By Dr George Venturini

Heinz Alfred ‘Henry’ Kissinger obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1954. His interest was on Castelreagh and Metternich – two empire builders. He devoted his life to sublimate them.

In an incendiary, studiedly defamatory book the late Christopher Hitchens described him as “a mediocre and opportunist academic [intent on] becoming an international potentate. The signature qualities were there from the inaugural moment: the sycophancy and the duplicity; the power worship and the absence of scruple; the empty trading of old non-friends for new non-friends. And the distinctive effects were also present: the uncounted and expendable corpses; the official and unofficial lying about the cost; the heavy and pompous pseudo-indignation when unwelcome questions were asked. Kissinger’s global career started as it meant to go on. It debauched the American republic and American democracy, and it levied a hideous toll of casualties on weaker and more vulnerable societies.”

The story is all here: from the martyrdom of Indochina to becoming the real backchannel to Moscow on behalf of his new client: Donald Trump.

Editor’s note: This outstanding series by Dr Venturini is published bi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays). Today we publish Part Eight. Here is the link to Part Seven; Operation Condor.

Three years after destroying democracy by instigating the military coup against Allende in Chile in 1973, Kissinger was in Santiago for a meeting of the Organisation of American States. There he met the Argentine Junta’s foreign minister. Kissinger’s main concern, as reported by the U.S. Ambassador in Buenos Aires, was “how long it would take … to clean up the [terrorist] problem.” Kissinger wanted Argentina to finish its terrorist plan before year end. He gave the Argentines the ‘green light’.

The largest cache of information on Operation Condor thus far was found, as already noted, by sheer accident on 22 December 1992 in Paraguay: the ‘terror archives’.

Material declassified in 2004 showed that Secretary Kissinger was briefed on Condor and its ‘murder operations’ on 5 August 1976, in a 14-page report from Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Harry Shlaudeman. “Internationally, the Latin generals look like our guys.” Shlaudeman noted. And he warned: “We are especially identified with Chile. It cannot do us any good.” The connection was clear, and one of Shlaudeman’s deputy later acknowledged that the State Department was ‘remiss’ in its handling of the case. “We knew fairly early on that the governments of the Southern Cone countries were planning, or at least talking about, some assassinations abroad in the summer of 1976. … Whether if we had gone in, we might have prevented this, I do not know.” he stated in reference to the Letelier/Moffitt bombing. “But we did not.”

A C.I.A. document called Condor “a counter-terrorism organization”, and noted that the Condor countries had a specialised telecommunications system named ‘CondorTel.’ A 1978 cable from the U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, Robert White, to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was published on 6 March 2001 by The New York Times. Ambassador White feared that the U.S. connection to Condor might be publicly revealed at a time when the assassination in the U.S.A. of Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt was being investigated. White cabled that “it would seem advisable to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest.”

Some of the exchange of information included up-date on torture techniques – waterboarding, for example, which was to be made infamous by the Bush Junior Administration, and playing recordings of victims who were being tortured to their families. The existence of such an exchange is another element of evidence suggesting that U.S. military and ‘intelligence’ officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor.

The document which had so much worried Ambassador White was found among 16,000 on the Pinochet regime and its collaboration with the American Administration released on 13 November 2000 by the White House, the Department of State, the C.I.A., the Defense and Justice Departments. The release, which remained selective and still incomplete, was the fourth and final ‘tranche’ of records released under the Clinton Administration’s special Chile Declassification Project.

An article in the Washington Post of 23 March 2000, titled ‘U.S. probe of Pinochet reopened’, returned to the matter of the Letelier assassination.

In May of 1978 the C.I.A.’s National Foreign Assessment Center had issued what purported to be a comprehensive analysis of the Pinochet regime’s responses to being identified as responsible for the most significant act of international terrorism ever committed in the United States – the 21 September 1976 car-bomb assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C. This eight-page assessment, classified secret/sensitive, addressed the impact inside the regime if “proof of Pinochet’s complicity in the Letelier slaying” came to light. At the time, the F.B.I. had identified Pinochet’s secret police, D.I.N.A, as responsible for the crime.

The C.I.A. assessment noted that Pinochet would have a difficult time disassociating himself from D.I.N.A., and its chieftain, Colonel Manuel Contreras. “The former secret police chief is known to have reported directly to the President [Pinochet], who had exclusive responsibility for the organization’s activities.” The report stated that Contreras’ guilt “would be almost certain to implicate Pinochet. … None of the government’s critics and few of its supporters would be willing to swallow claims that Contreras acted without presidential concurrence.”

Under United States pressure, in 1995 Contreras was tried and convicted in Chile. In an affidavit sent to the Chilean Supreme Court in December 1997, he stated that no major D.I.N.A. missions were undertaken without Pinochet’s authorisation.

On 1 February 1999 President Clinton ordered the United States national security agencies to “retrieve and review for declassification documents that shed light on human rights abuses, terrorism, and other acts of political violence in Chile” from 1968-1990. Until then, some 7,500 documents, mostly from the State Department, had been released as part of the Administration’s special ‘Chile Declassification Project.’

In June 1999 the U.S. State Department released thousands of declassified documents showing for the first time that the C.I.A. and the State and Defense Departments were intimately aware of Condor. One Defence Department ‘intelligence’ report, dated 1 October 1976, noted that Latin American military officers boasted about it to their U.S. counterparts. The same report approvingly described Condor’s “joint counterinsurgency operations” which aimed “to eliminate Marxist terrorist activities.”

On 30 June 1999 the National Security Archive, the Center for National Security Studies and Human Rights Watch hailed the release of more than 20,000 pages of U.S. documents on Chile. The records, estimated to total more than 5,300 in number, were declassified pursuant to the 1 February 1999 White House directive.

The Administration’s decision to undertake such a declassification review came in the aftermath of Pinochet’s arrest on 16 October 1998 in London and was prompted by international pressure, requests from Congress, and calls by the families of some of Pinochet’s most famous victims – including those of Charles Horman, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt.

The 30 June’s release of documents was the first ‘tranche’ covering 1973 through 1978, the Pinochet regime’s bloodiest years of repression. Thousands of other records were expected to be released before the end of 1999.

Representatives of the ‘Center’ and of the ‘Watch’, however, expressed serious concern that the C.I.A. had declassified only a fraction of its secret holdings on operations in Chile. The C.I.A., of course, had the most to offer but also the most to hide, commented the director of the Archive. He pointed to the dearth of documentation on the C.I.A.’s known ‘intelligence’ support for  D.I.N.A. and on Operation Condor.

On 8 October 1999 the U.S. Government released additional 1,100 documents on Chile.  Among them was a declassified State Department report on the case of Charles Horman, the American citizen who was killed by the Chilean military in the days following the coup.  This document was released once before in 1980, pursuant to a lawsuit filed by the Horman family.  At that time, significant portions were blacked-out. The version released on that day revealed what was censored: the State Department’s conclusions that the C.I.A. may have had “an unfortunate part” in Horman’s death.

On 30 June 2000 the U.S. Government released hundreds of formerly secret C.I.A., Defense, State, and Justice Departments, and National Security Council records relating to the deaths of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. The murders of Horman and Teruggi were later dramatised in the 1982 Costa-Gravas film Missing. Documents on another American, Boris Weisfiler, who disappeared in Chile in 1985, were also released.

The United States provided material support to the military regime after the coup, although criticising it in public. A document released by the C.I.A. on 19 September 2000, titled ‘CIA activities in Chile’, revealed that the C.I.A. actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet’s officers into paid contacts of the C.I.A. or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses. D.I.N.A. Chief Manuel Contreras was a paid asset from 1975 to 1977. The C.I.A.’s official documents state that, at one time, some members of the ‘intelligence’ community recommended making Contreras into a paid contact because of his closeness to Pinochet; the plan was rejected on Contreras’ poor human rights record, but the single payment was made due to ‘miscommunication’. C.I.A. contacts continued with him long after he dispatched his agents to Washington D.C. to assassinate former Letelier and his 25-year old American assistant, Ronni Moffitt.

The National Security Archive called on the U.S. ‘intelligence’ organisations – National Security Agency, C.I.A., Defense Intelligence Agency and other Defense Department bureaux at the U.S. Southern Command – to divulge in full  their files on communications assistance to the military regimes in the Southern Cone. The Archive is still waiting, but C.I.A. censors continue to dictate what Chileans and Americans alike should know about this shameful history.

Kissinger remains a very much sought after person: as will be seen further on, French Judge Roger Le Loire attempted to question him in May 2001 as a witness for alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor and for possible U.S. knowledge in connection to the ‘disappearance’ of five French citizens in Chile during the Pinochet regime. In July 2001 Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán obtained the right to question him in connection with the assassination of American journalist Charles Horman. The judge’s questions were relayed to Kissinger through diplomatic routes but were not answered. The request prompted a heated reaction from the Bush Junior’s Administration. An official condemned the Chilean Supreme Court decision to send questions to Kissinger, saying the move increased unease about the then proposed International Criminal Court in The Hague. The Administration source said: “It is unjust and ridiculous that a distinguished servant of this country should be harassed by foreign courts in this way. The danger of the ICC is that, one day, US citizens might face arrest abroad and prosecution as a result of such politically motivated antics.” In August 2001 Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba sent a rogatory letter to the U.S. State Department, requesting a deposition by Kissinger to aid the judge’s investigation of Operation Condor; in September 2001 the family of murdered General Schneider filed a civil suit in Washington, D.C. On 11 September 2001, on the anniversary of the Pinochet coup Chilean human rights filed a criminal case against Kissinger, Pinochet, the Argentine dictator Videla and the former Paraguayan dictator Stroessner; late in 2001 the Brazilian Government cancelled an invitation for Kissinger to speak in São Paulo because it could not guarantee his immunity from judicial action. In 2002 Judge Baltasar Garzón of the Spanish Audiencia Nacional sought to interview Kissinger over what the United States Government knew about Operation Condor. In February 2007 a request for the extradition of Kissinger was filed in the Supreme Court of Uruguay on behalf of Bernardo Arnone, a political activist who was kidnapped, tortured and ‘disappeared’ by the dictatorship as supported by Condor and Kissinger.

Hardly any request has been successful because of the protection afforded by all United States presidents and their administrations to Kissinger.

In addition to the work with his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc., Kissinger acts as some kind of ‘private National Security Adviser and Secretary of State’ to some thirty transnational corporations around the world, such as American Express, ASEA Brown Boveri, Atlantic Richfield, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro – the Rome bank which made illegal loans to Saddam Hussein through the now defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

The ‘Bank of Crooks and Criminals International’ – as it was nicknamed – because it was not squeamish in dealing with disreputable clients and funding to criminals and dictators, frequently handled money for U.S.-supported dictators such as Manuel Noriega and Samuel Doe. Other account holders included the Medellin drug Cartel and Abu Nidal. If ‘legal’ funds were hard to come by, the fraudulent B.C.C.I. was ready; illegal sources served, including so-called ‘Arab’ money siphoned through the courtesy of links between Bush Senior, the Saudi royal family and the Bin Laden family.

The C.I.A. held numerous accounts at B.C.C.I. These bank accounts were used for a variety of illegal covert operations, including transfers of money and weapons related to the Iran Contra scandal. During the Reagan Administration the C.I.A. also worked with B.C.C.I. in arming and financing the Afghan mujahideen for the Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the days when Osama Bin Laden was a U.S. hero, using B.C.C.I. to launder proceeds from trafficking heroin grown in the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands, boosting the flow of narcotics to European and U.S. markets. At least two former C.I.A. directors, Richard Helms and William Casey were involved in B.C.C.I. before it folded following revelations that it laundered money for the Medellin drugs Cartel.

For the past thirty years other private benefactors of Kissinger have been Chase Manhattan Bank, Coca-Cola, Fiat, Fluor, Freeport-McMoRan Minerals, Heinz, Hunt Oil, Merck & Co., Shearson Lehman Hutton, Union Carbide, Volvo and Warburg.

In a 1 February 2011 interview Henry Kissinger Nobel Peace Prize 1973 was anxious to praise 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Barack Obama for his foreign policy. He had already said, long before the inauguration of President Obama in January 2009, that Obama’s coming into office could give new impetus to United States foreign policy, partly because “the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world.” Kissinger spoke like an oracle when he said that “[President Obama’s] task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when really a New World Order can be created. It’s a great opportunity … ” and  “[the President]  can help usher in the New World Order.”   But what kind of New World Order ? Friendly Fascism ? Or of the kind which organised Operation Menu – a Nixon-Kissinger innocuous name for the ‘secret’ bombing of Cambodia in early 1970, and the ‘not so secret’ invasion of Laos in 1969-1973?

Among the thousands upon thousands who fell victims of Condor and of the Pinochet regime were not only Chileans – prominent among them Victor Olea Alegria, a Socialist ‘disappeared’ by Manuel Contreras; William Beausire, a Chilean/British businessman abducted at the Buenos Aires Airport and brought to ‘Villa Grimaldi’ a notorious torture centre in Santiago and then ‘disappeared’; the already mentioned Orlando Letelier murdered in Washington with his assistant Ronnie Moffitt; and General Carlos Prats – but also citizens of other South American countries.

Martín Almadá, a Paraguayan educator, was imprisoned in 1974, nearly tortured to death, and kept in prison for about three and a half years. His wife was killed; Sheila Cassidy a British born but Australian educated physician was tortured but survived to tell the story: Sheila Cassidy, Audacity to believe (Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, London 2011); two Cuban diplomats in Argentina, Crecencio Galañega Hernández and Jesús Cejas Arias transited through ‘Orletti’ detention and torture centre in Buenos Aires, were questioned by D.I.N.A. and S.I.D.E., with the knowledge of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. and subsequently ‘disappeared’; Zelmar Michelini and Héctor Gutiérrez Ruiz, former Uruguayan deputies, were assassinated in Buenos Aires; Juan José Torres, former Bolivian president was assassinated in Buenos Aires; Jorge Zaffaroni and Maria Emilia Islas de Zaffaroni ‘disappeared’ in Buenos Aires.

Attempts were made on the life of Andrés Pascal Allende, nephew of Salvador Allende, in Costa Rica; of Carlos Altamirano a Chilean Socialist leader, and of Volodia Teitelboim, a Chilean Communist, in Mexico; and on the life of Emilio Aragonés, the Cuban Ambassador in Buenos Aires.

Former U.S. Congressman Edward Koch became aware in 2001 of relations between 1970s threats on his life and Operation Condor. Christian-Democrat and former President of Chile from 1964 to 1970 Eduardo Frei might have been poisoned in the early 1980s.

Ingrid Dagmar Hagelin, an Argentine/Swedish, was only 17 when she was abducted by a military command former naval officer and then ‘disappeared’. The event generated international outrage which almost led to the breaking of diplomatic relations between Sweden and Argentina.

Four French citizens fell victim of Pinochet. They were:

–  Alfonso Chanfreau, a member of the Movimiento Izquierda Revolucionaria – Revolutionary Left-wing Movement, M.I.R. On 30 July 1974 he was arrested by the D.I.N.A. His wife Erika was also arrested the next morning “so that her husband would talk.” Imprisoned for 15 days at a torture centre in the middle of Santiago, the couple were brutally tortured. Erika was transferred to other detention centres and then expelled to France with their daughter Natalia. Alfonso Chanfreau was transferred on 13 August 1974 to the ‘Villa Grimaldi’ where his legs were crushed with a vehicle, before being taken back to the previous torture centre. He ‘disappeared’ afterwards.

–  Jean-Yves Claudet was a member of M.I.R. in charge of international relations.  Arrested on two occasions in 1973, he remained in detention for one year. On his release he was taken to the French Embassy and put on a flight to France. From France, Claudet helped to set up a M.I.R. cell in Argentina. He went to Buenos Aires on 30 October 1975. He was arrested on 1 November 1975 by agents of the Argentine secret police S.I.D.E., in the framework of Operation Condor. A D.I.N.A. representative in Buenos Aires, in a memorandum addressed to his superiors, subsequently informed them that Jean-Yves Claudet “Ya no existe” – no longer exists.

–  George Klein was an advisor to President Allende. He was by the side of Allende when La Moneda was bombed. On 13 September he was taken away with twenty other persons in a dumper lorry and ‘disappeared’. Evidence collected during the investigation of the case relates that he might have been taken to the Peldehue grounds, where he was killed by machine gun fire.

–  Étienne Pesle was in charge of land reform at the Institute for the Development of Agriculture and Fishing in Temuco. He was arrested there on 12 September, released and rearrested on 19 September 1973. He ‘disappeared’ from that day; it was reported that he had been killed and then dumped into the sea.

Argentine poet Juan Gelman was tortured but his son and daughter were ‘disappeared’. Gelman survived to seek redress from Spanish justice.

Bernardo Leighton, a Chilean Christian Democrat was targeted by Operation Condor. According to C.I.A. documents released by the National Security Archive, in 1975 in Madrid, Italian terrorist connected with ‘Gladio’ Stefano Delle Chiaie met with D.I.N.A. agent Michael Townley and Cuban Virgilio Paz Romero to prepare, with the help of  Franco’s secret police, the murder of Leighton. He and his wife were later severely injured by gunshots while in exile in Rome.

Carmelo Soria, a Spanish born Chilean diplomat and a member of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1970s, was assassinated by D.I.N.A. agents as a part of Operation Condor. Pinochet will be personally indicted in this case.

The international prosecutions of human rights crimes of the military governments of the Southern Cone began in 1976, with cases brought in Spain, Argentina, Italy, and Chile against the leaders of Operation Condor. The foremost example is the Spanish case against Pinochet starting in 1996. Spain charged that the leaders of Chile and Argentina had committed human rights crimes as part of a criminal syndicate which financed their terrorist activities with the national budget, and whose victims included many Spaniards and also tens of thousands of citizens of other countries, who were kidnapped, detained, assassinated or ‘disappeared’ in actions committed in many states of America and Europe. In Argentina the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, formed in 1983, began investigating Condor-related human rights abuses.

Next installment Wednesday: Pinochet: the dictator of death.

By Dr George Venturini

Heinz Alfred ‘Henry’ Kissinger obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1954. His interest was on Castelreagh and Metternich – two empire builders. He devoted his life to sublimate them.

In an incendiary, studiedly defamatory book the late Christopher Hitchens described him as “a mediocre and opportunist academic [intent on] becoming an international potentate. The signature qualities were there from the inaugural moment: the sycophancy and the duplicity; the power worship and the absence of scruple; the empty trading of old non-friends for new non-friends. And the distinctive effects were also present: the uncounted and expendable corpses; the official and unofficial lying about the cost; the heavy and pompous pseudo-indignation when unwelcome questions were asked. Kissinger’s global career started as it meant to go on. It debauched the American republic and American democracy, and it levied a hideous toll of casualties on weaker and more vulnerable societies.”

The story is all here: from the martyrdom of Indochina to becoming the real backchannel to Moscow on behalf of his new client: Donald Trump.

Editor’s note: This outstanding series by Dr Venturini is published bi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays). Today we publish Part Seven. Here is the link to Part Six; War criminal?

During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States put forward a variety of programmes and strategies ranging from funding political campaigns to funding propaganda aimed at laying down the necessary conditions to prevent Allende’s accession to the presidency. Throughout this time the United States successfully impeded the Left-wing parties from gaining power. In 1958 Jorge Alessandri, a nominally independent with support from the Rightist Liberal and Conservative Parties, defeated Allende by nearly 33,500 votes to claim the presidency. His laissez-faire policies, highly endorsed by the United States, were regarded as the solution to the country’s inflation problems. Under recommendations from the United States, Alessandri steadily reduced tariffs from 1959, a policy which caused the Chilean market to be overwhelmed by American products. The government’s policies angered the working class who asked for higher wages, and the repercussions of this massive discontent were felt in the 1961 congressional elections. President Alessandri suffered terrible blows which sent the message that laissez-faire policies were not the desired way. As the grand total of US$ 130 million from the U.S. banking industry, the U.S. Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund and other international organisations accepted by Alessandri illustrates, laissez-faire policies only made Chile more dependent on the United States.

When Allende appeared as a top contender in the 1964 election, the C.I.A. spent three million dollars campaigning against him, in an effort to influence the outcome of the election, mostly through radio and print advertising. The American Administration viewed electing the contender, Eduardo Frei, as a must since they feared that because of Alessandri’s failures the electorate would turn to Allende as the solution. Allende had long been feared by the American Administration because of his warm relation with Cuba and his open criticism of the invasion of the Bay of Pigs. Furthermore, more clandestine aid to Frei was put forward through President Kennedy’s ‘Alliance for Progress’ programme which promised “20 billion in public and private assistance in the country for the next decade.” In direct terms the United States contributed to the campaign with 20 million dollars but they also sent in about 100 people with assigned tasks to prevent Allende’s victory. In order to influence public opinion the C.I.A. also made use of massive propaganda in the radio, television, posters, wall paintings, pamphlets with the goal of connecting ‘Communist atrocities’ with Allende. In the end the mobilisation of the American business sector in Chile, the aid of the C.I.A. and that of the American Government helped Frei’s campaign win with a clear majority over Allende.

Condor was one of the fruits of this continuing effort. The targets were officially armed groups – such as the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria – Revolutionary Left Movement, M.I.R. a Chilean political party and former Left-wing guerrilla organisation founded on 12 October 1965, the Movimiento Peronista Montonero – Montoneros, an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s, the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo – People’s Revolutionary Army, E.R.P. which operated across the borders in several of South American states, the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional – National Liberation Movement, also known as the Tupamaros, an urban guerrilla organisation in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s – but in fact included all kinds of political opponents, their families and others. The Argentine ‘dirty war’, for example, which resulted in approximately 30,000 victims according to most estimates, targeted many trade-unionists, relatives of activists, and others.

Within the Operation Condor the Chilean-destabilisation strategy, presided over in detail by Kissinger, developed into a series of programmes called ‘Track 1’ and ‘Track 2’. They represented two approaches of the U.S. Administration to fighting Allende. ‘Track 1’ was a State Department initiative designed to thwart Allende by subverting Chilean elected officials within the bounds of the Chilean Constitution and excluded the C.I.A. ‘Track 1’ expanded to encompass a number of policies, the ultimate goal of which was to create the conditions which would encourage a coup. ‘Track 2’ was the C.I.A. operation overseen by Kissinger and C.I.A.’s Deputy Director of Plans, Thomas Karamessines. ‘Track 2’ excluded the State Department and Department of Defence. The goal of ‘Track 2’ was to find and support Chilean military officers who would support a coup.

Along the lines of ‘Track 2’, Kissinger prepared ‘Memorandum 93’, dated 9 November 1970, which summarises the presidential decisions regarding changes in U.S. policy towards Chile following Allende’s election. Kissinger sent it to the Secretaries of State and Defense, and to the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness and the Director of Central Intelligence. The memorandum directs U.S. agencies to adopt a “cool” posture towards Allende’s government, in order to prevent his consolidation of power and “limit [his] ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests.” The memorandum states that existing U.S. assistance and investments in Chile should be reduced, and no new commitments undertaken. Furthermore – according to Kissinger’s memorandum – “close relations” should be established and maintained with military leaders throughout Latin America to facilitate coordination of pressure and other opposition efforts.

By 18 November 1970 the C.I.A. was able to present a summary of its efforts between 15 September and 3 November 1970 to prevent Allende’s ratification as president and to foment a coup in Chile – according to both ‘Track 1’ and ‘Track 2’. The summary details the composition of the Task Force, headed by David Atlee Phillips, the team of covert operatives “inserted individually into Chile,” and their contacts with Colonel Paul Winert, the U.S. Army Attaché detailed to the C.I.A. for the operation. It reviews the propaganda operations designed to press President Frei to support “a military coup which would prevent Allende from taking office on 3 November.”

After all manoeuvres failed, and Allende was confirmed, as a declassified memorandum dated 4 December 1970 revealed, in response to a 27 November directive from Kissinger, an inter-agency Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile prepared a set of strategy papers covering a range of possible sanctions and pressures against the new Allende Government. These included a possible diplomatic effort to force Chile to withdraw – and if necessary to be expelled – from the Organisation of American States as well as consultations with other Latin American countries “to promote their sharing of our concern over Chile.” The documents show that the Nixon Administration did engage in an invisible economic blockade against Allende, intervening at the World Bank, at the Inter-American Development Bank, and at the Export-Import Bank to curtail or terminate credits and loans to Chile before Allende had been in office for a month.

The evidence of such ‘policy’ and much criminal activity only came to light with the work and subsequent publication in 1975-1976 of the many-volume Report of the The Church Committee – the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, presided by Senator Frank Church. According to the Report, covert United States involvement in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973 was extensive and continuous. The C.I.A. spent eight million dollars in the three years between 1970 and the military coup in September 1973, with over three million in 1972 alone. Covert C.I.A.’s activity was present in almost every major election in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973, but its actual effect on electoral outcomes is not altogether clear. Chile, more than any of its South American neighbours, had an extensive democratic tradition dating back to the early 1930s, and even before. Because of this, it is difficult to gauge how successful C.I.A. tactics were in swaying voters.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records which shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976. These documents include:

1) Cables written by U.S. Ambassador Korry after Allende’s election, detailing conversations with President Frei on how to block the president-elect from being inaugurated. The cables contain detailed descriptions and opinions on the various political forces in Chile, including the Chilean military, the Christian Democrat Party, and the U.S. business community.

2) C.I.A. memoranda and reports on ‘Project Fubelt’ – the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende’s Government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Kissinger and C.I.A. officials, C.I.A. cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende’s Government.

3) National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts ‘to destabilise’ Chile economically, and isolate Allende’s Government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.

4) State Department and N.S.C. memoranda and cables after the coup, providing evidence of human rights atrocities under the military regime led by General Pinochet.

5) F.B.I. documents on Operation Condor – the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, D.I.N.A. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by D.I.N.A. agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the car-bombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and on the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, amongst other operations.

These documents, and many thousands of other C.I.A., National Security Council and Defense Department records which are still classified secret, remain relevant to ongoing human rights investigations in Chile, Spain and other countries, and unresolved acts of international terrorism conducted by the Chilean secret police. Eventually, international pressure, and concerted use of the U.S. laws on declassification may force more of the still-buried record into the public domain – providing evidence for future judicial, and historical accountability.

All the documents are, expectedly, heavily redacted, including one which was prepared in August-September 1973 by the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency with biographical data on Pinochet. The heavy deletions are likely to conceal Chilean sources providing information on Pinochet, his own contacts with U.S. officials, and commentary on his character, reputation, political orientation and actions during his career.

Within nine months of his confirmation Allende nationalised the copper industry, the banks and other large industries, at the same time beginning land distribution. ‘Social spending’ – for health, education, housing and family assistance – almost doubled immediately. The Allende Government introduced ‘administrative prices’ and increased industrial wages. External boycotts and other adverse measures brought an increase in trade deficit. Exports fell and import grew to almost double. Wage increase and increased spending brought about a serious inflation, and called for protests of the usual malcontent among the people.

Against an attempt to set up a national transportation industry, a group of truckers went on strike, and this in itself caused other strikes. The year after his election Allende was battling a large inflation and a growing black market. By this time the Nixon ‘policy’ was beginning to work. Soon, small-scale businessmen, some professional unions, and student groups joined the strike. Then strikes started to spread. Industrialists sabotaged production. No one could explain how Chilean credit was suddenly cut off in international markets. Loans were suspended. The C.I.A. financed strategic strikes – doctors, bank clerks, a very long truck drivers’ strike. Conservative newspapers conducted a non-stop vicious disinformation campaign.

To appease the rich and the powerful, behind whom the C.I.A. was continuously working, Allende called into the cabinet a Right-wing military: General Carlos Prats, who had succeeded Schneider. Prats was a Right-winger but refused to join a military conspiracy against the President.

At the March 1973 parliamentary elections, Allende’s Popular Unity coalition increased its vote to 43.2 per cent, but by then the informal alliance with the Christian Democrats – the centrists – had ended, and they joined the opposition with the Right-wing National Party. Parliamentary conflict between the legislative and the executive branches paralysed the functions of  government. At this point the C.I.A. intervened more determinately with large financial support for the opposition parties, thus succeeding in generating pressures, exploiting weaknesses, and magnifying obstacles. There were coup rehearsals. A coup failed at the end of June 1973, and was followed by a general strike in July and an even more ominous one at the copper mines.

Much more seriously, on 26 May 1973 the Supreme Court had unanimously denounced the Allende Government disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions, and in August 1973 the Court publicly complained that the Government was unable to enforce the law of the land, and on 22 August the opposition in the Chamber of Deputies accused the Government of unconstitutional acts and called upon the military to enforce constitutional order.

On 24 August 1973 General Prats was involved in a puny but public incident whereupon he felt it necessary to hand in his resignation. Allende at first refused to accept it. Prats was forced by huge adverse publicity to insist, and Allende to accept. His resignation as Army Commander-in-Chief removed the last obstacle for the Chilean coup of 1973. General Augusto Pinochet replaced him as Army Commander-in-Chief the same day. In late August 1973, 100,000 Chilean women congregated at Plaza de la Constitución to vent their rage against the rising cost and increasing shortages of food, but they were dispersed with tear gas.

Early in the morning of 11 September 1973 the Chilean Navy occupied Valparaiso, seized the port and closed down the radio and television stations. The President went immediately to La Moneda, the presidential palace, but by 8.00 a.m. the Army had revolted and closed most radio and television stations in Santiago. The Air Force bombed the other stations.

The President had received incomplete information, and was convinced that only a sector of the Navy conspired against him and his government. President Allende and Defence Minister Orlando Letelier became unable to communicate with military leaders. The heads of the three Forces refused to return the calls from the President. When Letelier arrived at the Ministry of Defence he was arrested – the first prisoner of the coup d’état.

Despite evidence that all branches of the Chilean Armed Forces were involved in the coup, President Allende was so convinced of General Pinochet’s loyalty that, only at 8:30 a.m., when the Armed Forces proclaimed their control of Chile, and that President Allende was deposed, did he appreciate the extent of the coup. Allende refused to resign. He also refused to surrender, even under the threat by the military that they would bomb La Moneda if he resisted.

By 9.00 a.m. the Armed Forces controlled Chile, except for the centre of the capital, Santiago. Colleagues in the Socialist Party offered to Allende refuge in the San Joaquín industrial zone in southern Santiago, from which he could have led a counter-coup. But Allende refused. He refused to entertain advances from some of the military, and in one last potent farewell speech from a remaining free station explained to the nation why he would not resign but keep his oath of loyalty to the Constitution and Chile.

Pinochet ordered an assault on La Moneda, and the Air Force Commander called in a strike by planes. The President’s personal guard met the assault with armed resistance, and four aircraft bombed La Moneda all but destroying it. Resistance lasted until mid-afternoon and Allende suicided. Incidentally, at exactly the same time Kissinger was going through his own Senate confirmation process as Secretary of State. He falsely assured the Foreign Relations Committee that the United States government had played no part in the coup.

About sixty persons lost their life in the initial battle. Thousands would die during the seventeen years of the Pinochet regime.

The worst of the military’s violent purging from society of thousands of Chilean Leftists, both real and suspected – by killing or forced ‘disappearance’ – occurred in the first months after the coup. The military imprisoned 40,000 of their political enemies in the National Stadium of Chile; among the tortured and killed ‘desaparecidos’ were two U.S. citizens: Charles Horman, and Frank Teruggi.

Some 130,000 people were arrested in a three-year period; the dead and ‘disappeared’ numbered thousands in the first months of the military Junta. They included persons from several countries – and many from Spain. Political prisoners were held in stadiums, navy ships, military bases, police stations and remote buildings. They all served as detention and many as torture centres – altogether more than 1,130. Now, some of these former secret detention and torture centres are being transformed into memorials and museums, so Chileans can remember the horrors of military dictatorship – of Nixon, and Kissinger, from 11 September 1973 to 11 March 1990. In that time up to 2,700 persons were ‘disappeared’.

After Pinochet lost the ‘election’ in the 1988 plebiscite, the Rettig Commission – officially ‘The National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation’, named after a former Ambassador of President Allende – in February 1991 submitted its Report on human rights abuses. The Report ascertained that 2,279 persons were killed for political reasons. In 641 cases the Commission could not conclusively determine that the person was killed for political reasons. It found that 508 cases were beyond its mandate, and that in 449 cases no information beyond the name of a ‘disappeared’ person could be determined.

Later the Valech Commission – officially ‘The National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture Commission’ – submitted two Reports: one in November 2004 and another in June 2005. They confirmed the number as less than 3,000 killed and reduced the number of cases of forced disappearance; some 28,000 people were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Testimony gathered by the Commission from almost 36,000 people – some 27,000 relied upon – were to be kept secret for the next fifty years. Therefore, it cannot be used in trials concerning human rights violations, in contrast to the ‘Archives of terror’ found in Paraguay and those concerning Operation Condor.

A document written on 1 October 1973, shortly after the coup, by the U.S. Naval Attaché based in Valparaiso reports positively on events in Chile during the coup. He characterises “September 11” as “our D-Day” and states that “Chile’s coup de etat [sic] was close to perfect.” The report provides details on Chilean military operations during and after the coup, as well as glowing commentary on the character of the new regime.

U.S. Ambassador Davidow was a political adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Chile from 1971 to 1974. In Santiago he was an Embassy insider when the C.I.A. and the D.I.N.A. were organising the assassination gang which later murdered leading Chilean opposition figures, Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires and Orlando Letelier in Washington.

A memorandum dated 16 November 1973, sent by the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs to Secretary of State Kissinger, reports that summary executions in the nineteen days following the coup totalled 320 – more than three times the publicly acknowledged figure. The report also contained information on new economic assistance just authorised by the Nixon Administration. The memorandum also provided a ‘fact sheet on human rights in Chile’, with extensive details on the number of persons arrested between 11.09.1973 and 15.11.1973: 13,500, with the breakdown of persons originally arrested, detained in the National Stadium in Santiago, released, detained, killed while attempting to escape, provided with safe-conducts, departed from Chile and dead.

Two American citizens had been listed as “dead since the coup” by the previous report. They were Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, and they had been executed by the military after the coup. The murders were the subject matter of a telegramme 11 February 1974, written by Ambassador to Chile David Popper in Santiago and directed to Secretary of State Kissinger. The telegramme reported on a meeting between the Assistant Secretary and the Junta Foreign Minister, General Huerta. The Assistant Secretary had raised the matter “in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult.”

A heavily excised 15 April 1975 Intelligence Report from the Defense Attaché in Santiago describes the growth of D.I.N.A., “the sole responsible agency for internal subversive matters.” It is possible to surmise that many of the excised portions provide details about the strained relations between D.I.N.A. and the Chilean Armed Forces because of D.I.N.A.’s exclusive power. The report states that the head of D.I.N.A., Colonel Manuel Contreras, “has reported exclusively to, and received orders only from, President Pinochet.”

The U.S. Government sponsored and collaborated with D.I.N.A. and with the other ‘intelligence’ organisations forming the nucleus of Condor, despite the fact that the military dictatorships were killing and torturing tens of thousands of people. C.I.A. documents show that the C.I.A. had close contact with members of D.I.N.A., and its chief Manuel Contreras. Contreras was retained as a paid C.I.A. contact until 1977, even as his involvement in the Letelier-Moffit assassination was being revealed.

A declassified letter dated 6 June 1975, over the signature of the Legal Affairs Attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, and directed to General Baeza, Director General of Investigations in Santiago provides intelligence obtained through the interrogation of a captured Chilean leftist, Jorge Isaac Fuentes. The document records U.S. collaboration with Chile’s security forces, including the promise of surveillance of subjects inside the United States. Fuentes was detained through Operation Condor. It has been established that the F.B.I. aided Pinochet in capturing Fuentes, who was detained and tortured in Paraguay, then turned over to the Chilean secret police and ‘disappeared.’ Astonishingly, the surveillance of Latin American dissident refugees in the United States was promised to Condor figures by American ‘intelligence’.

A 1 July 1975 memorandum is among the declassified documents. It was written by a senior member of the National Security Council to President Ford’s National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, and conveys concern about wavering U.S. policy towards Chile in light of reports of human rights violations. The memorandum reveals a division within the U.S. Embassy over dealing with Chile, with a number of officials believing that all U.S. military and economic assistance should be terminated until the regime’s human rights record improved. According to the sender, by reducing aid and sending “mixed signals” to the Chileans, the United States could risk precipitating a crisis situation in Chile. The sender concludes his memorandum by recommending that Scowcroft schedule a special meeting in which U.S. agencies can “clarify guidelines for future policy.”

A subsequent memorandum 8 August 1975, by the same senior officer of the National Security Council, calls Scowcroft’s attention to Pinochet’s plans to visit the United States, and his requested meeting with President Ford. The memorandum states that the N.S.C. asked the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, David Popper, to discourage the meeting by telling the Chileans that President Ford’s schedule is full. Fearing that such a visit would “stimulate criticism” and foster embarrassment, the writer suggests an “informal talk” with Chile’s Ambassador Trucco.

Operation Condor was at its peak in 1976. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again, and again had to go underground or into exile. Chilean General Carlos Prats had already been assassinated by the Chilean D.I.N.A. in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former C.I.A. agent Michael Townley. President Gerald Ford publicly admitted in 1974 that the C.I.A. had covertly operated in Chile.

A declassified cable, dated 28 September 1976, and originating from the Legal Affairs Attaché in Buenos Aires, summarises intelligence information provided by a “confidential source abroad” about Operation Condor. The cable reports that Chile is the centre of Operation Condor, and provides information about “special teams” which travel “anywhere in the world … to carry out sanctions up to assassination against terrorists or supporters of terrorist organizations.” Several sections relating to these special teams have been excised. The cable suggests that the assassination of the Chilean Ambassador to the United States, Orlando Letelier, may have been carried out as an action of Operation Condor.

A long document dated 21 January 1982 provides a summary of information concerning D.I.N.A., which in late 1977 had been renamed Centro Nacional de Informaciones – National Information Centre, C.N.I. This report includes information not directly provided to the F.B.I. by Michael Townley, the D.I.N.A. agent responsible for the assassination of Letelier, but drawn from analysis of his correspondence with his D.I.N.A. ‘handler’; details about meetings between Pinochet and neo-Fascist Italian terrorists and spies, codenames and activities of D.I.N.A. personnel, collaboration between D.I.N.A. and anti-Castro Cubans; the creation of a fake terrorist organisation to take the blame for a D.I.N.A. kidnapping in Argentina; D.I.N.A. involvement in relations between Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and Townley’s fear that information about kidnappings and assassinations of prominent critics of Pinochet would somehow be traced back to him.

From 1976 onwards, D.I.N.A. and its Argentine counterpart, Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado (S.I.D.E.), were Condor’s frontline troops. The infamous ‘death flights’, theorised in Argentina by Luis María Mendía – which had already been used during the Algerian war of 1954–1962 by French forces – were widely employed, in order to make the corpses, and therefore evidence, disappear.

Next installment Saturday: The Bank of Crooks.

By Dr George Venturini

Heinz Alfred ‘Henry’ Kissinger obtained a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1954. His interest was on Castelreagh and Metternich – two empire builders. He devoted his life to sublimate them.

In an incendiary, studiedly defamatory book the late Christopher Hitchens described him as “a mediocre and opportunist academic [intent on] becoming an international potentate. The signature qualities were there from the inaugural moment: the sycophancy and the duplicity; the power worship and the absence of scruple; the empty trading of old non-friends for new non-friends. And the distinctive effects were also present: the uncounted and expendable corpses; the official and unofficial lying about the cost; the heavy and pompous pseudo-indignation when unwelcome questions were asked. Kissinger’s global career started as it meant to go on. It debauched the American republic and American democracy, and it levied a hideous toll of casualties on weaker and more vulnerable societies.”

The story is all here: from the martyrdom of Indochina to becoming the real backchannel to Moscow on behalf of his new client: Donald Trump.

Editor’s note: This outstanding series by Dr Venturini is published bi-weekly (Wednesdays and Saturdays). Today we publish Part Six. Here is the link to Part Five; Madman Diplomacy.

War criminal?

Henry Kissinger, adviser to the Rockefellers since 1954, supporter of Democrat candidate Hubert H. Humphrey early in 1968, promptly switched to Republican candidate Richard Milhous Nixon, whose  National Security Advisor he became on 20 January 1969, remaining in that position – after Nixon’s resignation – to President Ford until 3 November 1975. Kissinger was Secretary of State between 22 September 1973 and 20 January 1977.

This period – January 1969 to January 1977 – covers three ‘adventures’: Chile, East Timor (now Timor-Leste), and Argentina. Somewhere in between those dates is the Royal Ambush of the Whitlam Government in November 1975. This should be dealt with in a separate work for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that a case which will decide whether the correspondence between the Governor-General of Australia and Queen Elizabeth II is of a private nature, or should be regarded as subtracted from public eyes. The dispute is still, by initiative of professor Jenny Hocking and friends before the Federal Court of Australia.

Incidentally, the correspondence may reveal what might have been the connection between the Governor-General – a well-known ‘Intelligence services’ asset and a special ‘Task Force 157’, a secret U.S. Navy ops team, directed by Theodore George ‘Ted’ Shackley, Jr., which is suspected of being involved in the Ambush through persons of the Liberal and National parties.

Shackley, an American C.I.A. officer was involved in many important and controversial CIA operations during the 1960s and 1970s. In the early 1960s Shackley was ‘station chief’ in Miami, during the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as of the Cuban Project – also known as Operation Mongoose, that he directed. He became the director of the ‘Phoenix Program’ during the Vietnam war – responsible for the assassination of some 40,000 ‘suspected Communists’. He was also the ‘station chief’ in Laos between 1966–1968, and ‘station chief’ in Saigon from 1968 through February 1972. In 1976 he was appointed Associate Deputy Director for Operations, in charge of the C.I.A.’s worldwide covert operations, the so-called ‘black ops’.

There are plentiful indicia that Task Force 157 was almost a personal tool of Kissinger’s power.

Chile

The first 9/11 occurred in 1973 in Santiago, Chile and places nearby. President Richard Milhous Nixon and Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger were the instigators, General Augusto Pinochet simply the executioner.

The United States has been interfering with Chile since the arrival of Joel Roberts Poinsett as ‘special agent’ in 1811. The story of the first 9/11 began, most likely, on 15 September 1970 when Nixon and his consiglieri: Richard Helms, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Kissinger, National Security Adviser were discussing a possible C.I.A. covert operation in Chile.

Media sources confirmed that Nixon had been nearly beside himself with rage at the thought that ‘Marxist’ Salvador Allende might win the 1970 presidential election in Chile. The very name of Allende was anathema to Nixon. He had been personally beholden to the president of Pepsi Cola from the moment he had received that corporation’s account while a young lawyer with John Mitchell’s firm in New York. In time Mitchell would share with Nixon the fate of Watergate and other crimes. But, after the ‘Watergate’ affairs, only Mitchell ended up in gaol for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury.

Pepsi Cola, along with Chase Manhattan Bank, International Telephone & Telegraph and many other corporations, but above all Anaconda Copper Mining Co. and Kennecott Copper Co., had huge investments in Chile. It is estimated that in the early seventies those two major mining corporations alone controlled between seven and twenty per cent of Chile’s Gross Domestic Product.

In 1970 Allende, who had failed in the presidential elections of 1964, ran again. On 4 September 1970 he obtained 36.2 per cent of votes, followed by former President Alessandri with 34.9 per cent, with 27.8 per cent going to Tomic, the third candidate.

According to the Chilean Constitution then in force, if no presidential candidate obtained a majority of the popular vote, Congress would choose one of the two candidates with the highest number of votes as the winner. Negotiations were actively being conducted during the following month and only on 24 October was Allende confirmed by Congress. He assumed the presidency on 3 November 1970.

A series of eight cables, dated between 5 and 22 September 1970 declassified in the late 1990s and now available at the National Security Archive, located within the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., written by the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, records the reaction and activities of the Embassy after the election of Allende’s Popular Unity coalition. Known as ‘Korrygrams,’ the reports contain some of the most candid, and at times undiplomatic, opinions and observations ever offered by a U.S. Ambassador, until WikiLeaks arrived on the world’s scene. With titles such as ‘No Hope for Chile’ and ‘Some Hope for Chile’, Korry provides extensive details about political efforts to block Allende’s ratification by the Chilean Congress. The cables report on the activities of Chile’s political institutions in response to Allende’s election and provide Ambassador Korry’s explicit assessments of the character of key Chilean leaders, particularly the outgoing President, Eduardo Frei.

On 5 November 1970, as it appears in another declassified cable, Richard Helms, the C.I.A. Director provided a briefing for the 6 November 1970 National Security Council on the situation in Chile, telling Nixon exactly what he wanted to hear: “Mr. President, Salvador Allende, the Chilean Marxist, has now taken office as President in that country with virtually no significant opposition to hold him in check, and with a cabinet dominated by the Communists and his own even more extreme Socialist Party.” Apart from the obvious – the name, not a word of that was true.

The briefing contains details on a failed coup attempt on 22 October – but does not acknowledge a C.I.A. role in the assassination of General René Schneider. Helms also assessed Allende’s “tenacious” character and Soviet policy towards Chile. Despite the presence of Communists in cabinet, ‘Intelligence’ suggested that Chile’s Socialists – as he informed Council members – “will exercise restraint in promoting closer ties with Russia.”

Nixon had ordered the C.I.A. to prevent Allende’s election at all cost. He had explicitly told Richard Helms “to get rid of him”, referring to Allende.

At the time, the United States was still embroiled in Vietnam. The ‘parallel government’ of the C.I.A. was running a plan denominated Phoenix – a covert action programme which had been established in 1967 and would continued until 1971, at least. The C.I.A., the U.S. Army and the Saigon police, as well as various other ‘intelligence’ organisations were seeking to identify and destroy Viet Cong leadership cadres in the south of Vietnam. Phoenix’ activities included ‘intelligence’ collection, paramilitary operations, and psychological warfare. Phoenix became infamous for the capture or killing of nearly 40,000 suspected Communists. The programme was run by William Colby, who would ultimately succeed Helms, but at the time had the cover role as Director of Civil Operations and Rural Development Support for the Agency for International Development.

Nixon’s policy for the whole of Latin America was one early ‘war on terror’. At the time ‘war on terror’ was just another pretext for the pillage of Latin America by the U.S. Government and its favoured multinational corporations with the assistance of the American Administration. The obsession then was “to prevent another Cuba.” Nixon simply could not tolerate – as he said – “that bastard Allende.” Such animosity was probably displayed for the benefit of clients-at-large. Chile had the largest copper reserves in the world and it was suspected that Allende was about to nationalise the industry.

When preventing Allende’s election failed, the C.I.A. was instructed to destabilise the government.

A meeting of 15 September 1970, ten days after the narrow election of Allende, was to become crucial. Probably determinant to Nixon’s order to Helms to mount a full-scale operation against Allende’s prospective new government – including, as Helms’s notes of the meeting reflect, “to make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him” – was the advice given by Kissinger in his famous expression of contempt for the democratic play: “I do not see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

That was no isolated expression of Kissinger’s Realpolitik. The minutes of a secret 1975 meeting of the National Security Council attended by President Ford reveal Kissinger grumbling: “It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination.”

A total lack of any moral judgment remains the mark of such cynical Realpolitik. The New York Times reported on 16 December 2010 that, according to recently released tapes of Nixon at the White House, Kissinger was heard telling Nixon in 1973 that helping Soviet Jews emigrate and thus escape oppression by a totalitarian regime – a huge issue at the time – was “not an  objective of American foreign policy.”  “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” he added, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” Genocide was “not an American concern,” he said, but “maybe a humanitarian concern.”

As National Security Adviser and/or Secretary of State, or Assistant to the President, or simply as consigliere, Kissinger’s opinion would be sought by successive presidents: Carter, Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton, Bush Junior, Obama – perhaps even Trump.

Of course, at that meeting of 15 September 1970, Kissinger knew full well that Chile had not ‘gone Communist’. Probably so did Nixon; it certainly was within Helms’ knowledge.

Allende was a cultivated man, by all definitions a ‘bourgeois’ even though he was known as the charismatic founder of the Socialist Party. Allende in fact was a moderate, who wanted to develop “a peaceful Chilean way towards socialism.” He had been elected by workers, peasants and the marginalised, urban lower classes. Educated urban youth celebrated the “socialism of red wine and empanadas” – stuffed pastry.

But, in the debased language which had taken place with Nixon in the White House and in the ordinary jargon which would most assuredly reach a gangster such as Nixon, Kissinger did not hesitate to use such language. It was the advice of the consigliere to the capo-mafia. The advice was reflected in the handwritten notes taken by Helms and preserved in those declassified cables. Taken in the presence of Attorney General John Mitchell and Kissinger, the notes read: “l in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!; worth spending; not concerned; no involvement of embassy; $10,000,000 available, more if necessary; full-time job – best men we have; game plan; make the economy scream; 48 hours for plan of action.” [Emphasis added]

Minutes of 16 September 1970 record the first meeting between Director Helms and several high agency officials on covert operations – code-named ‘Fubelt’ – against Allende. A special task force under the supervision of C.I.A. Deputy Director of Plans, Thomas Karamessines, was established, headed by veteran agent David Atlee Phillips. The memorandum noted that the C.I.A. must prepare an action plan for National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger within 48 hours.

A ‘memorandum of conversation’ of a 15 October 1970 meeting, held at the White House between Kissinger, Karamessines and Alexander Haig, Deputy National Security Adviser and later President Reagan’s Secretary of State, records a discussion on promoting a coup in Chile known as ‘Track 2’ of covert operations to block Allende. The three conspirators discussed the possibility that the plot of one Chilean retired General, Roberto Viaux, might fail “with unfortunate repercussions for U.S. objectives.” Kissinger ordered the C.I.A. “to continue keeping the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight.”

The day after such meeting, 16 October 1970, Karamessines passed Kissinger’s order on to the C.I.A. station chief in Santiago, Henry Hecksher. The secret cable said, at the very opening: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.” [Emphasis added]  The “operating guidance” makes it clear that these operations were to be conducted so as to hide the ‘American hand’,  and that the C.I.A. was to ignore any orders to the contrary from Ambassador Korry who had not been informed of ‘Track 2’ operations.

Dated 3 November 1970 is the notice of a meeting for which Kissinger had a comprehensive secret/sensitive options paper (NSSM 97) prepared. The paper was to be submitted to the offices of the Vice President, of the Secretaries of State and Defense, and of the Director of Emergency Preparedness. It was also sent in copy to the Attorney General, the Under Secretary of State, the Chairman, Joint Chief of Staff, and the Director of Central Intelligence. Precisely on the day of Allende’s inauguration, it laid out U.S. objectives, interests and potential policy towards Chile. U.S. interests were defined as preventing Chile from falling under Communist control and preventing the rest of Latin America from following Chile “as a model.” Option C – maintaining an “outwardly cool posture” while working behind the scenes to undermine the Allende Government through economic pressures and diplomatic isolation – had been chosen by Nixon. C.I.A. operations and options were not included in the document.

Three cables dated 18 October 1970 passed between the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, VA., and the C.I.A. Station in Santiago. They dealt with the secret shipment of weapons and ammunition for use in a plot to kidnap the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, General René Schneider. “Neutralizing” Schneider was a key prerequisite for a military coup; he opposed any intervention by the armed forces to block Allende’s constitutional election. The C.I.A. supplied a group of Chilean officers led by General Camilo Valenzuela with ‘sterile’ – that is untraceable – weapons for the operation which was to be blamed on Allende supporters and thus prompt a military takeover.

Between the presidential elections and Congress confirmation of Allende two events took place in Chile. One was the kidnapping and assassination on 22-25 October of General Schneider. Schneider was a defender of the ‘constitutionalist’ doctrine that the Army’s role is exclusively professional, its mission being to protect the country’s sovereignty and not to interfere in politics. He was shot resisting the violence by another group led by General Roberto Viaux, at the head of a crypto-Nazi gang of generals and admirals, who had been paid US$ 50,000 each. Once hospitalised, Schneider died of his wounds on 25 October. Viaux’s kidnapping plan had been supported by the C.I.A., although Kissinger later claimed to have ordered the plans postponed at the last moment.

Correctly Christopher Hitchens, in the book by the provocative title The trial of Henry Kissinger, written in incendiary – studiedly defamatory – words, summed up the substance of the combined reading of those cables, and particularly of the ‘memorandum of conversation’ 15 October 1970: “Here one must pause for a recapitulation. An unelected official in the United States is meeting with others, without the knowledge or authorization of Congress, to plan the kidnapping of a constitution-minded senior officer in a democratic country with which the United States is not at war, and with which it maintains cordial diplomatic relations. The minutes of the meetings may have an official look to them (though they were hidden from the light of day for long enough) but what we are reviewing is a “hit” – a bit of state-supported terrorism.” (C. Hitchens, The trial of Henry Kissinger (Text, Melbourne 2001, at 57).

The other event was the appointment by the outgoing President Frei of General Carlos Prats as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to replace General Schneider.

Instead of a coup, the military and the country rallied behind Allende’s ratification by Chile’s Congress on 24 October.

The United States determination to destroy opposition to its domination in Latin America became part of a much broader plan which took the name of Operación Cóndor – Operation Condor, also known as Plan Cóndor.

The murder of General Schneider was just one of the crimes of Operation Condor; by then the Plan was well on its way.

In 1975 Bush Senior – formerly Nixon’s Ambassador to the United Nations, and Ford’s Chief Liaison Officer to China – was about to become C.I.A. Director. In that capacity he further developed Operation Condor. By 1975 Bush Senior was head of the C.I.A. and working together with Kissinger and Vernon Walters, later a key adviser to Reagan, to develop Plan Condor.

Operación Cóndor was a campaign of political repression involving ‘intelligence’ operations and assassination which started in 1968 and was officially implemented in 1975 by the Right-wing dictatorships of the ‘Southern Cone’ of South America. The programme aimed to eradicate alleged Socialist and Communist influence and ideas and to control active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments’ neoliberal economic policies, which sought to reverse the economic policies of the previous era.

There being no dead bodies, the conspirators could deny everything. Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of murders directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. It is estimated that a minimum of 60,000 murders can be attributed to Condor, possibly more. Victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, students and teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerillas – even some priests and nuns. Condor’s key members were the governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. The United States government provided technical support and supplied military aid to the participants during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. Such support was frequently routed through the Central Intelligence Agency. Ecuador and Peru later joined the operation in more peripheral roles. (Luiz Cláudio Cunha. Operação Condor. O seqüestro dos uruguaios. Uma reportagem dos tempos da ditadura – Operation Condor. The kidnapping of the Uruguayans. A story of the days of the dictatorship, L&PM, Editores, Porto Alegre 2008;  John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The New Press, New York 2004) and  Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (The New Press, New York 2013). In plain language, Condor was a high-level international criminal organisation in a campaign of political repression involving ‘intelligence’ operations and consequent assassination. In a 1999 book, titled Los años del lobo: Operación Cóndor – The years of the wolf:  Operation Condor – Stella Calloni, an Argentine investigative journalist spoke of anticipated revelations which pointed to the implication of Condor’s agents in the deaths of presidents Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jaime Roldós of Ecuador in 1981, who were “considered bothersome to the empire and dictatorships in secret documents that were investigated,” and possibly in the death of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. (Stella Calloni, Los años del lobo: Operación Cóndor – The years of the wolf:  Operation Condor, Editorial Ciencias Sociales, La Habana 1999, 2006).

The Grand Master, leader and adviser of such a syndicate was none other than Dr. Henry Kissinger.

On 25 November 1975 leaders of the ‘military intelligence’ services of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay met with Manuel Contreras, chief of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional – National Intelligence Directorate, D.I.N.A., which was Pinochet’s secret police.  They officially set up the Plan Condor. However, cooperation between various security services, in the aim of “eliminating Marxist subversion”, previously existed informally before that meeting and certainly before the Pinochet’s coup d’état. For example, during the Tenth Conference of American Armies held in Caracas on 3 September 1973, Brazilian General Breno Borges Fortes, head of the Brazilian Army, proposed to “extend the exchange of information” between various services in order to “struggle against subversion.” Not long after the Pinochet coup, in March 1974, representatives of the police forces of Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay met with Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine Federal Police and co-founder of the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina – Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, commonly known as Triple A, which was in fact a death squad, to implement cooperation guidelines in order to destroy the ‘subversive’ threat represented by the presence of thousands of political exiles in Argentina. In August 1974 the corpses of the first victims of Condor, Bolivian refugees, were found in rubbish dumps in Buenos Aires. The D.I.N.A. entered into contact even with Croatian terrorists, Italian neo-Fascists and the Shah’s Savak to locate and assassinate dissidents.

As far as the United States is concerned, and despite the fact that Operation Condor was promoted and formalised in 1975, there is no doubt as to the commitment of several American Administrations ‘to stop Chile from going like Cuba’. The United States provided key organisational, financial and technical assistance to the Operation. The commitment was total and the purpose quite clear from the beginning: according to a 1976 F.B.I. cable sent from Buenos Aires, Condor’s ‘operatives’ were “to travel anywhere in the world … to assassinate so-called [Leftists, Communists, subversives and Marxists].”

By sheer accident, in December 1992, a human-rights activist and a judge who were looking for files on a former prisoner at a police station in Asunción, Paraguay, would come upon archives describing the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay – Operation Condor. The soon to be known as ‘Archivos del terror – terror archives’ listed 50,000 people murdered, 30,000 people ‘disappeared’ and 400,000 people imprisoned.  In the archives there were official requests to track suspects to and from the U.S. Embassy, the C.I.A., and the F.B.I. The C.I.A. provided lists of suspects and other intelligence information to the military states. The F.B.I. also searched for individuals wanted by D.I.N.A. in the United States in 1975.

Next installment Wednesday: Operation Condor