THE PRICE OF POWER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 23
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 7, 2012
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: December 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST"Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
?:I~11CiT'u and D
THE PRICE OF P0
Kissinger, Nixon, and Chi
BY SEYMOUR M. HERSH
YEOMAN CHARLES E. RADFORD DID NOT WANT TO BE
reassigned to Washington, but it was the fall of
1970 and he was in the Navy and his country was
at war. Radford, twenty-seven years old, had been hand-
picked by Rear Admiral Rembrandt C. Robinson to serve
as his confidential aide and secretary on the National Secu-
rity Council staff in the White House. The bright and am-
bitious Radford was an obvious choice for the sensitive job:
he was married and had young children; he was a devout
Mormon who did not drink and would never consider using
drugs; and he was fierce in his determination to earn a
commission and become a Navy officer. Radford reported
for duty on September 18, replacing a civilian secretary
who was being transferred. There was obvious tension in
the office, and Admiral Robinson, in one of their first
meetings, demonstrated why, Radford recalls: "He made it
clear that my loyalty was to him, and that he expected my
loyalty, and that I wasn't to speak outside of the office
about what I slid in the office."
Admiral Robinson was the liaison officer between the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council,
and his office was a sensitive one: the White House's most
highly classified documents, including intelligence materi-
als, routinely flowed through it. By mid-1970, Henry A.
Kissinger, President Richard Nixon's national security ad-
viser, had developed complete confidence in Robinson's
discretion and loyalty.
It was not surprising, therefore, that Robinson was
deeply involved in the secret Kissinger and Nixon oper-
ations against Salvador Allende Gossens, of Chile, who
had astounded the Central Intelligence Agency and the
White House by winning the September 4 popular election
for the Chilean presidency, although Allende received only
36.6 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Radford, who
arrived at his new post a few weeks after the Chilean elec-
tion, vividly recalls the sense of crisis: "'his w; n't sup-
posed to happen. It was a real blow. All of a sudden, the
pudding blew up on the stove." Admiral Robinson and his
superiors were "wringing their hands" over Chile, Radford
says, "almost as if they [the Chileans] were errant chil-
dren." Over the next few weeks, Radford says, he saw
This is the second of two installments from Seymour M. Hersh's The many sensitive memoranda and options papers, as the bu-
Price of Power: Kissinger in Nixon's White House, which will be pub- reaucracy sought to prevent Allende from assuming office.
lisped nett spring by Summit Books. . Among the options was a proposal to assassinate Allende.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
One options paper "discussed various ways of doing it,"
Radford says. "Either we have somebody in the country do
it, or we do it ourselves. I was stunned; I was aghast. It
stuck in my mind so much because for the first time in my
life, I realized that my government actively was involved
in planning to kill people."
The options papers had been prepared for Nixon in the
weeks after Allende's election. "They were exploring ways
to get Allende out of there," Radford says, and murder was
one of the ways. The thrust of the option was clear. "I don't
know if they used the word assassinate, but it was to get
rid of him, to terminate him-he was to go."
BY THE MID-1960S, CHILE HAD BECOME WIDELY
known inside the American intelligence community
as one of the CIA's outstanding success stories. The
Agency had managed to penetrate all elements of Chilean
government, politics, and society, and took credit for en-
suring that Chile remained a progressive democratic na-
tion that-not so incidentally-encouraged American
multinational corporations to do business within its bor-
ders. The extent of American corporate involvement was a
source of constant debate in Chile, however, and emerged
by the end of the decade as a critical political issue, pitting
the Chilean right, with its support for continued American
profit-taking, against the left, which organized increasing-'
ly fractious labor strikes and public demonstrations
against the American firms. Chile was a world leader in
the mining of copper, but 80 percent of its production-60
percent of all exports from Chile-was in the hands of
large corporations mostly controlled by U.S. firms, most
prominently Anaconda and Kennecott Copper. Profits for
the American firms were enormous: during the 1960s, for
example, Anaconda earned $500 million on its invest-
ments-generously estimated by the company at $300 mil-
lion-inside Chile, where it operated the largest open-pit
copper mine in the world. The most significant political
threat to Chilean democracy, in the view of American poli-
cy-makers, was Allende, a member of the Socialist Party,
who had unsuccessfully run for president in 1958 and 1964
on a platform that advocated land reform, nationalization
of major industries (especially copper), closer relations
with socialist and communist countries, and redistribution
of income. National concern over the disparity of income
was especially critical to Allende's campaigns: by 1968,
studies showed that the 28.3 percent of the Chilean people
at the bottom of the economic scale took in 4.8 percent of
the national income, while the 2 percent of the population
at the top received 45.9 percent of the income.
In 19.58, Allende had lost the presidential election by
less than 3 percent to Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez, an
arch-conservative who was strongly pro-business and was
heavily backed by American corporations. Neither Al-
lende nor Alessandri received a majority vote, and under
the Chilean constitution the election was resolved in a run-
off election by the Chilean Congress, which voted Alessan-
dri into office. Despite CIA aid, Alessandri and his Nation-
al Party steadily lost popularity over the next six years,
and the presidential elections of 1964 came down to a bat-
tle between Allende and his radical forces and Eduardo
Frei Montalva, a liberal representing the Christian Demo-
cratic Party, which was pro-American and far more favor-
able to business than Allende's coalition.
The United States' influence on the 1964 election was
more extensive than has been publicly reported. At least
$20 million in support of the Frei candidacy-about $8 per
voter-was funneled by the United States into Chile in
1963 and 1964, much of it through the Agency for Interna-
tional Development (AID). Millions of dollars in AID and
CIA funds were allocated, with the full knowledge of the
Chilean and United States governments, to Roman Catho-
lic organizations throughout the country whose objective
was to oppose Protestantism and communism. Frei won
handily, with 56 percent of the vote. Frei, who was fully
aware of the source of his funding, also received covert
help from a group of American corporations known as
the Business Group for Latin America. The Group had
been organized in 1963 by David Rockefeller, president of
the Chase Manhattan Bank, at the express request of
President Kennedy, who was directing his administration's
fight against Castro and the spread of communism in Latin
America. It included on its executive committee such
prominent corporation executives as C. Jay Parkinson,
board chairman of Anaconda; Harold S. Geneen, head of
the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation,
which owned and operated the telephone facilities in Chile;
and Donald M. Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, the soft-
drink company, which had extensive business activities in
Latin America.
The principal contact in Chile for the CIA as well as for
the American corporations was the organization of
Agustin Edwards, a close friend of Kendall's, who was the
owner of the conservative El Mercurio newspaper chain in
Chile and a focal point for the opposition to Allende and the
left. The CIA and the Business Group, which by 1970 had
been reorganized into the Council of the Americas, relied
heavily on Edwards to use his organization and his con-
tacts to channel their moneys into the 1964 political cam-
paign. Many of the ties between the Business Group and
the CIA in 1964 remained in place long after the election.
For example, Enno Hobbing, a CIA official who had initial-
ly been assigned as liaison to the Business Group, eventu-
ally left the CIA and became the principal operations offi-
cer for the Council.
The most profound issue for the American corporations
was the threat of possible nationalization of their profit-
able subsidiaries in Chile. Allende's election would certain-
ly lead to nationalization. Frei, although his Christian
Democratic Party included factions that insisted on nation-
alization, offered more hope: one of his major campaign
promises called for a compromise known as "Chileaniza-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
tion," a procedure by which the state would be authorized
to buy large blocks of the stock of the Chilean subsidiaries
of the American copper companies. By 1967, the Frei
regime had bought 51 percent of Kennecott's Chilean
corporation and 25 percent of Anaconda's. The stock
transfers took place after negotiations with the com-
panies, which subsequently continued to generate high
profits for their American owners. Frei's reforms did
not affect other industries, and there was an increase
of American business activity in Chile throughout
the 1960s. Political pressure from the left increased.
The Frei regime reopened negotiations with Anaconda in
1969, and sought to begin a discussion of total nationaliza-
tion-'the only process that would enable the state to gain
control of the huge profits being generated, as the more
radical supporters of the Christian Democratic Party
demanded.
During the Frei years, the CIA continued to operate Bt
will throughout the country, primarily seeking to repress
radical and left-leaning political activities. At least twenty
operations were mounted inside Chile between 1964 and
1969, according to the published report of the Senate Intel-
ligence Committee, which conducted an extensive investi-
gation in 1975 into the CIA. Most of them were designed to
support the election of moderate and conservative candi-
dates in Chilean congressional elections. By the late 1960s,,
serious strain began to emerge in the CIA's relationship
with the Frei government. Most important, the chief of the
CIA station in Santiago, Henry D. Hecksher, believed that
Frei and his Christian Democratic Party had tilted danger-
ously to the left. Hecksher, a vigorous anti-communist, in-
cessantly urged CIA headquarters to change American
policy and turn from Frei to Alessandri, who was planning
to run again for president in the 1970 elections. Under
Chilean law, Frei could not stay in office for consecutive
terms. Hecksher and others feared-correctly, as it
turned out-that the Christian Democrats, increasingly
polarized by Frei's politics, would choose an even more lib-
eral candidate in 1970. If the CIA needed further evidence
of the party's leftward drift, Frei gave it: in 1969, he re-
established trade relations with Cuba.
ICHARD NIXON ENTERED OFFICE WITH A PRO-
found dislike for Eduardo Frei. Frei's movement to
the left and his attempts, albeit feeble, tonational-
ize the American copper companies in the late 1960s were
justification enough, but Nixon had another reason: Frei
was a Kennedy man, a social liberal whose stature inside
Chile was aided by the Kennedys and by the Georgetown
set at the CIA. The American ambassador to Chile, Ed-
ward M. Korry, was also suspect: a former newspaperman
with impeccable anti-communist credentials, Korry had
been appointed as ambassador to Ethiopia by John F.
Kennedy in 1963, and had served in Chile since 1967. In
December of 1968, one month after Nixon's election, the
CIA issued a National Intelligence Estimate, known in the
government as an NIE, on Chile. The report was critical of
economic and social policies of the Frei government and, so
Korry thought, played down the importance of democracy
in Chile. Once in office, Nixon quickly made clear his dis-
taste for the Frei regime, Korry recalls, by striking Frei's
name from a State Department list of foreign leaders who
were being considered for future visits to Washington.
Nixon also ordered a further cutback in American foreign
aid to Chile, which totaled more than $1 billion between
1962 and 1969, by far ,the largest aid program per capita in
Latin America. Whether intentionally or not, the White
House moves served to weaken the moderates in Frei's
Christian Democratic Party while strengthening the CIA's
anti-Frei position in Santiago. Conservative and right-
wing attacks in El Mercurio against the government grew
more frequent and harsher in tone, adding to the polariza-
tion of the political forces inside Chile. The Frei govern-
ment moved even further to the left. When Korry protest-
ed bitterly about the peremptory cutback of one $20
million aid program, which had been intensively negotiat-
ed over a five-month period, he was told that his resigna-
tion would be accepted by the new President-he was
fired. After some special pleading by Charles A. Meyer,
the newly appointed assistant secretary of state for Latin
America, Korry says, he was permitted to stay on in Chile
and was assigned the task.of negotiating the future of the
copper companies with the Frei government. Korry was
cynical about Nixon's motives in reinstating him: he sus-
pected that if the Christian Democrats went ahead with
their nationalization plans, Nixon would move quickly to
mollify his corporate supporters by making Korry-as a
Democratic holdover-a scapegoat.
The Frei government did little to increase its popularity
with the White House. Early in 1969, Frei canceled a
planned visit to Chile by Nelson Rockefeller. The visit,
part of a highly publicized tour of Latin America that the
New York governor took at the express wish (so the public
was told) of President Nixon, was meant to be a public sign
of amity of sorts between the Nixon and Rockefeller wings
of the Republican Party. Frei's cancellation-which was
preordained by Nixon's earlier aid cutback-was taken as
further proof by the White House of his moving left. Even
Korry had officially opposed the visit, however, since he
was sure that Rockefeller's appearance would spark large-
scale anti-American demonstrations. Until mid-1970,
Korry and Frei were forced to resort to duplicity to com-
municate with the White House. "Any idea put forward by
Frei had to be transformed into my idea," Korry says.
"Otherwise, we reckoned it would be automatically disre-
garded or turned against him."
Any doubts in the Frei government about its standing
with the White House were removed after an unusual face-
to-face confrontation between Nixon and Gabriel Valdes,
Frei's foreign minister. The occasion was a June, 1969,
meeting of Latin American ambassadors in the White
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
House at which Valdes, a member of an aristocratic Chil-
ean family, chose to turn a formal ceremony into a seminar
on North-South policy. In his account of the Allende years,
Armando Uribe, a diplomatic officer at the Chilean Em-
bassy in Washington, writes that Valdes had been sched-
uled to present Nixon with a formal policy statement on
commercial and financial matters. But then, Uribe says,
"he spoke of the impossibility of dealing with the United
States within the regular framework of inter-American re-
lations; the differences in power were too great ... Nixon
was caught off guard.... Masking his irritation, Nixon
heard Valdes out, and then pulled himself together, lower-
ing his eyelids, becoming impenetrable, withdrawn. Kis-
singer frowned."
Valdes recalls his impromptu talk as "the most difficult
time in my life." He had come to the White House with the
other Latin American officials knowing that the State De-
partment had lobbied against his visit. At one point in his
talk, Valdes says, he told Nixon that Latin America was
sending back 3.8 dollars for every dollar in American aid.
When Nixon interrupted to challenge the statistic, Valdes
retorted that the number had come from a study prepared
by a major American bank. "As I delivered my speech,"
Valdes says, "Kissinger was looking at me as if I were a
strange animal." On the next afternoon, Kissinger asked
for a private lunch with Valdes in the Chilean Embassy.
The meeting was unpleasant. As Valdes describes it, Kis-
singer began by declaring "Mr. Minister, you made a
strange speech. You come here speaking of Latin America,
but this is not important. Nothing important can come
from the South. History has never been produced in the
South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn,
crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What
happens in the South is of no importance. You're wasting
your time."
"I said," Valdes recalls, "Mr. Kissinger, you know noth-
ing of the South." "No," Kissinger answered, "and I don't
care." At that point, Valdes, astonished and insulted, told
Kissinger. "You are a German Wagnerian. You are a very
arrogant man." Later, to his embarrassment, Valdes
learned that Kissinger was a German Jew, and suspected
that he had gravely insulted him. Although it would have
been impossible for Valdes to fathom, one of Kissinger's
motives in arranging the lunch was clearly to avenge Nix-
on's honor, to confront the foreign minister who had dared
to tell the President something he did not wish to hear.
Korry, still in Santiago, was informed that Nixon was
"very angry" over Valdes's "arrogant and insulting" lec-
ture. "Valdes went beyond the limits agreed to," Korry
says.
The Valdes incident evinced much of the White House
attitude toward Latin America: like a child, Latin America
was to be seen and not heard. Those who defied Nixon,
such as Valdes and Frei-and, later, Allende-were to be
treated harshly. In his memoirs, Nixon devotes only seven
paragraphs, a few hundred words, to Chile, and says noth-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
ing at all about Latin American policy during his presiden-
cy. Kissinger, in his memoirs, defends his role in an ex-
tended chapter on Chile but in no other way deals with the
administration's policies and problems in the South. Until
1970, Kissinger writes, when he became involved in the
planning against Allende, "Latin America was an area in
which I did not then have expertise of my own." That may
be so, but from the first months of the administration, he
was an expert disciple of basic American policy: Latin
America was to be permitted little independence.
BY THE 77 ME KISSINGER JOINED THE NIXON AD-
ministration, he was far from a newcomer to covert
intelligence operations. He had served in the Army
Counter Intelligence Corps in occupied West Germany
after World War II, and was eventually assigned to a unit
whose functions included the recruitment of ex-Nazi intel-
ligence officers for anti-Soviet operations inside the Soviet
bloc. He retained hts ties, as a reserve officer, to military
intelligence after entering Harvard in 1947 at age twenty-
four as an undergraduate. By 1950, after his graduation,
he was working part time for the Defense Department (he
was one of the first at Harvard to begin regular shuttles to
Washington) as a consultant to its Operations Research Of-
fice, a unit under the direct control of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff that conducted highly classified studies on such top-
ics as the utilization in CIA activities of former German oper-
atives and Nazi partisan supporters. In 1952, Kissinger
was named a consultant to the director of the Psychologi-
cal Strategy Board, an operating arm of the National Secu-
rity Council for covert psychological and paramilitary op-
erations. In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed Nelson
Rockefeller as his special assistant in chaige of Cold War
planning, a position that involved monitoring and approval
of covert CIA operations. These were the days of CIA suc-
cesses in Iran, where the Shah was installed on the throne,
and in Guatemala, where the government of Jacobo Ar-
benz, considered to be anti-American and anti-business,
was overthrown. In 1955, Kissinger, already known to in-
siders for his closeness to Rockefeller and for Rockefeller's
reliance on him, was named a consultant to the Operations
Coordinating Board, the highest policy-mating board for
implementing clandestine activity against foreign
governments.
Kissinger has written and said little about his high-leve:
exposure to clandestine operations in the early 1950s. For
mer intelligence officials, in interviews, recall that the
young Harvard scholar had come to the attention of Aller
Dulles, Eisenhower's influential CIA director, even before
the Rockefeller appointment. "He was highly regarded,'
one senior aide says. "Allen spoke of his meetings A itl
him. He and Walt Rostow [Kissinger's predecessor-as na-
tional security adviser, and then a professor at MIT] were
considered to be kind of a team." One little-known fact if
that Rockefeller was replaced as the presidential advisei
on Cold War planning in late 1955 by Richard Nixon, ther
Vice President. There is no evidence that Nixon and Kis-
singer met in those days, although, many former intelli.
gence aides say, it is highly likely that Nixon was aware o:
Kissinger's intelligence work. By 1956, Kissinger was at
work as director of the Special Studies Project for the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., in New York.
Kissinger was able to exert near-total control over the
intelligence community shortly after joining the Nixon ad-
ministration. His bureaucratic device was a high-level
group known as the 40 Committee (named for the National
Security Decision Memorandum establishing it), which he
formally chaired. Its six members included Attorney Gen-
era] John Mitchell; Richard Helms, the director of central
intelligence; Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff; U. Alexis Johnson, representing the
State Department; and David Packard, deputy to Melvin
Laird, secretary of defense. The 40 Committee was re-
sponsible for approving-theoretically-all sensitive co-
vert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency; it also
supervised and monitored many intelligence-gathering ac-
tivities by the armed forces. In practice, however, Kis-
singer and Nixon treated it as they did the whole bureauc.
racy-as another office to be utilized or ignored at will.
The CIA, in what amounted to routine operating policy.
was also circumspect. For example, the Agency's exten-
sive contacts with ITT officials throughout Latin America.
and especially in Chile, were carefully shielded from the 4C
Committee, whose members presumably did not "need tc
know"-as the CIA would put it-about them, although
ITT eventually played a major role in Chile before the 197(
elections.
Complicating any account of the situation is the fact that
most sensitive intelligence decisions are made without s
paper trail. In the case of Chile in 1970, many of the docu-
ments that did exist, even those in government files, were
withheld after the Senate Intelligence Committee and the
Justice Department initiated full-scale inquiries in 1975
and 1976. At one point Justice Department attorneys came
to believe, according to files later made public under the
Freedom of Information Act, that Kissinger had kept his
own minutes of 40 Committee meetings, which presum-,
ably were more detailed than the official minutes that were
routinely distributed to the CIA and other involved agen.
cies. (Kissinger's attorney; William D. Rogers, subse-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
quently denied on behalf of his client that such personal 40
Committee files were kept.) The files of the 40 Committee,
at least those turned over by the CIA to the various inves-
tigating groups, show that the election in Chile was dis-
cussed on at least four occasions between April of 1969 and
September of 1970. In April of 1969, the CIA warned that
a major campaign to influence the 1970 election would not
succeed unless the CIA station in Santiago could begin as-
sembling operatives in various political parties. No direct
action was taken, the records show, until a 40 Committee
meeting on March 25, 1970, at which $135,000 for anti-
Allende propaganda efforts was approved. On June 27, the
40 Committee approved an outlay of $300,000-recom-
mended by Korry as well as by the CIA-for more anti-
Allende electioneering. It was at this meeting that Kis-
singer signaled his support of the anti-Allende programs:
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country
go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own
people."
In these early meetings, however,. the State Depart-
ment generally took a position against more direct inter-
ference in the Chilean presidential elections. On June 27,
for example, approval was sought for an additional
$500,000 in contingency funds, initially proposed by Korry,
to use for buying votes in the Chilean Congress in the an-
ticipation that the September 4 election would result in a.
runoff between Allende, running for the Popular Unity co-
alition, and Alessandri, the candidate favored by the CIA,
the corporations, and the White House. When some State
Department officials objected, approval was deferred,
pending the election. One official who attended the early
meetings as a senior aide to Alexis Johnson recalls that he
considered the operations against Allende to be a "stupid"
effort. "It assumed too much reliability from people over
whom we had no control. We were doing something culpa-
ble and immoral. Why take these risks?" His views pre-
vailed that summer, but as the White House became more
concerned, he soon found himself disinvited to the 40 Com-
mittee meetings.
WHAT THE 40 COMMITTEE DID APPROVE IN MARCH
and June was a series of anti-Allende "spoiling"
operations-as they became known inside the
intelligence community-that utilized the media and right-
wing civic groups to plant alarming allegations against the
Allende coalition. Newsletters were mailed, booklets were
.printed, posters were distributed, and wall signs were
painted-under the aegis of the CIA and the Agustin Ed-
wards empire-that equated Allende's election with such
events as the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague and Castro's
purported use of firing squads. By 1970, according to data
compiled by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA
was subsidizing two wire services in Chile and a right-
wing weekly newspaper, whose views were so extreme as
to "alienate responsible conservatives."
Although he had recommended the propaganda pro-
grams, Korry says that he soon grew disenchanted with
the crude results and antagonized the CIA by criticizing,
in writing, its "spoiling" campaign as being counterproduc-
tive and, in effect, "making votes for Allende."
Despite his complaints, there was no sense of panic
about Chile in the Nixon administration that summer (it
was winter, of course, in Chile). Until election day, the
CIA confidently predicted a huge Alessandri victory, on
the basis of polls being conducted by the organization of
Agustin Edwards-polls based on outdated 1960 census
data. Edwards had become more important than ever to
the CIA in Chile. Hecksher recommended that the
$300,000 approved on June 27 be floated into Chile via his
organization: the CIA, Hecksher argued, had no other
proven "asset" in Chile with Edwards's skills and discre-
tion. He owned three daily newspapers in Santiago, and
his business interests seemed to be constantly expanding:
he was affiliated with Lever Brothers and with Pepsi-Cola,
and owned one of the nation's most successful granaries
and a large chicken farm. At some point early that sum-
mer, his polls showed Alessandri with 50 percent of the
popular vote, obviating the necessity of a runoff election.
Such predictions did little to soothe the American busi-
ness community, which had been rebuffed earlier in the
year in its efforts to persuade the Nixon administration to
join in with it, as the Johnson administration had in 1964,
to make sure the right man won. In April, according to
documents made available by Korry, members of the
Council of the Americas approached the State Department
and offered to give at least $500,000 to Alessandri's cam-
paign. A small delegation of Council members, including
C. Jay Parkinson, of Anaconda, chose to relay the cam-
paign pledge through Charles Meyer. Meyer was the logi-
cal choice; a former senior official of Sears, Roebuck, he
had been involved in the firm's operations in Latin Amer-
ica, and had been an active member of the Council. Korry
recalls that Meyer, shortly after assuming the State De-
partment position, in 1969, told a private Council luncheon
that he had been "chosen" for the post "by David Rockefel-
ler." The Council's cash offer had a condition: the funds
would be contributed only if, as in 1964, the CIA also in-
vested a significant amount of money in the Alessandri
campaign. Meyer forwarded the proposal to Korry, who
objected strongly in a secret cable to Washington. Korry
warned that such interference would be impossible to
cloak, and would lead to serious problems for the United
States if discovered. He also asserted that any overt oppo-
sition by American groups to the Christian Democrats,
whose candidate, Radomiro Tonic Romero, was running
third in the polls, "would doubtless produce a negative re-
action that would do harm to immediate and longer term
United States interests." Korry's opposition was instru-
mental, and the State Department rejected the Council's
offer.
By that spring, Korry was emerging more and more as a
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
wild card for the CIA and the American corporations. He
was fiercely anti-communist and fiercely anti-Allende; his
inflammatory cables warning of the dangers that Allende
posed to American national-security interests were leg-
endary throughout the State Department for their sense of
drama. One State Department official recalls Korry's brief-
ings on Chile as "really terrible. If you didn't believe in
Korry's concept of free enterprise, you were a Commie."
Nonetheless, Korry was adamant about maintaining con-
trol over the CIA in his embassy, and he had flatly ruled
out any contact between the CIA and those members of
the Chilean military who were known to be eager to stage
a military coup d'etat in the event of an Allende victory.
Korry and Hecksher, who was bitterly opposed not only to
Allende but also to the Frei regime, did not have a good
working relationship-a fact that only Hecksher seemed
to realize. One CIA operative who worked in Latin Amer-
ica at the time says that Korry "and the Agency were not
on the same wavelength. He was a difficult ambassador."
Although Korry had agreed enthusiastically with the CIA
that a major propaganda program was needed to counter
the growing drift to the left in Chile, he insisted that the
propaganda be anti-communist in nature-and not pro-
Alessandri, as Hecksher and his superiors in Washington
wanted.
ITT and its president, Harold Geneen, were still deter-
mined to give money to Alessandri's campaign. But Gen-
een, obviously aware of Korry's rejection of the Council's
proposal in April, avoided the American Embassy in San-
tiago and worked directly at the highest levels in Washing-
ton. Geneen's go-bet*een was his good friend John A.
McCone, a CIA director under Presidents Kennedy and
Johnson, who in 1970 was a director of ITT; his wife was a
major Anaconda stockholder. In May, June, and July,
McCone repeatedly discussed the Chilean situation with
Helms. At least two meetings took place at CIA headquar-
ters (McCone was still a consultant to the Agency), and one
was at McCone's home in San Marino, California. McCone,
in 1973 testimony before the Subcommittee on Multina-
tional Corporations of the Senate Committee on Fbreign
Relations, said that he learned from Helms that the 40
Committee and the White House had decided that no CIA
programs in support of Alessandri were to be carried out
in Chile-a decision obviously based on anticipated opposi-
tion from Korry as well as on the optimistic polls.
The Senate subcommittee subsequently concluded, in its
final report, that it was McCone's suggestion that led
Helms to arrange for Geneen to meet in July with William
V. Broe?then chief of the CIA's clandestine operations in
Latin America. During that meeting, Broe told the sub-
committee, Geneen offered to make a "substantial" contri-
bution to the Alessandri campaign if the CIA would handle
the funds. The subcommittee never learned one essential
fact, however: the Geneen-Broe meeting had been stimu-
lated not by McCone but by Hecksher, who-working be-
hind Korry's back-had met in Santiago with ITT opera-
tives and had provided them with the name of a Chile7n
who could be used as a secure conduit for ITT's money The
information about Hecksher's role eventually became
known to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but was cen-
sored from its final published report. The inability of the
Senate Multinational Subcommittee to learn about
Hecksher's role, and his close ties to ITT, indicated to
what lengths senior officials such as Helms and Broe would
go in order to protect Harold Geneen and his corporation-
and, through Geneen, Nixon and Kissinger. Helms and
Broe could rationalize their incomplete and misleading tes-
timony by telling themselves that it was vital to national
security and the protection of CIA "sources and methods,"
a repeated catchall excuse for not talking about Agency
misdeeds. The willingness of the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee to permit the CIA to monitor and censor its reports
prior to publication-and, in the process, to delete
Hecksher's role and the specific involvement of Agustin
Edwards at key meetings-is much harder to understand.
Hecksher's main ITT contacts inside Chile were Harold
V. Hendrix and Robert Berrellez, two senior company offi-
cials, who had a close and long-standing relationship with
the Agency's station in Santiago. The ITT men were con-
sidered to be "assets" of the CIA, and were even described
by special code names in coded Agency communications.
The Senate Multinational Subcommittee, after hearing
sworn testimony from Geneen, Broe, McCone, and others,
was unable to find evidence that ITT had in fact pro-
vided funds. Berrellez and another senior ITT vice
president were later charged with obstruction of proceed-
ings, false statements, and perjury in their testimony be-
fore the Multinational Subcommittee. Harold Geneen was
also a subject of the federal grand jury investigation, but
was not charged; the Justice Department eventually dis-
missed the charges against Berrellez and the other ITT
official. Helms pled guilty in 1977 to misdemeanor charges
stemming from his false testimony before the sub-
committee.
In fact, Geneen did authorize at least one large contribu-
tion .in the summer of 1970 from ITT to the Alessandri
campaign-a payment of at least $350,000 that was not
made public by the firm until 1976, after the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee discovered it. Geneen had continued to
deny any ITT involvement in Chilean politics.
The Geneen offer established a precedent for future
anti-Allende activity that summer and fall: Hecksher and
his colleagues in Santiago knowingly became involved in a
policy of political support that had been specifically reject-
ed by Korry and the 40 Committee. No evidence could be
found directly linking Kissinger or Nixon to personal
knowledge of the ITT support, but some senior officials in
the White House surely had to know. It is inconceivable
that the CIA, with its justifiable fear of crossing the White
House, would have relayed Hecksher's information on how
to slip money into Chile to ITT without receiving authori-
zation to do so. In August of 1970, Charles Colson ran into
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
Harold Geneen in John Ehrlichman's office. Colson recalls
not being surprised at all when Geneen told him that ITT
had "been funneling money to help us" in Chile. "Geneen
was vei y happy to be in alliance with the CIA," Colson
adds. "He was bragging about all the money he had given
to the Agency."
I Tn'S MONEY DID NOT HELP. THE BOOM FELL ON SEP-
tember 4. Allende defied the public-opinion polls and
won the Chilean election by 39,000 votes out of the 3
million cast, forcing a runoff election with Alessandri in the
Congress on October 24-an election that, if history re-
peated itself, Allende, as the winner of the popular elec-
tion, was destined to win. The reaction in Washington was
more than just despair; there was rage at Allende for hav-
ing defied the wishes of American policy-makers. At 6:30
on the morning of September 5, a Saturday, Richard Helms
and a group of key CIA officials rushed into the Agency's
operations center to look at the election results. One offi-
cial on duty at the time recalls the attitude that morning of
Helms and his colleagues: "The CIA had had its nose
rubbed in the dirt in Chile. We had staked our reputation
on keeping Allende out. Alessandri's loss hurt the CIA's
standing [in the White House] and its pride." The situa-
tion-room official, who monitored highly secret traffic from
Santiago to Washington over the next few months, adds
that Helms and his deputies "just couldn't put up with Al-
lende. He became part of a personal vendetta. They'd gone
so far and got out on a limb."
Korry was also upset. He filed a cable saying, allegori-
cally, that he could "hear the tanks rumbling under my
window" as Allende's socialism began to take over Chile.
"We have suffered a grievous defeat," he wrote. "The con-
sequences will be domestic and international., ..." In his
memoirs, Kissinger describes that sentence as being
among those underlined by Nixon as he read the Korry
report. But in a sentence left unmarked by Nixon, the
Korry cable also said: "There is no reason to believe that
the Chilean armed forces will unleash a civil war of that
any intervening miracle will undo his victory" in the Octo-
ber 24 election.
That was not what Nixon and Kissinger wanted to hear.
"Nixon was beside himself," Kissinger writes, adding that
he blamed the State Department and Korry "for the exist-
ing state of affairs." In future planning in the Chilean cri-
sis, Kissinger says, Nixon "sought as much as possible to
circumvent the bureaucracy." Kissinger neglects to note
that he, too, was beside himself, and as eager as Nixon to
circumvent the bureaucracy.
There is compelling evidence that Nixon's tough stance
against Allende in 1970 was predominantly shaped by his
concern for the future of the American corporations whose
assets, he believed, would be seized by the Allende gov-
ernment. His intelligence agencies, while quick to con-
demn the spread of Marxism in Latin America, reported
that Allende posed no threat to national security. Three
days after the election, the CIA told the White House in a
formal Intelligence Memorandum that, as summarized by
the Senate Intelligence Committee, the United States
"had no vital interests within Chile, the world military bal-
ance of power would not be significantly altered by an Al-
lende regime, and an Allende victory in Chile would not
pose any likely threat to the peace of the region."
Nixon's anger at failing his corporate benefactors-Jay
Parkinson, Harold Geneen, and Donald Kendall-was di-
rectly passed on to Kissinger. Kissinger, many on his
staff recall, seemed to be less interested in corporate well-
being than in pleasing Nixon. "While he was their servant
ideologically," Roger Morris, who worked at the National
Security Council until mid-1970, says, "Henry's attitude
toward the business community was contemptuous." But,
Morris says, Kissinger also seemed to be truly concerned
about Allende's election: "I don't think anybody in the gov-
ernment understood how ideological Kissinger was about
Chile. I don't think anybody ever fully grasped that Henry
saw Allende as being a far more serious threat than Cas-
tro. If Latin America ever became unraveled, it never
would happen with a Castro. Allende was a living example
of democratic social reform in Latin America. All kinds of
cataclysmic events rolled around, but Chile scared him. He
-talked about Eurocommunism [in later years] the same
way he talked about Chile early on. Chile scared him." An-
other NSC aide recalls a Kissinger discussion of the Al-
lende election in terms of Italy, where the Communist Par-
ty was growing in political strength. The fear was not only
that Allende would be voted into office but that-after six
years-the political process would work and he would be
voted out in the next election. The notion that Communists
could participate in the electoral process and peacefully ac-
cept the results was seen by Kissinger as the wrong mes-
sage to send Italian voters. On September 16, Kissinger
spoke privately with a group of reporters to discuss,
among other issues, the Chilean election. He told the
newsmen, with seeming conviction, "I have yet to meet
somebody who firmly believes that if Allende wins there is
likely to be another free election in Chile." His real fear, of
course, was precisely the opposite: that Allende would
work within the democratic process.
His other fears about Allende were expressed more can-
didly. Convinced that the domino theory was alive and well
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
in Latin America, he went on to say that "in a major Latin
American country you would have a communist govern-
ment, joining, for example, Argentina, which is already
deeply divided, along a long frontier, Joining Peru, which
has already been heading in directions that have been diffi-
cult to deal with; and joining Bolivia, which has also gone
in a more leftist, anti-U.S. direction.... So I do not think
we should delude ourselves that an Allende take-over in
Chile would not present massive problems for us, and for
democratic forces and for pro-U.S. forces in Latin Amer-
ica, and indeed to the whole Western Hemisphere."
The initial White House reaction to Allende's election
was muted, because so much else was going on. On Sep-
tember 6, two days after the Chilean election, PLO terror-
ists began hijacking commercial airliners in Europe and
the Middle East, triggering what would become a brief
war in Jordan within weeks. On September 8, Kissinger
chaired a meeting of the 40 Committee.gt which he,
Helms, and Mitchell agreed "that a military [coup) against
Allende would have very little chance of success unless un-
dertaken soon." According to a summary published later
by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Korry was ordered
by Kissinger to prepare a "cold-blooded assessment" of
"the pros and cons and problems and prospects involved
should a Chilean military coup be organized now with U.S.
assistance. . . ." Korry's answer came back hot and anx-
ious on September 12: the possibilities for such an event
were "nonexistent." On September 14, with the crisis in
Jordan in temporary hiatus, Kissinger summoned another
40 Committee meeting. .
The meeting was dominated by serious discussion of
what became known in the intelligence community as the
"Rube Goldberg" gambit. Alessandri had announced that
if elected by the Chilean Congress on October 24, he would
resign the presidency. If he waited until after his inaugura-
tion, on November 3, his resignation would force yet an-
other election. Eduardo Frei, having been out of office-
even briefly-would legally be able to run again. The men
in Washington somehow considered the scheme to be a con-
stitutional solution to the Allende problem, but it hinged,
obviously, on cooperation from Frei, as well as on Frei's
ability to get renominated by the Christian Democratic
Party.
The scheme had begun well before Allende's surprise
victory on September 4. Korry had been approached by
some senior members of the Christian Democratic Party,
who relayed Frei's willingness to run again if Allende won
the popular election and if a constitutional solution could
be arranged. Korry reported the proposal to Washington,
and after Allende's surprise election, the Nixon adminis-
tration-desperate for viable ideas-debated and ap-
proved it at the 40 Committee meeting on September 14.
Korry was told, in a top-secret dispatch on the next day,
that he was authorized to offer Frei and his supporters
$250,000, and more, if necessary, for "covert support of
projects which Frei or his trusted team deem important" to
ensure Frei's eventual election-such as buying votes i
the Chilean Congress. Korry rejected the money out i
hand, telling the State Department in essence that undh
no circumstances should the United States do "Chile
dirty work for it." By that time, Korry says, he alread
knew what Washington did not: the "Rube Goldberg
scheme was unworkable. It was clear that Frei could nc
win the nomination of his own party-even if Alessand
won the runoff election and withdrew, as planned. "I al:
suspected Frei wasn't going to try to win [his party's nom
nation)," Korry says, "so why should I go running aroun
trying to buy up Chilean congressmen if Frei couldn't cot
trol his own party?" The American Embassy had learnec
Korry says, that Allende and Radomiro Tomic, the liber.
Christian Democratic candidate, who finished third in th
September 4 elections, had secretly agreed before the ele,
tion to pool their forces in case of a runoff. That agreemer
made any chance for Alessandri's election virtually impo:
Bible, Korry says, and Alessandri could not resign th
presidency if he could not win it.
Korry remained hostile to Allende's candidacy durin
this period, but he asserts that he repeatedly sought t
prevent any direct United States intervention in the Chi
ean elections. "If Frei could win his party's nomination i
an open, democratic way," Korry explains, "and then us
the system constitutionally in an open way to becom
resident, that was his business." During those hect
eeks, Korry was enthusiastic in his support of a series c
anti-Allende propaganda steps taken by some of Frei
more ardent supporters. When some of those supporter
came to him, Korry says, and reported that they planne
to help disrupt the economy, "I endorsed this in a cable t
Washington." Korry's concern, he says, was to show Wasl
ington that he could be as tough as anyone else; his goal, h
insists, was solely to prevent what he suspected was bein
considered-direct American support for a military cowl
For a few weeks, then, in mid-September, if Korry's a(
count is accurate, his world became as devious as Henr
Kissinger's: he sent a stream of tough-sounding cables t
Washington strenuously supporting a gambit that he kne'
had no chance of success. In one such cable, he told of
stern warning he had given to Frei's defense ministE
about the problems Chile would face if Frei did not ac-
"Frei should know that not a nut or bolt will be allowed t
reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to powe
we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and th
Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty, a policy dh
signed for a long time to come. . . ." Korry insisted late:
in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee and i
interviews, that he had deliberately "overstated the me,
sage ... in order to prevent and halt this damn pressur
on me to go to the military." He did not know at the time h
wrote the cable, he said, that an economic boycott of Chi]
was, in fact, being advocated by Nixon and Kissinger.
The unworkable "Rube Goldberg" plan was not the onl,
issue before the 40 Committee at the September 14 meet
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
ing. Approval was granted for a last-minute increase of the
propaganda activities designed to convince the Chilean
Congress that an Allende election would mean financial
chaos. Within two weeks, twenty-three journalists from at
least ten countries were brought into Chile by the CIA and
combined with CIA propaganda "assets" already in place
to produce more than 700 articles and broadcasts both in
and out of Chile before the congressional election-a stag-
gering total whose ultimate influence cannot be measured.
By late September, a full-fledged bank panic had broken
out in Santiago, and vast amounts of funds were being
transferred abroad. Sales of durable goods, such as auto-
mobiles and household goods, fell precipitously; industrial
production also dropped. Black-market activities soared as
citizens sought to sell their valuables at discounted prices.
The pressure was on. The screws had started turning in
earnest on September 14, when the 40 Committee signaled
that the Nixon administration was willing to go to great
lengths to keep Allende out of the presidency. Just how far
the President would go was not yet fully clear. Ten days
had passed since Allende's election, and Nixon had man-
aged to control his rage. There had been no outbursts. In a
Nixon reaction familiar to Kissinger, the explosion came on
the next day, the fifteenth, and the spark was alarm from
Nixon's friends and benefactors in the corporate world.
THE CORPORATE PATH TO NIXON ACTUALLY BEGAN
in Santiago, on the day before Allende's election,
when Agustin Edwards made his first and only visit
to Korry's embassy. Edwards had been on friendly terms
with Korry's predecessor, Ralph A. Dungan, a Democrat
who-served in Chile from 1964 to 1967, but had not devel-
oped a similar relationship with Korry. Korry says that
during their ten-minute talk he assured Edwards that the
latest polls still predicted that Alessandri would -vin. "Ed-
wards seemed pleased and left," Korry says. "[He told me)
he had plowed all his profits for years into new industries
and modernization, and would be ruined if Allende won."
Three or fou, days after the election, Hecksher told Korry
that Edwards wished to meet again with him, only this
time at the home of one of his employees on the outskirts of
Santiago. At the meeting, Korry says, he informed Ed-
wards that he did not believe that Chilean armed forces
would move to prevent Allende's election by the Congress;
he also acknowledged that the current CIA programs, pri-lO
manly geared to propaganda, had little chance of accom-
plishing their goal. Edwards agreed that Allende's election
by the Congress seemed assured, and surprised Korry by
announcing that he was leaving Chile immediately. He ex-
plained that he had been told by Allende's associates that
he would be "crushed" by the new regime. He flew within
days to see Kendall in Washington, who immediately hired
him as a PepsiCo vice president and invited him to be a
houseguest. On September 14, according to Kissinger's
memoirs, Kendall met privately with Richard Nixon, a
meeting that, like many others, did not appear in Nixon's
daily log as maintained by the Secret Service. On the next
morning, John Mitchell and Kissinger, at Nixon's direc-
tion, had breakfast with Kendall and Edwards; hours later,
Kissinger asked Helms to meet Edwards for, as Kissinger
writes, "whatever insight he might have." Helms later told
an interviewer that Kendall was with Edwards when they
met in a Washington hotel. The two men appealed passion-
ately for CIA help in blocking Allende-an argument,
Helms realized, they must have made to Nixon. In the ear-
ly afternoon, Nixon summoned Helms, Mitchell, and Kis-
singer to his office, and, in essence, gave Helms a blank
check to move against Allende without informing any-
one-even Korry-what he was doing.
The newspapers and networks would later make much
of the fact, as published in the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee's report on Chile, that Helms provided the commit-
tee with his handwritten notes of the September 15 meet-
ing with Nixon. The notes included such remarks as "not
concerned risks involved"; "full-time job-best men we
have"; "make the economy scream"; "$10,000,000 avail-
able, more if necessary"; and "no involvement of Embas-
sy." But those CIA men who served closely with Richard
Helms knew that Helms had much more than mere notes
to turn over, if he chose to do so. "You don't take notes" in
such meetings, one senior CIA man explained, "but as
soon as you're in your car, you dictate a memo for the rec-
ord." This official said that Helms was extremely careful
about keeping in his private files such memoranda, which
were never put into the official CIA record-keeping
system.
In his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee,
Helms said he came away from the Oval Office meeting
with the "impression . . . that the President came down
very hard that he wanted something done, and he didn't
much care hou, and that he was prepared to make money
available.... This was a pretty all-inclusive order.... If
I ever carried a marshall's baton in my knapsack out of the
Oval Office, it was that day" (emphasis added). Asked spe-
cifically whether assassination was included, Helms re-
sponded carefully: "Well, not in my mind ... I had already
made up my mind that we weren't going to have any of
that business when I was director."
Helms's response was nonsense. In a later conversation
with a close associate, Helms provided a much more credi-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
ble description of what took place on September 15: Nixon I
had specifically ordered the CIA to get rid of Allende.
Helms told the associate that there was no doubt in his
mind at the time what Nixon meant. In the weeks follow-
ing the meeting, Helms added, he was pressured again on
the subject at least one time by Kissinger. He further re-
vealed that he had made and kept in his personal posses-
sion detailed memoranda of his talks with Nixon and Kis-
singer about Allende. It should be emphasized that the
close associate cited above, who requested that his identi-
ty not be hinted at, was in a position to know the truth.
The close associate also reported that Helms had provided
his attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, with similar infor-
mation after being charged by the Justice Department
with perjury in connection with the Allende matter. Wil-
liams, contacted by me, refused to comment.
Helms was no innocent about CIA assassinations, hav-
ing been one of the few high-level Agency officials to be
fully aware of the efforts, beginning in 1960, to have Cas-
tro assassinated. Helms told the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee in 1975, according to its published report on assassi-
nations, that he fully believed that in those attempts-some
involving Mafia leaders-the CIA, as the committee put it,
was "acting within the scope of its authority and that Cas-
tro's assassination came within the bounds of the Kennedy
administration." Asked whether an explicit presidential
order to assassinate Castro was necessary, Helms was
quoted as responding: "I think that any of us would have
found it very difficult to discuss assassinations with a
President of the United States. I just think we all had the
feeling that we're hired out to keep those things out of the
Oval Office."
In a second appearance before the committee a month
Is r, the issue arose again. Asked whether Robert F. Ken-
neay, the attorney general, had ever ordered him to kill
Castro, Helms responded: "Not in those words, no." Were
less direct phrases used to make the same points? "Sir,"
replied the obviously discomfited Helms, "the last time I
was here, I did the best I could about what I believed to be
the parameters under which we were working, and that
was to get rid of Castro. I can't imagine any Cabinet officer
wanting to sign off on something like that. I can't imagine
anybody wanting something in writing saying I have just
charged Mr. Jones to go out and shoot Mr. Smith."
Another senior CIA official, who spent years dealing
with Cuba and Latin America, explained the technique
more directly in an interview: "All a President would have
to say is something innocuous-`We wish he wasn't there.'
That much of a message, even if it were to appear on the
famous [Nixon White House] tapes, would get no one in
trouble. But when it gets down to our shop, it means, to
about six people, `Don't ever come back and tell what
happened.'
Tall ing about assassination was not as traumatic inside
the White House in 1969 and 1970 as it would become five
years later, at the height of the domestic uproar over rev-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
elations of the CIA's assassination attempts against Cas-
tro, Patrice Lumumba, of the Congo, and Rafael Trujillo,
of the Dominican Republic. Roger Morris recalls at least
two casual conversations with fellow Kissinger aides about
the killing of Nguyen Van Thieu, South Vietnam's presi-
dent, who was seen as a key stumbling block to the success
of the Paris peace talks. In one case, Morris says, he men-
tioned plaintively to a colleague that Thieu's "assassination
is one that the American government ought to look at with
interest." To his amazement, his colleague, who worked in
Kissinger's personal office in the White House, responded
seriously: "They have." Morris later wrote, with another
aide, a top-secret memorandum on the Vietnam negotia-
tions that specifically advocated "imposing [a) settlement
over Saigon's opposition. The stakes would warrant steps
we have not contemplated since 1963." The memorandum
was presented to Kissinger, who, Morris was told, had it
retyped and presented to Nixon without change. Boasting
about assassination took place. Alexander Haig, Kis-
singer's chief deputy, once told John C. Court, an NSC
staff aide, that, as Court recalls, "if we have to take care of
somebody, we could do it." There was talk in Chile, also,
about assassination. Korry was directly approached by the
ambassador of a West European nation and urged, in all
seriousness, to arrange for the murder of Allende. Korry
rebuffed the diplomat, he says, and carefully reported the
thrust of their conversation to the State Department.
0 UT OF NIXON'S MEETING ON SEPTEMBER 15
emerged what the CIA would later call the "two-
track" approach. Track I would include the anti-
Allende propaganda and political programs voted by the 40
Committee and relayed to Korry and Hecksher for action.
Korry was also to continue his support for a solution in-
volving last-minute political chicanery by Frei or Alessan-
dri. Track II was to bcept secret from Korry, the State
Department, and even the 40 Committee. The goal of
Track II was not only to encourage the Chilean military to
initiate a coup but directly to assist the officers in getting
one under way. It was in essence to be an American coup
carried out by Chileans.
With Track II under way, the White House apparently
decided to keep ITT, too, in the dark about the great
lengths to which it was willing to go in Chile. One week
after Allende's election, John McCone met with Kissinger
and Helms. and relayed yet another ITT pledge, this one
for $1 million, for the purpose of assisting any CIA plan to
stop Allende. Viron P. Vaky Kissinger's aide for Latin
American affairs, was separately informed of the $1 mil-
lion offer by an ITT official in Washington, who added that
Harold Geneen was available to fly to the White House to
discuss the issue with Kissinger. ITT was taking no
chances; its two top men were making pitches in the same
week to the White House. The Senate Multinational Sub-
committee could not learn whether a Geneen-Kissinger
meeting on Chile took place. Nor could it find evidence that1Z
ITT passed funds for use in Chile-an inevitable failure,
given the less-than-candid testimony in the hearings, that
enabled the company to slide past the subcommittee in 1973.
If there was apprehension in the White House over the
enormity of what the administration was seeking to do to
Chilean democracy, Richard Nixon did not share it. On
September 16, the day after his tumultuous meeting with
Helms, he flew to Kansas State University to give a lec-
ture honoring Alfred M. Landon, who was the losing presi-
dential candidate in 1936 as a Republican.
Nixon praised Landon's graceful acceptance of defeat
and added: "There are those who protest that if the verdict
of democracy goes against them, democracy itself is at
fault, the system is at fault-who say that if they don't get
their own way the answer is to burn a bus or bomb a build-
ing. Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize
that in a free society no one can win all the time."
Especially Salvador Allende.
In the days that followed Richard Nixon's emotional
charge to Richard Helms, the CIA reached deep into its
resources to perform what many of its senior officers be-
lieved was a real-life "Mission Impossible." Without itself
being exposed, and within six weeks of a closely watched
runoff election in the Chilean Congress, the Agency had to
increase its direct involvement with leading members of
opposition groups and provide arms, money, and promises
in support of a coup. The goal was to get rid of Allende, as
the President demanded.
In his 1980 autobiography, Facing Reality, Cord Meyer,
one of Richard Helms's most trusted deputies, recalls at-
tending a small meeting at the Agency on September 15,
shortly after Helms's visit with the President. "We were
surprised by what we were being ordered to do," Meyer
writes, "since, much as we feared an Allende presidency,
the idea of a military overthrow had not occurred to us as a
feasible solution." Despite the doubts, however, the men
at the top of the CIA were determined faithfully to execute
Nixon's "aberrational and hysterical decision," Meyer
adds. "The pride we might have felt at having been among
the select few chosen by the President to execute a secret
and important mission was more than counterbalanced by
our doubts about the wisdom of this course." Meyer does
not say so, but surely there were also doubts about the
legality of the President's directive. That a group of ma-
ture government officials would enthusiastically carry out
such a policy without question provided, in the eyes of
many CIA critics, an excellent reason for abolishing the
authority of the Agency to conduct covert operations.
Thomas H. Karamessines, the CIA's senior official in
charge of clandestine activities, met and spoke with Henry
Kissinger six to ten times, by his count, in September and
October. Samuel Halpern, a longtime CIA official who was
a deputy to Karamessines, also reported to the White
House, but his contact was usually Haig; if Haig was not
available, Halpern spoke to Thomas K. Latimer, a CIA li-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
also:: oficer who was assigned to the National Security
Cow,cil staff. Senior officials of the intelligence agency, in
interviews and in testimony in 1975 before the Senate In-
telligence Committee, repeatedly described the White
House pressure to prevent Allende's election as intense.
comparable only to the pressure early in the Kennedy ad-
ministration to do something about Fidel Castro. It was
perhaps inevitable, then, that Richard Helms, a veteran of
the Cuban operations, would place responsibility for the
operations against Allende in the hands of many of the
same men who had worked against Castro.
As the various congressional investigations unfolded
during the mid-1970s. the official lying and distortion
about Chile reached a point equaled by only one other is-
sue in the Nixon era: the June, 1972, Watergate break-in,
with its subsequent cover-up. With Chile, as with Water-
gate. cover-up payments were sought for CIA contacts
and associates who were caught in the act of crime. With
Chile, as with Watergate, records were destroyed and doc-
uments distorted. With Chile. as with Watergate, much of
the official testimony provided to congressional investigat-
ing committees was perjury. With Chile, as with Water-
gate, the White House was in league with unscrupulous
and violent men who did not understand the difference be-
tween right and wrong.
Y MID-SEPTEMBER, KISSINGER HAD WRESTED
control of the Middle East from the State Depart-
ment. In a few days, he would single-handedly run
the response to what he perceived to be a Soviet attempt
to build a submarine port in Cienfuegos, a Cuban harbor.
It was a period in which Kissinger saw himself, and the
presidency, as facing grave challenges from the -Soviet
Union and rising to meet them head on. If he could mobi-
lize Army divisions and deploy Navy task forces with a
thirty-second telephone call, surely he could change the
election result in a not-very-important Latin American
country and demonstrate anew to the communist world
the authority of the Nixon White House. Kissinger was to
be totally in control in Chile. Perhaps it was the totality of
his command that prompted his bravado at the background
briefing on September 16, at which Kissinger warned of
Allende's election, for he proceeded to tell the newsmen
the essentials of Track I. "According to the Chilean elec-
tion law," Kissinger said, in a section of the briefing that he
did not choose to reprint in his memoirs. "when nobody
gets a majority. the two highest candidates go to the Con-
gress. The Congress then votes in a secret ballot and elects
the President.... In Chilean history, there is nothing to
prevent it, and it would not be at all illogical for the Con-
gress to say, 'Sixty-four percent of the people did not want
a communist government. A communist government tends
to be irreversible. Therefore, we are going to vote for the
No. 2 man.' - Kissinger was describing the "Rube Gold-
berg" ploy without, of course, revealing that $250,000 had
been authorized by the,40 Committee to bribe members of
the Congress. The failure of that ploy-because of
Eduardo Frei's refusal to act-would not become clear to
Washington for another week.
He said nothing, however, about the other half of the
White House operation, Track II. In his memoirs, Kis-
singer goes to great lengths to minimize the importance of
Track II-repeatedly suggesting, as he did in his 1975 tes-
timony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that
Tracks I and II had quietly merged. In Track II, Kissinger
writes, despite Nixon's promise to Helms of a fund totaling
$10 million or more, "The expenditures, if any, could not
have amounted to more than a few thousand dollars. It
was never more than a probe and an exploration of possi-
bilities, even in Helms's perception." He adds, "There
was always less to Track II than met the eye. As I have
shown many times . . . Nixon was given to grandiloquent
statements on which he did not insist once their implica-
tions became clear to him. The fear that unwary visitors
would take the President literally was, indeed, one of the
reasons why Haldeman controlled access to him so solici-
tous)y," It is not clear from his memoirs whether Kissinger
considered Richard Helms to be one of those `unwary"
visitors who took the President at his word.
Kissinger's eagerness to diminish Track II is understand-
able, for the true extent of the Agency's activities inside
Chile has never been told. and may never be fully known.
(It is worth noting that Kissinger's most trusted biogra-
phers, Marvin and Bernard Kalb, did not mention either
Chile or Salvador Allende in their book, published in 1974.
Not even Allende's downfall in 1973 was noted. The point
is not that the Kalbs suppressed any information but that
Kissinger did.) Helms certainly knew that it was more
than an exploratory probe: within weeks, he approved the
assignment of some of the Agency's most experienced
agents to Santiago. One such man, known in CIA dis-
patches only by his cover name, Henry J. Sloman, had by
1970 spent more than twenty years operating in disguise
throughout Latin America, Europe, and Asia. His cover
was impeccable: he was considered by his associates to be
a professional gambler and a high-risk smuggler who was
directly linked to the Mafia. When Sloman retired, in 1975,
he had been inside CIA headquarters in Washington fewer
than a dozen times in his career, occasionally meeting high-
level officials there on Sunday to avoid the possibility of
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
chance observation by other CIA operatives. He was a fa-
bled figure inside the Agency: there was repeated talk of
his. participation in "wet ops"-those involving the shed-
ding of blood. He was well known to Helms, who awarded
him at least two CIA medals for his undercover exploits,
which included other operations-mostly in Southeast
Asia-that, Sloman says, were staged expressly on Kis-
singer's orders.
He was not alone. At least three other senior CIA oper-
atives who, like Sloman, could pass for Latin American
natives were carefully rotated into Santiago before the Oc-
tober 24 election. The mission of the operatives-known
inside the CIA as "false-flaggers," a reference to their
phony Latin American passports-was not to help facili-
tate a constitutional solution to the Allende problem but to
pass money and instructions to those men inside Chile who
wanted to stage a coup.
In their briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee
senior CIA officials said the false-Baggers were necessary
in order to maintain security and minimize the possible
linkage of the United States government to the anti-
Allende plotting. There was a much more important rea-
son for their assignment, however: the false-Baggers were
men who were trained to do what they were told, and who
would not flinch, as many intelligence operatives inside
Chile would, at having to deal with the men known
throughout Chile as the most vitriolic haters of Allende-
an assortment of extreme right-wing terrorists led by
General Roberto Viaux. To the American operatives sta-
tioned in Chile, Viaux and his associate, former captain
Arturo Marshal, were unstable and impossible to control:
their fanatic group was also believed to have been infiltrat-
ed by Allende's forces. In 1969, Viaux was relieved of com-
mand and Marshal was cashiered from the Chilean army
for leading an unsuccessful anti-Frei coup; ever since, they
had been escalating their call for violence against the left.
Marshal had gone so far as to tell supporters privately that
he would assassinate Allende if given a chance-threats
that prompted Allende's advisers to urge him, unsuccess-
fully, to wear a bulletproof vest. Opposition to any dealings
with Viaux and Marshal was rife inside the CIA station in
Santiago. The Agency's main contact with the Chilean
military, Colonel Paul M. Wimert, Jr., the American Army
attache in Santiago, who had served in military intelli-
gence in Latin America since the 1950s, was adamant in
his contempt for Viaux. "I always operated on the assump-
tion that there's no substitution for brains, and Viaux
didn't have any," Wimert says. Wimert was as anxious as
anyone in the embassy to provoke a military coup that fall,
but not with Viaux.
The false-flaggers were ordered to have no contact with
other Americans inside Chile. They were to get in, hide
out in a hotel, pass money and instructions to Viaux, Mar-
shal, and their men, and get out. Their only contact with
the American Embassy and its CIA station was to be
through Hecksher, who would relay their instructions and
their cables to CIA headquarters in Washington. All this
scheming was routinely reported to the White House, as
was anything of significance inside Chile after September
15. The heat was on, and the CIA was letting the White
House know that it was doing its best.
Kissinger was out of Washington from September 26 to
October 5, traveling with the President on his electioneer-
ing visit to Europe and the Mediterranean. There is evi-
dence, however, that even before he left the White House
he knew that the 'Rube Goldberg" ploy was not going to
work. On September 23, according to documents published
by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Hecksher reported
that there were "strong reasons" for thinking that Frei
would not act. Hecksher urged that the CIA station in
Santiago be authorized to begin approaching anti-Allende
officers in the Chilean army and navy and inducing them to
lead a military coup. The contact was to be Wimert, an
expert horseman with many close friends among the sen-
ior-officer corps, many of whom shared his love for horses
and competitive riding. Wimert had been granted the
privilege of stabling his horses at the Chilean Military
Academy in Santiago, and his access to and influence with
the military in Chile were unmatched by those of any other
CIA operative. But Wimert had also been ordered by
Korry not to discuss politics with the Chilean officers-an
Order that, despite Wimert's intense dislike for Korry, he
had obeyed.
Ih late September, Wimert was quietly approached by
Hecksher and told that he had been assigned by "high au-
thority" to work directly with the CIA in contacting senior
Chilean military men and urging them to lead a coup.
Korry was not to be told of Wimert's new mission. Wimert
asked for, and received, a highly classified cable from his
direct superiors in the Defense Intelligence Agency, in the
Pentagon, confirming the arrangement. The cable was so
sensitive, Wimert was told, that he could not keep it in his
files. He was to report until further notice to Hecksher and
the CIA and do what they said. Weeks later, when the dan-
ger of his mission became clear to him, Wimert was given a
confidential assurance from Helms-in another cable that
Wimert was shown but not permitted to keep-that his
family and horses would be provided for in case he was
killed while at work for the Agency. Over the next three
months, Wimert filed his reports and his assessments-for
the CIA and also, he thought, for his superiors in the Pen-
tagon-through Hecksher. It was not until 1975, at the
time of the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings, that
he learned that not one of his reports had made its way to
the Defense Intelligence Agency. Chile was to be his last
assignment for the DIA; when he returned to Washington,
he was treated coldly by his superiors, who,' Wimert
learned later, had been distressed by his failure to file from
Santiago during the Allende election period. "Nothing I
sent went to the DIA; it went to Haig and Kissinger di-
rectly," Wimert says. "I was filing for three months and I
thought everything I sent over there was going to the DIA
14
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
and it wasn't-it was going over to the White House."
While in Santiago, Wimert received a cable of congratula-
tions signed by Admiral Moorer and General Donald V.
Bennett, who was in charge of the Defense Intelligence
Agency. Often, Hecksher would present Wimert with or-
ders that were signed by Bennett, and the CIA would re-
lay Wimert's responses, so Wimert thought, to the Gener-
al. All of those cables had been created somewhere outside
the Pentagon, Wimert learned later. The Senate Intelli-
gence Committee was unable to decide who was to blame
for Wimert's duping; CIA officials testified that they had
riot tampered with Wimert's cables. In an interview this
year, however, a senior CIA official who was directly in-
volved in the Chilean operation acknowledged that Wi-
mert's reports to the Pentagon had been derailed because
officials there had no "need to know" of the intense-plotting
in Santiago. Such manipulation was routine, the official
added, when an outsider such as Wimert was called upon
to aid the intelligence agency in a clandestine operation.
"There isn't a military attache I know of who isn't an ama-
teur," the official said, adding that Wimert's participation
was necessitated by the intense White House pressure.
Wimert managed to obtain an appointment to the Inter-
American Defense College, in Washington, in 1971, before
retiring to a horse farm in Virginia in 1973.
WHEN KISSINGER RETURNED TO WASHINGTON ON
October 5, he could not have been surprised to
learn that the "Rube Goldberg" plan was dead. A
40 Committee meeting was set up for October 6, and Kis-
singer once again was dominant. Minutes of that meeting,
as published in part by the Senate Intelligence Committee,
quote Kissinger as caustically criticizing those who "pre-
sumed total acceptance of a fait accompli"-that is, the
election of Allende-and warning that "higher authority
had no intention of conceding before the 24th; on the con-
trary, he wanted no stone left unturned." Karamessines
later told the Senate committee that the pressure to pre-
vent an Alleude presidency was still intense, and Kis-
singer, in their meetings, "left no doubt in my mind that he
was under the heaviest of pressure to get this accom-
plished, and he in turn was placing us under the heaviest of
pressures to get it accomplished."
By the second week in October, the CIA-with the aid
of Wimert-had made contact with a military faction in-
Chile that, along with the Viaux group, was consid-
side
ered to be the most likely to take the necessary violent
steps. The group, headed by General Camilo Valenzuela,
commander of the main army garrison in Santiago, was
composed of moderate conservatives oh active duty in the
army and navy. CIA officials, in their testimony before the
Senate Intelligence Committee, sought to make a distinc-
tion between the Valenzuela and Viaux factions; many
senior officers on active duty in the Chilean army and navy
were known to be opposed to Viaux's extremism and his
terrorist activities. The Senate Intelligence Committee
concluded, however, that there was close contact and co-
ordination between the two groups.
All the anti-Allende plotting throughout the pre-election
period was made riskier by reports of clandestine CIA op-
erations which repeatedly surged through Santiago; most
of the rumors accurately linked Valenzuela and Viaux to
coup plotting and to the CIA. Another source of tension
inside the Agency was Hecksher's view that Viaux was too
much out of control to be trusted. One of Viaux's first de-
mands, rejected by the CIA, was for the Agency to deliv-
er-via an airdrop-several hundred paralyzing gas gre-
nades for use in a coup attempt. Hecksher warned
headquarters not to convey the impression to the White
House that he had a "surefire method of halting, let alone
triggering, coup attempts." He was recalled to Washing-
ton and warned, as he later testified, that his superiors
were "not too interested in continuously being told by me
that certain proposals which had been made could not be
executed, or would be counterproductive." If Nixon and
Kissinger wanted it to be done, it was to be done-even if
the best intelligence minds in Chile reported that dealing
with Viaux, in the long run, would be inimical to the inter-
ests of the United States.
On October 13, the CIA station was authorized to pass
$20,000 to Viaux-through a false-flagger-and to prom-
ise him a $250,000 life-insurance policy in support of his
efforts to lead a coup. Such large sums of money were kept
on hand inside the CIA station in the American Embassy,
and disbursed with no receipts given or questions asked.
Wimert, who was later authorized to pay out $100,000 to
anti-Allende groups, says that the cash was too bulky to
carry: "I kept it in my riding boots in the trunk of my car."
THE COMPLAINTS ABOUT VIAUX FROM HECKSHER and
others in Santiago were not the only sources of anxi-
ety for Washington: Korry also posed problems.
Nervous about the constant rumors of CIA involvement in
Chile, he filed an eyes-only warning to Kissinger and Alex-
is Johnson, at the State Department, on September 25, the
day before Kissinger left Washington on the Nixon Euro-,
pear trip. "Aside from the merits of a coup and its implica-
tions for the United States," Korry reported, "I am con-
vinced we cannot provoke one and that we should not run
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
any risks simply to have another Bay of Pigs." According-
ly, Korry said, he had instructed the CIA station in San-
tiago "not to engage in ... encouragement of any kind."
What Korry did not report is that a few days earlier, he
and Hecksher had engaged in a brief shouting match over
Hecksher's complaint that Korry was not doing all he could
to urge Frei to involve himself in the Allende crisis. "Why
the hell don't you twist Frei's arm?" Korry recalls
Hecksher shouting. "You're telling Washington you're do-
ing it and you're not." Korry followed the cable with a re-
quest that he be permitted to return to Washington to
brief the administration and members of Congress about
events in Chile. He was told to stay in Santiago because
his presence there was "too valuable."
By early October, Korry was suspicious that something
was going on behind his back. There were Tew he could
turn to. Interviews with former Korry associates and
aides in the Santiago embassy revealed that he was widely
disliked for his arrogance, and was therefore totally isolat-
ed from the corridor gossip in the embassy-a basic source
of information. In a second private message to Kissinger
and Johnson, dated October 9, he again warned: "I think
any attempt on our part actively to encourage a coup could
lead us to a Bay of Pigs failure. I am appalled to discover
that there is liaison for terrorists and coup plotting.... I
have never been consulted or informed of what, if any, role
the United States may have. . . ." Korry told Kissinger
that he and his senior Foreign Service aides in the embassy
in Santiago had reason to suspect that an anti-Allende
coup was being plotted by the CIA with the Patria y Liber-
tad, an extreme right-wing civilian group-in contact with
Viaux-that advocated violent action against Allende and
his coalition. If this was true, Korry added, such efforts
would not be successful and "would be an unrelieved disas-
ter for the United States and for the President. Its conse-
quences would be to strongly reinforce Allende now and in
the future, and do the gravest harm to U.S. interests
throughout Latin America, if not beyond." (Once again,
Korry's insistence that he did not know that anything un-
toward was going on in his embassy seemingly defies be-
lief. Yet he was able to establish beyond question the in-
tegrity of his October 9 cable, and even testified about it in
his 1975 appearance before the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee without challenge.)
This time, there was an immediate reaction. Johnson
filed an urgent cable ordering Korry to report for a meet-
ing with Kissinger at the opening of business on Monday,
October 12. Korry says that he arrived at Kissinger's office
at the appointed hour: "Henry greeted me and kept blam-
ing `those idiots at the State Department' " for not provid-
ing earlier warning about the possibility of an Allende elec-
tion. Korry realized that he was in the difficult position-
as an ambitious Democrat working for the Nixon adminis-
tration-of having to prove his loyalty while at the same
time trying to persuade the White House to do nothing
militarily in Chile. After a few moments of talk, Korry
says, he told Kissinger that "only an insane person would 1 6
deal with a man like Viaux." Korry recalls describing
Viaux as "a totally dangerous man" whose political faction
had been penetrated by socialists close to Allende, which
compounded the risk of American exposure. At this point,
Kissinger asked Korry if he "would like to see the Presi-
dent"-an audience that had obviously been prearranged.
The two men marched to the Oval Office."When the door
opened," Korry says, "Nixon was standing right inside. He
smacked his fist into his hand and said, That s.o.b., that
s.o.b.' I looked surprised, and he said, `Not you, Mr. Am-
bassador. I know this isn't your fault and you've always
told it like it is. It's that son-of-a-bitch Allende.'"
Nixon, obviously aware of how careful he had to be with
Korry, who was not to know of the White House coup plan-
ning, began to explain lucidly how his administration
would apply economic pressure to bring down the Allende
government. When he concluded, Korry says, Nixon
"turned to me, looking rather pleased-as if I were going
to say, `Yes, sir.'" But Korry saw no reason to be a yes-
man. He had met Nixon in 1967, when he was ambassador
to Ethiopia and Nixon was out of office and on one of his
many worldwide trips; the two had spoken frankly. Korry,
meeting Nixon for the first time since then, felt he could
continue to speak his mind, and did so: "Mr. President, I
know you won't take it amiss if I tell you that you're dead
wrong." Not many people talked to Nixon that way. "I saw
Henry's eyes bulge," Korry says. The Ambassador pro-
ceeded to tell the President that he wanted authority to
begin a wide-ranging series of discussions with Allende
and his entourage as soon as his election was confirmed.
"Which," he said, "is an absolutely foregone conclusion.
Nothing on God's green earth can stop it." At that point,
Korry again brought up Viaux, warning the President that
"of course, there are madmen running around dealing with
Viaux."
At the end of his monologue, Korry says, "the one who
was steaming-quite obviously-was Henry. He looked
daggers at me. When I left the office, Nixon was very nice.
He got up and walked me to the door, asking about my
children." Kissinger stayed behind with the President, un-
doubtedly to join in the savaging of Korry that would take
place.
What Korry did not realize was that Kissinger was
merely reflecting Nixon's real feelings, the rage that the
President suppressed. In his memoirs, Kissinger tries to
minimize the Nixon-Korry meeting, casually saying, "I
gave Korry an opportunity to present his views to Nixon."
Kissinger also writes that the meeting took place three
days later, on October 15, though Korry says that his ca-
bles and travel documents show that he was summoned to
an early-morning meeting on October 12.
Korry, by his direct warning to Kissinger and Nixon,
had thrown a monkey wrench into Track II; no longer
could the President and his top adviser deny any knowl-
edge of the CIA's activities in case something went wrong.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
Track II's secrecy cut two ways: not only would the White
House be able to operate inside Chile without fear of expo-
sure but only a few key CIA officials-whose loyalty was
unquestioned-would know that the two top men in the
government were personally involved.
In Korry's view, some carefully orchestrated moves
were made over the next few days to convince him and
other senior administration officials that no secret CIA
coup plotting was under way. On the thirteenth, if the
White House logs for that day are correct, Karamessines
was summoned to the White House for a late-morning
meeting with Nixon, Kissinger, Alexis Johnson, and Laird.
Laird had not been filled in on Track II; no coup plotting
would be discussed in front of him-a fact Laird could tes-
tify to, if need be, in later inquiries. Karamessines, in his
testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, recalled
being taken aside by Nixon as the meeting ended and be-
ing told again (Nixon had made a similar statement during
the meeting) that "it was absolutely essential that the elec-
ti n of Mr Allende to the presidency be thwarted." Kar-
0
the President-'Look, we're in over our heads. Let's get17
out of there.'"
The official minutes of that October 14 meeting, as pro-
vided to.the Senate Intelligence Committee, quote Kar-
amessines as naming Viaux "the only individual seemingly
ready to attempt a coup and.... his chances of mounting
a successful one were slight." Viaux was "unpredictable,"
Karamessines said. The official minutes also quote Kis-
singer as observing that "there presently appeared to be
little the United States can do to influence the Chilean sit-
uation one way or another."
The need for so much duplicity apparently did have
some impact; the evidence is clear that Kissinger and Nix-
on suddenly began to have grave second thoughts. Any
violent action by Viaux carried the considerable risk of ex-
posing CIA involvement with the anti-Allende plotting;
now there was a second, much more serious issue-the
possible exposure of high-level White House involvement.
amessines understood the message, as he later told the
Senate committee: the Track II pressure was still on.
On the next day, Wednesday, October 14, the 40 Com-
mittee met again. Also at the meeting were Korry and
Charles Meyer, who were invited by Johnson, obviously
with the prior approval of Kissinger, and Karamessines,
filling in for Helms. Korry recalls that much of the session,
held in the White House Situation Room, dealt with how to
handle Chile in the post-Allende period. Characteristically,
Korry was the first speaker to raise the subject of a mili-
tary coup. Speaking after Karamessines provided a gener-
ally discouraging intelligence assessment, Korry referred
to rumors about Viaux "only in passing," he says, and once
again said, as he had done two days earlier with the Presi-
dent, that "there was no chance for a military uprising."
Kissinger said little during the forty-five-minute meeting.
Korry later concluded that Kissinger had staged the meet-
ing and invited Korry because "he wanted me to take re-
sponsibility for saying there's going to be no coup-so he
wouldn't be the one accused of getting cold feet." Two days
earlier, at their brief meeting before Korry met with Nix-
on, Korry says, Kissinger had asked him to write an eyes-
only memorandum documenting how the State Depart-
ment had dragged its feet in the opposition to Allende. At
the time, Kissinger claimed that it was Nixon who had
wanted such a memo, but Korry knew better: Kissinger,
afraid that Allende's election could not be averted, was
seeking ammunition to justify his actions to his President.
Korry was later very bitter about Kissinger's role: "His
interest was not in Chile but in who was going to be
blamed for what. He wanted me to be the one who took the
heat. Henry didn't want to be associated with a failure and
he was setting up a record to blame the State Department.
He brought me in to the President because he wanted me
to say what I had to say about Viaux; he wanted me to be
the soft man. He didn't have the moral courage to say to
F ROM ALL AVAILABLE EVIDENCE, THE DECISION TO
turn primary efforts from Viaux to the Valenzuela
group was made the next day, October 15, at a criti-
cal White House meeting on Chile. Wimert had been re-
porting for days that his contacts with Valenzuela and the
other plotters were substantial, and he was convinced, as
he reported to the Agency (and, he thought, to his superi-
ors in the Pentagon), that they were ready to mount a
coup-one that would have a far greater chance of success
than any operation proposed by Viaux. On the fourteenth,
Wimert had received a dramatic order, ostensibly signed
by General Bennett: "High authority in Washington has
authorized you to offer material support short of armed
intervention to Chilean Armed Forces in any endeavors
they may undertake to prevent the election of Allende on
October 24." Karamessines later told the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee that the "high authority" could only have
been Kissinger or Nixon; Bennett had no authority to issue
such orders. He also testified that the message must have
been drafted in the White House-or at least cleared by
Kissinger's office-before being routed to Wimert.
On October 15, a Thursday, Kararnessines again met
with Kissinger and Haig at the White House. According to
Karamessines's memorandum of that meeting, as supplied
to the Senate, the senior officials closely reviewed the pos-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
sibility of a military coup, focusing on Viaux and Valen-
zuela. In a decision clearly linked to the orders provided to
Wimert the day before, Kissinger ordered Karamessines
to stall Viaux, to persuade him to stand down. But the
other plotters-the more reliable group, headed by Valen-
zuela-were to be encouraged to proceed. Kissinger closed
the meeting by urging the Agency to "continue keeping
the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight-nova;
after the 24th of October, after 3 November [when Allende
was to be inaugurated], and into the future until such time
as new marching orders are given."
One day later, CIA headquarters cabled Hecksher its
understanding of the new White House orders: "It is firm
and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a
coup.... We are to continue to generate maximum pres-
sure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource."
Hecksher was told to warn Viaux not to move, since a
"coup attempt carried out by him alone with the forces now
at his disposal would fail." Hecksher further was to "con-
tinue to encourage" Viaux to join forces with other coup
planners. "There is great and continuing interest in the
activities of Valenzuela et al. and we wish them optimum
good fortune."
The White House decision to turn to Valenzuela was,
without question, triggered by Korry's meeting with Kis-
singer and Nixon on October 12 and his articulation of the
dangers inherent in dealing with Viaux. But the basic
American policy remained the same: a coup to prevent AI-
lende's presidency. Over the next eight days, the CIA con-
tinued to report to Kissinger and Haig about contacts with
Valenzuela and other plotters, and they, in turn, continued
to pressure the Agency to get something done.
And yet Kissinger and Haig insisted in their testimony
to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975 that they had
"turned off" the CIA's coup planning against Allende in the
October 15 meeting with Karamessines. After the fif-
teenth, Kissinger testified, "There was no separate chan-
nel by the CIA to the White House and . . . all actions
with respect to Chile were taken in the 40 Committee
framework. There was no 40 Committee that authorized
an approach to or contact with military people, no plots
which I am familiar with ... and if there was any further
contact with military plotting, it was totally unauthorized
and this is the first that I have heard of it." Haig corrobo-
rated the testimony: "The conclusions of that meeting [on
October 15] were that we had better not do anything rath-
er than something that was not going to succeed.... My
general feeling was, I left that meeting with the impres-
sion that there was nothing authorized." Nixon, in a subse-
quent written response in 1976 to a series of interrogator-
ies from the committee, went even further: he was not
aware of any coup planning at all, not even Track II. "I do
not presently recall being personally consulted with regard
to CIA activities in Chile at any time during the period
September 15, 1970, through October 24, 1970," he stated.
The one exception, Nixon added, came in mid-October,
when Kissinger "informed me that the CIA had reported
to him that their efforts to enlist the support of various
factions in attempts by Mr. Allende's opponents to prevent
Allende from becoming president had not been successful
and likely would not be." Nixon then agreed, he said, with
Kissinger's recommendation that the CIA be ordered to
abandon its efforts. Thus, the basic thrust of the Nixon,
Kissinger, and Haig testimony before the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee was that the CIA had been operating on
its own in continuing to move against Allende after Octo- -
ber 15. The Senate committee made no effort to investi-
gate the obvious contradiction between the Nixon-Kis-
singer and the CIA versions.
Kissinger was given very gingerly treatment by the In-
telligence Committee members, who did not directly raise
the possibility that he was not telling the truth in his testi-
mony. "The senators rolled over and played dead," says one
committee staffer who investigated the Chile incident. "It
was his celebrity status. When Kissinger came to testify
[in the closed hearings), all of a sudden we let in the press
and all the senators stood up and had photographs taken
with him." Most of the staff members investigating Chile
had no doubts about who was lying and who was not, but
were unable to do more in the published reports than to
note the various discrepancies-most of which pitted the
CIA against the White House.
In his memoirs, Kissinger, freed from the burden of
sworn testimony, takes the White House cover story a step
further. "When I ordered coup plotting turned off on Octo-
ber 15, 1970, Nixon, Haig, and I considered it the end of
both Track I and Track II. The CIA personnel in Chile
apparently thought that the order applied only to Viaux;
they felt they were free to continue with the second group
of plotters fled by Valenzuela], of whom the White House
was unaware." The Agency's efforts in Chile were "ama-
teurish, being improvised in panic and executed in confu-
sion." What Kissinger could add, of course, is that much of
the panic originated with Nixon on September 15, and
much of the confusion with White House fears of exposure
that grew out of Korry's warnings. Blood was going to be
shed in Santiago that October, and the White House want-
ed no part of the responsibility.
In later interviews, CIA officials were amused and al-
most philosophical about the subsequent Nixon and Kis-
singer lies: "We're there as the whipping boy," said one sen-
ior operative who was directly involved in Track II.
"Kissinger and Nixon left us holding the bag, but that's
what we're in business for. And if you don't like it, don't
join up."
0 NE OF THE PROBLEMS IN DEALING WITH FANATICS
is their fanaticism. On October 17, the CIA station
in Santiago informed headquarters that the White
House's words of caution had been passed to Viaux by one
of the false-Baggers. Viaux couldn't have cared less. He
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
informed his contact that it did not matter what the CIA
did, since he and his cohorts had decided to proceed with
the coup with or without American support. During these
last few days before the election, the CIA, desperately
trying to induce Valenzuela to act-and thus ease the pres-
sure from the White House-sweetened its offer to him.
Late on October 17, Valenzuela was promised three ma-
chine guns stripped of all identifying markings, six tear-
gas grenades, and 500 rounds of ammunition, in support of
a plan to kidnap General Rene Schneider, commander in
chief of the Chilean army and a strong constitutionalist,
who was believed by the CIA and the Valenzuela plotters
to stand between the armed forces and a military coup.
The plan was to grab Schneider as he left a military din-
ner on October 19, and fly him to Argentina. Frei would
resign; one of Valenzuela's aides would be placed in charge
of a military government and would dissolve the Congress.
Thus, Allende could not be elected. Without Schneider's
presence, it was argued, the chances of military backing
for a take-over were significantly increased.
One constant goal of the CIA station that fall was to
"create a coup climate" in Chile. A headquarters cable,
dated October 19-only five days before the election-
provided guidance: "It still appears that [the proposed)
coup has no pretext or justification that it can offer to
make it acceptable in Chile or Latin America. It therefore
would seem necessary to create one to bolster what will
probably be their claim to a coup to save Chile from Com-
munism." The cable, reprinted in part in the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee's report, makes clear that the CIA was
aware that the citizens of Chile were prepared to accept
peaceably an Allende presidency.
On the afternoon of the nineteenth, Karamessines met
with Haig in the White House and, as he testified to the
Senate, reported the new Valenzuela plan "very promptly,
if for no other reason than that we didn't have all that
much promising news to report to the White House."
Haig, of course, denied hearing anything about the ambi-
tious last-minute scheming, and Kissinger continued to
maintain that he "was informed of nothing after October
15." Kissinger went so far as to tell the senators
that according to his daily calendar-which he did not
turn over to the committee-he held no conversation with
Karamessines or Helms between October 15 and October
19, a statement that did not rule out the obvious possibility
that Karamessines met with Haig, as Karamessines testi-
fied, and Haig filled in Kissinger later" Haig and Kissinger
also specifically denied hearing anything about the kidnap-
ping plot against General Schneider.
On the evening of the nineteenth, the Valenzuela group,
bolstered by some of Viaux's thugs as well as by the six
tear-gas grenades delivered by Wimert, failed in an at-
tempt to kidnap Schneider when the General left the din-
ner by private means instead of in his official car. With this
overt act, the pressure from the White House became even
more acute. Early on October 20, Hecksher received ,an
urgent cable asking him to report anything he could,1be-
cause, the cable said, "Headquarters must respond during
morning 20 October to queries from high levels." After the
failure became known, Wimert was authorized to promise
Valenzuela and his chief associate, an admiral, $50,000
each in CIA funds if the two men would try again. That
second attempt, on the evening of the twentieth, also
failed. More extreme steps were taken as the constant
White House pressure and the failure of the Chilean con-
spirators induced what must have been near panic inside
the CIA station in Santiago. On October 22, the sterile
machine guns-shipped by diplomatic pouch-were deliv-
ered to Valenzuela. General Schneider was assassinated
that day by a group of military officers and thugs, who did
not use the American-supplied machine guns. Neither Va-
lenzuela nor his senior associates were at the scene, but
Chilean military courts later determined that the men who
participated in the October 22 assassination, which was
planned by Viaux, also participated in the Valenzuela kid-
napping attempts on October 19 and 20. The military
courts eventually convicted Viaux of kidnapping and con-
spiring to cause a military coup for his role in the
Schneider slaying; Valenzuela was convicted of the single
charge of conspiring to cause a coup.
JUST WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT IN THE
Schneider assassination is impossible to determine;
contradictions abound between the findings of the
Senate Intelligence Committee and the statements made
by participants in later interviews with me. For example,
the Senate Intelligence Committee reprinted numerous
CIA cables stating that no actual funds were passed to Va-
lenzuela in the days before the October 24 election. Yet
Wimert stated in an interview that he did indeed pass Va-
lenzuela and the admiral $50,000 each. After the failed kid-
napping, Wimert recalls, he was determined to get back
the $100,000 and thus shield, if possible, his direct role in
the plotting. The admiral returned the funds without com-
ment, but Valenzuela resisted, Wimert says. Wimert re-
calls that he felt compelled to pull out his revolver, which
he always carried with him in Santiago, and to wave it in
front of Valenzuela and say, "I'll beat the shit out of you
with this if you don't get me the money." Valenzuela still
hesitated, Wimert says, "and so I just hit him once and he
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
went and got it." The exchange took place in Valenzuela's
house. There is no apparent record in the CIA file of these
transactions, which Wimert insists he reported to
Hecksher.
Valenzuela's role was minimized in all of the subsequent
reporting, both in CIA cables and by the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee. The underlying assumption was that
Viaux and the other plotters failed in a kidnapping attempt
and were compelled to shoot Schneider when he resisted.
The slain general was said to have pulled out a handgun
when first confronted. Yet the official report, on file in
Santiago, of the military police officer who investigated
the slaying depicts an execution; there is no mention
of Schneider's alleged resistance. The report notes
that Schneider's car was struck and stopped by a sec-
ond vehicle. The car then "was surrounded by five indi-
viduals, one of whom, making use of a blunt instrument
similar to a sledgehammer, broke the rear window
and then fired at General Schneider, striking him in the3'e-
gion of the spleen, in the left shoulder, and in the left
wrist."
The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that since
none of the machine guns supplied to Valenzuela had been
used in the assassination, and since the CIA had with-
drawn direct support to Viaux, there was "no evidence of a
plan to kill Schneider or that United States officials specifi-
cally anticipated that Schneider would be shot during the
abduction."
Some of the CIA agents inside Chile knew better. In the
months following, at least one of those men who saw the
most-the false-flaggers-feared that his action against
Schneider would come to haunt him. The worried opera-
tive was Bruce MacMaster, a career CIA officer who had
served throughout Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s
under cover as a Foreign Service officer. MacMaster had a
series of complaints about what he had seen and done in
Chile and about the activities of Henry J. Sloman. On Feb-
ruary 16, 1971, he walked into the office of John Charles
Murray, the branch chief for Mexico, at Agency headquar-
ters, in Washington. Murray was a career operations offi-
cer with a reputation for integrity-a straight shooter.
MacMaster proceeded to unravel the story of his involve-
ment in Chile, acknowledging that he, Sloman, and others
were ordered into Santiago in an effort to mobilize a coup.
As Murray reported in a "Secret-Eyes Only" memoran-
dum to his superior two days later, MacMaster "stated
that [while in Chile] he ostensibly was representing
American business interests such as the Ford Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation and other unidentified busi-
ness groups." The Agency had agreed in 1967, after wide-
spread scandals about the use of philanthropic and educa-
tional foundations as CIA conduits, not to utilize the
credentials of the Ford, Rockefeller, and similar founda-
tions to shield their agents on overseas assignments.
MacMaster, who was born of American parents in
Colombia, told Murray that he had traveled on a falsified
Colombian passport to Chile to meet with coup plotters, a)
and had reassured them that, as Murray reported, "as a
representative of American business interests he was most
anxious to see the continuance of democratic institutions in
Chile." MacMaster said that he and Sloman had also met
with Viaux, and were involved in the plotting against
Schneider. They learned that Viaux was also working
closely with a group of right-wing students. It was the stu-
dent group, MacMaster told Murray, that "was responsible
for the machine-gun attack on General Schneider."
The main goal of Murray's memorandum, which was
sent to Broe, the chief of Latin American clandestine oper-
ations, was to warn of MacMaster's fear that some mem-
bers of the Viaux group, many of whom were jailed follow-
ing the Schneider assassination, "will possibly implicate
CIA in the action taken against Schneider." MacMaster
told Murray that he had privately met-outside of Chile-
with one of Viaux's associates and had been informed, as
Murray wrote, that the men jailed were "seeking a large
amount of money-somewhere in the neighborhood of
$250,000-for the purpose of providing support for the
families of the members of the group jailed.... Mr. Mac-
Master said that we could probably get away with paying
around $10,000 for the support of each family."
MacMaster had another complaint-about Sloman's
black-market activities while in Santiago. He accused his
colleague of smuggling clothing and jewelry out of San-
tiago for his personal profit, and reported that Sloman had
been using diplomatic pouches to bring pornography into
Mexico from the United States. The two men had been
friends, but when MacMaster lost a bitter fistfight with
him weeks before at a New Year's Eve party in Mexico
City, he retaliated by informing Mexican internal-security
officials of Sloman's status as a long-standing CIA
operative.
All these seamy doings, as reported by Murray, were
hushed up by the Agency over the next few months and
later kept from the Senate Intelligence Committee. Slo-
Tman, in a later interview, casually acknowledged that he
was involved in smuggling while in Santiago, but de-
scribed it as part of his CIA cover. "I've always been an
outside man," he said. "I lived my cover in every place I've
ever been. I was also known as a professional gambler-or
as Mafia." Sloman confirmed that he had been reported to
the police in Mexico City after a fistfight with MacMaster,
but called his action justified. "He made a pass at my
oldest daughter, and so I hit him in the mouth and knocked
his teeth out.,
Senior officials of the CIA were kept aware of the Mac-
Master-Sloman dispute in a series of highly classified offi-
cial reports and communiques in early 1971. Somehow, the
Mexican authorities were soothed, and Sloman was rou-
tinely promoted-despite the serious questions raised
about his activities, and the fact that his feud with Mac-
Master led to the blowing of his cover in Mexico and, more
important, compromised the security of the Agency's plot-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
ting against Allende. In deciding not to reprimand or dis-
miss the two men, the CIA perhaps concluded that the
character defects that got MacMaster and Sloman into hot
water in Mexico City also made them good agents. The
official memoranda detailing the incident reveal much, in-
advertently, about the kind of men recruited to serve as
undercover operatives. MacMaster was reported in official
documents to be a heavy drinker; Sloman had been admon-
ished for having violated Agency rules about the purchase
of duty-free liquor from American Embassy commissaries
and the use of diplomatic pouches for the shipment of per-
sonal-and obviously contraband-goods. Sloman also
told a senior Agency official in Mexico City who queried
him about some of the MacMaster charges that-as a sub-
sequent internal report noted-"he knew a great deal
about the people in the Station and threatened to blow the
Station out of the water."
Yet the only one to suffer was John Murray, whotad
forwarded official reports to his superiors. Murray, who
died in 1979, began to investigate on his own, and was told
by one senior CIA operative that there were at least a few
members of the CIA station in Santiago who realized that
Schneider would never escape from the kidnapping
attempt with his life. Murray was told that there had been
a "panic" inside the CIA station in Santiago after General
Schneider rebuffed the suggestion that he lead a military
coup to prevent Allende's election. The fear was that
Schneider might-as a patriotic gesture-tell Allende of
the CIA-inspired plotting against him. For his efforts,
Murray was stunned to find himself categorized as a
"squealer," and was subsequently dumped into the bottom
5 percent of his rank in terms of future promotions. He
retired in 1976, without receiving another promotion and
? after refusing a transfer to a position in Haiti. By then he
was fatally ill, bitter, and no longer willing or able to fight
the bureaucracy.
MURRAY KNEW THAT HIS INQUIRIES WERE BRING-
ing him to the brink of the most secret area of
CIA activity: political assassinations. No docu-
ment will ever be found, nor will there be an eyewitness,
to describe CIA plans or White House directions to mur-
der Allende. In interviews with me, nearly everybody in-
volved, including the false-flaggers, denied knowledge of
any such planning. A few CIA operatives did acknowledge
hearing talk of assassination from Chilean officers hostile
to Allende, but they said that was all they heard: loose
talk. That the plans and pressures did exist was confirmed
by a senior member of the intelligence community, whose
information on other sensitive activities-provided to me
when I worked for The New York Times in Washington-
has been unfailingly accurate. This official, while on a visit
to Chile in 1971, learned of intense pressure even then to
update contingency plans for the assassination of Allende.
In subsequent conversations, in Washington, he was flatly
told by the men at the top of the CIA that such planning2'
was initiated in the fall of 1970 because "Henry wanted it."
The only involved American to state directly that the
CIA may have been under instructions to assassinate Al-
lende in the fall of 1970 was Wimert, who, as an Army
officer, was perhaps not as steeped in the ways of secrecy
as his CIA associates. Wimert, in a conversation in late
1980, said he did not know of the existence of the false-
fiaggers inside Santiago until 1975, when he testified be-
fore the Senate Intelligence Committee. He told me what
he would never have said in 1975: that he had "figured" the
false-flaggers were in Santiago to arrange for Allende's
death. "Why else would they be there?" The assassination
of Allende, Wimert said, "was always something every-
body hoped would happen. It would have been the ideal
thing."
The key contact with the most extreme anti-Allende ele-
ments was made by a false-flagger we shall call Robert F.
He was a career CIA operative who had retired by 1970
but. was persuaded after appeals to his sense of patriotism
to return for one last mission. The more he knew about
Chile, the less he liked; he told some colleagues that it was
corporate security and not national security that wasnvolved in the anti-Allende operation. After testifying less
than candidly before the Senate Intelligence Committee,
Robert F. had second thoughts and later tried-without
success-to warn a committee staff member that "you
guys didn't get the real story."
Robert F. was ordered to spend two weeks in Santiago,
make contact with Viaux and his group, and pass them
money. He met Marshal late one night in the National Ca-
thedral, a few blocks from the presidential palace, in the
center of Santiago. Marshal struck Robert F. as insane,
but orders were orders. He gave him the money. A few
days later, around October 19, Marshal was arrested by
the Chilean police; he spent the next two years in jail. S10-
man acknowledges that men such as Marshal were pro-
vided with funds, and talked about assassinations with him
and the other false-flaggers. But Sloman insists that the
Chileans were always told not to get involved in
bloodshed: "Our answer to them was no-by no means."
Yet, he says, 'There is no way you can stop a Chilean from
doing anything."
After the Schneider killing, fear gripped the CIA sta-
tion. Wimert recalls that he collected not only the $100,000
he had paid to Valenzuela but also the three sterile ma-
chine guns that had been provided to the would-be kidnap-
pers. He and Hecksher then jumped into a car, drove sev-
enty miles west to the resort town of Vina del Mar, and
threw the weapons into the Pacific Ocean. "You can say we
really deep-sixed them," Wimert says, with a laugh.
Hecksher must have realized that in the likely event of a
full-scale investigation, Viaux and the other conspirators
would be able to testify that the concept of Schneider's
kidnapping had originated with the CIA. A little-noted ex-
change of CIA cables published by the Senate Intelligence
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
Committee shows that on October 13, Hecksher was quer-
ied by CIA headquarters about possible plans to prevent
Schneider from exerting his influence to disrupt a coup.
The response, filed within hours, according to the commit-
tee report, was that the coup leaders-Viaux and Valen-
zuela-would f rst eliminate Schneider by kidnapping him,
and then proceed with the coup.
The Schneider assassination, far from easing the way for
a successful coup in the days before Allende's election.
made it impossible. The Chilean military and citizenry, an-
gered at the attempt to disrupt the constitutional process,
rallied around Allende; he easily won the congressional
election on October 24. and was inaugurated on November
3 without incident.
Within a few days, Hecksher was summoned back to
Washington and replaced-the first victim of the CIA's
failure to do what the President wanted. Nixon and Kis-
singer were also enraged with Helms, who had failed
them. Korry was in his last ambassadorial post, although
he would not learn as much for another year.
None of this is described by Kissinger in his memoirs. In
his version, he and Nixon had sought to stop the CIA ex-
cesses on October 15, and were determined to adopt a "coo]
but correct" stance to the new Allende administration. But
Allende. writes Kissinger, was not in the mood to accept
the good wishes of the Nixon administration; in greeting a
Nixon envoy at his inauguration, he "gave no evidence of a
conciliatory approach." The possibility that Allende might
be aware of the White House's planning against him is not
even suggested by Kissinger.
AFTER THE FAILURE TO STOP ALLENDE'S ELECTION,
the next step was economic: the administration
would stop the flow of financial aid and loans from
as many sources as possible in an effort to cripple Chile's
economy and force Allende out of office. On November 9,
the White House issued National Security Decision Memo-
randum 93, "Policy toward Chile," a top-secret paper, nev-
er published in full, that outlined what amounted to eco-
nomic warfare. "Within the context of a publicly cool and
correct posture toward Chile," it said, the administration
would undertake "vigorous efforts.... to assure that oth-
er governments in Latin America understand fully that
the United States opposes consolidation of a Communist
state in Chile hostile to the interests of the United States al~.
and other hemisphere nations, and to the extent possible
encourages them to adopt a similar posture."
The President ordered steps taken to:
"A. Exclude, to the extent possible, further financing
assistance or guarantees for United States private invest-
ments in Chile, including those related to the investment
guarantee program or the operations of the Export-
Import Bank;
"B. Determine the extent to which existing guarantees
and financing arrangements can be terminated or reduced;
"C. Bring a maximum- feasible influence to bear in inter-
national financial institutions to limit credit or other fi-
nancing assistance to Chile;
"D. Assure that United States private business inter-
ests having investments or operations in Chile are made
aware of the concern with which the United States Gov-
ernment views the Government of Chile and the restric-
tive nature of the policies which the United States Govern-
ment intends to follow."
The document also called for a review of possible steps
that could be taken to affect adversely the world price of
copper, and ordered a ban on all new bilateral economic-aid
commitments. "Existing commitments will be fulfilled,"
NSDM 93 stated, "but ways in which. if the United States
desires to do so, they could be reduced, delayed or termi-
nated should be examined."
In essence, Nixon had authorized an economic death
knell for Chile. In the next few weeks, Kissinger took
charge of a series of interagency meetings, mandated by
NSDM 93, to work out the policy of economic retaliation.
The goal was to make sure that the State Department bu-
reaucracy carried out orders and cut Chile off without a
dollar. "It stuck in my mind because Kissinger, in effect,
became a Chilean desk officer," says one senior State De-
partment official. "He made sure that policy was made in
the way he and the President wanted it. Henry was show-
ing the President that he was on top of it." The cutoff was a
success: no agency in the government and none of the mul-
tilateral lending banks dared cross Nixon or Kissinger.
Prior to Allende's election, for example, the World Bank
had lent Chile more than $234 million; afterward, not one
loan was approved. Severe shutdowns also took place at
the Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Develop-
ment Bank. American AID assistance to Chile, which
averaged nearly $70 million annually during much of the
1960s, totaled just $3.3 million in the three years of the
Allende presidency.
In his memoirs, Kissinger calls NSDM 93, which he does
not reproduce, "stern but less drastic and decisive. than it
sounded." Whatever policy the United States pursued be-
tween 1970 and 1973, Kissinger argues, "the credit-Nvorthi-
ness of Chile would have dropped drastically...." The
cutbacks were ordered, of course, before Chile's credit rat-
ing began to fall.
The CIA believed after Allende's inauguration that it
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3
1
still had a presidential mission to accomplish: the ouster of
Allende. Track II was reduced in scope and in intensity
over the next few years, but it continued-for there had
been no cancellation. Karamessines was explicit about it in
his Senate testimony: "As far as I was concerned, Track II
was really never ended. What we were told to do ... was
to continue our efforts, stay alert, and to do what we could
to contribute to the eventual achievement of the objectives
and purposes of Track II. That being the case, I don't think
it is proper to say that Track II was ended."
Within months, a new chief of station and a new network
of agents were in place. By late 1971, there were almost
daily contacts with the Chilean military and almost daily
reports of coup plotting. By then, too, the station in San-
tiago was collecting the kind of information that would be
essential for a military dictatorship in the days-following a
coup-lists of civilians to be arrested, those to be provided
with protection, and government installations to be Q9cu-
pied immediately. The CIA, aware that its men and activi-
ties were being closely monitored by the new Allende gov-
ernment, turned to its allies. Two operatives from the
Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) were sta-
tioned in Chile after a formal request; the Australians
were told that outsiders were needed because of the gov-
ernment's close surveillance. By 1972, the Australians had
agreed to monitor and control three agents on behalf of the
CIA and to relay their information to Washington. The
bare fact of such involvement became known after an in-
ternal inquiry by the Australian government in 1977; just
what the ASIS operatives were doing in Chile on behalf of
the United States was not made public.
In its published report on covert action in Chile, the
Senate Intelligence Committee acceded to the Agency's
request to permit details of the post-1970 operations to be
censored. The eliminated material included the fact that a
major disinformation and propaganda program was initiat-
ed in 1971 by the CIA, in an effort "to stimulate the mili-
tary coup groups into a strong unified move against the
government." In addition, the censored material included
information on a "long-term effort" to collect operational
data that would be necessary for a military coup-such as
illicitly obtaining the Allende government's contingency
plans to be put into effect in case of a military uprising.
More than $3.5 million was authorized by Nixon and Kis-
singer for CIA activities in Chile in 1971; by September of
1973, when Allende was assassinated-or committed sui-
cide-during a successful military coup, the CIA had
spent $8 million, or at least had officially reported spend-
ing that much, on anti-Allende plotting. There is no evi-
dence that the CIA played a direct role in the Allende
coup, nor is there evidence that the Nixon administration
was involved-through third parties-in Allende's death.
There were few in Chile, however, who did not understand
what kind of regime would find favor in Washington.
N ATIONAL SECURITY, IN TERMS OF A THREAT TO'
the well-being of the United States and its citi-
zens, played no significant role in Chile in 1970.
And yet the election of Allet,de, with his open support for
Cuba and other revolutionary countries, did pose a major
problem for the National Security Agency, the elite group
responsible for communications intelligence. There were
at least two top-secret NSA facilities operating "in the
black"-that is, under cover-in Chile. One facility, dis-
guised as an Air Force atmospheric testing station on Eas-
ter Island, in the Pacific Ocean, was responsible for moni-
toring and tracking Soviet and French nuclear tests and
ballistic-missile firings in the southern Pacific. Easter Is-
land's significance was in its location: any Soviet missile
strike at the United States from submarines in the South
P4Cific would have to pass within its radar range. In addi-
tidon, Chile-with its narrow coast and high mountain
ranges-provided the perfect topography for the success-
ful monitoring and interception of low-frequency Soviet
submarine communications, and at least one NSA facility,
under cover at an offshore island, was operating round-
the-clock to help keep track of the Soviet submarine fleet.
Both bases were evacuated overnight-and their equip-
ment flown to a U.S. base in Panama-when Allende was
elected by the Chilean Congress. The loss of such facilities,
coming on the heels of the Cienfuegos crisis, in which Kis-
singer believed-or said he believed-that the Russians
were seeking to expand their submarine operations in the
Caribbean, could have helped explain or make more ra-
tional the White House's hostility to Allende. And yet not
one of the participants in the Chile crisis-including CIA
men who attended meetings in the White House-can re-
call hearing any expressions of concern from Kissinger or
Nixon about the bases. "The NSA played no part at all,"
says one senior official. "The bases were never mentioned
in any meetings I heard or saw notes of. They weren't a
reason for Nixon's and Kissinger's concern about Allende.
There was genuine concern over his policies."
The White House collaborators had differing motives for
their high-risk attempts to prevent Allende's election.
Richard Nixon was primarily protecting the interests of
his corporate benefactors, Jay Parkinson, Donald Kendall,
and Harold Geneen. For Henry Kissinger, the issue was
more complicated, linked not only to his need to please the
President and dominate the bureaucracy but also to his
world view and his belief that no action to stop the spread
of communism was immoral.
But Chile was also an interlude, an opportunity for the
men who did not understand the limits of their power to
make something happen, to get it done, to solve a problem
with the appropriate blend of political, military, and eco-
nomic force, applied in secrecy. It did not work that fall in
Chile, just as it did not work in the most pressing issue
before Nixon's administration-the war in Vietnam. 0
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402830023-3