HOW 20 CHILEANS OVERT[] FOR THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000100330001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2004
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: February 19, 1979
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2004/10/28 : CIA-RDP88-013
~_ i. cLE A.EPEA:CED INQUIRY MAGAZINE
ON YAGE f ? Z0 19 February 1979
A small group of Chilean ppropagand
ran a sophisticated press cammaigy
Now they are running the
_ LL i
portions of. a Senate report,
several members of the current
Chilean government worked directly
for the CIA in the campaign to over-
throw Salvador Allende. One of them,
Chile's current foreign minister, Her-
nAn Cubillos, was for several years a -
"principal" agent of them. That rev'
elation came in a closed hearing on
October 23, 1978, in the trial of former
rrr official Robert Berrellez. Berrellez
was charged with having committed.
perjury during hearings in 1973 of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
into attempts by rrr and the CIA to
block the election of Salvador Allende
as president of Chile. The leak was
part of a defense effort to convince the
Department of Justice to drop the case
rather than risk further disclosures of
"national security" information in
court. -
Berrellez was threatening to make
public the fact-suppressed at the
CIA's request from the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee's report Covert Action
in Chile 1965E-'1974--that 20 leading
Chileans, many now in the govern-
ment, had been members of a ciA-..
financed think tank, the Institute of
General Studies. CIA funding for Ics-
began in 1971 and continued after the
coup-at least until 1974. Members of
the ICs were not simply CIA contacts:
They were CIA agents, a counterelite
that the cm backed to replace the Al-
lende government. After the coup,
with the military primarily concerned
with internal security, ICs members
largely took over the administration of
the country.
The ICs has been de ibed b e of
its U.S. contacts, :err official Harold
Henrix, as "some propagandists work-
ing again on radio and television"; and
by its British contact, Robert Moss,
.as "the nerve center of political oppo-
sition to Marxism." The classified ver-
sion of the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee's report on the CIA in Chile
echoes Moss's assessment: "The Insti-
tute of General Studies became the
brain center of all groups opposed to
Allende Government [sic]."
The ICs organization grew out of 'a
coordinated 1970 media campaign.
against Allende's election. At the cen-
ter of this effort were the top executives
of Chile's leading newspaper, El Mer-
curio, and of the magazines Portada and
Que Pasa. This media campaign soon
meshed with a CIA coup attempt code-
named Track n, whose objective, ac-
cording to a CIA cable, was to "[c]reate
a coup climate by propaganda, dis-
information, and terrorist activities in-
tended to provoke: the left to give a
.pretext for a coup." Luis Maira, a
Christian Democratic party deputy,
wrote of the ICs propaganda campaign
to unseat Allende: "Their effort was
based on a cynical belief that huge
sums of money spent in a giant pub-
licity apparatus could accomplish any-
thing." Three years later Maira. was
on the junta's "10 most wanted" list,
and the ICs was running Chile. .
.. But the coup did not succeed in
1970, because the opposition groups
did not have the wi:il, the organization;'.
or the technical know-how to pull one
off. Allende won the election and many
IGS members left Chile, apparently
taken in by their own scare campaign
against the leader of the Popular Unity
faction. The director of `ICs, Pablo
Baraona Urzua, fled to Paraguay;
Cristian Zegers, who headed the CIA-
funded Andalien ad agency, left for
Venezuela; Enrique Campos Menen-
dez settled in Madrid; Marcos Cha-
mudes, editor of s'xc, ran across the
border to.Mendoza, Argentina; and
Carlos Urenda Zcgers, an attorney for
El fercurio, went all the way toAustra-
lia As the Senate Intelligence Cotn-
mittee report observes, "When Al
lende took office, little was left of the
CIA-funded propaganda apparatus."
UT THERE WERE A FEW
intransigents, including CIA
agent David Phillips, who re-
fused to give up. Phillips took the mat-
ter of Allende's victory personally. He
had been recruited into the agency
back in 1952 while working as ajour-
nalist in Chile. Phillips's children were
:.Chilean citizens. He had helped de-
feat Allende three times already and
was not about to throw in the towel,
especially now that he was the CIA's
director of covert operations for the
Western hemisphere.
Phillips had' long been close to El
Mercurio publisher Agustin Edwards, a
reliable friend of the CIA. Phillips's
South Pacific Mail had been printed on
the presses of El ll~.fercurio in Valpara-
iso, before Phillips was able to buy his }
own press and move the operation to
Santiago. Phillips later sold the paper,
to David Hellyer, a career CIA officer
working under journalistic cover in j
Chile for the Copley News Service. In
Approvd For Release 2004/10/28 CIA-RDP88-01314R000100330001-8 r