The 53-Year Anniversary of a Coup

Seymour Hersh wrote, “By the mid-1960s Chile had become widely known in the American intelligence services as one of the CIA’s outstanding success stories. The Agency had managed to penetrate all elements of Chilean government, politics, and society.”

The CIA, under orders from Washington, infiltrated all elements of Chile and opened up the country to plunder by US corporations. In the 1960s, “80 percent of [Chile’s] production was in the hands of large corporations mostly controlled by U. S. firms.”

In 1970, Salvador Allende ran for President and threatened US business control of Chile.

On September 4, 1970, Allende won the election.

On September 15, 1970, President Richard Nixon “ordered the CIA to foment a military coup in Chile,” according to Peter Kornbluh.

President Nixon ordered the CIA “to make the economy scream' in Chile, toprevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.’”

The Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird concurred. Laird said, “We have to do everything we can to hurt [Allende] and bring him down.”
Doing everything to hurt Allende included the recommendation by the US

Ambassador to Chile. Edward M. Korry said, “Once Allende comes to power, we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.”

Kornbluh wrote, “Within days of Nixon’s September 15 directive, CIA headquarters began transmitting instructions for the ‘creation of coup climate’ through ‘economic warfare,’ ‘political warfare’ and ‘psychological warfare.’”

Yet, the “CIA-backed coup plot [in Chile] in October 1970” failed to overthrow Allende.

Washington decided to increase its covert efforts to foment a coup in Chile.

The Economic Times wrote, “William Colby, CIA director, later testified that the [CIA] had spent eight million dollars between 1970 and 1973 to ‘destabilise’ Allende’s government.”

According to Kornbluh, between 1970 and 1973, the Nixon administration engaged “in an invisible economic blockade against Allende.”

The National Security Archive wrote that U.S. officials authorized a directive to “manipulate the international market value of Chile’s main export, copper, to further hurt the Chilean economy.”

The economic warfare and creation of the coup climate led directly to the Pinochet coup on September 11, 1973.

Pinochet used the weapons, intelligence, and support the CIA had provided between 1970 and 1973 to overthrow Allende.

Washington supported their friend, the dictator Pinochet, with ample military and economic aid for 17 years. Kornbluh wrote, “Even as reports of mass arrests, summary executions… widespread torture, and disappearances flooded the media,” the Nixon White House “opened the floodgates of economic and military support to the new [dictatorship].”

Under Pinochet, Resumen LatinoAmericano wrote that “Thousands of people were persecuted, executed, disappeared, imprisoned, tortured and expelled from the country. Entire families were broken and social, union, political and cultural organizations were destroyed and persecuted.”

The coup on September 11th, 1973, still affects Chile 53 years later.
Washington’s support for the Pinochet dictatorship established on September 11th, still affects Chile.

Yet, last week, US mass media remained silent about U.S. imperialism in Chile.

-Anton Porcari