PINOCHET CITES CIA IN ATTACK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201180002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: May 8, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201180002-1
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAS I -/Z
Pinochet
Cites CIA
In Attack .
Chilean Speculates
On Assassination
Attempt Last Year
7 By Edward Cody
Wavbmptn0 Pant foreign k?rvicc
WASHINGTON POST
8 May 1987
PARIS, May 7-Gen. Au usto
f- Pinochet, the Chilean president,
suggest in an interview published
today that he believes the CIA may
have played a role in last Septem-
ber's assassination attempt against
him.
In an interview with the Paris
daily Le Monde, Pinochet said he
has what he described as "circum-
stantial evidence" of Central Intel-
ligence Agency involvement.
The indications, Pinochet said in
the question-and-answer session,
were contained in several warnings
he has received between 1973 and
last year, including two from a CIA
operative, that the agency was un-
happy with him.
"Then came the assassination
attempt," he was quoted as saying.
"And I told myself, 'Well, well, the
CIA?' "
Underground leftist commandos
fighting to overthrow Pinochet have
said they were responsible for the
assassination attempt, from which
Pinochet emerged slightly injured.
Chileans of the far left and their
sympathizers elsewhere generally
have accused the CIA of aiding Pi-
nochet's rise to power and of helping
maintain him in the presidency. But
Pinochet told Le Monde he asked
"my friend" Ambassador Vernon
1'? Wal P about the CIA suspicions,
without specifying when or in what
form the contact took place.
Walters, a retired general and
former deputy director of the CIA,
is U.S. representative to the United
Nations. He frequently carries dis-
creet messages from the Reagan
administration.
Pinochet said Walters told him:
"No, president, reject that. It is not
possible. It is false. You have been
deceived."
According to Le Monde, Pino-
chet's suspicion apparently was not
completely allayed. The newspaper
quoted him as adding, with an ap-
parent allusion to the Soviet Union:
"And then somebody else, very
well informed about these things,
told me, 'Sometimes the two pow-
ers act together.' "
Pinochet has run Chile since the
coup he led against president Sal-
vador Allende in 1973. The United
States, with Richard Nixon as pres-
ident, had sought covertly to desta-
bilize Allende, a Marxist. But U.S.
officials have maintained that the
United States played no direct role
in the bloody military takeover or
the crackdown on Chilean leftists
that followed.
More recently, the Reagan ad-
ministration has been signaling a
desire to see a return to democratic
institutions in Chile.
The prodding has produced com-
plaints from Pinochet, who has not
said publicly whether he plans to
run for president in elections set for
1989 as part of what his govern-
ment has described as a staged
opening to democracy.
"Yes, I advocate a democratic
opening," he told Le Monde. "But
without the participation of certain
gentlemen. In short, a protected
democracy, a democracy that takes
precautions. Otherwise, it risks be-
ing eaten up." Marxist parties are
excluded by the decree regulating
political activity.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201180002-1