* Sanitized
version

[LC]

# "The CIA and the 1964 Chilean Presidential Election"

Kristian Gustafson
Downing College
Cambridge
(kcg23@cam.ac.uk)

US Involvement in Chile is certainly most famous for its most recent period: the CIA's role in the fall of Salvador Allende Gossens and the rise of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. The extremes of this period unfortunately eclipse more than a decade of preamble, a string of covert actions under three successive presidents before the fateful actions under President Nixon. The CIA's behaviour during the presidency of Allende did not occur in isolation from other policy, nor was the US government unaware, in 1970, of the threat posed by Allende or the political forces pushing him. Prior to his victory in 1970, as Senator Allende he had stood in three successive elections as a candidate of various leftist front parties. In each of those elections the US undertook some form of action against the Marxist front parties and so Salvador Allende. In order to place later and more elaborate operations of 1970-1973 into perspective, the US perspective on Allende's political career must be understood. These operations are not the attempted assassinations and plotted coups of the popular conception, but rather much subtler affairs of money and influence. They mark, nonetheless, a serious meddling in the affairs of a friendly democracy. Meddling, one should note, that was not without its darker side and menacing consequences. The planning and execution of covert operations in the 1964 Chilean Presidential election was a point of no return for US interests in Chile, a precursor to the events of the Nixon/Allende administrations, a waypoint on the long road to the coup. It was, moreover, an independently important

18

event in the history of US state behaviour in Chile and Latin America, for it was a large-
scale involvement in the political process of a democratic state.

***

"From the viewpoint of US interest, it would be better if any of the candidates other than Allende won the Chilean elections. Were Allende to win we could be faced with a pro-Soviet, anti-US administration in one of the most important countries in the hemisphere."¹ So wrote the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (ARA) in June of 1958, presaging a sentiment that would dominate US thinking about Latin America for the next two decades. Before the Cuban Revolution, the US was presented with a challenge in its own back yard, the threat of a pro-Soviet government in *the Americas*. The shock was doubly sharp because it was unexpected (at least to the Americans: most Chilean observers saw it coming). For the US, Chile represented one of the *good* Latin-American states, a true democracy with a strong record of civilian governance and peaceful handovers of presidential power only twice broken since independence from Spain in 1818. After a revision in 1925, the Chilean constitution remained unchanged until after the 1973 coup.² Overall, Chile's history is one remarkably free of the *golpe de estado* (coup d'état) that fit within the North American

¹ Memo, Ast. Sec. State ARA to Dep Und Sec Economic Affairs, 18 June 1958. [FRUS 58-60, Vol. V Micorfiche Supplement, CI-6]

² The President was elected for a term of six years and was not able to succeed himself. Deputies were elected for four-year terms and senators for terms of eight years. J. Biehl Del Rio and Gonzalo Fernandez R., "The Political Pre-requisites for a Chilean Way," in *Government and Opposition*, Vol. 7, No.3, 1972, p. 308.

19

stereotype of Latin America.³ As US Ambassador Edward M. Korry described it, Chile was:

> The most stable, tested, freest democracy in South America... Democracy in Chile meant exactly what it meant in the United States. Even more: it meant an unfettered press. It meant a multi-partied Congress. It meant an independent judiciary. It meant an apolitical army, an army that had never participated in politics.⁴

For the US, it was the one Latin-American country that could be depended upon, due to its strong middle-class (something entirely absent in most of the rest of the region) and burgeoning industrial/consumer economy.⁵ Yet in the 1958 election campaign the US, for the first time since the Pacific War of 1879-1884, had to pay close attention to Chile, for from seemingly out of nowhere the Communist-Socialist Front under Senator Salvador Allende, was now poised—perhaps—for a win.⁶ What was going on?

Chile had changed. While the nation had grown wealthy through the two world wars by sales of copper and foodstuffs to the belligerents, its population had stratified. There was a notably sophisticated upper and middle-class, upwardly mobile and educated, comprising about one third of the population, with the remaining population existing in several distinct layers of working class and urban poor.⁷ In fact, historian Mark Falcoff argues that the Chilean socio-economic stratification almost perfectly

³ Harold Eugene Davis, "The Presidency in Chile," In *Presidential Studies Quarterly*, Vol. X, No. X, 19XX, p. 707.

⁴ F. Orrego Vicuna, ed., *Chile; The Balanced View* (Santiago, 1975), p. 292.

⁵ An economy, though, almost entirely fuelled by copper exports. As with any resource-based economy, Chile's GDP mirrored the rise and fall of copper prices on the global commodities market: it just so happened, though, that wars tended to drive up prices of such strategic metals. Ergo, Chile had done quite well for itself in the period of 1914-1945, though much of the profit still went to the largely foreign owners of the mines.

⁶ In the period surrounding the War of the Pacific, Chile successfully challenged the US as the dominant naval power in the South Pacific littoral with its defeat of Peru and Bolivia. American political and commercial dominance of the southern cone was thwarted for several decades and was instead traded between Chile and Argentina. See William F. Sater, *Chile and the United States: Empires in Conflict* (Athens, USA, 1990).

⁷ Sigmund, 21. Cf. Mark Falcoff, *Modern Chile 1970-1989: A Critical History* (Pittsburgh, 1989), p. 18.

20

replicated the European and North American societies of the era. It was later noted by US government officials that despite this wealth, for half the population real wages had been declining since 1950.⁸ This social stratification and inequitable wealth distribution contributed to a Communist party that was one of the strongest in the west,⁹ and all parties “are well aware that it is controlled by Moscow.”¹⁰ The Socialist party could claim a thirty-seven year history with impressive results both in and out of government, as the Chilean social-welfare system—and concomitant debt—indicates. Consciously copying the European model, Chile’s socialists began, in the 30’s, to form into ‘Popular Fronts’, the first of which, the “*Frente Popular*,” brought President Pedro Aguirre Cerdo (himself a low-key socialist) to power in 1938. This party, a mix of communists and socialists, was one of the most loyal to Moscow in the entire world.¹¹ Indeed, the decision to form this front was taken at the 7th Congress of the International Communist Movement, held in Moscow in 1935.¹² Suffice to say that Chile had a strong political strain of Socialism/Communism pre-dating US interest in the domestic politics of the state.

This movement of leftist parties Chile ran in opposition to the long established political culture. On the right were, at various times, the Conservative and Liberal parties (who would run together initially in 1958 under the banner of ‘Democratic Front’) and the National Party and in the centre was the Radical Party (which, in 1962, also joined the

⁸ NIE 94-63, "The Chilean Situation and Prospects," 3 October 1963. [JFK FRUS, Vol. XII Microfiche supplement, Doc 45.]

⁹ Ambassador Nathaniel Davis, *The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende* (Ithaca, 1989), p. 3.

¹⁰ Memorandum, INR, "Salvador Allende, Chilean Presidential Candidate", 24 April 1964. [DDRS]

¹¹ James D. Theberge, *The Soviet Presence in Latin America* (New York, 1974), p. 51. See also testimony of Ambassador Korry, "The United States and Chile During the Allende Years", Hearings Before the House Sub-Committee of Foreign Affairs, July 1 1971, p. 11.

¹²Eusebio Mujal-León, *The USSR and Latin America: A Developing Relationship* (Boston, 1989), p. 124-125. See also Biehl and Fernandez, "The Political Pre-requisites for a Chilean Way," p. 316.

21

Democratic Front) a collection of various socialists held together by a shared anti-
clericalism, and divided on the subject of cooperating with the Marxist left.¹³ All of these
orthodox parties were historically very important in Chilean politics but saw some
measure of their support drawn away to the Communist/Marxist 'popular fronts' that
emerged after 1938.¹⁴ Likewise drawing support away from the centre-right parties was
the relatively new and left-leaning Christian Democratic Party (PDC), whose
membership tended to support land reform, state influence in the economy, and the cause
of "Christian communitarianism."¹⁵ Prior to 1964 the Christian Democrats had not been
involved in any government. Their chosen leader was Eduardo Frei Montalva, a
charismatic, frugal and hardworking Senator from a patrician family.

Despite all these active parties, INR was quick to note that no more than 15% of
the Chilean electorate was a member of a political party. A large majority of the non-
committed were 'a floating mass of lower-class voters' who supported the candidate
offering the greatest promise of improving their lot.¹⁶ This was, potentially, ripe for
harvest by a keen popular front. So, if numerous American and Western officials could
celebrate Chile's openness and democratic liberalism there was reason for concern posed
by the nation's highly ideological political culture and the active participation of two
large and well led Marxist parties.¹⁷ As has been made clear by numerous historians and
former CIA officers, this situation was somewhat analogous to Italy, and indeed US
operations in Chile would be modelled after US covert action in Italy in the 1940's.

13 Julio Faúndez, *Marxism and Democracy in Chile* (New Haven, CT, 1988), pp. 31, 160-161.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Sigmund, p. 17.

¹⁶ Memorandum, INR to ARA, "Pressures for Change Dominate Chilean Presidential Campaign", 1 May 1964. [DDRS]

¹⁷ Falcoff, *Modern Chile*, p. 203.

22

There, as former DCI William Colby noted, the US made efforts to "strengthen the centre democratic forces—parties, cooperatives, women's groups, etc.—against the leftist challenge.¹⁸ This was to be the template for US action in Chile, though this only became the case after the scare of the 1958 election in Chile.

## Allende and the 1950's Elections

The election of 1958 was the second one in which Senator Allende competed. In 1952 he had been the candidate for a fringe Socialist party, where he received 5.5% of the vote. The poor showing of the Socialists in the 1952 Presidential race left the US apparently unimpressed by the threat of Communism in Chile, but this was to change in 1958. As head of the *Popular Action Front* (FRAP) Allende was one of four candidates but notably represented all the Marxist/Socialist parties, previously fractured; his principal opponents were Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, of the conservative *Democratic Front*, and Eduardo Frei Montalva of the PDC.¹⁹ Allende lost to Alessandri by only 3.3%—fewer than 32,000 votes—and the Chilean Congress confirmed Alessandri as president in the required run-off vote.²⁰ For the first time—due to changing demographics and electoral laws—the bulk of the Chilean working poor had exerted their electoral clout, and the US paid attention.

The reaction was determined, if not yet panicked, within the US government.
Noting the narrowness of the conservative victory over the Socialist front party, US

¹⁸ Colby and Forbath, *Honorable Men*, p. 191.

¹⁹ Faúndez, p. 109.

²⁰ Falcoff, *Modern Chile*, p. 14. According to the Chilean constitution, if in an election no individual secures a majority, the two leading candidates are put to a combined session of congress for a run-off vote. Long standing tradition—but neither the letter nor spirit of the law—dictated that the candidate with the most votes in the general election be selected.

23

Ambassador Walter Howe noted in a despatch to Washington that things were likely to get worse, not better. "We must recognise", the ambassador wrote, "that the political pendulum has swung as far to the right in Chile as it is likely to go, and that the return swing is likely to be evidenced in... the presidential election of 1964." More than just a call for increased support for the conservatives, Howe was urging the US government to get ahead of the swing back and support "the non-communist parties of the Chilean centre and left."²¹ This was to become the chosen course for the subsequent Democratic administrations of Kennedy and Johnson, and stands apart from the popular contemporary assumption that the US would always support the conservatives as the main opposition to socialists. President Alessandri of Chile, while visiting Eisenhower in February of 1960, reiterated the suggestion of a broad-based anti-Communist approach in Chile, noting that the Communists had a sophisticated propaganda machine that attacked the US regularly to the detriment of all the non-communist parties. President Alessandri "urged that... the US conduct a vigorous campaign of counter-propaganda."²²

Eisenhower, while previously keen to overthrow several lesser governments, seems to have thought such low-threshold pro-capitalist propaganda was inappropriate for Chile. According to the minutes, Eisenhower "said jokingly he assumed that president Alessandri was not suggesting that the US buy a newspaper in Santiago and turn it into an official US propaganda organ."²³ While this was the precise course of action the US

²¹ Despatch, Ambassador Walter Howe to State Department, 8 January 1960 [FRUS 58-60, Vol. V Microfiche Supplement, CI-27]

²² Memorandum of Conversation, President Alessandri with President Eisenhower, 29 February 1960 [FRUS 58-60, Vol. V Microfiche Supplement, CI-30]

²³ Ibid.

24

would eventually take with the *El Mercurio* in 1970, it was evidently unacceptable at the time, and president Alessandri “laughed, and said that of course was not his intention”.²⁴

## The Alliance for Progress

While John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon to win the 1960 election by only a thin margin, his rhetoric on taking office showed the determination of a strong mandate. Latin America played an important part in his inaugural address, an address otherwise famous for the ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ statement. In a paragraph addressed to ‘our sister republics south of our border,’ Kennedy read,

> We offer a special pledge—to convert our good words into good deeds—in a new alliance for progress—to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbours know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.²⁵

Like any political manifesto Kennedy's words are densely packed with significance and indications of future policies. The last three lines of this paragraph are familiar to any student of politics since 1823, for it is an unmistakable reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine, updated with a veiled threat against communism, those 'aggressors' who might try to 'subvert' the cause of freedom in the Americas. But whereas such a statement could have as easily come from the Eisenhower Whitehouse, the first part of the paragraph most certainly would not have, for it states an understanding of, and sympathy for, those segments of society left behind by the course of statist capitalism (or pure kleptocracy) in the region. The idea led to the creation, in March of 1961, of the

²⁴ Ibid.

25

eponymous Alliance for Progress, an organisation destined to be one of the greatest US aid efforts ever conducted after the Marshall Plan. William D. Rogers, a Washington lawyer and later an Assistant Secretary of State under Nixon, served as Deputy U.S. Coordinator for the Alliance for Progress from 1961 until 1965. In a recent interview he noted, "There were a lot of people who were enthusiastic about it at the time, regarding it as an enlightened chapter in American foreign policy towards Latin America, which was to move beyond old Cold War antipathies and to move towards positive development of the hemisphere."²⁶ Despite the rhetoric of 'moving beyond Cold War antipathies', Rogers said the programme was "admittedly [designed] to counter the lure coming out of Havana." Nevertheless, Rogers believes that Kennedy was wise and statesmanlike enough to realise that "for the US to project that image [of positive development aid] was the best kind of antidote for the appeal of Fidel and Ché."²⁷

Chile was to feature in the new Alliance for Progress, for at the time democracy was a rare system in Latin America. Particularly after the 1964 coup in Brazil, Rogers noted,

> democracies you could count on one hand: Chile, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and that was it.... in Latin America democracy was very much embattled at that time, so Chile was one of the few places where we felt that the concept of the Alliance for Progress had a chance of being realised in the near term. We ran a lot of programs in Chile for that very purpose, demonstratively.²⁸

The 1964 Chilean presidential election existed in this greater hemispheric context for the United States. To hold up a non-communist model for Latin America required a shining

²⁵ John F. Kennedy, "Inaugural Address" in *Inaugural Addresses of the presidents of the United States: from George Washington to George W. Bush* (2nd Ed.), US Congress, Senate, USGPO, 1989,

²⁶ Interview, Mr. William D. Rogers.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid.

26

example of democratic success. With the number of democracies in South America so sharply limited, if the Marxist-Communist front under a *Fidelista* like Allende won the election in Chile, there would be precious few chances for the President's Alliance to work its magic. Conversely, the Alliance might give the impetus required for the victory of the pro-democratic party. The 1964 Presidential election in Chile suddenly became a *very important* matter, being both a subject of, and requirement for, the success of the Alliance for Progress.

That Chile was increasingly important is reflected by the production, in October of 1963, of the first ever National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Chile. Obviously concerned with the potentially negative outcome of the election, American policy makers had initiated the study to better inform the determination of a coordinated US response, both overt and covert, to this threat of communism spreading out of isolated Cuba. The NIE echoed what many in the administration had said over the previous six years. The 1958 election results "raised apprehension that the 1964 presidential election might bring to power a government under strong communist influence, if not control."²⁹ This was taken seriously by policymakers, and responding to the NIE, a group of State Department officers agreed "we need to take the Allende campaign seriously."³⁰ Essentially, as historian Mark Falcoff has stated, in the context of immediately after the Cuban Revolution, Chile was burdened with being the most advantageous hemispheric battlefield on which the US could meet the Cuban challenge to Western Capitalist-Democratic ideals.³¹

²⁹ NIE 94-63, "The Chilean Situation and Prospects," 3 October 1963.

³⁰ Memorandum of Conversation, Belcher, Thompson, Richardson and Carlisle, "Chile", 14 November 1963. [JFK FRUS Vol. XII Supplement, Doc 46.]

³¹ Falcoff, *Modern Chile*, p. 203.

27

Retrospective conceptions of Salvador Allende paint him as a pleasant and jovial 'Champagne Socialist' along European lines, more democrat that despot. Was the reaction to him in the early 1960's unjustified, viewed through the eyes of desperately and unreasonably anti-Communist Americans, made worse by Monroe Doctrine fears? It is likely that there something more to Allende's stance that spooked the Americans into action.

## Who's Afraid of Salvador Allende?

Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens was a recurring character in Chile's political dramas from the 1930's onwards.³² From a wealthy family, Allende had entered politics while still in medical school and had helped found the Chilean Socialist party in 1933, the year he graduated.³³ Elected as a federal deputy in 1937, Allende became Secretary-General of the Socialist Party in 1943, and by 1951 he was president of the Chilean Medical Society and vice-president of the Chilean Senate.³⁴ Revolutionary Cuba would emerge as his party's main model and Allende cultivated a close friendship with Castro. Allende was important in the forming of the Cuban-sponsored Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO), which was to serve as the political body behind Che Guevera's 1967 Bolivian adventure.³⁵ Indeed, Allende's daughter Beatriz would later marry the Cuban diplomat (and spy) Luiz Fernandez Oña, a former Guevaraista and intimate of

³² In Spanish speaking countries, two last names are officially used. However the latter name, called the matronymic, is not used in addressing an individual.

³³ Barry Goldwater, "On Covert Actions in Chile 1963-1973: A response to the Church Committee Report" in *Inter-American Economic Affairs*, Vol. XXX, No. 1, 1986, p. 86.

³⁴ Memorandum, INR, "Salvador Allende, Chilean Presidential Candidate", 24 April 1964. [DDRS]

³⁵ Barry Goldwater, "On Covert Actions in Chile 1963-1973: A response to the Church Committee Report", p. 87.

28

Castro.³⁶ In the merger of the Socialists and Communists each entity remained intact, but there was enough cohesion in the party to retain Allende as the presidential candidate over the course of three consecutive elections.

As noted by former CIA officer David Atlee Phillips in his fascinating book *The Night Watch*, the CIA had penetrated both the Communists and the Socialists parties in the early fifties, and was thus capable of getting very detailed information about their leadership personalities and even finances.³⁷ Prior to the 1958 election, however, and despite accurate CIA reporting, few in the US government would have ever heard the name Allende, and those who had would not have been unduly worried by it. Allende was just another socialist politician in another Latin American country. In the run-up to the 1964 election, though, Allende finally appeared as a bright icon on the US government's anti-communist radar screen. This is not to say that perceptions of Allende were entirely conditioned by anti-communist obsession, nor was it entirely hysterical in tone. Asked in 1963, as part of the NIE procedure, to give a sketch of Allende, the US country-team in Santiago wrote:

> Allende is a chameleonic person... Personally he is vain, quick tempered, easily offended, socially as well as politically ambitious, able turn on or off at will a considerable social charm. He is sensitive to charges he would be dominated by Communists or that he would institute anti-democratic measures. Nevertheless were he to achieve power we think he could be led by events into being harsh and ruthless with his opponents but more likely use exile than prison or pardon. It is probable that he thinks in terms of a Marxist regime similar to Castro's Cuba in its free-wheeling, relatively independent line but more sophisticated, cultured, without emotional excesses of a "tropical" country such as Cuba.³⁸

³⁶ Nathaniel Davis, p. 91.

³⁷ David Atlee Phillips, *The Night Watch: Twenty Five Years of Peculiar Service* (New York, 1977), pp. 14-28.

³⁸ Cable, Embassy Santiago to Department of State, "Assessment Socialist-Communist Candidate Salvador Allende", 22 April, 1964. [LBJ FRUS, 251]

29

Allende himself (who in the CIA's view "does not possess unusual intelligence") consciously used the rhetoric of Marxism within his party, but nonetheless tried to portray the image of being a democrat. Despite his periodic statements (often to American press representatives) that he was not a Communist, as well as the wide-spread belief among Chileans, including many in opposition, that he was basically a democratic socialist as opposed to communist, the CIA believed the "record shows he has collaborated with Communists for more than 15 years with no apparent difficulty" and was likely fully in league with Communist Party leader Luis Corvalán.³⁹ INR added that Allende "has turned increasingly to the Communists as an instrument of victory and has risked becoming their tool."⁴⁰ Indeed, Allende may have believed himself to be a new breed of *Chilean Marxist-Socialist*, and he would become agitated when accused of wanting to do away with Chilean democratic institutions, saying that he would actually *save* democracy by the introduction of *People's Government*: "The new social order will require new institutions...we shall draft a new Constitution using the present Charter as a springboard."⁴¹ But if one was unsure about the precise meaning of this last sentence, Allende provided a more concise explanation in his party platform: "The objective is total, scientific Marxist socialism."⁴² Allende may have been a new-model Marxist, but in using such language he confirmed, to any but the most sophisticated political philosophers amongst American officials, that he was indeed a Marxist first and foremost.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Memorandum, INR, "Salvador Allende, Chilean Presidential Candidate", 24 April, 1964. [DDRS]

⁴¹ Airgram A-756, AMEmbassy to State, 10 April 1964. [NARA, RG 59, Stack 250, Box 2025, Pol 2-1 Joint Weekas Chile]

⁴² Régis Debray, *The Chilean Revolution* (New York, 1971) p. 118.

30

But 'Allende the threat' was not taken for granted by US officials. Many in the State Department and other parts of the government put significant thought into the question. One particularly noteworthy discussion of the matter came from the US Embassy First Secretary Robert Hurwitch, who produced a lengthy and thoughtful letter on the topic addressed directly to the NSA, McGeorge Bundy. While suggesting that the Soviets would be likely, but not certain, to take advantage of a communist Chile to expand their presence in America, Hurwitch was much clearer about the overall impact of an Allende victory:

"Dear Mac:

I have had very much in mind your request for another opinion as to whether an Allende victory would be seriously detrimental to US national security interests.... As a practical matter, whatever our assessment of the significance of an Allende victory, we may find our manoeuvrability the day after the election severely circumscribed. (I have often thought that the real tragedy for us of Castro's having embraced the Marxist, rather than our, world lay in the limitations now placed upon the flexibility of US policy toward situations which superficially resemble that of Cuba.) Another "Castro" in the Hemisphere, particularly one who achieved power through the democratic process in a country where we have invested the highest rate of per capita assistance, would be awfully tough to handle from both the international and domestic standpoints. This would clearly be a case where one and one totalled much more than two and the consequences throughout the Hemisphere of a second Castro would be serious."43

That the issue of Chile was tied to the issue of Cuba was inescapable, as Hurwitch notes regretfully, but the discussion here was much less hysterical than some historians have supposed. Hurwitch ultimately suggested quite simply, "An Allende victory would constitute a defeat for US policy."44 The practical examples of such a defeat were quickly identified: "If Allende wins and stays in power, we are in trouble" wrote Gordon Chase

43 Letter, "First Secretary of the Embassy in Chile (Hurwitch) to McGeorge Bundy", 19 June 1964. [FRUS 259]

31

of the State Department, for he would "probably nationalize the copper mines, which in
turn, might end the aid program because of the Hickenlooper amendment; this, in turn,
could lead Chile to ask the Bloc for economic aid."⁴⁵ For the US government in the
1960's all Communist roads led to Moscow.

Even without reference to the Kremlin, the mere mention of the word 'Cuba'
would have caused blood to boil, hackles to rise, and numerous alarms to sound in a
White House still occupied—for just a few more days—by the brothers Kennedy. It is
likely that the CIA station in Santiago had a good idea of Allende's connections with
foreign and domestic communist parties, and with the Soviet Union itself.⁴⁶ While it is
unclear what precisely the CIA knew about Allende in 1963, new work by Professor
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin shows that by this time Allende was indeed
firmly in the Soviet camp.⁴⁷ [Thirty Lines on the Soviet Relationship to Allende and the
Chilean Communist/Socialist Parties deleted pending UK security release] Making
reference to not-so-secret information, he was further noted to be something of a
womaniser.⁴⁸ That Allende was being supported by international communist elements
was clear even outside the CIA, for Presidential candidate Eduardo Frei reported to the
US Ambassador that "large quantities of funds [around $1 Million] for the Allende
campaign had recently come in from Canada and that more were expected in the near
future. [Political Attaché] Scott Fox had told him that he had not been able to track down

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Memorandum, Gordon Chase to McGeorge Bundy, "Chiefs of Mission Conference-Brazil and Chile", 19 March, 1964 [LBJ, NSF, Country File, Latin America, Vol. I, 11/63-6/64] The Hickenlooper Amendment stated that the US had to end all financial aid to any nation that expropriated US property without compensation or due legal process.

⁴⁶ That the CIA was operating within the FRAP constituent parties is clear by the security deletions in CIA documents about these parties. Detailed information about party strategies or personalities is followed by such deletions, likely obscuring the source within these organizations.

⁴⁷ This section waiting security clearance in the UK.

32

the report but that the presumption was that the money had originated in Cuba”. Work in
Soviet archives by Chilean-based researcher Olga Ulianova does indeed show Soviet aid
to the Chilean Communist party (PCCh) at a baseline of $50,000/annum in 1960 to 1969
with spikes of up to $400,000.⁴⁹ Eventually, the sums of money passed to the PCCh were
the highest in Latin America after Cuba.⁵⁰ Even without this knowledge (Phillips does not
tell us what information his agents actually produced) many commented that Allende was
spending money at a rate far faster than he could possible be raising domestically.⁵¹

The rise of Allende and the strength of the Chilean communist party helped
prompt the Soviet Union to waive its normal aversion to operations in the American
sphere of influence. After the sudden and unanticipated success in Cuba, the USSR no
longer looked at Latin America as merely part of the American sphere, but rather as an
independent zone: previously 'out of bounds,' Latin America now appeared as an
enormous political arena which, if exploited properly, offered an opportunity to hurt the
Americans. For the first time, Latin American branches opened in the KGB and Foreign
Ministry. The former was placed under the direction of new KGB officer Nikolai
Leonov, whose memoirs offer substantial comments on Chile. The strategic vision was
less direct than many might perhaps think. Leonov proceeded on the assumption that the
USSR was not interested in Chile because it would derive any necessary strategic or
tactical benefit, but because *the US did*. The USSR itself gained no particular advantage
out of winning *aside from winning*.⁵² That such a victory might be achieved in the most

⁴⁸ This section waiting security clearance in the UK.

⁴⁹ Ulianova, p. 89.

⁵⁰ Nikolai Leonov, *Likholetye*, (Moscow, 2000) p. 39.

⁵¹ Telegram, Embassy Santiago to Sec State & Embassy Ottawa, "Allende's Funding", 5 May 1964. [LBJ, NSF, Country File, Chile, Vol. 1, Cables 1/64-8/64, doc 32]. See also David Atlee Phillips, p. 14-28.

⁵² Leonov, pp. 37-40.

33

capitalist of Latin American countries was a tangible plus. Reporting from the Embassy in 1964 described the chain of events resulting from a Communist government in Chile, and the impact they would have on the United States:

> Negative economic impact will be very great immediately and probably over short-term as well. Allende would probably try to expand activities and efforts of existing GOC institutions that directly involved in economy in effort compensate for lacks and lags in private sector. He will undoubtedly seek help from bloc and "unaligned" countries but conceivably might make unreasonable request of USG (e.g. low interest loan pay for expropriation copper companies and utilities) expecting turn down which he could use as ostensible justification Chilean public for turning [to] bloc. In general economic deterioration after Allende victory would tend stimulate and be used justify extreme internal measures toward full statist economic power as well as shift to excessive Chilean dependence Communist bloc aid and trade.⁵³

American statements to the effect that having Chile 'go communist' would be a blow to their prestige first and foremost showed the same basic understanding of the great-power stakes shared by their Soviet counterparts. Both East and West were on the same playing field. "In essence," said National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy to President Johnson, "the problem we face is that a very popular and attractive candidate, named Allende, who has thrown in his lot with the Communists, has more than a fighting chance to win"⁵⁴ That the US had to do something to avert this was quite simply assumed.

## Initiation of the 1964 Operation

In overt terms the determination to work against Allende had begun with the inauguration of President Kennedy in 1961, largely through the Alliance for Progress,

⁵³ Cable, Embassy Santiago to Department of State, "Assessment Socialist-Communist Candidate Salvador Allende", 22 April, 1964. [LBJ FRUS, 251]

34

with the idea of assisting the Christian Democrats first mooted in March 1962 by Ambassador Cole and the then Special Assistant to the President, Richard Goodwin. At this time the '5412 Special Group' (a semi-official cabinet-level body tasked to review and approve covert action proposals) approved a programme of 'non attributable' assistance to Eduardo Frei's Christian Democrats in April 1962 and again on 30 August 1963, with concurrent approval from States' Latin American Policy Committee in January and June 1963. By the northern autumn of 1963, the US government had effectively decided to actively prevent the election of Allende in Chile. In late 1963, a subsidy of an unknown amount to the Democratic Front (under the leadership of Radical Party boss Julio Durán Neumann), the coalition party of the right-leaning Conservative and Liberal Parties and the centre-left Radicals. This one-time payment was not connected to any well thought-out policy, though it was specifically requested by a member of the party to make up their $500,000 campaign shortfall.⁵⁵

These payments, one might perceive from the tone of CIA discussions regarding them, were not party of a coordinated strategy, but rather stop-gap payments based on the recommendations of the Embassy country-team. The Assassination of Kennedy in November of 1963, brought a temporary halt to the measures to implement a high-level, coherent plan to be executed by the Agency. Despite the sad delay, the transition to President Johnson was relatively seamless and had little impact on the developing program in Chile—except in the attitudes behind the support to Chile. By mid-December of 1963, the West Wing had absorbed the new administration and the new staff got on

⁵⁴ Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Chile, Vol. I, 1/64-8/64. Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. IV [LBJ FRUS 252]

⁵⁵ Memorandum, C/WHD (J.C. King) to DCI McCone, Political Action Program in Chile, 3 January, 1964. [LBJ FRUS 245]

35

with the business at hand.⁵⁶ McGeorge Bundy seems to have put Chile back on the agenda, writing to President Johnson on 24 January with the suggestion that the Special Group, the informal committee that considered covert actions, “might, at an early date, give consideration to the interests of the United States in the Chilean election which occurs in December 1964.”⁵⁷ No one familiar with Latin American affairs, noted Bundy, “has any doubt as to the importance of the outcome of this election, not only in Chile but throughout the hemisphere” and it should therefore be dealt with promptly.⁵⁸ Nothing further, however, was briefed to the President.⁵⁹

The major problem faced by the US government in early 1964 was precisely who they were going to support to prevent an Allende victory. While the Maxist-Socialist left parties were united under the banner of the Popular Action Front or FRAP, the centre and right-of-centre both represented viable alternatives to a communist government and were running separately: the Democratic Front (FD) and the Christian Democrats (PDC). The decision on which one to support was evidently the cause of much hand wringing. The CIA's initial support to the PDC was aimed at getting them into a broad-based non-communist coalition with the Radicals, previously Chile's largest single political party—and may have had prompting from President Kennedy directly, as former US Ambassador to Chile Edward Korry stated in an interview in Santiago in 1999: “It started probably in early '63 after President Kennedy met directly with [PDC Chairman Eduardo] Frei in the White House. It was a secret meeting. I believe it was in the

⁵⁶ LBJ Briefings, Ch. 3.

⁵⁷ Memorandum, Amb Dungan to McGeorge Bundy, untitled, 18 January, 1964. [LBJ FRUS 246]

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

36

[Northern] spring of '63... In that period."⁶⁰ But with Kennedy gone this pro-PDC desire waned, exacerbated by the inability to tell Eduardo Frei that he was being supported by the US at all. The last reason for PDC funding had been to make the party unwittingly act as a third, or splitter, party, drawing votes away from elements of soft-socialist/pro-clerical supporters of the FRAP in a way that the FD could not. Asked by the administration to make a choice on which they should support, the CIA was firmly behind supporting just the FD despite Kennedy's pro-liberal and pro-Catholic sentiments. The reasoning was that the Christian Democratic Party would be less favourable and responsive to United States Government policies than the Democratic Front, and that they were likely to try to "establish relations with Iron Curtain countries... [and] will endeavour to increase its trade with the Soviet Bloc and will not follow the United States lead in foreign policy with the same willingness as the present government."⁶¹ The underlying reasoning of the CIA was echoed by the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs (ARA) Thomas Mann, who suggested support should only go to the FD because Durán, being more pliable—from the American viewpoint—in economic matters than Frei, might be more ready to reinvest money into Chile and so improve the economy. Also, Durán's relatively left-leaning tendencies "might draw further votes away from Allende." But some small measure of "support to the [PDC] should be continued because they too offer strong competition to Allende."⁶² Despite the Kennedy's drive for some kind of 'progressive development aid' in Latin America to back the Alliance, the Agency and State were aiming at the US-default of

⁶⁰ *Estudios Públicos*, 72 (primavera 1998). "El Embajador Edward M. Korry en el CEP".

⁶¹ Memorandum, C/WHD (J.C. King) to DCI McCone, Political Action Program in Chile, 3 January, 1964.
[LBJ FRUS 245]

37

supporting the right-wing, the 'alliance for progress' instead relapsing to a mandate for stability. In February the CIA's Chief of Western Hemisphere Division (C/WHD) J.C. King submitted his recommendation to the Special Group to obtain approval for election support of the Democratic Front and a subsequent cutback in the subsidy to the Christian Democratic Party. Luckily for the PDC, however, the Special Group did not meet on 5 March, as planned, and failed to discuss Chile at its next meeting a week later.⁶³ As would be repeated in 1970, the Special Group dithered over the decision on which party they should support. Before that decision could be made, however, local politics would force the American hand to a more progressive policy with long-lasting effects on US-Chilean interaction.

Chile, it was often noted by foreign political observers, seemed to be in a nearly constant election campaign. Between presidential, congressional, municipal, and by-elections there was always some sort of campaigning underway. In March 1964, as it happened, a deputy had died and there was to be a by-election in his riding of Curicó. Ralph W. Richardson, the State Department official in charge of Chilean affairs noted that it would serve as a major indicator of the relative strength of the parties into the presidential race. Pride, it is said, cometh before the fall, and Durán apparently set out to prove the point: he stated explicitly that the by-election would stand as a 'plebiscite' on the ruling party, the Democratic Front, as well as his leadership of it.⁶⁴ This seemed a safe bet at first, noted historian Paul Sigmund, as Curicó was traditionally a rural

⁶² Memorandum for the Record, Chief and Deputy Chief, WHD with Assistant Secretary Mann, "Record of Conversation", 28 February 1964. [LBJ FRUS 247]

⁶³ Ibid. See also NARA Department of State, INR/IL Historical Files, Special Group Files, Meetings.

⁶⁴Memorandum, Richardson to Mann, "Curico By-Election", 6 March 1964. [NARA, RG 84, Santiago Embassy Files: FRC 69 A 6507, 1964, POL 14 Elections (Presidential) 1964.]

38

conservative bastion.⁶⁵ The FRAP candidate in the election, however, was the son of a late and lamented Socialist deputy with great clout in Curicó, and he played the familial link to his immense advantage. On 15 March, the FRAP candidate won the Curicó by-election with 39.5 percent of the vote; the next day, Durán resigned as the DF presidential candidate (though not from the Presidential race itself). As the Democratic Front was a fragile coalition, the loss of Durán was mortal, and the party dissolved within a short time. This was a high-impact event in the normally predictable Chilean political scene, and reaction in the US was sufficiently dramatic to prompt the CIA's Desmond FitzGerald to write in a memorandum that "the most important thing is to keep people from panicking" as a result of the by-election loss to FRAP.⁶⁶

While many in the US government were vexed by the FRAP victory, some at the State Department (generally of the pro-JFK persuasion) saw the silver lining. One of these was Ralph Richardson of the Chilean desk. Realising the difficulty in running two horses against a very strong FRAP, Richardson believed that the best bet lay with a single, reformist candidate. The socialist parties had never taken more than 40% in any election in Chile, so if the centre and rightist parties could be induced to support the PDC candidate, Frei, as the main non-Marxist candidate, then the election had a much better chance of producing the desired outcome. While noting that the race was far from theirs, Richardson commented on the positive impact Curicó had on the decision-making process: "I still cannot repress a feeling of satisfaction in seeing how quickly and cleanly our 'decision' to swing behind Frei was made for us. I really had wondered before Durán's disaster whether we were going to get any definite decision from the front office

⁶⁵ Sigmund, *The Overthrown of Allende*, p. 29.

39

on which group we should help.”⁶⁷ With State and CIA unable to force an executive decision on who should be supported—as would happen again in the 1970 election—the Americans nonetheless had a candidate thrust upon them.

While it is often assumed that the US had been behind the PDC from JFK's inauguration onwards, the record shows it not to be so. Kennedy's Democrats—liberal and Catholic, like Frei—did have an affinity to this analogous Latin-American party, but sympathy had not been enough to swing a notably right-leaning Democrat administration into actually supporting them: the Alliance for Progress was to be run on political terms dictated from Washington, and those terms demanded a pliable, conservative government in *La Moneda*. This was especially so after Kennedy's death when the more pragmatic LBJ took office and delegated his even less Kennedy-inspired staff to run the show. It is only from the relatively late date of 15 March, less than six months before the election that the US government—because they had no choice—truly committed to supporting Eduardo Frei and his left-leaning, progressive Christian Democrats. Some still thought the loss of Durán was catastrophic and, as the embassy regretfully noted, “not without certain aptness has it been jested that the choice between Frei and Allende is between chaos and disaster.”⁶⁸ Despite this occasional lack of conviction about their now-chosen man, whatever the US lost in time they made up with enthusiasm, and within a matter of days the situation changed dramatically: the proscription against ‘witting’ (or overt) contact with the PDC was partially broken, and at the party’s request incredible sums of

⁶⁶ Memorandum, Carter to Hughes, “ARA-CIA Weekly Meetings, 1964-1965”, 26 March 1964. [LBJ FRUS 248]

⁶⁷ Letter, Ralph W. Richardson to Jova, 3 April 1964. [NARA, RG 84, Santiago Embassy Files: FRC 69 A 6507, 1964, POL 14 Elections (Presidential) 1964 (1)]

⁶⁸ Airgram A-45, Embassy to Dept State, “Semi-Annual Politico-Economic Assessment - Chile”, 16 July 1964. [NARA: RG 59, Stack 250, Box 2025, Pol 2-1 Joint Weekas Chile]

40

money were being sent from the US. With no other choice to avert a Marxist government, the PDC suddenly became the Great Hope.

## The CIA Swings Into Action

With focus thrust upon them, and determination accidentally imbued to the White House, the CIA acted with appropriate decisiveness in Chile. Within a short time the implications of the Curicó defeat had been absorbed and processed by the Agency with the help of the State Department and the Santiago Embassy. On 1 April, two weeks after the defeat, a comprehensive and lengthy memorandum was submitted to the Special Group outlining the full plan for initial support to the PDC. The preamble to the memorandum is noteworthy, outlining the considerably different political scene in Chile after Curicó, and the way the PDC was now approaching American involvement. It tells us that at the end of March a member of Frei's campaign team visited the embassy (whether this is the political section or the CIA is not said) to present their campaign budget to the Americans. First they presented their current budget of US $100,000 per month, which they claimed to be meeting only with difficulty and which they did not think was sufficient anyway. Next, they presented their desired budget of over $300,000 per month. This, they said, was needed in order to beat Allende. The Chileans coolly suggested that the U.S. Government make up the difference "which amounts to one million dollars for the period from now to election time."⁶⁹ The Embassy and the CIA station reviewed the budgets, felt they did not seem unreasonable, and subsequently recommended that the Chilean's request for one million dollars be granted as soon as

⁶⁹ Memorandum, CIA to Special Group, "Support for the Chilean Presidential Election of 4 September 1964", 1 April 1964. [FRUS 250]

41

possible.⁷⁰ Money to the Christian Democrats, though, was not the end of the proposed US program of covert support in Chile. “As a result of the [political] situation outlined above,” the memorandum continued, “it becomes necessary to take all possible action to assist Frei in his campaign.” A whole battery of tactics were proposed, which one can summarise as:

(1) Preventing the Radical Party from formally endorsing Allende; “In the event the Radical Party declares for Allende, financial assistance will have to be provided to individual Radical leaders or groups capable of bringing Radical voters into the Frei camp”;

(2) Influencing the Conservative and Liberal parties to support Frei in a manner that would not damage his image as a reform candidate. (to be achieved by bribes);

(3) Complementing the subsidy directly to the PDC, influence on Frei to reach a private agreement with the Radicals for their support in exchange for post-election patronage;

(4) Preventing the declaration of a third candidate (the most likely was Jorgé Prat, a conservative from a powerful political family) by bribery and “pressure” to avert the splitting of the non-Marxist vote;

(5) Financial assistance to ancillary organizations, such as youth and student groups, peasant organizations, slum dwellers’ associations, labour unions, and women’s clubs, to bring their votes to Frei; and

(6) Initiating “specialized propaganda operations, some of which will be black, to denigrate Allende.”⁷¹

Altogether, this seems a fairly reasonable set of options considering the perceived problem, perhaps even standard political wrangling, whose only sinister terms are the vaguely described ‘pressure’ to be applied to keep other candidates from challenging Frei’s dominance of the centre and right. Nor was it illegal under either Chilean or US law. It is, nonetheless, serious political interference with the electoral process in a democratic state. To the Americans, however, it was merely a gentle inoculation of prevent the far worse anti-democratic disease of Marxism, for this was contagious disease: there were serious consequences “if this major Latin American nation should

⁷⁰ Ibid.

42

become the first country in the hemisphere to freely choose an avowed Marxist as its
elected president.”<sup>72</sup> A further option listed at the end of the memo underlines the gravity
with which the CIA and the Special Group viewed the situation. Realising that the first
six options might not swing the required votes, the CIA should be prepared, in the latter
stages of the campaign, “to buy some votes outright if required.”<sup>73</sup>

Despite the PDC's open and direct approach for campaign funding, there was still
disagreement as to whether this funding should be provided to them in an overt fashion.
While it was not yet stated explicitly, it was clear to both the PDC and the US
government that the revelation of wholesale US funding to the Chilean party would be a
disaster, likely to result in massive political gains for Allende and the FRAP. Yet, with
the whole point of the campaign being to "obtain some essential leverage" over the PDC
during their erstwhile Presidency, the CIA suggested that the money be passed in a
manner which might "infer U.S. Government origin of the funds yet permit us plausible
denial if necessary" by explicitly attributing the funds to US non-official sources.<sup>74</sup> The
Embassy's political staff, however, believed that the important matter was merely for Frei
to win, that the benefit of leverage over the PDC was dramatically outweighed by the risk
of a leak from some nationalist in the PDC that would compromise the entire operation.
The PDC, though, was just a little too left wing for the Special Group to feel comfortable
with them not under some American influence. Accordingly, the Special Group
authorised $750,000 (of the requested $1 million) in immediate funding to go to the PDC,
in the semi-covert fashion outlined by the CIA. This decision was made, however, with

71 Ibid.

⁷² Memorandum, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mann) to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, "Presidential Election in Chile", 1 May, 1964. [LBJ FRUS Doc 253]

⁷³ LBJ FRUS 250

(w)

43

the understanding that it did not "reflect the Embassy's position." The difference was not too great, however, and it seems that the CIA was able to accommodate the slightly sceptical ambassador Cole. The following day the paper was approved, with new C/WHD Desmond FitzGerald announcing in an attached memo that a solution to the slight difference of opinion between Ambassador Cole and the Santiago CIA station had been reached: attribution of U.S. support would be inferred *but there should be no evidence or proof.*<sup>75</sup> This was, FitzGerald apparently assured them, something the CIA could do. Whether it would actually be effective at deflecting realisation of American funding would remain to be seen.

After the Church Committee investigations of 1975, the manner in which covert actions were approved changed dramatically. Within a day of approval by the successor to the Special Group, the president would have to issue a 'finding' authorising the operation as necessary for the national security of the United States and then pass it to the congressional select committees on intelligence. This was not the case in 1964, a time when the covert-action decision-making infrastructure was still free of bureaucratic hurdles or legal checks, especially those later put in place by Congress. While the President may have been partially cognisant of the ongoing procedures regarding Chile (he did not choose to read the still-classified 'intelligence checklist' [latterly known as 'the President's Daily Brief'] from the DCI, as would later become customary, so this is not certain<sup>76</sup>) the first evidence of his being informed about the actual programme and the associated funding decision came on or about 13 May, 1964. At this time, National

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Memorandum, Minutes of Special Group Meeting of 2 April, INR/IL Historical Files, Special Group Files, 9 April 1964. [NARA]

44

Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy forwarded to Johnson a memorandum, written by Assistant Secretary of State for ARA Thomas Mann to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, which outlined the entire US programme of action in Chile, both covert and overt. To this memorandum Bundy appended a short note for the President, which highlighted the salient points as he perceived them, indicating

> We have a coordinated Government-wide program of action to strengthen [Allende's] opponent and support actions in Chile which will work to the advantage of those now in power. It is a highly fluid situation and one in which there may have to be further action as we get into the summer. I have been very much encouraged by the determination and unity which all Departments of the Government are showing on this one, and we will be watching it very closely, but I do think you ought to know about it yourself.⁷⁷

The latter point—full cooperation of all the departments—is important, for it is possible that the success of this programme hinged upon it, as would be proved in later US efforts in Chile. It is notable, however, that this entire programme of covert actions (and tens of millions in overt funding) was occurring possibly *without the knowledge or permission of the President*. Certainly, the system of security management in the NSC as established by the National Security Act of 1948 was designed to allow swift responses by empowered staff acting within the conceptual framework previously established by the President. The Chief Executive is, after all, a fairly busy individual. Initially, it may seem surprising that such a delicate and seemingly important task, with so much money being funnelled to a friendly democracy (an act, Loch Johnson notes, more serious than operations in a repressive regime), without some small measure of control by the President—but there is an explanation. Johnson, by April of 1964, had only been acting

⁷⁶ John L. Helgerson, "CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates 1952-1992", (Washington, 1996) chapter 3 in *passim*. Henforth *Presidential Briefs*.

45

as President for four months and before that he was kept—at the request of JFK—almost
totally in the dark about covert actions.⁷⁸ He had met on one occasion with DCI Allen
Dulles in July 1960 while a vice-presidential candidate, but neither Dulles nor his
successor, John McCone, had made much effort to keep Johnson informed during the
intervening years.⁷⁹ Compared with the concerns of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe,
Cuba, and especially Vietnam, Chile was a relatively secondary matter, so the fact that
LBJ had not been 'read-in' to the matter until April, when real action was being planned,
was not implausible. Nonetheless, by this time Johnson had long stopped reading the
Agency's *Intelligence Checklist*, preferring to let the agency or the NSC take care of
matters. Accordingly, one can detect very little Presidential input into the matter of
supporting Frei after Curicó both before and after this initial briefing.⁸⁰ The operation
was, essentially, still operating under the control of the deceased Kennedy. But what JFK
had started was impressive, and it becomes clear in the rest of this memo to Johnson. In
addition to the CIA's covert actions, the memorandum outlines the entire sweep of US
*overt* operations:

2) Providing AID loans in CY 64 amounting to approximately $70 million...

5) Organizing a political action and propaganda campaign through CIA contacts in coordination with or parallel to Frei's campaign. This includes voter registration drives, propaganda, person-to-person campaigning... and arrangements to provide some Italian Christian Democratic organizers to Frei as advisers...

7) [Attempt]... to encourage their rising awareness of the subversion which would take place under an Allende government.

⁷⁷ Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Chile, Vol. I, 1/64-8/64. Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. IV [LBJ FRUS Doc 253]

⁷⁸ Presidential Briefs, Ch. 3.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Presidential Briefs, Ch. 7.

46

8) Continuing USIA placement in Chile of un-attributed material, giving special care to low-keyed efforts which do not expose U.S. Government involvement.

9) Encouraging, through covert ties and private U.S. organizations, effective anti-Allende efforts by Chilean organizations including the Roman Catholic Church, trade union groups, and other influential bodies, such as the anti-clerical Masons.⁸¹

This was, indeed, a 'full court press', with all aspects of the US government directed to prevent the election of Allende. Indeed, some observers were so impressed by the anti-Allende efforts of other US government agencies that they assumed that they were CIA fronts. Popular Chilean author Eduardo Labarca, in his book *Chile Invadido*, states quite firmly that the United States Information Service (USIS) was a CIA front organisation, though in its own records the CIA states that this was not the case. CIA Chief of Western Hemisphere Division William V. Broe wrote to the Deputy Director of Plans, in explanation of his own activities, that "the material disseminated [by us] does not duplicate USIA efforts, which in Chile are centred mainly in propaganda areas other than radio."⁸² While Labarca may have been correct in noting that the USIA was spreading pro-American propaganda, it was noted by the CIA that the "USIA effort does not concentrate on disseminating a significant amount of anti-Communist material."⁸³ While Labarca points to some fairly unlikely patterns to support his theory—he argues, for example that any editorial from Santiago daily *El Mercurio* that finished with the letters O, W, or S was a plant from the CIA—he is not incorrect to have spotted the American hand behind the large pro-Frei propaganda drive in Chile, including (though his letter

⁸¹ LBJ FRUS 253.

⁸² Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Approval and Renewal", 12 March 1968.

⁸³ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Approval and Renewal", 12 March 1968.

47

pattern is nonsense) editorials in major conservative papers such as *El Mercurio*.⁸⁴ The Americans, however, felt that the operation and all its millions were still entirely *sub rosa*, with ARA assistant-secretary Mann telling his superior that they “are attempting to insure that extraordinary caution is observed in this action campaign to conceal official U.S. government interest, and we have rejected several ideas which have seemed to entail undue risks or excessive American involvement.”⁸⁵

## Corporate Funding

Though the Americans perhaps had an inflated sense of their own operational security in Chile, they did at least take security seriously. Perhaps the most frequent charge levelled against the US in Latin America is that they were subservient or reactive to corporate interest at the expense of sound policy. This certainly applies to Chile, where the large US investments in the copper mining industry, and in telecoms and infrastructure, were in the order of billions of US dollars. In Chile in 1964, however, the desire to work directly with or for the corporate sector was viewed as being too predictable and too likely to be compromised for there was a “lack of assurance on security before, during, and after the election” from interested corporations.⁸⁶ Part of this stemmed from admonishments directly from Frei. On more than one occasion when speaking to US Embassy officials, Frei emphatically stated that any linking of him to the US Government or—especially—to the U.S. private sector financial assistance would be

⁸⁴ Eduardo Labarca, *Chile Invadido* (Santiago, 1968), pp. 307-317. On top of propaganda, USIS was also distributing bad movies, if on can judge from their film repertoire #286 ‘Danza Hacia la Libertad’ [Dancing towards Freedom] about two Hungarian ballerinas who bravely flee to West Berlin.

⁸⁵ Memorandum, Mann to Rusk, “Presidential Election in Chile”, 1 May, 1964. [FRUS 253] (or Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Chile, Vol. I, 1/64-8/64).

⁸⁶ Airgram, Deputy Chief of Mission (Jova) to ARA (Mann), “76320”, 5 May 1964. [Frus 254].

48

"fatal."⁸⁷ To have his reformist and 'communitarian' party linked with foreign capital in such a highly nationalist country as Chile would be a political kiss of death—a fact he made explicitly clear to Joseph Jova, the Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d'Affairs.

Concerns about the political ramifications in Chile of a revelation about corporate funding (made manifest in the ITT scandal of 1972) were not the only concern on the minds of US politicians. While the common conception about US foreign policy is that it is totally amoral, especially when in pursuit of anti-Communist goals, in 1964 the State Department seems to have had great ethical concerns about corporate involvement as well. In a cable to his superiors at Foggy Bottom, Jova wrote:

> The concept of American commercial firms passing financial aid surreptitiously to the U.S. government raised so many questions of ethics, financial and interrelationships that Mr. McCone said he felt the matter should be discussed in the [Special] Group. A lengthy exchange of views ensued, but the conclusion was that the legal aspects were too labyrinthine and the questions of tax benefits, conflicts of interest and corporation behavior were too murky to make any clear determinations.⁸⁸

The security risks and questionable morality of acting as an agent, in effect, of U.S. capital led to the agreement that the CIA would refuse any offers of assistance from any US corporation invested in Chile: there was a "decision *not* to become a partner with business interests in covert political action but at the same time [the US would] assure [the corporations] that the U.S. was making every effort, on a priority basis, to prevent the election of Allende."⁸⁹ Nonetheless, the US-owned corporations in Chile, including the multi-national firm International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) did have resources or expertise that the CIA was often keen to use, and names such as that of Harold S. Geneen, CEO of ITT, appear in the context of such non-intelligence matters as how to

⁸⁷ LBJ FRUS 254.

⁸⁸ LBJ FRUS 254.

49

move 3,500 metric tonnes of beef to Chile to prevent a price spike.⁹⁰ Of course, private firms operating in Chile were not forbidden from making political contributions, and many sought to do so (apparently, sometimes in the form of on-the-hoof beef). In August of 1964 a request arrived at the embassy in Santiago from a private business woman, named Carroll Walters, of Pfizer, asking how to contribute money to the Frei campaign, as "most other American business firms are now making direct contributions to campaign both through local offices and...through a business committee in NY."⁹¹ The official line was set, however, and when the embassy sought guidance on what to tell her to do they received the formula reply:

> Inform Walters that [State] Dept...[discourages] private contributions since we feared charges of US involvement in the campaign as a result possible indiscretion. This is consistent with our long-standing policy to advise US citizens against interference or participation in the internal political affairs of any foreign country.

Despite a sincere corporate interest to help the PDC with either money or expertise, US corporations were deflected from doing at the combined request of Frei and the US Government.

## Playing Politics

Funding was not the sole course of action pursued by the US government in Chile, and a large part of the CIA's mission was to directly influence the decisions of certain political parties. It is clear that, to this end, the CIA was involved in the internal affairs of some parties. A memorandum from the Chief of Western Hemisphere Division

⁸⁹ Memorandum for the Record, "Minutes of the Meeting of the Special Group", 12 May 1964. [FRUS 257]

⁹⁰ Telcon, DCI McCone and Under Secretary of State George Ball, 11:45AM, 7 May, 1964. [FRUS 256]

⁹¹ TELEGRAM, Embtel 264, Santiago Emb to Sec State, "Frei Campaign Officials", 15 Aug 1964. [NARA RG 59, Stack 250, Box 2026, Pol 5 & 12 Political Affairs and Relations/Political Parties]

50

to the Deputy Director for Plans in March of 1968 discusses the renewal of funding for certain (unnamed) projects. It notes that in one of these projects, the Agency had been providing funding to moderate elements within the Radical Party since 1963.⁹² Though "we have worked with the same kind of collaborators within the party, the nature of our objectives, scope of involvement, and tactical use of such collaborators" changed along with the evolution in Chilean politics. When funding had started, the Radicals were part of the centre-right coalition in Congress that had supported Alessandri. This basis of support had evaporated when the Radical Julio Durán was defeated in a by-election. With Frei now established as the preferred candidate for the US, CIA support drifted away from the increasingly left-wing Radicals. The Radicals were not entirely abandoned by the CIA, however, for they noted that Julio Durán had recently avoided an attempt within his party (which the CIA had initially hoped would beat Allende) to endorse Allende directly! With this action the CIA—who had never come to the same opinion twice about the Radicals or Durán—realised that there was still utility in supporting Durán, and they were happy to note that their funding had been "instrumental" in maintaining the Radical candidate in that particular struggle.⁹³ All along, CIA and Country-Team political assessments were unsure whether Durán and the Radicals stole votes from the PDC or the FRAP, but with the attempt of the Radical party to align with the FRAP, this became a secondary concern to keeping them from supporting the FRAP directly. With the help of Frei, the PDC was thus enlisted to push money to Durán in order to keep him both in the race and friendly to Frei, for in the case of a slim electoral majority and a run-off contest between Frei and Allende, the hope would be for friendly

⁹² Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Renewal of Project", 20 March 1968. [CIA]

51

Radical party congressmen to vote for Frei as President. While the CIA could keep Durán in the race for President, they could not guarantee the post-election support of the Radical party, nor could they guarantee the prevention of another Radical Party move to support Allende, for "Due to ambassadorial restrictions against supporting Radicals, our equities in that party [are] quite diminished."⁹⁴ For the mean time, at least, this was not a major problem.

## More Money

If the CIA could not influence every aspect of the Chilean political system, the US government as a whole could at least throw a lot of money at the one party they could sway. On 14 May, 1964, the Special Group considered a proposal to increase the funds available for covert use in the Chilean election, noting the CIA's opinion that "recent political developments and additional information" indicated that an additional $1,250,000 was needed for the program to defeat Allende. Almost all of these funds were to go to Frei, allowing his party to "campaign at its full potential."⁹⁵ According to the minutes of the Special Group meeting where this was approved, "the principle of financial flexibility," lay behind the new payment, for "if, as the campaign develops, one segment [of the operation] needs additional support and another less, authority exists to shift the subsidy in the needed direction." Here we know LBJ had at least a cursory

⁹³ Department of State, INR/IL Historical Files, Special Group Files, 14 May, 1964. [State]

⁹⁴ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Renewal of Project", 20 March 1968. [CIA]

⁹⁵ FRUS Doc. 262 (Editorial)

52

awareness of the ongoing proposal, for MacGeorge Bundy informed the participants
"higher authority was aware of the seriousness of this election."⁹⁶

Yet more money was to follow. The 303 Committee, successor as of 2 June, to
the Special Group, considered on 23 July a proposal to provide "supplementary support
for the Chilean presidential elections." In a 21 July memorandum to the 303 Committee
the Central Intelligence Agency reported that an additional $500,000 was needed for the
program to defeat Allende, as it would permit Frei to "maintain the pace and rhythm of
his campaign effort" and allow the CIA to meet any "last minute contingencies." The
303 Committee's obvious question on why yet more money was required in addition to
the US $2 million already spent (an enormous sum even in a US election, several people
noted) was met with an apology from the CIA: Frei had miscalculated his finances, they
said, an error "attributable to the PDC's inexperience in organizing a campaign of this
magnitude."⁹⁷ Apparently placated, NSC staffer Peter Jessup recommended approval of
the suggestion to Bundy on 23 July, repeating the mantra: "We can't afford to lose this
one, so I don't think there should be any economy shaving in this instance. We assume
the Committee are pouring in dough; we have no proofs. They must assume we are pouring
in dough; they have no proofs. Let's pour it on and in."⁹⁸ The funding was approved.
There was also the case of an unnamed Chilean man who, apparently on the basis of
conversations with various Americans, assumed that he had a tacit commitment for
financial support from the US. Although no formal commitment had been made to him,
nor any deals signed (for the CIA, of course, was careful about Chileans not detecting

⁹⁶ Memorandum for the Record, "Minutes of Special Group Meeting of 13 May", 14 May, 1964 [NARA: National Security Council, 303 Committee Files, Subject Files, Chile thru 1969]

⁹⁷ Memorandum for the Record, "Minutes of 303 Committee Meeting 21 July", 21 July 1964. [NARA: National Security Council, 303 Committee Files, Subject Files, Chile thru 1969]

53

their hidden hand), the 303 Committee felt he "had made measurable contributions to the
Frei campaign through his 'front' organisation and that some allocation of funds should
be made to defray his deficit of $395,000."<sup>99</sup> This was an enormous sum of money for an
individual, especially in Chile in 1964. Indeed, ARA's Ambassador Thompson
commented disapprovingly that it "seems a great deal", but he did not enter any caveat to
the disbursement.<sup>100</sup> This incident indicates the seriousness with which the US
Government viewed the elections but also, more importantly, how freely their money was
injected into Chile.

Progress

If so much money was being thrown around in Chile, was it actually achieving the
aim? Did it look as if Frei would actually beat Allende. By and large, the Santiago CIA
station thought so: "In the Embassy's opinion almost every evidence and observation
suggest that Senator Eduardo FREI should win the most votes in the national election on
September 4, 1964... [despite] FRAP charges that he is the candidate of the Church, the
Right and the United States...."<sup>101</sup> The implication that their support—which they knew
was secret—might be aiding the FRAP was impossible, and they concentrated instead on
their scientific polling—a function introduced to the non-Communist Chilean political
scene by the US Embassy Country Team, and which they shared with Frei.<sup>102</sup> The US
Embassy also met with local business leaders, who "all agreed with me that Frei [was

⁹⁸ FRUS Doc. 246. Editorial.

⁹⁹ FRUS Doc. 267. Editorial.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid.

¹⁰¹ Airgram, US Amb Santiago (Cole) to State Dept, "The Presidential Campaign with Two weeks to go", 21 Aug 1964. [NARA: NSF, Country File, Chile, Vol. 1, Cables 1/64-8/64]

¹⁰² Interview, Jack Devine, 2004.

54

the] likely winner. General feeling [was that] serious violence [was] unlikely and [the] GOC [was] well prepared to maintain order."¹⁰³ There was, however, fear in the Embassy and the CIA in particular. The latter felt that all the money they were passing to the PDC was doing nothing to ameliorate the fact that the PDC was simply less well organised than the FRAP, and it "is now convincingly evident that the communists have indeed been working hard for many years pointing toward this election. They have made notable inroads among the campesinos..." and other segments of the electorate that the PDC simply could not reach.¹⁰⁴ While people were generally confident of a PDC win, "a certain tension is felt in middle and upper class circles as shown by such things as the greatly increased issuance of visitor's visas, plane and ship bookings and capital flight."¹⁰⁵ Not totally dismissing the unscientific political prognostication of the locals, the CIA—haunted by the concept of an Allende win and another Cuba on their watch—made inquiries amongst the Chilean army on what they might do in the event of an Allende victory. The answer to this question was a resounding 'nothing.' Simply, the Chilean military was conditioned by a long tradition of 'non-deliberation', remaining outside of politics, liable only to act if a party, any party, attempted to subvert the Chilean constitution. "If Allende should impatiently attempt to override Congress," the CIA Station wrote to Washington, "the military would almost certainly intervene to preserve constitutional order. If he should too abruptly seek to impose his personal control on the military establishment, there might also be a reaction. Otherwise, the military and the Carabineros [the Chilean national police] would be likely to support the duly elected

¹⁰³ Telegram, US Amb Santiago (Cole) to Sec State, "Met Today", 27 Aug 1964. [NARA: NSF, Country File, Chile, Vol. 1, Cables 1/64-8/64]

¹⁰⁴ Airgram, US Amb Santiago (Cole) to State Dept, "The Presidential Campaign with Two weeks to go", 21 Aug 1964. [NARA: NSF, Country File, Chile, Vol. 1, Cables 1/64-8/64]

55

regime.” Despite military intervention in the government briefly in 1924, there simply was no great likelihood of any extra-constitutional action: “Military intervention in politics can happen in Chile, though not without strong provocation.”<sup>106</sup> Furthermore, this was no run-of-the-mill South American banana republic, and the warning was made to the White House that “we should not confuse the Chile of 1964 with the Guatemala of 1954 unless we are prepared to physically occupy the country.”<sup>107</sup> Luckily, this course of action did not seem too likely, as the polls were coming out in favour of Frei. An August 1964 sampling of the important areas of Santiago and Valparaiso shows Frei ahead by 20.2% over Allende in those cities.<sup>108</sup>

The Station, however, was keen to stress that these were rough polling numbers, hard to translate into a prediction of the actual election outcome, and that the ‘important point’ was that Frei looked like he was in for a simple majority and a solid mandate. Such a majority, they noted hopefully,

> would mean that the election would not have to be thrown to congress and therefore that the uncertainties surrounding that process, including the possibility of rioting, would be eliminated. Furthermore, with a clear majority Frei would not have to make any political deals with other parties. Forced to predict, however, we would give the following: Frei-53 percent; Allende-41 percent; Duran-6 percent.<sup>109</sup>

This was wonderful news for the White House. Nonetheless, as 4 September of 1964 approached there were, no doubt, more than a few white knuckles both in Washington and Santiago.

<sup>105</sup> Ibid. Original Italics

<sup>106</sup> NIE, "The Chilean Situation and Prospects", 3 October 1963. [CIA]

<sup>107</sup> Memorandum, McGeorge Bundy/Lawrence O'Brien/John Reilly to Senator H.H. Humphrey, "The Present Political Situation in Chile, 16 June 1964. [LBJ: EX CO 4 Chad, Republic of, BOX 21]

<sup>108</sup> Memorandum, CIA to State/NSC, "Chilean Election Forecast", 1 September 1964. [FRUS 268]

56

## Election Day

Come the election day of 4 September, the various parts of the Johnson administration involved in the Chilean operations closely monitored the official voting count in Chile. The Department of State received hourly updates from the Embassy in Santiago, which in turn were forwarded to the White House.¹¹⁰ Although the initial returns echoed the polls and put Frei into the lead quite early on, the final result was surprisingly decisive. With only slightly more than a tenth of the electorate not voting, Eduardo Frei and his PDC received 56% of the vote; Salvador Allende Gossens and the FRAP 39%; Julio Durán Neumann, centre of such hand-wringing and worry in the Santiago Station, finished third with just 9% of the vote—very close indeed to the CIA's polling numbers. President Johnson addressed the importance of the Chilean election at a news conference on 5 September. The election, he said, served as a reminder of the strength of democratic institutions throughout Latin America; it was a victory for democracy as well as a defeat for “those who are hostile to freedom” (read: communism).¹¹¹ The Embassy staff was slightly more prosaic, commenting in a cable several days after the poll that “Midnight Wednesday mercifully brought to an end an election campaign which has been going on for longer than Embassy officers care to remember.”¹¹²

¹⁰⁹ Ibid.

¹¹⁰ Memorandum, Chase to Bundy, “Chilean Polling”, 4 September 1964. [LBJ: NSF, Country File, Latin America Vol. II, 6/64-12/64] See also telegrams 366-371, Santiago to Washington, 4 September 1964. [NARA: RG 59, Central Files 1964-66, POL 14 CHILE]

¹¹¹ FRUS Doc. 269 Editorial.

¹¹² Airgram A-187, Santiago to State, Joint Weeka No. 36, 3 September 1964. [NARA: RG 59, Stack 250, Box 2025, Pol 2-1 Joint Weekas Chile]

57

## Effectiveness & Results

The CIA was not shy about the share of the credit due them for the stunning win, the first clear majority government in a Chilean election in 22 years, as DCI John McCone pointed out to the 303 Committee. The CIA was one of the "indispensable ingredients of Frei's success."113 Frei, personally, praised the Embassy for its role during the campaign, noting their "discretion and cooperation" throughout his campaign.114 The Station likely agreed wholeheartedly. They indicated to the 303 Committee their belief that Frei's chances of winning the election "would have been considerably more tenuous, and it is doubtful if his campaign would have progressed as well as it did without this covert U.S. Government support."115 The Ambassador, Charles Cole, agreed, and the day after the election he reported that the combined effort of U.S. agencies "contributed significantly to the very satisfactory Frei victory on September 4."116 Feeling, apparently, in a remarkably generous mood, McCone remarked that the voters "themselves... deserved some commendation."117 It was, all around, a great day for being in the CIA. Whether it had been a good day for Chile is debatable.

Commenting on the matter almost forty years later, William D. Rogers gives a more reasoned and rational tone to the reaction, which also puts into perspective the supposed secrecy of the CIA's efforts:

> We saw [the election] in 64 as kind of an acid test. You know the old domino effect: we were terrified. I still remember the sense of relief in the Alliance that he won. He was our strong preference, so we put our money where our mouth was. But there wasn't any secret about it, about where

113 Ibid.

114 Telegram #383, Santiago to State, 8 September 1964. [NARA: RG 59, Central Files 1964-1966, POL 14 Chile]

115 Department of State, INR/IL Historical Files, Chile, 1964-1967. [FRUS 269]

116 Telegram, Ambassador to SecState, # 372, 5 September 1964. [NARA: RG 59, Central Files 1964-66, POL 14 CHILE]

117 FRUS Doc. 269.

58

our aid money was going. And I think it was applauded by most of the
liberal side of the spectrum here in Washington.¹¹⁸

Accordingly, they did everything they could both openly and clandestinely to ensure a
Frei victory, though Rogers also added “Oh, no that’s wrong: it wasn’t everything we
could; we could have done a hell of a lot more. We were pretty restrained in what we
really did. But there was no doubt in where we saw our interests lie.”¹¹⁹ Nonetheless,
Rogers disagreed with the assessment that the CIA was a major factor in the Frei victory.
Instead, he believes a combination of Frei’s charismatic personality, the collapse of the
Democratic Front after Curico, and the continued candidacy of a defeated Durán that led
to this notable majority. Indeed, this opinion was echoed by senior State Department
Official Ambassador John H. Crimmins, who indicated in an interview that Bob
Hurwitch, the Embassy’s First Secretary, “believed that the [US] efforts had had a very
marginal effect.¹²⁰

But it most certainly *had* had an effect. Regardless of whether they had actually
assisted the Frei candidacy, almost universal suspicion arose in Chile that Frei was the
US's man. Eduardo Labarca remarks: "*Lo cierto es que en la época del gobierno del
presidente Frei, Washington se ha valido preferentemente, en su labor corrupta y
colonizadora, de personeros democratacristianos.*"¹²¹ Habeas Corpus or not, plausible
deniability simply does not matter when everyone comes to believe that the supposedly
unproved allegations are true. The US had effectively, and with consent, undermined the
credibility of the Frei government and the PDC by aligning too closely with them. The
final word on this can be given to Jorgé Alessandri, the recently ex-President of Chile

¹¹⁸ Interview, William D. Rogers, 2004.

¹¹⁹ Interview, William D. Rogers, 2004.

¹²⁰ Interview, John H. Crimmins, 2004.

59

who would stand again for the Presidency in 1970. Meeting a US official several weeks
after the inauguration of Frei, the former President was noted (in a curtly worded
telegram to Washington) as saying:

> Chile was [an] over-politicised nation accelerating its plunge towards chaos ruin and inevitable military intervention... [the] PDC [is the] incurably muddled inefficient cutting edge for eventual open Marxist takeover which only armed force could and should and would stop, however much he lamented blows to Chilean democratic tradition.

Frei could not change stripes (he implied that he regarded Frei as a Chilean Kerensky) and therefore independents would oppose Frei to the end, running their own candidate in 1970 even if it assured victory of FRAP and put communists in GO[C] At least such eventuality would trigger army intervention.

> He held USG largely responsible, not only for its direct actions, but for support it gave to such subversive organisations as ECLA [Economic Commission for Latin America] and FAO, for the imminent Chilean crisis. Intellectuals surrounding President Kennedy had meddled ruinously in Chile.¹²²

Such a damning—and, as it turns out, shockingly accurate—appraisal of the results of the
US's involvement in Chile likely fell on deaf ears.

121 Labarca, p. 24.

122 Cable, Santiago to SecState, "President Frei Insisted", 21 Dec 1967. [LBJ: Country File Box 14, Chile Vol V, Memos, 8/67-11/68]

# CIA & ITT
## The Agency Response to Corporate Interest

by Kristian Gustafson

He felt that there was already too much open talk in these circles which was filtering back to Chile. Even Frei had pointed out that publicized large-scale U.S. business support for his candidacy would be a kiss of death. On the basis of the risks and the apparent lack of security, he felt the U.S. "private sector" should not engage in political action in this Chilean election.

c. The concept of American commercial firms passing financial aid surreptiously to the U.S. government raised so many questions of ethics, financial and interrelationships that Mr. McCone said he felt the matter should be discussed in the Group. A lengthy exchange of views ensued, but the conclusion was that the legal aspects were too labyrinthine and the questions of tax benefits, conflicts of interest and corporation behavior were too murky to make any clear determinations. The risks of acting as an agent, in effect, of U.S. capital and the lack of assurance on security before, during, and after the election led to the agreement that McCone would convey to Mr. Weed the U.S. decision *not* to become a partner with business interests in covert political action but at the same time to assure him that the U.S. was making every effort, on a priority basis, to prevent the election of Allende.¹

In March 1972, syndicated columnist—and famous Washington muckraker—Jack Anderson published in his syndicated column “The Washington Merry-Go-Round” a sensational allegation that the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation had constructed, in league with the CIA a “bizarre plot to stop the 1970 election of leftist Chilean President Salvador Allende.” As published in his later book, *The Anderson Papers*, Jack Anderson alleges:

> The giant conglomerate was scheming to create financial chaos in Chile, to put pressure on the Chilean congress to keep Allende from power, and to organise a coup to take control of the government. Participating in the conspiracy were the CIA's clandestine services chief William V. Broe, and the ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry.²

¹ Memorandum for the Record, Minutes of the Meeting of the Special Review Group, 12 May 1964.

² Jack Anderson, *The Anderson Papers*, p. 112.

These were serious accusations for two reasons: if they were true, the US government was attempting to subvert a democracy, and it was doing so as the servant of corporate, not national, interest. They had a seismic impact on a country growing increasingly disillusioned with the perceived opacity of foreign affairs and the war in Vietnam. As the editors of the *Washington Post* argued, "this is a charge so serious it is hard to see how anything less than a congressional investigation can dispose of it."³ The allegations, in fact, proved excellent fodder for the highly partisan chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator J.W. Fulbright, which "asserted its paramount jurisdiction over intervention abroad" and voted to investigate the allegations.⁴ This alone was sensational in that up to this point in the history of US intelligence the Foreign Relations Committee had not exerted any influence over the CIA, this being carried out by the Armed Services Committees and their military appropriations subcommittees. Perhaps sensing the history he might make, Fulbright wasted no time in letting-loose one of his most ambitious and aggressive fellow senators and committee members, Senator Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, empowered with the 'Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations.' In time, the investigations of Senator Church into ITT led into the more serious 'Church Committee Investigation' which investigated the full scope of the CIA's duties, and to a universal questioning of the policies and modalities of the Agency's actions around the world. These investigations, on top of inadvertently revealing many CIA methods and sources, brought the end of the 'old generation' at Langley and the end to the laissez-faire attitude with which the Congress traditionally provided oversight of their

³ *Washington Post*, “ITT: And Now Chile”, 22 March 1972.

⁴ Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations), 93rd Congress, 1st Session, “International Telephone and Telegraph Company and Chile 1970-1971”, Washington, 1973. (Henceforward: “Senate ITT Report”)

[u]

activities.⁵ Moreover, they were fuel to the fire that was slowing burning under Nixon's presidency and which would eventually engulf him and the office of the President in general.

If the accusations of Jack Anderson and his ITT documents had such a great impact, one might assume that they were an accurate portrayal of the CIA's operations in Chile. In fact, as a careful analysis indicates, the ITT documents and Anderson's column contained far more sensation than fact. An appeal to recent document releases, as well as older congressional testimony, shows that the CIA and ITT did not in fact conspire to create economic chaos in Chile, nor did they combine to suborn the Chilean congress to any unconstitutional move against Allende. The ITT Corporation was not dictating programmes to the CIA, nor did it have the influence over the US government that the Anderson papers led the public to believe.

Yet the Anderson papers are not without their facts, and those facts are still extremely relevant when discussing the CIA and its covert actions in the 1970's. While the massive declassification undertaken over the last few years has given over the bulk of governmental documents on Chile—State, CIA, and the NSC have turned over the bulk of their Chile papers to an online declassification website—there is little to give context or depth to these bureaucratically written documents. So, unintentionally, the ITT papers provide a real insight into the functioning of the CIA in one of its most debated and controversial operations—an intimate and well-informed view of CIA operations from *outside* the CIA. When viewed in parallel with declassified CIA and State department papers, they help show a covert action policy *not* influenced by corporate interest, but rather one driven by an impatient

⁵ A general view of the impact of the Church committee from a CIA point of view can be seen in the memoirs of former DCI Richard Helms', *A Look Over My Shoulder*.

Chief Executive. The CIA was no *Rogue Elephant*, as some argue to this day.⁶ This, at least, is the opposite of the allegations made those thirty-odd years ago in the "Washington Merry-go-Round".

## The ITT Corporation

ITT was indeed one of the largest corporations in the US.

## The Scandal Breaks

The ITT scandal broke after the Jack Anderson columns of 21 and 22 March, 1972 in the pages of the *Washington Post* and several other papers across the US. So seriously did DCI Richard Helms view the information in the Anderson columns that he apparently tried to convince Anderson not to publish them, though admittedly such requests were fairly common in the era.⁷ Though not at first a front-page story, Jack Anderson's "The Washington Merry-Go Round" column nevertheless caused a stir, especially so when Anderson released his source material to the government and the public. The accusations in his columns, backed by the documents, were stark and direct: ITT "dealt regularly with the Central Intelligence Agency" and they "were plotting together to create economic chaos in Chile."⁸ To do this, ITT made "an offer to the White House to 'assist financially in sums up to seven figures.'"⁹ To assure the forward movement of their schemes, Anderson asserts, ITT was assisted in Washington by William V. Broe, CIA Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, and apparently ITT men in Chile were included in the intimate details of Agency and

⁶ Helms, p. 437.

⁷ Kornbluh, *The Pinochet File*, p. 103, fn 36.

⁸ Jack Anderson, "Memos Bare ITT Try for Chile Coup" in *The Washington Merry-Go-Round*, 21 March 1972.

⁹ Jack Anderson, "ITT Pledge Millions To Stop Allende" in *The Washington Merry-Go-Round*, 22 March 1972.

Embassy plotting in Santiago. Anderson added the details of the plotting of Chilean General Roberto Viaux, on whose plot the CIA as well as ITT was "pinning its waning hopes."¹⁰

While some might have hoped to dismiss Anderson's column as just more idle anti-Agency gossip, the ITT memoranda released by the columnist seemed to entirely support his accusations. One of the most seriously considered accusations of Anderson's ITT memoranda is that of 17 September 1970, in which it is stated that on 15September, Ambassador Edward Korry received a message from the "State Department" giving him permission to do everything "short of a Dominican Republic-type action—to keep Allende from taking power.¹¹ To this end, Anderson asserted, the Chilean army "has been assured full financial assistance by the US military establishment."¹² Moreover Edward Korry, the mercurial US Ambassador to Chile had, according to the ITT documents, manoeuvred without State Department permission in the affairs of Chilean political parties, as well as haranguing Chilean president Eduardo Frei "to the point of telling him to 'put his pants on.'"¹³ Finally, showing a good degree of detail into the actions of the CIA in Chile, the article went on to discuss the CIA-ITT plan to support the *El Mercurio* newspaper, the conservative and anti-Allende newspaper that was under threat from pro-Allende forces and had even been threatened with closure and expropriation directly by one of Allende's lieutenants.

The accusations do not end with the alleged links in Chile itself. It is further argued in Anderson's lead article that

ITT officials were in touch with William V. Broe, who was then director of the Latin American division of the CIA's Clandestine

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ ITT Memorandum, Hendrix & Berrellez to Garrity, "Chile", 17 September, 1970.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Ibid.

Services. They were plotting together to create economic chaos in Chile, hoping this would cause the Chilean army to pull a coup that would block Allende from coming to power.¹⁴

Accordingly, “approaches continue to be made to select members of the Armed Forces in an attempt to have them lead some sort of uprising—no success to date...”¹⁵ While the article gives some descriptive weight to some of these allegations (and many more column-inches to independent ITT activities against Chile), they seem serious enough on their own—serious enough to act as catalyst for a Senate investigation and to remain in the public mind for decades afterwards. But while there is no doubt that Anderson’s column made good press, is it accurate?

## Assessing the Validity of the Scandal

To know how much the ITT memoranda say about the CIA and US Government policy one has to assess their accuracy, a tricky affair when dealing with such scant information. The key question is this whole debate is this: did the two men reporting for ITT in Chile have any special knowledge of CIA actions, and if so how detailed, or were they merely reporting rumour or public knowledge? GWU historian Peter Kornbluh states that Berrellez “repeatedly misled the Church subcommittee by denying any ITT contact with CIA officials in Chile”.¹⁶ Likewise, in the book by journalist David Corn on CIA officer Ted Shackley, the author spends several pages expositing on the connection between the alliterative ITT-men Hal Hendrix and Bob Berrellez and Santiago CIA station-chief Henry Hecksher, as well as links in Washington with CIA men Ted Shackley, William Broe and others. But it is nearly impossible to cross-check their accusations, which essentially imply that the CIA was

¹⁴ Anderson, "Memos Bare ITT Try for Chile Coup".

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Kornbluh, p. 102.

working with, and at the behest of, a corporation. Most of the station personnel from
Santiago in 1970 have passed away, and those that remain are not talking, at least on
the record. While authors such as Kornbluh and Corn seem convinced of the
connection, neither of them offer any concrete proof that they are willing to cite, nor
do they offer any explanation or nuance to the nature of the connection. This leaves
the inquisitive reader with only two rather indefinite ways of untying the knot—or at
least confirming the solution provided by the two authors mentioned above—textual
comparison and intuition. Likewise, there are two distinct parts to the accusation of
ITT-CIA links: those that occurred in Santiago and those that occurred in
Washington, and these need to be dealt with separately to be understood in context.

## Part 1, Washington

During the Congressional investigations of 1975, Senator Frank Church,
directing the investigating committee, concluded that "In 1970, US Government
policy prohibited covert CIA support to a single party or candidate, at the same time,
the CIA provided advice to an American-based multinational corporation on how to
furnish just such direct support."¹⁷ This conclusion is based in large part on testimony
which repeated allegations from the Anderson Papers, which "show that ITT officials
were in close touch with William V. Broe, who was then director of the Latin
American division of the CIA's clandestine services. They were plotting
together...."¹⁸ When examined with reference to the CIA's own documents, and
more recent information, one can perceive a greater degree of nuance in the matter.

Cooperation between ITT and the CIA at the executive level had its origins in
the 'old boys club': John McCone, a senior director of ITT was also previously a DCI.

¹⁷ Church Report

¹⁸ Washington Merry Go Round, 21 March 1972. Washington Post.

A meeting about the election in Chile was initiated by a call to DCI Colby from
McCone. The first meeting between Broe and ITT President Harold S. Geneen—a
man called “a very *very* unpleasant freebooter… the kind of guy who thought Latin
American governments should be manipulated and bought off…” by one senior State
Department official¹⁹—occurred at the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel in Washington on 16
July. At this meeting Geneen gave Broe a short history of ITT’s involvement in
Chile, including their passage of funds to the PDC during the 1964 Presidential
election (after McCone, as then DCI, had rejected a similar approach from ITT!).²⁰
Broe was told that ITT wanted to pass funds to the Alessandri campaign in this
election, and hoped that the CIA might either act as a channel for funds or advise ITT
the best way of channelling them itself. Broe, prepared by a WHD briefing memo,²¹
responded by telling Geneen the CIA “could not absorb the funds and serve as a
funding channel” and was advised “that the US Government was not supporting any
candidate but was most anxious that Allende not be elected.”²² Broe left the meeting
with a promise that he would explore routes by which ITT could channel the funds by
its own means. Up to this point, the CIA was “highly impressed by ITT’s
professionalism” and the Station expressed hopes that such professionalism would be
maintained. Always hoping for more corporate involvement in the election
campaign, the CIA had stepped outside the strict boundaries of the non-partisan ruling
to ensure the security of ITT’s own funding channel to Alessandri.

For the CIA this was a relatively bold move in support of an outside
organisation, and their normal reticence to breach their security protocols soon
reasserted itself. "Since [deleted] 16 July meeting with Geneen [word deleted] we

¹⁹ Interview, Crimmins.

²⁰ Memorandum, CIA, William Broe for the Record, 17 July 1970.

²¹ Memorandum, CIA, "Harold D. Geneen—Questions and Answers", memo #1049, undated, July or August 1970.

²² Ibid.

have determined” wrote Broe, “that the ITT election operation has not been closely
held even within the company, contrary to what was [Broe] was led to believe.”²³ To
an Agency very heavily concerned with the repercussions of exposure with regards to
Chile especially (the fear of an exposure was the motivating factor behind the CIA’s
low-key, ‘Alessandri if necessary but not necessarily Alessandri’ no-candidate stance
in the election), this lack of operational security must have been very worrying. It
seemed it was, as the cable goes on for another two pages discussing the nature and
scope of the compromise. Yet at this time, CIA Western Hemisphere Division
concluded that no dirty laundry was being stored for later airing, as “conversation
with Geneen was limited to commenting on the integrity of the [word deleted]
channel [already set up by ITT] and mild encouragement that ITT *et al* become
involved in the election.²⁴ Yet, it was urged that the Station in Santiago limit its
discussions with ITT’s local representatives, since if the CIA became heavily
involved in the passage of funds from ITT/Chitelco to Alessandri’s party, it risked
both a breech of operational security as well as a breech of the non-partisan stance in
the election ordained from Washington. Neither breech held consequences the
Agency was happy to allow.²⁵

Yet, within a short while, William Broe was talking to E.J. Gerrity once again
about operations in Chile. What they discussed, however, vastly outshines the review
of a funding channel in terms of seriousness: for by the next time they met, Allende
had, on 4 September, won the presidential election with a slim plurality, and now
waited only upon the formality of a Congressional confirmatory vote after 50 days,
and an inauguration several days thereafter. The pressure from ITT—which had
almost $700million US at stake in Chile—on the White House was not small, and on

²³ Cable, CIA, Broe to Santiago, "We Have Weighed", 6 August 1970.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ibid.

(w)

12 September Kissinger stated that he "had a call last night from McCone...[he] thinks it would be a catastrophe if we let [Chile] go."²⁶ While 'correlation is not causation', the CIA became more active in its discussions with ITT in the week following this call. In what can be viewed as 'phase 2' of the ITT revelations, Anderson revealed the matter of these discussions: the CIA's attempt to convince ITT of a plan to cause economic chaos in Chile in order to force the army to prevent the confirmation and inauguration of Allende. As published in Anderson's column, the memorandum seemed to reveal particularly sinister planning by the CIA. On 29 September, Broe met with E.J. Gerrity, ITT's Senior Vice-President in charge of public affairs, the former presenting "suggestions based on recommendations from our representative on the scene and analysis in Washington."²⁷ First of all, it could be drawn from this that the Agency was taking its orders from ITT, but this revelation is eclipsed by Broe's suggestions. Gerrity wrote that

> the idea presented, and with which I do not necessarily agree, is to apply economic pressure.... He indicated that certain steps were being taken but that he was looking for additional help aimed at inducing economic collapse. I discussed the suggestions with [ITT's Latin American President Jack] Guilfoyle. He contacted a couple of companies who said they had been given advice which is directly contrary to the suggestions I received.²⁸

Unfortunately, there is very little in the CIA's files to corroborate the discussion, though its occurrence is not in doubt: the CIA solicited the help of a corporation in the matter of wrecking the economy of another country, a truly scandal-worthy occurrence. Regardless of CIA intentions, ITT dismissed the idea as unworkable and its own memoranda indicate that no move was made by the company to increase economic chaos in Chile, for "information we received today from other

²⁶ TELCON, President/Kissinger, 12:32 p.m., 12 September 1970.

²⁷ Memorandum, ITT, Gerrity to Geneen, 29 September 1970.

²⁸ Ibid. *Emphasis added.*

sources indicates that there is a growing economic crisis in any case.”²⁹ Whether or not the CIA carried on with the plan independently will be discussed later.

## Part 2, Chile

There is no doubt that the CIA, through William Broe, were in contact with the upper echelon of ITT in Washington. The nature of the ITT-CIA relationship in Chile, however, has perhaps a greater impact on the validity of the scandal, for it comments directly on the accuracy of the ITT documents published by Anderson. The first very clear implication of the Anderson Papers was that ITT was working hand-in-hand with the CIA in Santiago, a sort of adjunct civilian operational arm of the ongoing covert actions in Chile's capital. Weighing the evidence, it does seem clear that Hendrix and Berrellez had some contact with at least one officer of the CIA station, perhaps even Hecksher himself. The question needs to be more specific: was CIA-ITT contact casual or secret, continuous or sporadic? Was it the case, as US Ambassador Edward reported in a recent interview, that some of the things going on around the embassy "were more appropriate to John Le Carré"?³⁰

Documents from the Agency show that the relationship with ITT in Santiago was not longstanding. Before he went to speak with Harold Geneen on 17 July of 1970, Broe had been prepared with a likely questions-and-answers memo prepared by WHD. The last of the potential questions listed in the memorandum, "Are we currently in touch with ITT personnel in Chile?" is answered simply "no."³¹ It was the general policy of the agency, witnessed in Chile during the 1964 election, to discourage private companies from getting involved in secret funding of political

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Fermandois, Fontaine, et al, "El Embajador Edward M. Korry en el CEP", *Estudios Públicos*, Vol. 72, No. 3, 1998, p. 24.

³¹ Memorandum, CIA, "Harold D. Geneen—Questions and Answers", memo #1049, undated, July or August 1970.

parties for fear that they were likely to be caught and exposed to general US
embarrassment. But this policy was facing something of a reality check in 1970.
Faced with a massive loss in funds, private corporations were making independent
moves towards supporting the PDC and other parties. As the station cabled to the
Agency this was a trend the CIA was unlikely to be able to stop:

> [We] doubt they can be dissuaded, coordinated or channelled. Approx
> 800 million dollars of investments are at stake. Also, most American
> corporations believe that the US embassy has done nothing in the past
> and will do nothing in future to stave off disaster. Short of telling them
> what is being done, ref arguments would carry little weight.³²

Essentially, it was a panic to save investments as much as possible, and it was
outside of the CIA's ability to secure. "More doom and gloom" is Broe's exasperated
marginal comment on this cable.³³ The Agency obviously looked at the odds and
figured it was in the interest to assist the biggest of the corporations in as unobtrusive
way as possible. If they could not be stopped, they could at least be shepherded. The
17 July meeting in Washington thus initiated the Agency-ITT relationship in
Santiago; not permitted or desirous of channelling the funds to Alessandri themselves,
but not wishing to have ITT cause a massive uproar by being caught in the act of
passing funds, the CIA agreed to guide the ITT men in their own covert action to pass
the funds.³⁴ Memoranda over the following days show that the CIA reviewed the
security of a Chilean who could help ITT move funds to Alessandri discreetly. The
Santiago station reported back to Langley that "with advice of our Chief of Station"³⁵
a local ITT representative had made contact with a member of Alessandri's entourage
and "that offer in Ref A Amount [$300,000] made and accepted. *Station midwifery*

³² Cable, Santiago Station to CIA HQ, "Doubt they can be dissuaded", 10 September 1970.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ It was in fact legal for ITT to pass the funds, but politically impossible, as is discussed below.

³⁵ Memorandum, CIA, William Broe for the Record, 3 August 1970.

neither mentioned nor implied [to Alessandri contact]."³⁶ A subsequent review of the event, written sometime after April 1972, commented that only three or four individuals were witting to the ITT-Alessandri transaction, and "none of these [deleted] individuals have ever been used operationally by the agency," and "there is no indication that these individuals were aware of the advisory role played by the Agency in this funding."³⁷ So, beginning in July of 1970, the CIA station in Santiago met with representatives of ITT in Santiago for the purpose of passing funds. These representatives could have been no others than Berrellez and Hendrix, for we know from ITT's papers that these were their two men in Chile. This could be significant, for when one reviews the Anderson papers there is a vast amount of 'intelligence reporting' from the two former newspapermen that hints at access to the secret parts of the embassy, if not access to the CIA Station itself.

In one of the first ITT documents released is the description of what is now known as the 'Alessandri Formula,' or the 'Frei Re-election Gambit.'³⁸ In this plan, close runner-up Alessandri promised that if the congress voted for him to be president, he would immediately resign, allowing Frei to run for the first office again, according to Chilean constitutional practice which prevented consecutive terms as president. This information is hardly scandalous, and certainly did not emerge from Agency sources: it was a matter of public record and Alessandri's offer was actually placed in the major Santiago daily *El Mercurio*. It is the subsequent comment in the same memorandum—partially quoted above—that aroused the most furore in the US when Anderson secured their publication:

³⁶ CIA Cable, Santiago Station to CIA HQ, "Suggest You Allow", 18 July 1970. Emphasis added.
Figure of $300,000 a hand-written marginal note.

³⁷ Memorandum, CIA, "ITT Funding in Chilean 1970 Presidential Election", Cable #1061, undated, likely post-April 1972.

³⁸ Memorandum, ITT, Hendrix and Berrellez to Gerrity, "Chile", 17 September 1970.

Late Tuesday night (September 15) Ambassador Edward Korry finally received a message from State Department giving him the green light to move in the name of President Nixon. The message gave him maximum authority to do all possible—short of a Dominican Republic-type action—to keep Allende from office.³⁹

Did any cable go to Santiago on 15 September giving a 'green light?' A previously unreleased telephone transcript shows by 12 September that Kissinger and the President were interested in more aggressive action in Chile. In that conversation, between the President and Kissinger, Nixon asks the latter to "send a back channel to Korry" and for the CIA to get a man to Santiago to make "an appraisal of what the options are." This was necessary not because of any rift between Korry and the State Department, but because to the President, Korry was "a Kennedy Democrat" who "may have wanted to put us on the spot."⁴⁰ Two days later, on 14 September, Secretary of State Rogers counselled caution in Chile and told Kissinger that "I have been disturbed by Korry's telegrams. They sound frenetic and somewhat irrational... I think we've got to be sure he acts with discretion...."⁴¹ We know that Rogers was not the vector of the 'green light' quotation to Santiago: indeed, he was urging caution and worried about what the 'frenetic' Korry might do. The only cable sent by State to Korry on 15 September tells him to increase his contacts with the military to ensure the flow of information, but reminds him that "your role is thus very delicate one and you will be required to walk a fine line. We do not want you to get out in front and we do not want to 'take over.'"⁴² This is hardly a green light. Furthermore, it is unlikely that it came from the Embassy, for as Ambassador Korry's noted in his last interview, he threw Berrellez and Hendrix "out of the Embassy. I gave everybody

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ TELCON, President/Kissinger, 1232hrs, 12 September 1970.

⁴¹ TELCON, Rogers/Kissinger, 1215hrs, 14 September 1970.

⁴² Cable, CIA/State, Sec State to Ambassador Korry, "Meeting Covered at Length", 15 September 1970.

instructions to have nothing more to do with them.”<sup>43</sup> This points to a source in the Station.

What further steals credibility from the assertion that the ITT information came directly from the Station is a later paragraph in the same memo, where it is said that

> Ambassador Korry, before getting the go-signal from Foggy Bottom, clearly put his head on the block with his extremely strong messages to State. He also, to give him due credit, started to manoeuvre with the CD, the Radical and National parties and other Chileans—without State authorization—immediately after the election results were known. He has never let up on Frei, to the point of telling him to “put his pants on.”<sup>44</sup>

There are several indicators in the paragraph that show its origins to be other than secret. In a statement written by Korry after the breaking of the scandal, he points out that he met with President Frei only one after the election, for about 30 minutes, and at this meeting on 12 September at Viña del Mar was serving only as translator to several other diplomats.<sup>45</sup> Otherwise, he had minimised all contact with the President or any other political party. That he stopped all meetings is corroborated by a hitherto undisclosed telephone transcript of 12 September 1970, released to the author by Dr. Henry Kissinger, where he informs the President of Korry's recent measures in Chile, including the fact that "Korry has stopped all appointments unless they come to him."<sup>46</sup> The 'pants' comment to Frei likely never happened.

None of this ignores the very real measures that the Nixon Whitehouse took to undermine the congressional vote to elect Allende. Here again, however, the ITT cable has its facts and figures wrong. The first meeting to decide on a hard covert

<sup>43</sup> Fernandois, Fontaine, et al, "El Embajador Edward M. Korry en el CEP", *Estudios Públicos*, Vol. 72, No. 3, 1998, p. 25.

<sup>44</sup> Memorandum, ITT, Hendrix and Berrellez to Gerrity, "Chile", 17 September 1970.

<sup>45</sup> Memorandum, Korry for the Record, "Significant References to Mr. Korry in ITT Documents", incorrectly dated 30 Sept 1970, likely 23 March 1972, as marginally noted later in the document.

<sup>46</sup> TELCON, President/Kissinger, 1232hrs, 12 September 1970.

(cc)

action in Chile occurred on 15 September when President Richard Nixon called CIA director Richard Helms, Henry Kissinger and Attorney General John Mitchell into the Oval Office to give executive direction for US action towards Allende. William Colby—then Deputy and later the Director of the CIA—noted that "Nixon was furious"⁴⁷ He wanted to prevent Allende from being inaugurated President at the beginning of November. The message he delivered—famously preserved in Colby's hand-written notes—launched Operation FUBELT, otherwise known as Track II.⁴⁸ With the first memoranda for Track II generated on 16 and 17 September, we start getting a glimpse of 'green light' potential material: the establishment of CIA capabilities to somehow thwart Allende's confirmation. Once again the ITT cable is wrong. From the start, Korry was not privy to Track II information- that is what made it Track II, with 'Track I' representing the ongoing efforts from Korry towards the Frei Re-election gambit. Furthermore, the first few telegrams sent to Santiago for Track II did not authorise any movement: they noted the President's desire "to prevent [Allende] from coming to power or unseat him", but to report back on 18 September to report on the feasibility of this project.⁴⁹

The question remains: who was the 'Green Light' source? One can largely dispense with the explanation given at the ITT Senate investigation that the source was an associate of President Frei, though this does not automatically mean that the source came directly from the Embassy or that the ITT men did not have contacts with, or report information from, Chilean sources.⁵⁰ The overall picture here is of a game of 'Chinese Whispers', whereby the ITT men are making reference to generally true information, but information taken out of its original form by one or two

⁴⁷ William Colby, and Peter Forbath, *Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA* (New York, 1978), p. 303.

⁴⁸ "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders," 94th congress, 1st session, US Senate, Nov 1975, p. 227. Henceforward 'Alleged Plots.'

⁴⁹ Memorandum, CIA, Broe for the Record, "Genesis of Operation FUBELT", 16 September 1970.

⁵⁰ Senate ITT Report, Testimony of McCone, pp. 130-132.

removes. Certainly, it was Berrellez or Hendrix who had been the vehicle for ITT's funding to the Alessandri campaign, and it is through that situation alone that the two worked with the Station. In a CIA internal audit of contact with ITT throughout the Allende period, and notes that "ITT representatives [deleted] maintained close contact with the Santiago Station throughout the 1970 electoral campaign and consulted with the Station in ITT's proposals to support Alessandri."⁵¹ The information in the ITT memoranda, though, is sufficiently vague to indicate Berrellez and Hendrix were not fully witting of Track II. They were likely associating with Station officers with regards to funding Alessandri or perhaps acting as cut-outs for information passed from the PN with regards to the re-election gambit. In their meeting with CIA officers, they would have gathered that something major was afoot, and perhaps a Station member indicated the presence of a strong presidential directive. The inaccuracy and sparseness of their information overall, however, does not indicate full intimacy with the CIA plan, merely awareness of its existence. Giving the details of an extremely secret operation to former reporters, however friendly and familiar, would have been an inexcusable breach of security for professional intelligence officers. While this conclusion does not seem major in the first instance, it reports directly upon the conclusions of Senator Church in his investigations about the ITT scandal and the information it revealed about even more serious allegations about CIA activity.

There is one possibility, at least, that has not been explored in any context: were Berrellez and Hendrix 'non-official cover' agents?

DKDKG:LSDGM

⁵¹ Memorandum, CIA, "ITT Funding in Chilean 1970 Presidential Election", Cable #1061, undated, likely post-April 1972.

The Viaux Plot

The most controversial part of US involvement in the election of Allende was
the assassination of General René Schneider, the commander-in-chief of the Chilean
army, on 22 October, 1970. In this situation, again, the Anderson Papers give an
insight into the situation greater than the sum of the CIA's papers and those of ITT.
Former Brigadier General Roberto Viaux had been dismissed from the military after
leading an abortive army revolt in October of 1969. By early October 1969, Viaux
had used his stature amongst junior officers to begin coup-plotting against Allende.
Knowledge of Viaux's plotting was widespread and "Rumours that he would trigger
a coup on October 9 or October 10 were rampant in Chile and spilled over into
Buenos Aires, Argentina," noted Berrellez and Hendrix in a cable to ITT on 16
October 1970.⁵² The CIA's desperate scramble to comply with Presidential
directives had up to that point produced little of value, as almost all Agency and State
Department officers had noted "the idea of a military overthrow had not occurred to
us as a feasible solution."⁵³

The history of CIA plotting with Viaux and others, and the subsequent
assassination of Chilean Army Commander General René Schneider has been dealt
with previously.⁵⁴ What is at issue here is the accuracy of the ITT reporting, which is
relatively good though often off in timing. The first mention of Viaux in any ITT
documents, noted above, happens on 16 October, when Hal Hendrix filed a long
situation report back to E.J. Gerritty in Washington. Noting that the rumour of

⁵² ITT Memorandum, H. Hendrix (in San Juan by phone dictation) to E.J. Gerrity, "Chile", 16 October 1970.

⁵³ Hersh, p. 277.

⁵⁴ see Kristian Gustafson. "Reexamining the Record: CIA Machinations in Chile in 1970" in *Studies in Intelligence* (Vol. 47, No. 3, 2003, unclassified edition)

Viaux's plotting was rife, the ITT memorandum also mentioned the fact that he likely did not have sufficient support for a coup, for "Viaux has been conferring with high-ranking and junior officers about taking some action to prevent Allende from becoming President. He has pledges of support from several, but unfortunately not from any key troop commanders, at least not to our knowledge."⁵⁵ The fairly closely matches information cabled by the Santiago Station to Langley, where it was written that "COS met with [a false flag officer] who said he had talked with General Viaux, and as a consequence is convinced that Viaux has no military support."⁵⁶ Similar information, but the CIA cable was sent six days before that of ITT.

One of the most controversial points about the Schneider assassination is the 'turn off' message allegedly sent by Kissinger to Viaux on 16 October. Most historical accounts to date refute the assertion, noting that Kissinger still desired a coup, and would not actively urge Viaux to desist. The key memo comes from the NSC on 15 October 1970, and reads:

> "It was decided by those present that the Agency must get a message to Viaux warning him against precipitate action. In essence our message was to state: 'We have reviewed your plans, and based on your information and ours, we come to the conclusion that your plans for a coup at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets...the time will come when you with all your other friends can do something. You will continue to have our support.'⁵⁷

This memo was then reworded and passed to Viaux through a false flag officer. Here we have a link that argues strongly for co-operation between the CIA Station and the ITT men in Chile. In the ITT memo of 16 October, the following was written:

> It is a fact that word was passed to Viaux from Washington to hold back last week. It was felt that he was not adequately prepared, his

⁵⁵ ITT Memorandum, H. Hendrix (in San Juan by phone dictation) to E.J. Gerrity, "Chile", 16 October 1970.

⁵⁶ Memorandum Intelligence Note to File, "Track II," 10 October 1970.

⁵⁷ Memorandum of Conversation, "Dr. Kissinger, Mr. Karamessines, Gen. Haig at the White House," 15 October 1970.

timing was off, and he should 'cool it' for a later, unspecified date. Emissaries pointed out to him that if he moved prematurely and lost, his defeat would be tantamount to a 'Bay of Pigs in Chile.... Viaux was given oral assurances he would receive material assistance and support from the US... [but] friends of Viaux subsequently reported Viaux was inclined to be a bit sceptical about only oral assurances<sup>58</sup>

Whether or not one chooses to believe that ITT was working directly with the CIA in Santiago, this cable adds credence to the official line that Viaux was 'turned off.' Strikingly similar to the CIA's cable, the information is sufficient to convince most readers of an intimate relation between the CIA and ITT in Santiago. The final sentence of the paragraph, however, and the time lag between the first CIA memorandum and the ITT memorandum indicates information being passed either through Chilean contacts, or through a one-time chat with a sympathetic CIA official.

While recent documents show that the CIA still held hope for a coup after the assassination of Schneider, ITT saw clearly that the result of the assassination was not to be of benefit for those who opposed Allende's ratification as President. This was due to the simple matter of military succession. With Schneider out of the way, it was the army Chief-of-Staff, General Carlos Prats, who would be promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the army, and this gentleman (later assassinated in Argentina by Pinochet's dreaded *DINA* spy-agency) was as firmly constitutionalist as General Schneider. As Hendrix commented to Gerrity:

> We will continue to monitor the situation. Whether it will develop into any military action remains to be seen, but at this stage it seems doubtful with General Prat (sic) now in command.... Prat supported Schneider in his attitude toward General Roberto Viaux, who had attempted to spark a military coup earlier [the failed *Tacnazo*]. Prat does not like Viaux personally. As far as we can determine, Prat will display the same loyalty to Frei as Schneider did in the past.<sup>59</sup>

<sup>58</sup> ITT Memorandum, H. Hendrix (in San Juan by phone dictation) to E.J. Gerrity, "Chile", 16 October 1970.

<sup>59</sup> ITT Memorandum, Hendrix to Gerrity, "Chile (Bob Berrellez Called this Morning)", 22 October 1970.

At the same time that the ITT men are making this accurate prediction, CIA cables are still hoping for an 11th-Hour coup.⁶⁰ There is also revealing information in what is *not* mentioned in the ITT telegrams. General Camilo Valenzuela, allegedly a co-conspirator with Viaux and one of the other men with whom the CIA was plotting, is not mentioned at all. This adds another piece of evidence that ITT was not fully witting of the CIA machinations of Track II. The information is cumulative: Hendrix and Berrellez certainly knew the CIA men in Chile. They likely associated with them on occasion. They were not, however, part of the plot to overthrow Allende.

Regardless, its revelation in the pages of a syndicated column blew the whole CIA operation into the open.

## The ITT Scandal in the Senate

The scandal started by the Anderson Papers marked the first break in an unspoken agreement between the Agency and Congress where the CIA enjoyed relatively lax scrutiny from the combined legislative body. There was, as there is today, no dedicated committee to oversee intelligence, this function being covered largely by the Armed Services Committees. As ITT broke the headlines, the public mood, already angered by Vietnam and other excesses of the Nixon administration, seemed to push congress towards a more zealous stance. In 1972 the Democratic Senator from Idaho, Frank Church, set up a Sub-committee on Multinational Corporations of the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to follow up disclosures of ITT's interventions in Chile and to investigate how far big companies were influencing or forming foreign policy. "The multi-national corporation" noted Church ahistorically, "is a relatively new phenomenon," and one he suspected was

⁶⁰Memorandum, CIA, "Track II", 24 October 1970.

unduly influencing government.⁶¹ ITT's involvement "is not a question of private or public morality. What concerns us here is a major issue of foreign policy for the United States," said Church,⁶² mirroring the *Washington Post* comment that President Nixon "stands charged in what is purported to be an authentic ITT document, of personally approving an attempt [to keep Allende from Power]."⁶³

Apparently under pressure from the Nixon White House, Church agreed not to hold hearings on ITT until after the 1972 presidential election, though in September of 1972 members of his staff started to conduct interviews with ITT employees, CIA officers, and other officials from the State Department and the NSC.⁶⁴ This put the CIA in an interesting position: it could keep its collective mouth shut, in which instance whatever was said in the Anderson Papers would go unchallenged. On the other hand, it could explain the allegations, in which instance much more secret operations would be revealed. It was a no-win situation for the Agency, for the DCI, and for the administration as a whole.⁶⁵ The hearings commenced at the beginning of February, 1973.

From the beginning of the hearings the matter which most drew the attention of the Committee was the 'scheme to create economic chaos.' Senators Church and Case, firing questions at John McCone, suggested that the memo from Berrellez and Hendrix was ITT policy, reflecting CIA policy, and therefore US government policy.

⁶¹ Sentate ITT, *Opening statement, Senator Church*, p. 2. What types of corporation Senator Church considered IBM, Ford, GM, or the United Fruit Company to be is unknown.

⁶² David Boulton, *The Lockheed Papers* (London, 1978), p. 178. *check citation*.

⁶³ *Washington Post*, Editorial, "ITT: And Now Chile," 22 March 1972, p. A22.

⁶⁴ Corn, p. 241.

⁶⁵ Helms, pp. 413-415, 440-443. The successful prosecution for perjury brought against Richard Helms in 1975, based in part on his testimony to the Church Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations was unprecedented, and broke new grounds in terms of the balance of power between the Executive and the Legislature where it applies to covert operations. Essentially, Helms stated that he lied to the Subcommittee because he was bound by oath to the President not to reveal the operations, and that the Church Sub-Committee lacked authority of oversight on the CIA. Likewise, Helms claims that the testimony was in open session and to ask for executive session at that point would be tantamount to answering in the positive.

McCone reacted first against the suggestion that ITT wanted economic chaos, for as a corporation they had a duty to stay in business, and that to create an economic crisis would undo their *raison d'être*. Answering in his capacity as a former DCI, McCone said

> Now I understand that various ideas were generated at the staff levels of the CIA. They were never approved by Mr. Helms, never were submitted to [the 40 Committee] and, therefore, were not policy. This must be clearly understood; that is the difference between staff thinking and policy determination.⁶⁶

William Broe explained the approach being based on the "thesis that additional deterioration in the economic situation could influence" Christian Democrat Senators to vote against Allende, as was their right, but that the thesis quickly proved to be impracticable.⁶⁷ Charles Meyer, Undersecretary of State from ARA, likewise offered the opinion that "one of the problems facing this distinguished committee... is the distinction between policy and examinations of feasibility." He continued:

> Mr. Broe... explored with Mr. Gerrity the action and reaction within Chile, which he clearly stated, of an advance of the economic deterioration which was going to occur anyway, as a potential effect on the congressional support or non-support of Dr. Allende. He explored it, they brainstormed. Had it been adopted, it would have been a change in [the official] policy. It...disappeared.⁶⁸

The 'Frei Election Gambit' also received a degree of attention. Here it was pointed out by Hendrix himself that this was common knowledge in Santiago, and did nothing to show that ITT was actively plotting with the CIA to do anything with the Chilean congress: the Gambit was a domestic event which they had no role in instigating and no influence over at all and which in any case was perfectly legal under the Chilean constitution, if perhaps untraditional. Broe added to this by stating that the Gambit was "of great interest at the time and we were all watching to see if

⁶⁶ Senate ITT, testimony of McCone, p. 103.

⁶⁷ Senate ITT, testimony of Broe, p. 250.

⁶⁸ Senate ITT, testimony of Meyer, p. 399.

(w)

there was any feasibility to it" but, when they realised there was not, nothing further
was done. It was merely an investigation into a natural event in domestic politics,
abandoned as easily as it was picked up.

As historian Mark Falcoff has stated, in an operational sense no coordinated
ITT-CIA plan to bribe the Congress or create a financial crisis ever existed.⁶⁹ There
were, indeed, large bank withdrawals following the election of 4 September, but these
were born of legitimate fears of Allende and his well-stated expropriation agenda and
his plan to drastically lower interest rates. In his testimony to Congress, William Broe
emphasised that the CIA hoped only to build on this existing trend,⁷⁰ and several
others reported that neither the CIA nor any US company ever closed or caused a run
on a Chilean bank.⁷¹ As for the reason that ITT was talking to the government in the
first place, William Merriam, ITT's man in charge of the Washington office,
commented that ITT's approaches to Nixon and Kissinger were "just to let anyone
who would listen, in government, know that ITT was stood to lose a bundle."⁷² In
most cases, as with the initial contact to Viron Vaky at the NSC by ITT, the
government disregarded the attempted influence by the corporation.⁷³ The picture
painted by the testimony was that if the actions taken were questionable, they were
still legal. Nonetheless, the Senate investigation into this matter—as well as other
established matters such as their funding of Alessandri and of the newspaper *El
Mercurio*—was enough to provoke a reaction in Chile, and gave the Allende
government the excuse they required to expropriate ITT's Chilean holdings without
compensation. It did not matter what had actually happened, only how it looked.

⁶⁹ Falcoff, p. 210.

⁷⁰ Senate ITT, testimony of Broe, pp. 250-251.

⁷¹ Senate ITT, testimony of Berrellez, p. 168.

⁷² Senate ITT, testimony of Merriam, p. 23.

⁷³ Senate ITT, testimony of Vaky, p. 436.

The matter of the expropriation of ITT does require a further comment.

Allegations that ITT provoked its own expropriation by its efforts to block Allende, as Peter Kornbluh has asserted, ignores the reality of expropriations under Allende. The fact is that by 1973 the Allende government had multiplied the number of the Chilean firms under government control ten-fold, placing well over 90% of the Chilean GDP in the hands of the government.⁷⁴ It is doubtful that Allende would have left Chitelco, Chile's primary phone company, un-nationalised as companies dealing with communications were listed specifically in the UP manifesto as targets of expropriation.⁷⁵ What the ITT scandal did do, however, is to provide the Allende government with an internationally recognised reason to expropriate which the US could not bring to the Paris Club or any other organisation for review, and which alleviated the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) from paying out on the ITT insurance policy. Ultimately, while Anderson may have saved the US taxpayer $500 million, that same amount was lost to American investors.

## What the ITT Evidence Shows

For all their lack of discretion in intelligence affairs, the officers and directors of ITT did have a good appreciation of local conditions in Chile, of international economics, and of the relations between the two. In the Church sub-committee investigations, testimony from several ITT officials, including board member and former DCI John McCone, indicated that ITT predicted months before the CIA that Allende would win the election.⁷⁶ Examining the declassified documents from both the CIA and the State Department, neither had predicted a certain Allende victory

⁷⁴ Falcoff 132, if not somewhere else

⁷⁵ Programa Básico de Gobierno de la Unidad Popular, 4th ed. (Santiago: Impresa Horizonte, 1970, p. 20).

⁷⁶ Church Sub-Committee Report, pp. 2-3.

until July or August 1970, less than a month before the election.⁷⁷ This is in contrast with the ITT board of governors, who at their monthly meeting in June 1970 expressed the unanimous belief that Allende would indeed triumph.⁷⁸ When informed of this verdict by McCone, current DCI Richard Helms indicated that this opinion was not supported by the members of the 40 Committee. Allende's narrow victory justified ITT's initial fears, while highlighting the general failure of the US intelligence establishment in Chile (counting INR as well as the CIA) to adequately weigh the chance of an Allende victory at the polls.

Nor did ITT fully share the CIA's belief that an Allende government would immediately produce the total communist dictatorship that the CIA, as well as Korry, initially predicted. This difference in verdict on the election of Allende is perhaps the most accurate prediction of the fate of that leader and his government. While acknowledging the lack of action after the Schneider assassination, ITT came to the general consensus that:

> ...the election of Allende by congress pulled the plug from under the anaemic Chilean economy. Without help from Washington, Allende will be forced to turn to the communists and Moscow. The Russians don't want another Tito on their hands. In order to fortify their hold, the communists will have to start tampering with the congress, the trade unions and the military. This will invite some serious troubles for the communists.⁷⁹

This is indeed an accurate prediction. During a recent interview, one former Santiago Station CIA officer, present in the capital when the Chilean Armed Forces overthrew the president, explaining his appreciation of the military's motivation for

⁷⁷ Memorandum, 40 Committee, "Options in Chilean Presidential Election," 31 August 1970. Cf. Interview, John Crimmins: In recent interviews, Ambassador John Crimmins, formerly of ARA stated the case with more nuance, arguing that ARA realised *the chance* of an Allende victory all along, but was still not sufficiently moved by the prospect to back any significant covert action. Such a covert action, if it failed, might have negative long term effects on US diplomacy in Latin America which outweighed the negative aspects of a six-year Allende presidency. Interview, John H. Crimmins, 2004.

⁷⁸ Church Subcommittee, p. 2.

⁷⁹ ITT Memorandum, Berrellez to Hendrix, "Chileans", 22 October 1970.

overthrowing the Allende government, noted the army's train of thought being that the institution of the Army "outranked the constitution and the president and the democratic process—for the good of the institution they had to take the coup plotting out of the dark."⁸⁰ But this later quote is a representation of thought several years after the Allende election. At the same time ITT was predicting an eventual coup before a Marxist state could be established, three years before that coup, the CIA (if not the calmer State Department) were still shrilly predicting the rapid progression of communist oppression.⁸¹

The ITT scandal itself offers valuable comments on the CIA's tactical thinking in Chile. "The Station has no mechanism which could render covert support to Tomic", quotes one CIA paper, "*and has stressed the desirability of permitting Chilean voters to choose their president without outside assistance.*"⁸² Yet, at the same time, the CIA is relatively quick to 'encourage' (in the CIA's words) ITT to contribute funds to the Alessandri and NP campaigns in the election. Why the discrepancy? While no clear explanation is in the papers, it is likely that the CIA's arguments are sincere and reflect the belief in *their own* abilities to effect the outcome of the election. Nevertheless, all along the CIA had been dismissive of Alessandri/NP appeals for money, because they did not believe that it was the position of the US government to finance his campaign, a duty best carried out by member of the local business community, whom they thought too apathetic overall. To the CIA, 'local business community' included ITT's majority-owned Chitelco phone company. Part of the problem, from the CIA's planning perspective, was that Chitelco *could not* be seen to pass money to the PN or the opposition press. For a company that was

⁸⁰ Interview, Unnamed CIA officer, March 2003.

⁸¹

⁸² Memorandum, C/WHD to CI (via DDP), "Background paper for Meeting with Ambassador Korry", 17 September 1969. Italics added.

trying desperately to avoid expropriation (a clear promise of Allende) the 'optics' of
passing money to opposition-supporting *El Mercurio* was sure to only speed
Allende's expropriation agenda. It was a death-or-glory scenario for ITT: sit idle and
let a victorious Allende expropriate Chitelco, or move to prevent an Allende victory
by covert passage of funds, which if discovered would help an Allende victory and
speed expropriation. From ITT's perspective it made perfect sense to accept the
CIA's help, and from the CIA side it only made sense to keep the corporation from
getting itself into trouble—trouble that would effect the entire anti-Allende effort—
for something it was going to do regardless of CIA help, which amounted to little
more than advice on people they could contact.⁸³

ITT's cables also give us a glimpse at the confusing scenario of who in the
government apparatus dealing with Chile were for or against supporting Alessandri,
or even who was in favour of blocking Allende at all. A hitherto unreleased telephone
transcript between Henry Kissinger and President Nixon adds some support to the
scenario of Ambassador Korry and ARA being less than sanguine about trying to
block Allende. In the conversation, which took place on 12 September 1970,
Kissinger starts discussion on Chile with the understatement that "The big problem
today is Chile." More importantly, however, Kissinger states that "Latin America
Bureau at State is against doing anything."⁸⁴ This dismisses, first, that Korry ever
told Frei 'to put his pants on' as alleged in the Gerrity-Hendrix reports, but also shows
how the State Department and Ambassador were in agreement that Chile should be
left largely to its own devices. It adds weight to the argument that the origin of the
CIA's 'Track II' operation lay firmly with "Nixon's aberrational and hysterical

⁸³ Cord Meyer, *Facing Reality* (New York, 1980) p. 182.

⁸⁴ TELCON, President/Kissinger, 12:32 p.m., 12 September 1970.

decision"⁸⁵ in favour of an extreme covert action and against the 'wait and see'
approach counselled by the State Department and, less stridently, by CIA.

Recent comments by many of the players involved offer fairly blithe verdicts
on the effect of the Church Subcommittee investigation. Viron Vaky, a State official
seconded to the NSC as Kissinger's Latin American expert, said "I think it just stirred
things up but I do not think it was taken seriously It was not taken seriously by
Henry [Kissinger]. It just fed people's anxieties."⁸⁶ Continuing, Vaky noted:

> I don't think it bothered Henry. Henry was just worried about Cold
> War and balance of power, those sort of things. Nixon may have been,
> because... people supporting him were having their interests cut, [and]
> this probably fed his alarm, but even in this case I think the real
> concern is how [Chile] fit into the whole Cold War picture.⁸⁷

Kissinger, speaking for himself, noted "You have to see all of this in the Vietnam context. Opponents of Vietnam were trying to prove that this was a criminal government, and that everything it did all over the world was covert. Covert operations did not have a dirty name in those days; they were highly classified but were perceived as daring. So, I do not believe I focused on ITT."⁸⁸

Perhaps these comments are a little disingenuous: the ITT scandal and
subsequent Senate hearings no doubt had people in the White House and CIA quite
concerned. While it would not have been certain at the time, the Church Sub-
Committee on Multi-National Corporations was only a pre-cursor to the much more
serious Church Committee investigations of 1975. Certainly, in the long-run the ITT
scandal led to a sea-change in the way that the CIA operated and the manner in which
oversight was conducted. The old, easy way of running business in Langley was
coming to an end. In this case it was probably to the long-run benefit of the Agency,

⁸⁵ Meyer, p. 184.

⁸⁶ Interview, Viron P. Vaky,

⁸⁷ Interview, Vaky..

⁸⁸ Interview, Kissinger, etc.

for it emphasised the need for a more prescribed cycle of covert action authorisation
to be established and followed. Clearly this was not done in the case of the period
from 4 September to 26 October 1970, where the CIA rushed—under a legal
Presidential edict—to find *any* method to stop Allende’s inauguration. Had an order
such as this been given under the current system of covert action approval, it would
not have been ratified or carried out. Since the panic to stop Allende proved
detrimental to US and Agency interests in the long run, and would have been of
doubtful benefit in the short run, it is hard to see how such ‘fast and loose’ operations
were a good thing in the first place. Despite the sometimes flimsy facts in the ITT
documents, they did reveal the general nature of a CIA operation which many in the
US were unwilling to accept at the time or any time since: tampering with the
constitutional process of a foreign democracy. In this sense the ITT scandal, for all its
hyperbole, is a true marker of the watershed in the public perception of intelligence
which began in the early 1970’s and largely persists to this day.

Supporting the Moderates

# The 1969 Congressional Election

Kristian C. Gustafson

After the 1964 presidential election, the next significant U.S. operation in Chile took place in mid-1968 through to 1969: the manipulation of the Chilean congressional election of March 2, 1969. American activities in Chile in this period were not a continuation of any previous effort the Americans had undertaken there, and can be viewed as something of a fresh start. While the US had, through the CIA, undertaken missions to influence the Presidential elections of 1964, and the subsequent congressional elections in 1965, no operation had been maintained with the aim of preventing the dominance of the communist party in subsequent elections. This despite the fact that the political climate in Chile had not altered, and the chances of a communist victory had increased due to notable changes in Chilean demographics and electoral law. Throughout 1968-1969 the goal of the United States in Chile remained stable if simple: keep the communists from power. The various agencies in the US government responsible for Chile, however, were not able to adapt their policies in Chile to the growing radicalism of Chilean politics, nor could they in their minds easily abandon their old political allegiances to the increasingly communist and anti-American PDC. The American operation to influence the 1969 election therefore reflect a period of ambiguity and misunderstanding of Chilean politics. The efforts surrounding the 1969 election were haphazard and they progressed without and clear executive direction—a fact perhaps compounded by the handover of the lame-duck Johnson Administration to the incoming team of Nixon and Kissinger. Drifting along without significant executive-level input, both Ambassador (a State Department functionary) and CIA HQ provided conflicting direction, with neither side having a clear image of what strategic foreign policy goal they were pursuing. Furthermore, at critical points the CIA's political analysis was crucially flawed, misreading the impact their measures would have on the Chilean political environment. Likewise, disagreement between the COS and the Ambassador highlighted the differing political predictions of the various American players. The ultimate result of the confused American action was to actually split the anti-Marxist vote and contribute to an electoral environment that actually *favoured* Marxists in the period following the election. The hallmarks of the operation are a meandering mission, confused chain-of-command and insufficient executive control.

If the benefits were so small, so undeterminable, why was the US government willing to risk an operation in the first place? Covert action is, in the greater scheme of things, a war undertaken without the knowledge of one of the participants. Likewise, one does not initiate a war without some tangible goal. Was this war worth waging for the Americans? Did it have a goal? Examination of the evidence shows that the effort to influence the 1969 congressional election in Chile was a waste of time and effort, a procrastinating half-effort that compounded future troubles for American operations in Chile.

41

The Genesis of the Operation

The genesis for the 1969 election operation apparently came from the Ambassador, Edward Korry. He had approached the CIA Station Chief, Henry Hecksher, in late 1967 or early 1968 and asked him to request 303-Committee permission to undertake a "limited covert election operation aimed at Congressional elections."¹ The political arena seemed fairly clear to the US Embassy team during this period. On the conservative right was Arturo Alessandri's National Party. In the centre was the governing PDC, surrogate Democrats in Latin America. On the far left, were the constituent parties in the FRAP and, wavering between them and the government, were the Radicals, formerly centrists like the PDC but now moving into the Communist-Socialist orbit. The congressional elections, the CIA team imagined, could be used to stiffen the resolve of the PDC to resist the UP, while at the same time promoting moderate centrists within the Radical party as well as any other leftist party that had more democratic tendencies.

In May of 1968 the Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, William V. Broe, in a meeting with State Department representatives, formally made the suggestion that the USG should attempt to influence the Chilean congressional elections of 1969, and by extension the Presidential Election of 1970. That they had to make a proposal to start such a programme for this election is telling from the point of view that the Embassy in Santiago had not made an effort to sustain any covert mechanism to influence the Chilean political system in which they had such great interest. Generally, this was because of a reduction in the size and number of covert operations as the sixties drew to a close. This scale-back had to do with budgetary concerns, as well as the beginnings of more public scrutiny of the agency. "By the end of the decade, internal concern developed over the problem of exposure for large-scale operations...Gradually, senior Agency personnel began to recognise the cumulative effect of long term subsidies to and associations with political parties, media, and agents overseas—a large presence invited attention and was vulnerable to exposure."² This is not to say that the CIA had not maintained any assets in Chile—it is clear that they did—but that the level of commitment had waned significantly from their effort in 1964. Yet, in the case of Chile the reduction in commitment originated from more than just a concern of general risk, but also out of confusion about the general political situation. In the last presidential election the choice had been very clear cut for the Americans: There was only one non-Marxist party that had any hope of beating the Socialist-Communist FRAP, and that was the PDC. The decision to subsidise the PDC as heavily as they did was an easy choice to make for the Americans, as the PDC, and their champion, Eduardo Frei, were icons to the American Democratic party. After having cleared the major hurdle of the 1964 election, the PDC was left to its own devices under the trustworthy hands of President Frei. It was assumed, perhaps due to a mistaken mirroring of the permanence of political institutions in the US, that the PDC could be relied upon to remain a bulwark of the Democratic-style social reform that

1

² Leary, P. 81.

42

Kennedy and Johnson had favoured. Politics in Chile evolved much faster than the US, however, and the PDC of 1968 did not resemble the PDC of even four years previously.

The Embassy staff was persistent if anything, and it was decided that the PDC should be the focus of their plan regardless. An old soldiers' maxim asserts that 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy' and in this case the maxim held true. The PDC was, in any case, the only party to which the US could actually make an open approach. The PDC, however, did not have the same view of their relationship with the CIA as the latter did with them, and the CIA did not receive a favourable response. "STA overtures," wrote one CIA officer "have evoked no response suggesting PDC leadership's election planning encompasses [a] role on any terms STA would entertain."³ The reasons for this had, for some time, been clear to many within the Chilean political environment, including President Frei himself. In January of 1968 Ambassador Korry had spoken at length with Frei about the PDC's current drift to the left, and he noted "High personalities in the PDC had argued...that some kind of broad popular movement [in conjunction with the Communist Party] was needed in Chile to assure the execution of PDC goals."⁴ Essentially, the PDC had ceased to be the reliable pro-US machine it had been in the past. Indications came from recent manifestos issued by the party, which showed that the moderate reformist President Frei was in a struggle for control of his party mechanism with a group led by the FRAP-friendly Radomiro Tomic. Of all the Chilean politicians aside from Frei and Alessandri, the US government and CIA had the most information on Tomic. For two years he had been the Chilean Ambassador to the US, and so had become quite well known, politically and personally in Washington. The CIA understood that Tomic was the representative of the new, vigorous left wing of the PDC. They knew of his ambitions to lead a broad leftist front in the next election, and dismissed his chances of doing so, for Tomic was "not trusted—let alone liked—by the other leftist parties...he envisions himself as leader of."⁵ As far as the Chilean right was concerned—in this case represented by National Party founder Miguel Otero—the right believed that "Tomic was *very* close to what Allende was saying. Only a very slight difference....I would say that Tomic would have been completely anti-American."⁶ The CIA no doubt understood this fact, for they wrote that the rise of the Tomic wing within the PDC "casts into more striking relief fundamental incompatibility of [Station/USG] role in support of PDC and PDC's dedicated travel of *via no capitalista*."⁷

Yet, for some reason, the CIA could not move past the fact that the PDC was the only party that offered an alternative to a Communist-Socialist front in the coming elections. The CIA's conclusion, announced in a DI 'Special Report', was that "in the absence of a strong Christian Democratic showing in the 1969 congressional elections, Chile probably will stumble along until a new administration—possibly with communist support—takes over in 1970."⁸ In March of that year a Board of National Estimates Special

³ Cable, Santiago Station to DCI, "Foll Not to be Considered", 8 August 1968.

⁴ Memorandum of Conversation, Ambassador Korry with President Frei, "Aboard Presidential Aircraft on route to Concepción," 3 January 1968. (DDRS)

⁵ Special Report Weekly Review, "Chile: A New Opening to the Left?", 12 April 1968. (DDRS 15/7/03)

⁶ Interview, Miguel Otero, Santiago Chile, 12 May 2003.

⁷ Cable, Santiago Station to DCI, "Foll Not to be Considered", 8 August 1968. (DDRS 15/7/03)

⁸ Special Report Weekly Review, "Chile: A New Opening to the Left?", 12 April 1968. (DDRS 15/7/03)

43

Memorandum titled "Chilean Problems and Frei's Prospects" stated that Frei was a lame-
duck President who could not control his increasingly left-leaning party. In view of the
hostility to the PDC in the conservative-dominated Senate, "there appears to be little
chance that he could secure passage of additional reform measures his [left-wing]
opponents within the PDC are demanding." The estimate further stated, "this could result
in the Christian Democrats losing to the Communist-Socialist coalition in both the
congressional and presidential elections."⁹ While in retrospect we know the conclusion of
the prediction was correct, but what about its premise, the need for a strong PDC?

Aside from the PDC there existed two other non-Marxist parties that the CIA
would consider for support. The first and most interesting of these was the Radical Party,
which had been part of the right-wing Coalition that elected President Alessandri in the
1958 Presidential race, but had been defeated by the PDC juggernaut in 1964. Yet, where
the PDC had been left to its own devices, the CIA had maintained collaborators within
the party and had been providing financial support to 'moderate' elements within it since
1964.¹⁰ To no avail, apparently, for in 1965 "the balance of power within the Radical
Party shifted and the left wing came to dominate... no possibility remained in the near
future to recapture the party."¹¹ With perhaps little head to warnings of 'good money
after bad' in July of 1967 the 303 Committee approved a programme to spend an
unspecified amount of money "in an effort to discourage the movement of important
elements of the Radical party toward a working alliance with the Communist party and
Socialists."¹² This was a fool's errand as the party continued to move left and seek
alliance with the FRAP. Nonetheless, in the debate about what to do with the Radical
Party, the CIA decided to maintain 'minimal' support for the PR in order to retain some
influence within the party. This might be a useful tool for the CIA, as the PR was
entering into informal cooperation with the FRAP, so continued influence in the PR
might give the CIA either information on the plans of the FRAP, or might perhaps serve
to cause some sort of vote-stealing split in the PR later on.¹³ It is notable that this was the
only party to receive US funds through this period, and perhaps serves as something of a
foreshadow for CIA relations with the PDC through the congressional election to the
presidency.

The second and more obvious party that the CIA considered was the National
Party (PN), the right-of-centre party that had elected the popular and very conservative
President Alessandri in the 1958 election. As it approached the 1969 Congressional
election, it appeared that Jorge Alessandri would once again seek the leadership of this
party for the crucial Presidential election in 1970. The CIA noted that this party was
basing its election strategy "exclusively...upon his undeclared Presidential candidacy."¹⁴
Nonetheless, the PN draws curiously little comment from the CIA in this period. For

⁹ Board of National Estimates Special Memorandum, "Chilean Problems and Frei's Prospects", 4 March 1968.

¹⁰ Memorandum, CWH/D to DDP, "Request for Renewal of Project", 20 March 1968.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Memorandum to File, INR/DDC Records, "CIA Operations", 1 August 1968. (State)

¹³ DI Special Report/Weekly Review. "The Popular Front in Chile as a Communist Path to Power", 2 August 1968. (DDRS 15/7/03)

¹⁴ Cable, COS to 'Director', "Foll not to be Considered", 8 August 1968.

44

some reason, and despite the fact that the PN polled very high and was seen as
controlling most of the not-inconsiderable right-of-centre vote, the CIA cables do not
reflect consideration of this party as a universally suitable alternative to the PDC. Drawn
by their concern over the left, the embassy seemed to be ignoring the right.

The Plan Takes Shape

The plan to influence the election began to take shape in June of 1968, a timing
based on the fact that the parties would not select their congressional candidates until the
autumn of that year. "It was decided" stated the CIA in a brief to the NSC, "that because
the 1969 election might hold the key for 1970, an operation should be undertaken to help
elect moderate candidates of the PR, PDC, and PN where it is decided, on the basis of
hard information, that our support could be decisive."¹⁵ The Ambassador's election
team had a massive piece of work ahead of them; there would be upwards of 750 listed
candidates for 180 congressional seats.¹⁶ Korry, himself a JFK appointee, was very
clearly of the camp supporting the PDC, and his tactics reflected his trust that this party
would continue in its reformist approach in a manner that would benefit US (or
Democratic?) interests. In view of the increasing leftward drift of the party, however, he
felt that something had to be done to 'encourage' the PDC to refrain from supporting the
FRAP. Moreover, Korry perceived the general trend that politics in Chile were
abandoning the centre entirely, moving towards extreme-left and ultra-conservative,
leaving no room for the gentle reformist. His idea was apparently simple: the
Ambassador and his chosen staff would canvass the field of candidates from all the non-
Marxist parties and would hand-pick a number of these candidates who appeared
sufficiently 'moderate' to suit the American (Democratic Party? State Department?)
political interests. These candidates would be chosen with no consideration to their
parent party, merely on their own political merits and a rough system of triage: the
chosen ones would be those moderates most likely to benefit from US support. Despite
the PDC's drift left, or the Radical Party's confirmed support of the FRAP, candidates
from these parties stood a chance of being chosen for American support based on their
own political views. The programme, however, was not entirely without guile. Support
would continue for one potential splinter group from the Socialist Party, the Popular
Socialist Union (USP) in the express hope of drawing votes away from its parent party,
and with the general hope of sowing discord in this most important FRAP constituent
party.¹⁷ While it does not receive a lot of attention, and cables and memos regarding the
topic are heavily excises, the support for the USP was considered of primary importance
to the election program. The logic being that the USP candidates would draw votes away
from the PS, splitting the left-wing vote and paving the way for the win of a PDC or PN
candidate.¹⁸ The Embassy staff believed the entire plan was sound and was timed to
provide a good start on the project. "By early planning, a country team setup, and

¹⁵ Memorandum for the Record, Briefing of Viron Vaky by DDP, 6 August 1968.

¹⁶ Memorandum, CWH/D to DCI, "Progress Report: March 69 Chilean Congressional Election, 4 December 1968.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ December progress report...cited elsewhere.

45

personal direction from Ambassador Korry," wrote the COS, "significant results are
possible."¹⁹

Discussion on the embryonic plan began at a meeting between the CIA and the State Department on 24 May of 1968, and quickly seized on some of the tactical and political problems facing the CIA Country Team (CT) and the Embassy in the execution of the operation. As it appears, the CT was simply not positioned to provide all the information required by the Ambassador's team to choose the candidates. William Broe, Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, noted, "our biggest trouble at the moment was lack of information." Indeed, for the agency was considering appealing to "its European and Latin newspaper contacts for information about political temperatures in the Chilean hinterland; the sort if information on other words that our Embassy could not readily produce"²⁰ Moreover, the CIA did not have any ability to ensure that moderates were chosen by their parties as candidates in the first place; Santiago had already determined that this was impossible, for the system was too complex, and the Station "lacks sufficiently detailed intelligence to second-guess party decisions/deals" nor, they admitted, "does the STA have covert political muscle to impose its will."²¹ In addition to lack of information and covert leverage, however, the State Department official present, one Mr. Sayer, brought up a serious issue of command and control: who would be choosing the candidates, and by what criteria? Being informed that it was to be the Ambassador directing a team of CIA and Embassy staff, Sayer posited that the principal difficulty "would be to get the Ambassador to be specific enough to give us a fair idea of exactly what he wanted to do and how we would go about it."²² While it is clear that the State Department was not entirely convinced by the plan—nor by the "inadequate" quality of the CIA's staff-work—they gave the CIA and Ambassador the benefit of the doubt and gave State's endorsement for further planning by both agencies.²³ "The ARA agrees with the objectives of the proposal program" wrote State Department officer Covey T. Oliver, adding that he thought the CIA's tactics were sound and that "the survival and health of [these democratic, reformist] forces is desirable and congenial to our interests."²⁴ The programme was recommended to the Assistant Secretary of State with no reservations. Accordingly, the incomplete plan moved forward along the approval process and, with the basic support of all the agencies involved, was approved by the 303 Committee, with a budget of $350,000, on 12 July 1968,²⁵ stating that the support given to moderate candidates would be made "in an effort to brake the leftward drift toward a popular front which threatens to engulf" the PDC and President Frei.²⁶ Nonetheless, it was noted that "the 303 Committee would be just as satisfied if we were

¹⁹ Memorandum, William Broe to DDP, "Request Approval of Project", 13 August 1968.

²⁰ Memorandum, INR/DDC, "ARA/CIA Meeting 24 May 1964", 27 May 1968. (State)

²¹ Cable, Santiago Sta to DCI, "Foll Not to be Considered", 8 August 1968.

²² Memorandum, INR/DDC, "ARA/CIA Meeting 24 May 1964", 27 May 1968. (State)

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Memorandum, ARA-Covey T. Oliver to Ambassador Bohlen, "Chile: Assistance to Congressional Candidates", 5 July 1968. (State)

²⁵ Memorandum, CWH/D to Director, Office of Planning, Programming and Budgeting, "ref: Minutes of 303 Committee", 1 August 1968.

²⁶ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Approval of Project", excerpt of 303 Committee approval of 12 July 1968.

46

not involved in this election, even on a limited scale." This was hardly a ringing
endorsement of the plan, and a budget that perhaps reflected this enthusiasm.

The Plan In Execution:

Both the CIA and the State Department moved forward with the plan that had
been agreed upon, but it would not be long before they were not reading off the same
sheet of music. While the CIA had been relatively clear on what the tactics of the
operation would be, there was soon divergence between the 303 Committee and the CIA,
between the CIA and State Department, and within both departments, as to what was the
overall intent of the mission. As far as the State Department understood it, the object of
the proposal was to:

Promote the election in 1969 of the greatest possible number of moderate senators and deputies in order to maximise effective opposition to the popular front candidate in 1970 and to create a body of moderates who could act as a restraint on the policies of any popular front president, should one be elected.²⁷

This diverges by a few degrees from what the 303 Committee stated in its
approval note. Indeed, when briefed by William Broe in August of 1968, Viron P. Vaky,
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, was told that the
operation would be undertaken, quite sensibly, "because the 1969 election might hold the
key for 1970."²⁸ The State Department, in its internal communications, added "The
rationale for this assistance, which is generally recognised as probably only the first
instalment, is that there is {Perhaps} at stake the survival in Latin America of the sort of
democratic reformism that President Frei represents."²⁹ This was closer, but again faintly
different, for while the 303 Committee talked about preventing the (short-term, tactical)
collapse of Frei's hold over his party, the State Department was here discussing the
(long-term, strategic) stability of Frei-style democratic reformism over all of Latin
America. While this would appear to be different only in style, enthusiasm and syntax of
expression, it is an important difference in that it shows the vastly different
understanding of both the scope of the operation and its overall intent. The cause is a
lack of a 'mission statement' sent from the executive level, telling everyone the object of
the operation. Some thought it was to be a precursor mission to the 1970 election, but as
things developed this would prove not to be the case. Regardless, as the plan moved into
execution the gap in understanding between all the organisations would grow greater still.

27 Memorandum, ARA-Covey T. Oliver to Ambassador Bohlen, "Chile: Assistance to Congressional Candidates", 5 July 1968. (State)

28 Memorandum for the Record, "Briefing of Mr. Viron Peter Vaky", 6 August 1968.

29 Memorandum for the Record, INR/DDC, "CIA Operations", 1 August 1968. The word 'perhaps' is a marginal note. (State)

47

The 303 Committee, as stated when they approved the document, were not entirely interested in supporting an operation for the congressional elections, begging the question as to who was pushing the mission onwards. The answer, clearly, was Ambassador Korry. There can be doubts, however, that Korry really understood what was going, and this doubt was shared by the COS in Santiago. "I suppose one can feel fairly comfortable about Ambassador Korry's judgement and lack of experience in Latin America, even though he certainly cannot qualify as an expert on Latin American affairs", offered the COS. Moreover, because the selection mechanism was entirely in the ambassador's hands, any change in the Administration, and perhaps the introduction of a neophyte ambassador, might put the whole election mechanism into disarray.³⁰ An unanswered question might focus on the nature and strength of the Ambassador's political biases, and how they might affect his choice of candidates. More importantly, however, comes the question of overall focus. If the 303 Committee was disinterested, and the ambassador was pushing the mission, who was there to bring the two constituent departments, CIA and State, into concert on the intent and aim of the operation? The answer might be 'no one.'

A member of the election team sent the 303 Committee the first status report on the mission on the 3rd of September 1968. Very little was said, and the committee was told that "the lack of spic-and-span picture at this time is largely due to the fact that particular candidates are not selected until November, and the campaign gets under way only later in December."³¹ The first discouraging words to be uttered about the 1969 election programme, however, came only two weeks later. Though the full titles of the recipient and originator of the document are partially deleted, it appears that someone in the US wrote it to the Chief of Western Hemisphere division. A three-page long document, it argues at length that the entire operation lacks focus, is likely to produce negligible results, and is potentially embarrassing for the US. The author starts by admitting that though it was perhaps too late to do anything about the mission, stating he...

...should like to go on record as having serious reservations about the basic concepts underlying the proposal...By and large, the subsidies will go to individual candidates in the absence of any real indication of how they will use the funds, and without any control over the manner in which the funds are expended...the mere insertion of funds to individual candidates does not assure us of any positive results.³²

Furthermore, it did not appear that all the candidates selected for support would have needed support. Early estimates made of the PDC war chest indicated to the Station "that PDC's vigorous fund-raising drive yielding more than satisfactory results, (amounts as high as 2 million dollars have been mentioned). Come Nov 68, PDC campaign managers should be able launch (sic) campaign without overpowering financial worries."³³ If

³⁰ Memorandum, From unknown to C/WHD, "I realize it is late", 17 September 1968.

³¹ Memorandum, to C/WHD for files, Extract of 303 Committee minutes, 3 September 1968.

³² Memorandum, From unknown to C/WHD, "I realize it is late", 17 September 1968.

³³ Cable, Santiago Sta to DCI, "Foll Not to be Considered", 8 August 1968.

48

money was not needed, then what was the point of giving the candidates money, and small sums of it at that?

On the other hand, it is clear that the National Party, as one example, was perennially short of money, and in 1969 "near bankruptcy" stated Miguel Otero.³⁴ One could argue that it was a waste of resources to give money to one organisation that was flush with funding, and which in any case was not sure to act in your interests while, at the same moment, restricting support of another organisation that was more likely to act in their interests and was short of money. Lastly, the writer of this cable did not like the way the operation was being run from a tactical standpoint, and thought it had a "more than normal flap potential." Simply, its mechanism of using priests as couriers "seems to raise more security problems than it solves"³⁵, for large numbers of these unknown quantities were required to sponsor the number of candidates to make it an effective operation, therefore inversely decreasing the security of the operation. Miguel Otero was sceptical of this funding mechanism as well, and said that there were individuals who bragged at the time that in working for the CIA, in either receiving money or moving it to candidates, they did not see the funds to an honest end; rather, "they pocketed it."³⁶ The drafter of the CIA cable may have had his suspicions, and was not enthusiastic about the operation, indeed much less enthusiastic than the lukewarm, perhaps disinterested 303 Committee. He wrote that: "In sum the proposed project appears simple, both in conception and execution. I would maintain that is deceptively simple and that it will come back to haunt us sooner or later."³⁷ This not-so resounding endorsement for the operation is wonderfully dramatic foreshadowing of subsequent operations in Chile.

This dissenting cable appears not to have had any effect on the progress of the operation, and as it proceeded the conflicts and contradictions brought up by the plan continued to flourish. In mid-October, the Chief of Western Hemisphere division was given a memorandum explaining a State Department's paper designed to brief the incoming Nixon administration about the problems relating to Chile. The CIA would have a chance to review this paper a few days later, on October 18th, and (the DDP? DCI?) wanted Western Hemisphere's views and consent on a few issues. First of all, they wished to agree with the State Department that the aim of the entire US policy towards Chile, both overt and covert, was "to keep both the Chilean Presidency and Congress free of Marxist control."³⁸ On the other hand, they disagreed on the aim of the Congressional election operation's intent, contradicting State's (and Western Hemisphere Chief William Broe's) apparent belief that this mission would effect the 1970 Presidential election. First disagreeing with the view that the Christian Democrats could somehow control both houses of the Chilean Congress after the 69 elections, the drafter of the memorandum posited that even "this would not substantially reduce the prospect of a FRAP victory in 1970 (40% FRAP/Radical vote vs. 60% remainder, which split.)".³⁹

³⁴ Interview.

³⁵ Memorandum, From unknown to C/WHD, "I realize it is late", 17 September 1968. The indication that it was priests being used as couriers comes from the CEP interview with Ambassador Korry.

³⁶ Interview.

³⁷ Memorandum, From unknown to C/WHD, "I realize it is late", 17 September 1968.

³⁸ Memorandum, From unknown to C/WHD, "State Draft Policy Paper on Chile", 17 October 1968.

³⁹ Memorandum, From unknown to C/WHD, "State Draft Policy Paper on Chile", 17 October 1968.

49

Calling into question the suitability of the PDC as the American's choice party in Chile, and the continued American support for them, the memorandum went on to argue that the overall party-outlook of the PDC in terms of the 1970 election was more important than the outcome of the congressional elections. "The point will be made that [the current] strategy runs counter to US objectives," and that this point needed to be made quite clear.⁴⁰ Nonetheless, the CIA was directed to still move money to the PDC, in hopes of fortifying that party's moderates, despite the fact that continued support for the Radical Party through the first years of the Frei presidency had not stopped that party from moving to a type of alliance with the FRAP. This left the National Party as the only non-Marxist party in the upcoming election, and Alessandri as the only non-Marxist candidate. So what did the 303 Committee make of all this? "On the negative side...his candidacy would split the democratic, anti-Marxist vote should be a three-way presidential race in 1970 as now seems possible."⁴¹ It was not the pro-FRAP PDC that would be the problem in the 1970 election, but the conservative PN, the only remaining party not to have some designs for an alliance with the FRAP. Old habit dies hard, and the US had been supporting the PDC for a long time.

In preparation for the visit of Ambassador Korry to Washington on November 20th, 1968, for consultations with the White House, as well as with the DCI and C/WHD, the latter sent a cable to Santiago outlining its briefing notes that it planned to go over with the Ambassador. It begins by pointing out that the 69-election operation was never designed to be more than a 'minor' covert part of a total overt US government diplomatic strategy aimed at preventing the rise of Marxist power in Chile. The posture would be to support moderates from all the non-Marxist parties "in absence of a clear-cut choice [of Presidential candidate] for 1970 which is the real test facing the US in Chile."⁴² Developments pointed out in the progress report in early August, however, brought this strategy into question, specifically the fact that the PDC was now under the control of Tomic to a degree that was indisputable and, furthermore, that the support to the Radical Party, which had been going on since 1967, was going to a party that had to be considered "as hostile [to US interests] and in pursuit of an alliance with the FRAP."⁴³ Conversely, Alessandri was now clearly the PN's candidate for the 1970 election, and was exerting influence on them. Western Hemisphere HQ then began to draw its conclusions. First, it said the "election program is now basically [PN]-oriented by virtue of both the preponderance of financial support we will provide...and the propaganda climate." More critically, however, the HQ's cable made one statement that seemed to suggest the unthinkable for Ambassador Korry, for it suggested "We are building what might eventually become a pro-Alessandri machine for 1970."⁴⁴ Worse, the cable did not suggest that this was a bad thing.

⁴⁰ Ibid (17 October).

⁴¹ Memorandum, CWH/D to DCI, "Progress Report: March 69 Chilean Congressional Election, 4 December 1968.

⁴² Cable, C/WHD to Santiago Sta, "In Preparation for Amb's Visit", 14 November 1968.

⁴³ Ibid. (14 Nov 1968)

⁴⁴ Cable, CIA HQ to Santiago Sta, "In Preparation for Amb's Visit", 14 November 1968.

50

To this point, it appears that none of the major players involved in the election
operation—Ambassador, State Department, Santiago Station, CIA WHD, and the 303
Committee—really had a clear idea of what was the unifying aim of the mission. Was it
to prevent a communist dominated congress, or to prevent a communist President?
Would this be achieved by the support of moderates, even when those moderates
belonged to FRAP-associated parties? The Station's rebuttal to the last cable, however,
was not based on these questions but on questions of practicality. The Station did not
agree with HQ's logic, "particularly that our modest Ops machinery could either
influence or significantly benefit possible Alessandri candidacy in 1970." This, the
station argued, was because "both financially and in terms of number of persons involved
[the mission] continues [to] be minor part of total US govt package..."⁴⁵ Their operation
was simply too small for them to be considering the scope of their operation as including
the presidential election. The Station's outlook, by force of resources, was distinctly
short-view. As it filtered its way up the chain-of-command, however, the message
became a bit diluted. Perhaps, as it turned out, the 69 election would not directly effect
the outcome of the presidential election, as was stated in August 1968. Perhaps it had
been mentioned earlier that "the 1969 election might hold the key for 1970"⁴⁶ but really,
the DDP wrote to the DCO, "The program for 1969 was designed to be limited in scope
and flexible in political terms, thus leaving all options open for the 1970 election."⁴⁷ The
Election operation changed colour, if not shape, once again.

The confusion about what was going on in Chile could not have been helped by
the input from Ambassador Korry. It is unclear where Korry truly stood with regards to
his support of the PDC and its leading contender, the left-leaning Tomic. The
aforementioned Mr. Sayre of the State Department had commented in May of 1968 that
"he felt he detected in Korry's correspondence and attitude hostility] to former
Ambassador Tomic" which would be alright in consideration of Tomic's left-wing
views.⁴⁸ The Station perceived the opposite, and mentioned later that year that "There is
a difference in outlook between the Ambassador/Embassy and the Station, the former
being inclined leftward towards the Christian Democrats and Tomic and the latter
inclined right-of-centre towards the nationals and Alessandri." (This disagreement, they
noted, did not impair the Station's "fine relationship with Ambassador Korry."⁴⁹) In the
same month, "The Ambassador...made it abundantly clear that he lines up with President
Frei and the Christian Democrats...he gave the impression that Tomic is out and that a
more moderate candidate...would rise as the party's candidate...the ambassador took
repeated swipes at Alessandri..."⁵⁰ This was despite the fact that the CIA had reported
that the most-likely presidential candidate for the PDC was Tomic, who had in August
ushered in a new directorate composed primarily of Tomic supporters, which had in

⁴⁵ Cable, Santiago Sta. to Director. "Station Agrees with HQS Briefing", 18 November 1968.

⁴⁶ Memorandum for the Record, "Briefing of Mr. Viron Peter Vaky", 6 August 1968.

⁴⁷ Memorandum, DDP to DCI, "Visit of Ambassador Edward M. Korry on 20 November 1968", 19 November, 1968.

⁴⁸ Memorandum, INR (William Trueheart) to Messrs. Hughes and Denney, ", 27 May 1968. (State)

⁴⁹ Memorandum, DDP to DCI, "Visit of Ambassador Edward M. Korry on 20 November 1968", 19 November, 1968.

⁵⁰ Memorandum for the Record, "Visit of Ambassador Edward M. Korry/ Working Lunch", 22 November 1968.

51

October formally adopted Tomic's political strategy of an opening to the left.⁵¹ In light of his earlier comments, and this information, the note that "Ambassador Korry has been skilfully trying to perpetuate Communist distrust for Tomic by making it appear as though the US and Tomic have 'an understanding'"⁵² takes on a more conspiratorial tone. Ambassador Korry may not have been 'shooting straight' in all his dealings with the PDC and the CIA, and was perhaps ensuring the continued pre-eminence of JFK's favourite party before a more hostile Republican President Nixon took office. Korry's most recent remarks, in an interview with the Santiago-based think-tank Centro de Estudios Públicos, make his contemporary reports at the time all the more curious. There, in 1998, when asked why the PDC was supported after it had clearly gone to the left under Tomic, Korry responded with: "Why did we [support the PDC] at all? Because if we hadn't done it, the Democratic Congress would have been on my back in two seconds, as having reversed the Kennedy policy, taken it out...."⁵³ Was Korry pressured by some part of the Johnson administration to support Tomic and the PDC? There is no evidence for this, for the 303 Committee seemed untroubled by Chile, and even the State Department were unsure of supporting Tomic. While the contradictory information makes it unclear where Korry stood with regards to Tomic, it can be offered that the former was less than transparent in his dealings with this party. What can be stated with certainty is that these conflicting expressions, from the man who was responsible for the direction of the election effort, did not contribute to the mission in a positive manner.

## Selection of Candidates

Thus, it was with some conflict in aim between the main players in Chile that the election operation pushed on. While the operation had been inaugurated in July, there was little to report until the beginning December, when the parties had finalised their candidate lists (a complex matter under the *D'Hondt* electoral system). While it had been thought, originally, that upwards of 40 candidates would be selected for support, the realities of the Radical Party's communist tendencies, and concerns over some in the PDC, sharply limited the number of suitable candidates.⁵⁴ Thus, in the first week of December 1968, "in full recognition that the election program is a limited one which cannot in any significant way be expected to affect the prospects for 1970, that the Embassy/CIA election team approved ten candidates for support."⁵⁵ Within two weeks an additional five candidates had been added to the list. These fifteen candidates were from all three 'non-Marxist' parties, a list that still included the FRAP-allied Radicals, as well as the PDC and the conservative National Party. While the number of candidates from each party has not been released, it is firmly recorded that these fifteen candidates

⁵¹ Memorandum, C/WHD to DCI, "Progress Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 4 December 1968.

⁵² Memorandum, DDP to DCI, "Visit of Ambassador Edward M. Korry on 20 November 1968", 19 November, 1968.

⁵³ *Estudios Públicos*, 72 (primavera 1998). "El Embajador Edward M. Korry en el CEP", p. 19.

⁵⁴ Memorandum, NSC/303 Committee, "Final Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 14 March 1969. (NSC).

⁵⁵ Memorandum, NSC/303 Committee, "Progress Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 5 December 1968. *Italics Added*. (NSC)

52

were moderates for whom additional covert support might make the difference between election and defeat.⁵⁶ Additional moneys were spent on propaganda to support the moderate candidates, and in support of the dissident USP in a vote-stealing endeavour—indeed, they would ultimately provide the splinter USP with up to one half of their campaign budget.⁵⁷ By December 26th, the election team had spent roughly one half of the approved total funding for the operation, or $175,000.⁵⁸ (This was, in an important foreshadow, the first briefing that Kissinger received on the topic of the US operation in Chile. It is also interesting to note that at this point, the DDP considered the election effort to be on the 'A-list' for having the highest "flap-potential" amongst all the CIA's covert operations at the time.⁵⁹) It would be unlikely if they found any more candidates than the fifteen (which were spread between the 150 Deputies and 30 of 50 Senate seats open for election) as the Station election team was having a hard time keeping grips on the political upheavals in Chile, and in the PDC specifically. The COS apologised that his reporting was "bereft of all insight" for "a significant section of the spectrum of events no longer registers on our [Deleted: 1 word] radar screen. To substitute speculation where facts are unobtainable strikes us as dangerous practice."⁶⁰ The Station's fifteen candidates, trimmed down to 12 by February,⁶¹ represented a small knot of moderate politicians within a much larger and very confusing political scene the Americans were grappling to understand. Through most of January and February 1969, there is little further traffic between Santiago Station and Langley: it is impossible to determine whether this is due to continued classification of these documents, or an actual lull in communications. Informed speculation might indicate a drop of communications volume after the candidates had been chosen and the campaigns begun, but this can only remain speculation.

## Propaganda Production:

Throughout the entire period of the political analysis and candidate evaluation the CIA was in fact carrying on an operation independent of the individual candidates, if united in general aim. This mission, directed at the production of propaganda for the Station, was also the only operation undertaken by the CIA in this period that had any continuity with previous CIA actions in Chile. While the CIA had ceased to support any party but the Radicals in the period after the 1964 PDC victory, they had carried on in the production of certain propaganda, albeit at a low level. Several cables and memorandum show the existence of propaganda efforts covering "anti-Communist...activities, mainly in the form of wall posters, leaflet campaigns and other similar street actions" dating back

⁵⁶ Memorandum, "Briefing Memorandum for Mr. [Deleted]", 17 December 1968.

⁵⁷ Memorandum, NSC/303 Committee, "Final Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 14 March 1969. (NSC)

⁵⁸ Memorandum, "Chile: March 1969 Congressional Election" (Hand written: "Memo to DCI to Brief Kissinger"), 26 December 1968.

⁵⁹ Memorandum, [Deleted] to C/WHD, "Covert Action Activities to be Covered...for Mr. Kissinger.", 19 December 1968.

⁶⁰ Dispatch, COS Santiago to C/WHD, "For Reasons Too Complex", 6 January 1969.

⁶¹ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Summary of Chilean Congressional Election Operation", 4 March 1969. The exact date that three of the candidates for support were dropped is not listed in the material.

53

to the 1967 fiscal year and before.⁶² That this propaganda was considered important is made clear by developments through the 69-election mission: by the end of 1968, the CIA was noting that propaganda rather than selective support had become the primary thrust of the election operation.⁶³ The examination of this propaganda effort becomes interesting in light of the fact that it began as a separate effort, but was soon rolled into the programme of selective support. Of all its operations, the CIA holds its cards closest on those dealing with media and propaganda. For understandable reasons, the CIA does not want to have the reputation of being able to warp facts and sully the 'truth', nor does it want its particular methods and mechanisms known: there is a visibly higher degree of deletions from those CIA cables dealing with propaganda than those that deal with, say, political analysis of parties or their methods of supporting candidates. Evidently, the CIA considers well-placed propaganda to have a significant 'force multiplying' effect on its target audience. Accordingly, propaganda took a major role in the 69-election campaign that, as is noted, grew as the operation progressed. The propaganda mechanism developed for the 1968 fiscal year—which coincides with the beginning of the selective-support election mechanism—was a more sophisticated operation in organisation, production, and scope.

If propaganda became a very important aspect of the election operation, it did so in sharing the confusion in mission of the greater project. One can detect a slight confusion in direct intent of the mission, and several different explanations of it are given in cables. Overall, one cable says, the aim of the CIA's propaganda efforts was to promote moderate politics amongst "the leadership class and the opinion moulders."⁶⁴ Alternately, it was explained that the main thrust of the Station's "broad spectrum propaganda is plea to independent voter to exercise his vote...subsidiary function [is to] provide guidance to the uncommitted voter on how to choose among candidates the one best qualified to help steer Chile on course of moderation, eschewing summons to class warfare which in long run bound to lead to alteration of existing constitutional order."⁶⁵ Alternately, one could believe the cable that asserted "The propaganda woven into the daily radio news casts is designed to influence those vocal groups—public and private—which play a role in the political process of the country. Over the long run and aiming particularly at the Congressional election of 1969 and the Presidential election of 1970, the purpose is to [one line deleted]...to discourage an alliance of the democratic opposition to the Government with the FRAP."⁶⁶ One might take as the CIA's propaganda mission the statement of another cable, which believed that:

> By promoting an anti-communist climate, the objective is to curb growing radical tendencies among the Chilean populace and, more specifically, to create tensions between the Government and the Soviet Bloc representation in Chile...⁶⁷

⁶² Memorandum, Acting Chief, WH/[Deleted] to C/WHD, "Termination of Project", 23 April 1969.

⁶³ Cable, CIA HQ to Santiago Sta, "In preparation for Amb's Visit", 14 November 1968.

⁶⁴ Memorandum, CIA, "Propaganda Production", 12 March 1968.

⁶⁵ Cable, Santiago Sta to C/WHD, "Following Station Analysis", 11 Feb 1969.

⁶⁶ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Approval and Renewal", 12 Mar 1968.

⁶⁷ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Approval and Renewal", 12 March 1968.

54

Lastly, one might take the mission to be as stated later on in the operation, in February
1969, which was a "plea to independent voter to exercise his vote and counteract present
state of lethargy (aggravated by distractions of summer vacation period) and repugnance
at Chile's party system as a whole."⁶⁸ The impact of this confusion may have been to
diffuse the effectiveness and focus of the messages that the CIA was trying to
disseminate, though some additional focus may have been given by the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia in late August of 1968, thus providing a touchstone for materials aimed
at the doctrinaire, Moscow- and Havana-oriented Communist and Socialist parties.

If there was a slightly confused mission, however, this did not affect the crisp
functioning of the propaganda mechanism itself, as opposed to the message. In March of
1968, a full year before the election and months before the CIA's election mechanism
was brought into action, the Station in Santiago had established a 'propaganda workshop'
aimed at disseminating Station produced propaganda through all mass media
instruments.⁶⁹ This 'workshop', of unknown scale, was needed to meet the large amount
of propaganda demanded by the Station's media operations. The cost of the workshop is
also a guess. We know from other cables that a perhaps significant portion of the
$350,000 earmarked for the operation was going to 'media operations.'⁷⁰ We also know,
however, that none of this money was expended until sometime after mid-August,
meaning that the propaganda effort running until this time was operating on a much
smaller budget.⁷¹ Regardless, the propaganda machinery seems to have been very highly
developed. One memorandum reported that "Agency-prepared news-items and editorials
are inserted daily in the programs of [deleted: one word] radio networks. These comprise
some [deleted: one word] radio stations (of the 126 operating in Chile)" and that this
coverage reached the majority of the Chilean working class, who derived most of their
information from the radio.⁷² The Station also sponsored some programs directly, feeling
that these were sufficiently anti-Communist. In general, the propaganda attacked "the
nature of communism, PCCh attempts to subvert and/or divide other parties...and
implications of Czech invasion...", a very exploitable example of Communist aggression,
they believed. Furthermore, as with the selective-support actions, it was thought that the
"propaganda benefits moderates in PDC, PR, and PN without stressing support for any
one party." Yet, it was noted that "Propaganda must... be selective and sharp hitting
rather than massive because of limited amount of funds..."⁷³ The Station believed it was
handicapped by the election mechanism, which barred them from cooperation with any
political party, leaving them with an absence of "non-affiliated political mechanisms to
which propaganda can be attributed."⁷⁴ Some tailor-made propaganda, however, was
produced for the usage of the chosen candidates.⁷⁵

⁶⁸ Cable, Santiago Sta to C/WHD, "Following Station Analysis", 11 February 1969

⁶⁹ Memorandum, "Project [Deleted]", 12 March 1968.

⁷⁰ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Approval of Project", 13 August 1968.

⁷¹ Cable, Santiago COS to DDP, "As Required by the 303 Committee", 14 August, 1968.

⁷² Memorandum,

⁷³ Cable, Santiago COS to DDP, "Station Agrees with HQs Briefing", 18 November 1968.

⁷⁴ Cable, Santiago Sta to C/WHD, "Following Station Analysis", 11 February 1969

⁷⁵ Memorandum, NSC/303 Committee, "Final Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 14 March 1969. (NSC).

55

While significant paper was generated by this propaganda effort—sadly, the total number of articles placed is removed—a seemingly failed excision tells us the amount of money being spent on this propaganda effort. The sum is remarkably modest. From an initial funding approval in April of 1968,⁷⁶ an unknown increase was granted bringing the total to $16,780.⁷⁷ A parallel project, which supported “individual propaganda assets”⁷⁸ received an increase to bring its total funds to the lofty heights of $8,050.⁷⁹ (These were below the awareness of the 303-Committee, which by an unwritten rule only judged activities with budgets over $25,000.⁸⁰) While it is difficult to determine precisely, this project was most likely supporting an individual or individuals, most likely known freelance journalists or correspondents, who were placing propaganda onto a wire service for general usage. Numerous statements, describing the how and where the Station’s product was carried, back up this guess.⁸¹

A fairly clear picture emerges of the CIA's propaganda mechanism, though some conjecture is required. Desirous of producing a wide-scale propaganda campaign, the CIA established a 'workshop' that wrote articles and general editorial pieces for all three media (TV, print, radio). Simultaneously, the CIA maintained several correspondents, editors or free-lance journalists as its own media 'stringers' (these paid for by the two smaller operational funds). These media assets would then take the CIA media product (and, presumably, money) and place the pieces on a wire service for pick up by unwitting media outlets throughout Chile. Others would place it in editorial pages of papers and magazines as their own work, or place it over the airwaves via radio (and in TV, to a much lesser extent). Still again, articles could be seeded into foreign journals or news services controlled by the CIA, with the knowledge that CIA media assets could pick up these stories with full credibility. They could, the CIA notes proudly, even seed American propaganda through Communist press services, an operation technique that they thought added much credibility to their product.⁸² William Broe noted in a cable that since the CIA's propaganda product was 'salted' into material from other sources and carried as straight news rather than rightist propaganda, and "it does not usually draw any measurable or heated response."⁸³

CIA propaganda did make it on to the media in a widespread fashion, and we have CIA assurances that it was effective. Indeed, Miguel Otero's comments about the visibility of CIA propaganda show that it may have been fairly effective, if subtle. Otero noted "I didn't really see anti-Communist propaganda. That was made mostly through the TV, or the panels, or the radio, or people that were speaking in a forum or something like that. But that you would see on pamphlets or posters, against the communists...I

⁷⁶ Cable, Santiago COS to C/WHD, "Request Amendment", 31 May 1968.

⁷⁷ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Amendment to Station Santiago's Project", 29 May 1968.

⁷⁸ Memorandum, to C/WHD, "FY 1969 Renewal", 22 April 1968.

⁷⁹ Project Approval Notification, C/WHD Authority, 5 August 1968.

⁸⁰ Leary, p. 82.

⁸¹ Memorandum, William V. Broe to [Unknown], "Thematic and Effectiveness Data", 23 May 1968.

⁸² Memorandum, Unknown to Unknown, "Renewal of Project [deleted] (WH/Chile)", 3 March 1969.

⁸³ Memorandum, William Broe to [Unknown], "Thematic and Effectiveness Data", 23 May 1968.

don't recall. There might have been, but I don't recall that it was important."⁸⁴ Overt, over-the-top anti-communist poster campaigns or pamphlets would have been clumsy and transparently American, as noted by Labarca's comments about the 'obviousness' of American propaganda in the 64 Presidential campaign. Television, print, and especially radio placement of articles critical of the communists would have been much more effective in the Chilean context of an advanced media environment—though this didn't stop the Americans from believing that they were better at producing their favourite "anti-Communist posters which darkly predict" the bleak results of a communist victory.⁸⁵ Regardless, close monitoring by the CIA team led them to congratulate themselves for a job well done, as their material was being "skilfully used, and the finished product compares favourably with material deriving from the international news services with which the items are frequently interwoven."⁸⁶ The Station was even able to produce in Washington "voluminous samples" of all the articles and broadcasts that it had originated.⁸⁷ As the cables note, however, the true impact of this propaganda campaign can never been determined: Chile had no established polling organisations, the CIA itself could not conduct scientific polling and, most importantly, they lacked information on public opinion outside of Santiago.⁸⁸ The subsequent un-answerable question is whether propaganda was the best use of the money granted the CIA for the congressional election mission.

## Election Results & Plans for 1970

On March 2, 1969, the Chilean electorate went to the polls and the result was, at least initially, pleasing to the CIA and those concerned in Washington. "According to initial reports" said a State Department memorandum, "the congressional election operation in Chile has been successfully executed." The report when on to state that ten of the twelve candidates supported had been elected, but most significantly the breakaway United Socialist Party, which the CIA had cleverly supported, polled 52,000 votes and had thus deprived the regular Socialist Party (PS) of about seven congressional seats, all of which were won by PDC or the PN, save one to the PR.⁸⁹ Clearly the operation had achieved its aims for, depending on one's methods of accounting, 17 seats had been denied to the Marxist parties. This was good news, many believed, and the congratulations were cabled from party to party. One cable comes from Ambassador Korry to the DCI, thanking him for the hard word of the CIA officers in Santiago. He congratulates the CIA, and comments that this small operation had an outstanding effect on the political climate in Chile. The ambassador wrote:

⁸⁴ Otero.
⁸⁵ Cable, Santiago Sta to C/WHD, "Following Station Analysis", 11 February 1969
⁸⁶ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Request for Approval and Renewal", 12 March 1968.
⁸⁷ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Project Renewal for FY 1970", 20 February 1969.
⁸⁸ Memorandum, Unknown to Unknown, "Renewal of Project [deleted] (WH/Chile)", 3 March 1969.
⁸⁹ Memorandum for the Record, "The Chilean Congressional Election of 2 March 1969", 4 March 1969. (Marginal Ink Annotation: 'Acc@ #980643000012, Safe A-2, Drawer Box 19'). See also Memorandum, NSC/303 Committee, "Final Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 14 March 1969. (NSC)

57

I would appreciate the 303 Committee being informed of my great appreciation for the excellent contributions to US goals in Chile by the first rate contribution of the COS and his colleagues...I am persuaded that we had a maximum impact in electoral terms for modest resources employed and that we benefited greatly from carefully selected multiplying-effect choices...⁹⁰

Not everyone believed that the operation should be celebrating its success. If the missions' stated aim had been to support a political climate of moderates for the 1970 election campaign, or to act as a 'break' on any popular front leader elected in 1970, then it was not as successful as some thought.⁹¹ A document submitted to the 303 Committee noted that the CIA thought their operation had been a limited one—it did not spend its entire $350,000 budget⁹²—which had achieved limited objectives, and could not be celebrated as a major victory over the forces of Marxism.⁹³ In the post-election wrap-up, even Korry was shocked into admitting that “the Chilean Right, born by a resurgent wind of Alessandrism, rose...to a strong vote that cut deeply into the strength of President Frei’s Christian Democratic Party.” While the PDC was still the largest vote getter, Korry admitted, “the facts remain that is has suffered a grave defeat.”⁹⁴ The 303 Committee, in a rare burst of attention to Chile, produced a direr verdict on the operation. The minutes of the meeting record:

> In the total picture, however, it should be realised that Chile's political moderates suffered a clear setback in the 2 March 1969 elections. What happened was a movement toward political polarization with the conservative right and the Marxist left coming out the greatest beneficiaries. In the present political climate the Communist-Socialist front would stand perhaps an even chance of victory for the presidency.⁹⁵

This reality seems to have caught up with the Ambassador. Speaking to the CEP in Santiago in 1998, Korry had changed his opinion from his on-the-record celebration of the mission of the operation in a dramatic way. When asked to elaborate on the process and success of the election operation, Korry expresses doubt about the effectiveness of the operation overall:

> ...we did the minimal that would hurt and was targeted very specifically not at any one party, but to where possible a little amount of money would defeat a Unidad Popular candidate.

So it went to all sorts of candidates of all persuasions, not many of them, it had a so-so effect, we never will know whether it had any effect.

⁹⁰ Cable, Ambassador Korry to DCI, 7 March 1969.

⁹¹ Ibid.

⁹² Memorandum, NSC/303 Committee, "Final Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 14 March 1969. (NSC)

⁹³ Memorandum, Proposed Agenda, Meeting of the 303 Committee, 15 April 1969. (NSC)

⁹⁴ Cable, Santiago Station to Director, "The Chilean Right", 3 March 1969.

⁹⁵ Memorandum, NSC/303 Committee, "Final Report: March 1969 Chilean Congressional Election", 14 March 1969. (NSC)

58

But some of the people we supported did get elected, some of the people we opposed did not get elected, and the total of that was minimal, because with a hundred, say a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to spread among twenty or thirty people, it can't be very much, not even in this country, and moreover not one candidate knew he got it. It was delivered by priests, I don't know who, by all sorts of people.⁹⁶

Eight months of CIA work, and close to a third of a million dollars spent, thus was productive to a degree that no one can measure with any degree of certainty. The congressional election operation mechanism, it turned out, would not be maintained. When the COS in Santiago requested a renewal of budget and permission to look for new contacts to effect the upcoming presidential election—itself now 8 months away—he was rebuffed. A cable from Langley stated: "While we appreciate the reasons to project operational thinking and planning beyond 2 March 1969, it is felt that it would be best to wait for the results and the post-election assessment before taking any action which might imply [Deletion: 1 word. 'USG'?] commitment to a [deletion: 1 word]-type undertaking in 1970." The COS was free to keep up his contacts, but had no funding for further operations until a new operation mandate was given.⁹⁷

## Too Little Too Late?

When taken together, the propaganda effort and the assistance provided to moderate candidates provide an interesting if confusing image. What, precisely, was the American goal in both of these operations? What was the overarching *intent*? And what end-state was envisaged? The trouble with the 1968 operation is that there was no unifying political control over the effort. While the mission was important enough for the CIA to give it 'A' listing for 'flap potential,' it was basically not considered to be an important mission from the point of view of the policy makers. This is not to say that they did not give it their proper intention. Quite to the contrary, they took bi-monthly reports on the mission. Yet, there is no evidence of direction being given to the CIA or the State Department (and so to the ambassador) about what the executive branch of government hoped to get for the $350,000 they were willing to expend. One might say that the goal was 'to keep the communists from power' but this does not fully qualify as a mission. While all parties implicitly understood that the ultimate goal was to keep the FRAP-candidate from winning the 1970 presidential election—numerous documents cite this as the reason for starting the 1969 election operation—at no point does any higher authority explain how the smaller operation will link with the bigger intent. Ultimately, we see that the operation cannot possibly help the process of the 1970 election; it is simply too small and too restricted. This left each organisation, primarily in this case the Ambassador and the CIA Country Team, to situate the mission as they felt best. In failing to provide direction the 303 Committee, which was apparently (and appropriately) more concerned with affairs in Vietnam, as well as the Soviet invasion of

⁹⁶ *Estudios Públicos*, 72 (primavera 1998). "El Embajador Edward M. Korry en el CEP", p. 19.

⁹⁷ Cable, C/WHD to COS Santiago, 19 February 1969.

59

Czechoslovakia, dropped the ball.⁹⁸ The result was eight months wasted in supporting a party—the PDC—that the CIA thought was communist, while it could have been eight months spent supporting the pro-American PN under Alessandri, who in any case everyone but Ambassador Korry thought was the most likely candidate to win the upcoming presidential election. Had the executive promulgated a clear objective, a mission clearly attached to a greater US foreign policy goal, the mission would either have been fully resourced and more successful; or it would not have been carried out at all, for lack of any ability to alter circumstances.

Politics clearly effected the execution of the mission. The PDC had been a
darling of JFK and the Democratic Party, and the current Democratic administration was
loath to give up on its old stand-by of non-communist reform. This despite the fact that
the PDC was coming closer and closed to the communist left, while the favourite but
lame-duck President Frei was unable to influence his party. The State Department was
still committed to its policy of propping-up the moderates, long after the moderates in
Chile had gotten off the fence and chosen sides. No one, for some reason, was willing to
support the only party that was actually pro-American, Jorge Alessandri. Meanwhile, the
CIA, unable to push a coordinated agenda of what it wanted to do, and without a clear
mandate or mission, was left by want of alternative running a small mission with a small
aim, while bigger concerns were left unanswered. As Chilean historian Joaquin
Fernandois has stated, "Korry insisted on very attentive observation (and intervention) in
Chile, and the CIA assisted him discreetly, but the CIA still undertook operations that
Korry believed were absurd. On the other hand, the State Department considered the
threat minimal, and thought that Korry was living too much in the spirit of the 'Cold
War.'"⁹⁹ This is perhaps too simple a view of things. Korry was clearly, at this point, not
working in a Cold War paradigm. More accurately, he was working in the paradigm of
US party politics. Throughout the whole mission he seemed reluctant to abandon the
PDC, the Chilean avatar of the US Democrat Party that was his home. This loyalty
continued after it was clear that the PDC was not the pro-US reformist organisation it had
previously been. Korry actually favoured a pro-Marxist party, hardly the actions of a
cold Warrior as commonly depicted. Indeed, there needs to be a clear reappraisal of
Korry's actions throughout his tenure as ambassador in light of his unwavering support
for the PDC.

One may judge the wisdom of this operation by different standards. First, one
might argue that it was too little too late. Support to a dozen candidates, most of whom
were successful, might be considered a great success if one could judge for certain that
they would have failed without the support. But with a maximum outlay of $30,000 per
candidate, and apparently rarely in cash, it is uncertain whether these funds really
contributed to their success, especially to a party (the PDC) which already had a plentiful
election coffer in the millions.¹⁰⁰ In retrospect, did these ten candidates make a
difference? The other view one may take is that in their assistance to the congressional

⁹⁸ Fernandois, *Chile Y El Mundo 1970-1973*, p. 285.

¹⁰⁰ Memorandum, C/WHD to DDP, "Summary of Chilean Congressional Election Operation." 4 March 1969.

60

election, the CIA were 'cutting off their nose to spite their face' in that they continued to focus on the PDC as the main alternative to the Communist-Socialist front, ignoring the fact that in the upcoming Presidential election the PDC candidate would most likely have been inimical to US interests had he won, but more importantly that the continued strength of the PDC stripped support not from the Communist-Socialist bloc, but from the only candidate likely to defeat that organisation: Alessandri and his Partido Nacional. Instead of supporting a Right versus Left campaign, the US actually funded a Centre versus Right fight.

The choice between these views is one that requires one to judge the prescience of the CIA and State Department, and their motives for support in the first place. In the NSC's final report on the topic there is a hint of realisation that what the CIA had actually achieved was minimal, and showed an awareness of the erosion of any moderate position in Chilean politics. This erosion is the critical misinterpretation of the political scene in Chile. The CIA clearly understood that the PDC had drifted left, and they knew that the party mechanism was in the hands of pro-Marxists. Likewise, they knew that the PN was the party most likely to defeat the FRAP in any upcoming election. So the short-term goal of electing moderates to the congress made sense, but not in the long-term where the PN was the only party that stood a chance of defeating the Marxists in a Presidential election. By favouring the middle ground, the US was stealing potential support from the one party able to achieve the longer-term goal of keeping a Marxist president from office. In view of the political climate and direction of the time, the better choice would have been to provide strong support to the most important party for the US in the long-term, and that was the PN. Old party loyalties, and an ambassador that could not bury his bias, prevented this from happening.

Timeline

<table><thead><tr><td>Date</td><td>Event</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>24 May 1968</td><td>First CIA / State Meeting about Congressional Election</td></tr><tr><td>12 July 1968</td><td>303 Approval of election program</td></tr><tr><td>3 September 1968</td><td>First progress report. No candidates selected</td></tr><tr><td>5 December 1968</td><td>First ten candidates selected</td></tr><tr><td>27 December 1968</td><td>Second progress report. Half of $350,000 budget expended</td></tr><tr><td>12 February 1969</td><td>Final slate of 12 candidates for support.</td></tr><tr><td>2 March 1969</td><td>Election. Ten of the selected candidates win their seats, a further 7 Socialist Party seats denied by splinter party.</td></tr></tbody></table>