The Foreign Service Journal, September 2003

Hinchey, D-N.Y., says that plan involved the kidnapping of Gen. Rene Schneider, the Chilean Army commander. A strong supporter of the Chilean Constitution, Schneider was seen as a major stumbling block for military officers seeking to carry out a coup to prevent Allende from being inaugurated. Kissinger notes that even though the CIA withdrew from the plot, the Chilean military proceeded anyway. But it botched the kidnapping, and Schneider was killed. The Chilean Congress ratified Allende’s election days later, and he was inaugurated on Nov. 3, 1970. A year later, events in neighboring Uruguay provided Latin American radicals additional cause for encouragement. There a leftist candidate, Liber Seregni, appeared to be pos- ing a strong challenge in the Nov. 28, 1971, presidential elec- tions, but finished a distant third. It was not until years later that the fairness of the election was called into question. According to documents released in May 2002 by the National Archive, Pres. Nixon credited Brazil’s military gov- ernment with Seregni’s defeat. “The Brazilians helped rig the Uruguayan election,” Nixon exulted on Dec. 23, 1971, apparently pleased that the possibility of “another Chile” in the region had been averted. Second Thoughts? Perhaps inevitably, when the coup in Chile took place almost two years later, suspicions of American involvement were rampant. Those allegations were revived recently by an unexpected source. On Feb. 19, 2003, a month before the Iraq war, Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the studios of Black Entertainment Television in Washington to address a gathering of young people. He was asked whether the United States had the moral authority to attack Iraq given the U.S. role in “staging a coup” in Chile in 1971. Powell’s answer was surprising. “It is not a part of American history that we’re proud of,” he said, seeming to lend credence to the questioner’s premise. He said reforms instituted since then make it unlikely that the policies of that era will be repeated. In a highly unusual move, the State Department quickly issued a statement that put distance between the department and its top official. The statement asserted that the U.S. gov- ernment “did not instigate the coup that ended Allende’s government in 1973.” The bases for that conclusion, it said, were a 1975 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report overseen by Chairman Frank Church, D-Idaho, and the 2000 Hinchey Report. The State Department statement added that the U.S. government has been “proactive in making documents avail- able to the public so that it might judge for itself the extent of U.S. historical actions toward Chile.” It noted that the declassification project has led to the release of 23,000 docu- ments covering relations with Chile between 1968 and 1991. William D. Rogers, who served under Kissinger as assis- tant secretary of State for Latin America in 1975-76 and maintains a professional relationship with him, heard the broadcast of the Feb. 19 taping and was troubled by it. He was concerned that the remark was reinforcing what he calls “the legend” that the Chile coup was a creation of a Kissinger-led cabal working in league with Chilean military officers opposed to Allende. Even before the State Department prepared its state- ment contradicting Powell, Rogers said he called the depart- ment’s legal office to point out that there was a pending Chile-related lawsuit against the U.S. government and that Powell’s comment could help the plaintiffs. Rogers said he also talked to Kissinger. “I wouldn’t say he was upset. ... I told Henry I think this is bad stuff. It doesn’t help the U.S. legal position,” Rogers said. But more important to Rogers was Powell’s perhaps unwitting role in keeping the Kissinger-as-coup-chieftain notion alive. “Allende’s policies,” Rogers contends, “were quite sufficient to explain the economic decline in the coun- try during his reign, and his administration was not without responsibility in the deterioration of civil society which occurred in Chile in 1972 and 1973. He did not exactly pro- mote democratic institutions and practices, nor was he much of a defender of human rights. But in any event, whatever the U.S. responsibility for the near-chaos in Chile in that fate- ful year, this is scarcely the same as actually inciting the Chilean military to unlimber their weapons and attack La Moneda.” Examining the Record One problem with the State Department’s response to Powell’s Feb. 19 remarks is that it does not seem to square with a Clinton-era statement, issued on Nov. 13, 2000, after the Chile documents were declassified. That statement said, “Actions approved by the U.S. government aggravated polit- ical polarization and affected Chile’s long tradition of demo- cratic elections and respect for constitutional order and the rule of law.” This seems more consistent with Powell’s Feb. 19 remarks than with the State Department’s attempt after- ward to absolve the United States of responsibility. Efforts to obtain an explanation for the differences between the two statements were unsuccessful. Despite the release of State’s records, some researchers remain convinced that the true U.S. role in the events of 30 years ago has never been fully exposed. Peter Kornbluh, a student of Latin American issues whose book, The Pinochet File , is being released in September, says, “The U.S. govern- ment carried out a clear effort to undermine and destabilize Allende’s ability to govern, creating the climate necessary for a coup to take place.” He insists that the U.S. role did not stop there. 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