the South American Spanish colonies (a position he filled from 1810 to 1814) to investigate the prospects of the revolutionaries, in their struggle for independence from Spain.
After World War I, the United States replaced Britain as the leading superpower controlling most of Chile's resources, as most economic activity in the country lay in US hands.
As the "grand total of $130 million from the U.S. banking Industry, the U.S. Treasury Department, the IMF and the ICA"[7] accepted by Alessandri illustrates, laissez-faire policies may have induced the opposite of the intended effect – making Chile more dependent on the United States, not less.
The Americans viewed electing Christian Democratic contender Eduardo Frei Montalva as vital, fearing that Alessandri's failures would lead the people to support Allende.
Furthermore, clandestine aid to Frei was put forward through John F. Kennedy's Latin American Alliance for Progress, which promised "$20 billion in public and private assistance in the country for the next decade.
"[9] According to a U.S. Senate select committee, publishing a Church Commission Report in 1975 to describe international abuses committed by the CIA, NSA, and FBI, covert United States involvement in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973 was "extensive and continuous".
Chile, more than any of its South American neighbors, had a long-standing democratic tradition dating back to the early 1930s, and it has been difficult to gauge how successful CIA tactics were in swaying voters.
Immediately after the Allende government came into office, Nixon's administration sought to place pressure[19] on it to limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemispheric interests, such as the total nationalization of several U.S. corporations operating in Chile.
Their tactics were political warfare, economic pressure, propaganda, and diplomatic hardball as they aimed to buy enough Chilean senatorial votes to block Allende's inauguration.
Their last resort was to have the U.S. "condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty, forcing Allende to adopt the harsh features of a police state," Korry told Kissinger.
[20] To aid in this mission, the CIA station chief in Brazil, David Atlee Phillips, was brought in along with twenty-three foreign reporters who worked to stir up international opinion against Allende, the centerpiece of this part of the operation being the strong anti-Allende story on the front cover of Time magazine.
As part of the Track II initiative, the CIA used false flag operatives with fake passports to approach Chilean military officers and encourage them to carry out a coup.
The attempted kidnapping and Schneider's subsequent death shocked the public and increased support for the Chilean Constitution, the exact opposite of the expected outcome of the planned coup.
[41] In another breadth, the CIA showcased its close connection with the coup plotters, through its knowledge about a change in the military plan in which "some armed forces units wanted to" carried out "as early as the 8th " "but were dissuaded by higher-ranking officers" who said "could not possibly be put together until 10 September", as "the need for a coordinated effort" was lacking from both ranks.
"[44] This level of knowledge the CIA shared with the White House not only demonstrated an effective way the agency deployed in picking intelligence, but also its closed network or otherwise indirect involvement in the coup.
On one breadth, the CIA entrusted in the non-friendly political atmosphere in Chile at the time which opposed Allende's government would eventually force him out of office, "should no coup develop."
"[45] This incompetence and non-friendly opposed political atmosphere were a direct economic orchestration by the CIA that made Chile ungovernable, a situation the National Parties aimed to use to their advantage.
As the CIA denies its involvement in the coup, another cable sent from the agency on 8 September classified "Secret" had information on the Chilean Navy time and date to overthrow the government of President Allende.
[34] Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project, argues in his book The Pinochet File[22] that the US was extensively involved and actively "fomented"[22] the 1973 coup.
Joaquin Fermandois criticized Kornbluh's "black and white" and "North American centered conception of world affairs", stating that a variety of internal and external factors also played a role and that a careful reading of the documentary record reveals the CIA was largely "impotent".
[51] Conservative scholar Mark Falcoff alleged that Cuba and the Soviet Union supplied several hundred thousand dollars to the socialist and Marxist factions in the government.
The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who had published several articles on Operation Condor.
She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor.
White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was concerned that the U.S. connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of the 44 year old former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt.
The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense, and Justice Department records released in November 2000 on the nearly 17-year long Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power.
Ray E. Davis, who commanded the U.S. Military Mission in Chile, gave information to the Chilean government about Horman and Teruggi that resulted in their arrest and execution in the days following the coup.
Although they were unable to gather enough intelligence that proved that he gave the order, they received shocking evidence from the Chilean Major, Armando Fernandez, who they convinced to come to the capital to provide them information, that Pinochet was directly involved in covering up the incident.
"[68] A White House press release in November 2000 acknowledged that "actions approved by the U.S. government during this period aggravated political polarization and affected Chile's long tradition of democratic elections"[69] In a 2003 town hall with students, high school student James Doubek asked Secretary of State Colin Powell about the United States support for the coup, to which Powell replied that "it is not a part of American history that we're proud of".
Obama did not respond to requests for an apology but said during a press conference that U.S. relations with Latin America had at times been "extremely rocky," and that people needed to learn from and understand history, but not be trapped by it.
The unveiling of Letelier's commemorative statue came less than two years after the Obama administration had released a "long classified CIA analysis...[that] cited 'convincing evidence that President Pinochet personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder.'"
