ALLENDE'S END

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201400003-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201400003-5
AP ?P`LF.. APPEARED
Q 71 i,r"
CHILE'S PRESIDENT Salvador
Allende died in a bloody coup d'etat
that abruptly ended his country's
ex
WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE
3 March 1985
several chapters of the book. The
article opens with Davis' account of
the attack on the Moneda, the
presidential palace in Santiago:
penment w[th Marxist This article is excerpted from The
government on Sept. 11, 1973. Nearly Last Two Years of Salvador Allende
12 years later, Chile continues under
themilitaryovernm t c' by Nathaniel Davis, to be published
g
en of en.
Augusto Pinochet, who recently
extended a state of siege designed to
quell unrest.
At the time of Allende's fall,
Nathaniel Davis was in the Chilean
capital of Santiago as U.S.
ambassador. An outspoken man who I
in May by Cornell University Press.
Copyright ?1985 by Cornell
University. The excerpts were
selected by Don Podesta of the
The Washington Post Foreign
Service staff.
has attracted both praise and S WE APPROACHED
criticism, he was characterized in the the downtown area,
film "Missing" as a partisan of U.S. perhaps 20 blocks from
business interests in Chile who was the Moneda and the
involved with the military officers embassy, we saw cara-
who engineered the coup. Davis and bineros systematically
several others are suing the makers A hlo cking off stree
I
ts
In his forthcoming book, The Last "?W.L% w we center
Two Years of Salvador Allende, with orange traffic
cones. We raced along
g
Davis, now retired from the Foreign parallel to the line of
S
11 .. ervice and Hixon professor of barriers and managed
-'manities at Harvey Mudd College to find a section that
in Claremont, Calif.. discusses U.S. was not yet blocked. In we went. We
policy toward Allende'sgovernment, got to within three or four blocks of
mciudiri~ CIA aid to the opposition the embassy before we had to park
and his role in it. He also examines the car because of the fighting and
Allende's personality and style. proceed on foot. By then it was about
What follows is excerpted from
a.m., and the army was moving
into action in the center of the city.
We heard the crack of rifles, the
chugging of tear-gas guns, and the
burping of automatic weapons a block
or two away.
At about that time Orlando Letel-
ier was brought out of the Ministry of
Defense in custody. Chilean television
broadcast this scene, and my wife
viewed it. She recalls that Letelier
had always been positive and upbeat,
his faith in the future manifest. He
looked very changed. Except for
newspaper photos, that was the last
time my wife or I saw him.
The president, reportedly in a state
of considerable excitement, inspected
the defensive arrangements, had the
carabineros' small-arms magazines
opened, and had some gas masks dis-
tributed. He received an added blow
when Alfredo Joignant telephoned to
report that investigative police head-
quarters had been seized by troops. It
is alleged that alcohol flowed freely
within the Moneda, and well it might
have, for alcohol helps dull anguish-
as the president had long known. Ac-
cording to Allende's daughter Isabel,
the president never lost his human
touch: "The last picture I have of my
father in my mind's eye is as a com-
batant, going from window to win-
dow, raising the spirits of his guards,
joking with them ..."
At about 11:30 am., Socialist
~V~I II~,~L~41?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201400003-5
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201400003-5
deputy Erich Schnake broadcast a
dramatic but fruitless appeal to the
Chilean people to march to the center
of Santiago.
Outside the Moneda the action
resumed. Tanks of the Second Ar-
mored Regiment were drawn up
north of the palace across Constitu-
tion Square. Soldiers of the Infantry
School were on Teatinos Street, be-
tween the Hotel Carrera and the U.S.
Embassy offices. Troops of the army's
Noncommissioned Officers' School
were on Morande Street, east of the
Moneda. The Tacna Regiment was to
the south, on the Alameda O'Higgins.
All these troops were exchanging fire
with the [president's guard] in the
Moneda and with the snipers on the
higher floors of surrounding build-
ings.
The junta's renewed demands that
Allende and his people surrender
were met by the president's contin-
ued refusal to do so. Pinochet urged
that the air bombardment commence
without further delay, as he feared
that Allende was trying to gain time
for the workers of the industrial belts
to come to the center of the city.
Finally the aerial attack com-
menced. The first pass came at 11:52,
followed by six more in the ensuing
21 minutes. The planes turned be-
hind San Cristobal hill, went into a
very steep dive and launched their
rockets when they were over the
Mapocho railroad station. Their aim
was perfect. The rockets went
straight into the doors and windows of
the north side of the Moneda Palace.
Those of us in the embassy felt the
tremor of the explosions beneath our
feet. In a letter a day or two later my
wife described the scene as it looked
from four miles away, on the ridge on
which the embassy residence sat
"Shortly before noon we heard the
jets. It was an eerily beautiful sight as
they came in from nowhere. The sun
glinted on their wings. There were
I only two. Still in formation, they
swung gracefully through the sky in a
great circle, and then they tipped and
dove ... one bomb each . . . then, a
gentle curve upwards. Sun glistened
on the wings again, and there was an-
other run."
The president and his entourage
had taken refuge in the side cellars of
the Moneda, on the theory that the
pilots would hit only the central por-
tion of the palace in order to avoid
damaging surrounding buildings.
The bombardment set fires in the
Moneda, and the conflagration soon
spread, filling much of the north side
of the building with smoke, flames
and gases. The defenders' gas masks
apparently were not effective. Part of
the roof caved in, and pieces of plas-
ter, splintered furniture, curtains and
office materials were strewn about.
Apparently Allende died between
1:50 p.m. and 2:20 p.m.; accounts dif-
fer as to the time. Leftist descriptions
of Allende's death have Chilean sol-
diers gunning the president down in a i
firefight. But Salvador Allende prob-
ably died by his own act in the Inde-
pendence Salon from bullets from
Fidel Castro's gift submachine gun.
That conclusion does not diminish
Allende's real courage in his last
hours.
I AM REASONABLY confident
that it was not U.S. policy during my
time in Chile to "destabilize" Allende
and bring him down. I cannot say
with the same confidence, however,
that all personalities in Washington
were of the same mind. Seymour
Hersh has explicitly charged that
there were sharp differences- within
the Nixon administration. On 8 Sep-
tember 1974 .quo ti irector of
Central teIligence William lbv
Indirectly and other reliable U.S. offi-
cials as his sources, he descricri the
lineup as follows: agency's
gyrations from 1970 to 1973 were
considered a test o e to g of
hea cash a ents to brig down a government vie as an o-
nistic toward the Uni fates.
State Department ... wanted to
stretch out any clandestine activities
t o permit t h e r e g i m e to _ come to a
political end. The argument was be.
tween those who wanted to use force
and end it quickly rather than to play
it out. Henry [Kissinger) was on the
side of the former-he was for consid-
erable obstruction."'
Hersh's description of a kind of
laboratory test of a technique seems
implausible. From all we know about
their feelings, both Richard Nixon and
Henry Kissinger had deeply held emo-
tions and convictions about Chile.
A judgment about U.S. covert
financial in tervention has to take
some account of what others were
doing. In Chile, as in most democra-
cies, the continuation of constitu-
tional government depended on the t
survival of a constitutional opposition
and the, UP [Allende's ruling Unidad
Popular coalition) government was
attempting to asphyxiate its adver-
saries.
There were all too many thumbs
pushing to unbalance the Chilean
political scales. Not only did the Al-
lende government try to cripple the
opposition, but UP leaders and their
foreign backers also financed progov-
bring Chile to socialism through legal
and institutional means? Was he sin-
cere when he presented his vision of
the Chilean Way in his May 1971 ad-
dress to the Congress? I believe that
the answer is "Yes"; Allende wanted
these things. More than two decades
previously, in 1948, Allende had criti-
cized the Soviets' restriction of indi-
vidual liberty and their negation of
"rights which we deem inalienable to ,
the human personality." During the
intervening years most of his posi-
tions were consistent with this asser-
tion. It was only the road to socialism,
however, that Allende wanted to i
make democratic and institutional.
He did not envisage the Chilean peo.
ple voting exploitative and capitalist
'institutions back into power. Once
"the people" took over in the com-
plete sense, Allende believed that
they would continue to rule.
Allende's enemies could truthfully
point to many flaws. He fully partici-
pated in government by legerdemain
and condoned the violation of Chile's
liberties, laws and constitution. His
propensity to renege on commit-
ments, his willingness to let -dirty
work be done, his dissembling-all
were part of Salvador - Allende. -But
Allende was also called by some "the
First Dreamer of the Republic"; and
he dreamed marvelous, soaring
dreams. His aspiration was for a bet-
ter Chile and for happiness and ful-
fillment for his compatriots. Few peo-
ple are altogether consistent in out-
look, and Salvador Allende revealed
more contradictions and anomalies
than most. Nonetheless, he was an
extraordinary leader and a pro-
foundly impressive human being.
It is true that the Chilean Way led
across a sea of troubles. At first high
and broad, the road was progressively
Qi(NIJRUed
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201400003-5
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201400003-5
eaten away by turbulent waters, with'
waves of leftist assault and UP folly
undermining one bank as rightist at-
tacks washed at the other. The cause-
way got narrower and more treacher-
ous, and the prospect ahead more ob-
scure. By the early months of 1973,
thinking people could not help but
see that the constitutional road to
1976 was crumbling. Nevertheless,
Allende and his trusted collaborators
could have made wiser decisions. Had
they been more resolute, consistent
and farsighted they could have faced
the necessity of a clear choice of
policy and made the commitments
essential to it. It might have been
painful, but it would not have been
impossible.
All this matters because it is im-
portant that hopes of social transfor-
mation through democracy and law
be kept alive if possible, across the
spectrum of the left. The Chilean
Way was the highest expression we
have yet seen of central-core Marxists
trying to follow the peaceful road to
socialism. Socialism may not be the
best or even a good way to order a
society's affairs, but the ability of free
citizens to choose socialism, or capi-
talism, or some other economic sys-
I tem is beyond price. Too many peo-
ple in the world share Allende's so-
cialist convictions for democrats to
abandon that aspiration to men with
guns who preach bloody revolution as
the only road to social justice. Too
many of the world's people live out
their lives in the dust of poverty, hun-
ger, sickness and ignorance and op-
pression for democratic socialists to
facilitate the task of the totalitarians
of the left. It should not be necessary
for those who share Salvador Allen-
de's dream to accept the secret police-
man's boot on the stairs at night as a
necessary price for the achievement
of their economic and social values. If
the possibility of a Chilean Way
should be decisively ruled out for the
world's leftists, we would all have rea-
son to be sorry. 0
3,
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201400003-5