CHILE 1973

THE CLAIM

That the United States worked for three years to destabilise and remove an elected Chilean government, and that it bears responsibility for the 1973 coup and what followed.

THE THEORY, AS ITS PROPONENTS TELL IT

The covert action is confirmed in extraordinary detail, and the argument concerns the final step.

After Allende's 1970 election, Nixon instructed Richard Helms to prevent him taking office. Helms's handwritten notes from that meeting survive and include the phrases make the economy scream and not concerned risks involved. This produced Track II, a covert effort run outside normal channels and concealed from the American ambassador.

Track II included encouraging a military coup. In the course of it, plotters supported by the CIA kidnapped General René Schneider, the army commander who opposed intervention, and killed him. The Agency had supplied weapons to a related group, though it maintained the specific group that acted was not the one it armed.

Over the following three years the United States funded opposition media including El Mercurio, supported strikes, and worked to obstruct international credit. Allende was overthrown in September 1973 and died during the coup; Pinochet's government then killed or disappeared thousands.

WHAT IS KNOWN

The Church Committee's 1975 report on covert action in Chile documents the funding, the propaganda operations and Track II. The 2000 Hinchey Report added further detail.

Helms's notes are genuine and are in the public record.

The Schneider killing and the American connection to the plotters are established, and the United States settled a civil claim brought by the Schneider family without admitting liability.

What is not established is direct American operational involvement in the 1973 coup itself. The declassified record shows Washington knew it was coming, welcomed it, and had spent three years creating the conditions, and does not show it planning or ordering the event.

EVIDENCE FOR

• Helms's contemporaneous handwritten notes of the presidential instruction.
• Church Committee findings on Track II, including the concealment from the ambassador.
• Documented funding of opposition media and organisations over three years.
• The Schneider assassination and the American supply of weapons to plotters.

EVIDENCE AGAINST (THE STRONGEST READING)

• No released document shows the United States planning or ordering the September 1973 coup.
• Chile's internal crisis was severe and had domestic causes, including hyperinflation and a polarised congress, that were not manufactured abroad.
• Track II failed in 1970. The 1973 coup was a Chilean military action three years later.

ASSESSMENT

Confirmed as to a sustained covert campaign against an elected government, and deliberately not asserted beyond that. The distinction this office draws is between creating the conditions and pulling the trigger, and the record supports the first unambiguously. It is one of the few files where a president's own instruction survives in the notes of the man he gave it to, which removes any need to infer intent. Compare OSA-052 and OSA-053, where the Agency ran the operation end to end and said so.

WHAT WOULD CHANGE THE GRADE

• CONFIRMED as a sustained covert campaign: Helms's contemporaneous handwritten notes of Nixon's instruction survive, including make the economy scream, and the Church Committee documented Track II, the media funding and the concealment from the American ambassador.
• Established separately: the killing of General René Schneider by plotters the CIA had supported, and a civil settlement with his family without admission of liability.
• Not established, and deliberately not asserted here: direct American operational involvement in the September 1973 coup itself. The record shows Washington created the conditions, knew it was coming and welcomed it. It does not show Washington ordering it.

FURTHER READING

• 1973 Chilean coup · Wikipedia
• Church Committee, Covert Action in Chile 1963 to 1973 (1975)
• Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File (2003)