Block, Siteadmin, SkipCaptcha, Upload, Automoderated users, edit, protect
4,562
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 263:
Line 263: + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
→The truth about CIA involvement
According to the book, "the CIA was so aware of the eyes on it that in a report from its Directorate of Operations, dated September 1972, it said that 'the temptation to assume a positive role in support of the military coup is great', but that they should restrain themselves, since they would be accused of 'engineering the collapse of the Allende government'".
According to the book, "the CIA was so aware of the eyes on it that in a report from its Directorate of Operations, dated September 1972, it said that 'the temptation to assume a positive role in support of the military coup is great', but that they should restrain themselves, since they would be accused of 'engineering the collapse of the Allende government'".
<ref name=CIA_KGB>{{cite web|url=https://ellibero.cl/actualidad/la-mano-de-la-kgb-y-la-cia-en-el-quiebre-democratico-en-chile/|title=La mano de la KGB y la CIA en el quiebre democrático en Chile|September 11, 2015|language=es|publisher=El Líbero}}</ref>
<ref name=CIA_KGB>{{cite web|url=https://ellibero.cl/actualidad/la-mano-de-la-kgb-y-la-cia-en-el-quiebre-democratico-en-chile/|title=La mano de la KGB y la CIA en el quiebre democrático en Chile|September 11, 2015|language=es|publisher=El Líbero}}</ref>
According to Mark Falcoff: "Great things have been claimed for the Clinton declassifications. Thanks to them, Christopher Hitchens has been able to boast that in his book “I produce [government] documents that plainly show the orchestration of a plot to murder General René Schneider.” Likewise, he remarks, in the suit filed by the general’s family, “every paper for the prosecution is a declassified document of the U.S. government.” In fact, however, the Clinton declassifications are less rich in information than the findings of the Church committee, which was able to examine the documentary record in its unexpurgated form and also to interrogate the participants under oath. Nor do the Clinton declassifications contribute anything particularly useful to the case against Kissinger. Some of them actually corroborate the findings of the Church committee, and, what is even more ironic, support Kissinger’s own version of events as laid out in the relevant volumes of his memoirs.
That version is itself buttressed at points by other information, especially transcripts of Kissinger’s conversations with relevant figures in Washington and elsewhere. Some of these conversations took place by telephone. Records of Kissinger’s telephone exchanges, covering the entire span of his government service, are now in the process of being released—they form, for instance, the primary basis of his new book, Crisis, dealing with the Yom Kippur war and the end of the Vietnam war. All of them have been given by him for inclusion in the Nixon Library. Although the records relating specifically to Chile are not yet in the public domain, they will be before long, and he has kindly let me review them in advance.
First and foremost, these transcripts establish that Chile was not an important part of the then-National Security Adviser’s daily diet. This point is crucial, not least because in the BBC film we are continually being told that Kissinger micromanaged every detail of American foreign policy. While that may have been true for subjects of high geopolitical import, Chile was not one of them. In fact, during September and October 1970—which is to say, between the Chilean election and the congressional vote—the telephone record reveals a Kissinger preoccupied with a full-blown Middle East crisis, Vietnam, a Soviet submarine base in Cuba, the Black September plane hijacking, Nixon’s planned visit to Europe and to the Sixth Fleet, the defense budget, and the Pugwash conference on U.S.-Soviet relations, but with Chile only slightly. Thereafter, there is nothing at all until June 1973, when he and Nixon discuss a failed military revolt against Allende, and then no further references until after Pinochet’s assumption of power with the September 11 coup.
But this is not really surprising. During much of the Allende presidency, Kissinger was in Paris, Moscow, Beijing, or other locales of far greater importance to the U.S. than Santiago. And even when the subject was again broached at the time of the coup, Kissinger was principally concerned with the possible resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew and preparations for his own confirmation hearings as Secretary of State.
This is hardly to say, however, that the telephone documents are uninformative; far from it. In what follows I shall be drawing freely on them as well as on other pertinent sources to reconstruct the true course of events."<ref>[https://www.commentary.org/articles/mark-falcoff/kissinger-chile-the-myth-that-will-not-die/ Kissinger & Chile: The Myth That Will Not Die]</ref>
According to Kyle Orton: "The U.S. actions in 1970 have created confusion, some of it honest and some of it wilful, about the coup that actually did bring down Allende in 1973. Almost invariably when somebody presents a “smoking gun” of U.S. complicity in the 1973 coup, it transpires to be a document or transcript from 1970. Five days after Allende was toppled in September 1973, Kissinger said in a telephone call with Nixon, “We didn’t do it”, and that is the plain truth. The U.S. did not plan the 1973 coup and was not even aware of the plot. The most that can be said is what Kissinger added in that call: that the U.S. “created the conditions as great as possible”. In reality, even this is overstating the case. Chileans acted in 1973 for Chilean reasons in response to conditions created by Chileans, but, whether self-flagellating or boasting, American officials can struggle with the idea events occur in the world without their involvement.
The argument that the U.S. “created the conditions” for the 1973 coup centres on claims the U.S. took steps to damage the Chilean economy—and the evidence adduced consists of documents and statements from U.S. officials in 1970. Ten days after Allende’s election in 1970, Nixon was recorded saying that he would “make the economy scream”. This quotation is infamous in circles where the Chilean coup is the archetype of U.S. Imperial abuses. On 16 October, after the Viaux coup was paused but the general “Track II” policy continued, the CIA headquarters cabled the station in Santiago, “We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end”. Soon after Allende took office in November 1970, Nixon determined that the U.S.’s “public posture” would be “correct but cool, to avoid giving the Allende government a basis on which to rally domestic and international support for consolidation of the regime”, and in the background the U.S. would “seek to maximize pressures on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests.”
This all sounds minatory, but the rhetoric far outstripped the policy. For instance, Nixon wanted to “bring maximum feasible influence to bear in international financial institutions to limit credit or other financing assistance to Chile”. As it turned out, the maximum feasible influence was not much: Chile under Allende received over $100 million ($800 million in today’s money) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“The documentary evidence is … unambiguous”, Falcoff summarises, “the most serious charge that can be levied against the Nixon administration is that it contemplated economic sanctions against Chile at a time when Allende had yet to lay a hand on American investments in the country and was still making payments on Chile’s debts. But even that envisaged policy was never truly implemented.” As just a few examples: in July 1971, Allende expropriated American copper holdings and the Hickenlooper Amendment was not invoked; Chile defaulted on its debts to the U.S. in November 1971, but it did not stop agreed loans being sent; humanitarian aid was never cut off; and U.S. aid to the Chilean military tripled from 1970-73, which considerably assisted Allende in consolidating his regime by relieving pressure on the civilian budget and drawing the military leadership, Prats in particular, closer to being co-opted by the president.
The economic ruin that afflicted Chile by 1973 was a result of Allende’s policies, not U.S. sanctions. Allende came into office at the head of Unidad Popular, a “popular front” coalition that had the Soviets’ “fraternal” Communist Party as one of its leading elements and contained the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), a terrorist-revolutionary outfit devoted to Lenin’s example, one of whose leaders was Allende’s nephew. “Our aim in Marxist socialism, total and scientific”, Allende told a stenographer in 1971, and to that end the paramilitary squads of the parties in his coalition directed the revolutionary workers’ committees (cordones industriales) in often-violent seizures of factories and farms across the country, inevitably bringing the enterprises to a near-halt, collapsing productivity, wages, and foreign investment, while creating a food shortage. The constant harassing of small businesses and other operators made goods Chileans had taken for granted unavailable—not that most people could have easily afforded them by late 1972. The unchecked printing of currency sent inflation through the roof: inflation hit nearly 80% in 1972, reached 350% by 1973, and stood at over 1,000% by August 1973. Chilean truckers went on strike in October 1972, infuriated at the extortionate freight rates they were being charged when they could not even access spare parts, and the strike spread to other sectors, notably shopkeepers, with threats that engineers, doctors, and other professionals would join in. Allende’s effort to dismantle or co-opt the independent trades unions was shown to be seriously incomplete, and the whole economy was virtually paralysed.
The economic disaster was accompanied by escalating political repression. The Soviets maintained regular contact with Allende once he was in power, notably doing this through his old KGB handler Kuznetsov, not the Soviet ambassador. Allende was officially a Soviet confidential contact, not an agent, but he was regularly paid by the Soviets—in just October 1971, he was given $30,000—and Allende did as directed by Moscow. (The details of Allende’s subordination to Moscow were revealed in the Mitrokhin Archive after the Cold War was over, but it was hardly a secret in real-time: Allende identified the Soviet Union as Chile’s “Big Brother” in a speech to the Kremlin in December 1972 and publicly said his views were “identical” to those of the Soviet Communist leaders.) The KGB’s consistent advice was for Allende to rely more heavily on the security apparatus in governing, to bring Soviet “advisers” into the military-intelligence system, and to tighten Chile’s links with Castro’s Cuba. Allende accepted all of these things. It was black-beret Cuban troops and Cuban-trained militiamen from Allende’s Socialist Party (PS) that formed the Praetorian Guards, the “Group of Personal Friends” (GAP or Grupo de Amigos Personales), for Allende and his family."<ref>[https://www.kyleorton.com/p/myth-1973-american-coup-in-chile The Myth of the “American Coup” in Chile]</ref>
==Unknown controversial statements==
==Unknown controversial statements==