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→Military Intervention
The Senate Intelligence Committee under Senator [[Frank Church]] investigated US involvement and exonerated the Nixon administration of any unlawful activity.<ref>[http://www.foia.state.gov/Reports/ChurchReport.asp Church Report. Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973]. United States Senate. 94th Cong. 1st Ses. GPO 63-372. Washington. 1975.</ref><ref>Falcoff, Mark, [http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=10612 ''Kissinger and Chile''], Commentary Magazine, 10 November 2003.</ref><ref>[http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/09/19/us.cia.chile.ap/]</ref><ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch01-01.htm]</ref>
The Senate Intelligence Committee under Senator [[Frank Church]] investigated US involvement and exonerated the Nixon administration of any unlawful activity.<ref>[http://www.foia.state.gov/Reports/ChurchReport.asp Church Report. Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973]. United States Senate. 94th Cong. 1st Ses. GPO 63-372. Washington. 1975.</ref><ref>Falcoff, Mark, [http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=10612 ''Kissinger and Chile''], Commentary Magazine, 10 November 2003.</ref><ref>[http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/09/19/us.cia.chile.ap/]</ref><ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch01-01.htm]</ref>
===The truth about CIA involvement===
So many people refuse to accept that the [[CIA]] had no involvement in the 1973 military intervention, the intervention centers on the killing of General René Schneider in 1970.
There was a nationalist small group called ''Patria y Libertad'', they were definitely financed by CIA. And somehow, they got the idea to kidnap the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Armed Forces, General René Schneider.
He was and a man who was extremely well-respected throughout Chilean society, especially in the military. After the 1970 election, there were calls to ignore the democratic process and prevent Allende from taking power. Gen. Schneider publicly articulated what became known as the Schneider doctrine: The armed forces would always support and protect institutional democratic authority, and would never go against a legal outcome duly passed by Congress or the courts. In other words, Schneider was refusing to stand in the way of an Allende presidency. This enraged Allende's hardest opposition, so ''Patria y Libertad'' came up with the idea of kidnapping Schneider, possibly, at the instigation of the CIA. This has never been very clear.
The kidnapping was botched, Schneider defended himself with his side arm and in the process was killed by the kidnappers. This led to the accession of Carlos Prats to the post of commander-in-chief. It was also deeply traumatic to the Chilean military as a whole. A few senior officers outright blamed the Americans for the Schneider killing. Most took a more nuanced view. But the net effect was the same, no one in the Chilean Armed Forces would have anything to do with the CIA or the people from the US Embassy after this incident. Outcasts from the Chilean military, like Roberto Viaux, or marginal people in Chilean politics, gravitated to US Embassy personnel and the CIA, who gave them money.
But their involvement with the Americans made them even more suspect, and marginal, in Chilean society. Later, the CIA in order to justify itself and show that they had been effective in Chile, elevated these marginal or unimportant people as “key to the successful removal of Allende!” Leftists and historians ran with this notion. But it was just to hide CIA incompetence.
Because of the trauma of the Schneider killing, it’s absurd to think that the Chilean armed forces would cooperate with the US [[Deep State]] for the 1973 military intervention, especially when they didn’t need them to pull it off successfully. It was only after the military intervention, and only out of national economic necessity, that the Military Government got closer to the Americans.
But institutionally, the Chilean military never trusted the Americans, and never allowed themselves to be dependent on them. The American government was never happy with the Pinochet government, because it never gave back the lucrative copper mines that Allende had expropriated.<ref>{{cite web|author=[[Gonzalo Lira]]|url=https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1542742748188606466.html|title=Chilean history thread|date=July 1, 2022}}</ref>
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