NSA – The Coup in Chile: What Did Nixon Know and When Did He Know it?

49 Years After Pinochet’s Putsch, Presidential and CIA Documents Remain Secret

The National Security Archive Calls for Full Disclosure of Covert History as Countdown to 50th Anniversary of Military Coup Begins

Washington D.C., September 12, 2022 – One day after the violent, U.S.-backed, coup d’état in Chile, the very first item in President Richard Nixon’s September 12, 1973, CIA intelligence report—known as the President’s Daily Brief (PDB)—was the overthrow of Salvador Allende. “Chile’s President Allende is dead and the armed forces, together with the carabineros, are working to consolidate their successful coup,” stated a short summary of principal developments around the world. On page 1 of the PDB, the CIA informed Nixon that the members of the new military junta “are all respected and experienced leaders,” indicating they were not supporters of democracy. According to the PDB, “the new rulers have declared [the Chilean] Congress to be in recess.”

But, on the actual day the military moved to overthrow Salvador Allende, September 11, 1973, what the CIA informed President Nixon remains TOP SECRET. Forty-nine years after one of the most infamous military coups in Latin American history, the intelligence report in Nixon’s 9/11/1973 PDB on Chile continues to be classified as sensitive national security information. Nixon’s PDB on September 8, 1973, which is believed to contain initial CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency reporting on specific coup preparations by the Chilean military, also remains completely redacted, almost half a century later.

As the countdown to the 50th anniversary of the coup next year begins, the National Security Archive called on the Biden administration and the CIA to fully declassify the PDBs and all remaining records related to covert operations in Chile. “Secrecy over time erodes credibility, especially regarding national security,” according to John Dinges, author of The Condor Years and a member of the Archive’s advisory board. “Continuing to hide key documents from public view after half a century,” he noted, “prevents finding a credible answer to the questions about U.S. actions in Chile.” 

Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive’s Chile Documentation Project said the Archive would use the Freedom of Information Act and all legal means to press for full disclosure of the controversial history of U.S. ties to the coup before the 50th anniversary. “There is still more to be learned about this dark and sordid episode of covert intervention,” Kornbluh stated, “in order to finalize the judgement of history on the U.S. role in Chile.”

Para seguir leyendo: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2022-09-12/coup-chile-what-did-nixon-know-and-when-did-he-know-it?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=67d93458-a525-4a80-ba9a-d2b5e41feb4e

 

On the eve of the 45th anniversary of Argentina’s Military Coup of 1976: what the U.S. Knew

Briefing Book #751 Edited by Carlos Osorio





 

U.S. had ample forewarning of coup plotting, Documents Show

Officials maintained channel of communications with plotters

Ford Administration knew Argentine military planned to commit human rights violations

U.S. Ambassador aborted pre-coup visit by a former CIA deputy director

Washington, D.C., March 23, 2021 – On the eve of the 45th anniversary of the military coup in Argentina, the National Security Archive is today posting declassified documents revealing what the U.S. government knew, and when it knew it, in the weeks preceding the March 24, 1976, overthrow of Isabel Peron’s government. The documents provide evidence of multiple contacts between the coup plotters and U.S. officials. “[Admiral] Massera sought opportunity to speak privately with me,” U.S. Ambassador to Argentina Robert Hill reported in a cable sent one week before the putsch after meeting with a leading coup plotter. “[H]e said that it was no secret that military might have to step into political vacuum very soon.”

The documents posted today record the U.S. government knowledge of the plotters, their preparations for the coup, and their potential plans for what State Department officials described as “military rule for an extended duration and of unprecedented severity.” They show that the U.S. “discreetly” advised the military more than a month before the actual coup that Washington would recognize the new regime.

In the first substantive report to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on a “Possible Coup in Argentina,” in mid-February 1976, Assistant Secretary of State William Rogers flagged the likelihood of human rights violations after a military takeover (…)

Para seguir leyendo: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2021-03-23/argentinas-military-coup-what-us-knew?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9fcb5efb-937e-4c13-9e3a-90897fe629e7

National Security Archive – Che Guevara and the CIA in the Mountains of Bolivia

Che Guevara after his execution on October 9, 1967, surrounded by Bolivian soldiers. (Source: unknown)
Argentine-born Revolutionary Executed 53 Years Ago

Declassified Records Describe Intense U.S. Tracking of Guevara’s Movements, Initial Doubts about His Death, and Hopes that His Violent Demise Would Discourage Revolutionaries in Latin America


Washington, DC, October 9, 2020 – Fifty-three years ago, at 1:15 p.m. on October 9, 1967, Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed in the hills of Bolivia after being captured by a U.S.-trained Bolivian military battalion. A CIA operative, Felix Rodriguez, was present. U.S. officials had been tracking Guevara’s whereabouts ever since he disappeared from public view in Cuba in 1965. The highest White House officials were intensely interested in confirming his death, then using it to undermine leftist revolutionary movements in Latin America, as a selection of White House and CIA documents posted today by the National Security Archive describes.

President Lyndon Johnson himself received regular updates on Guevara’s whereabouts, the record shows, reflecting continuing, deep concerns over Cuban-inspired revolutionary activity in the region.  Today’s posting features National Security Council memos, CIA field reports, and other documents that follow several strands of the story, from Guevara’s ill-fated campaign in Bolivia, to La Paz’s request for U.S. help in creating a “hunter-killer” team to “ferret out guerrillas,” to reports of Che’s last conversation and execution (provided by an under-cover CIA officer at the scene), to the intensive efforts of the United States to mount a posthumous propaganda campaign based on Guevara’s diary and other captured records.  In a number of cases the documents have previously been released but are now available with fewer security redactions.

The materials are selections from the recent digitized documentary compilation, “CIA Covert Operations III: From Kennedy to Nixon, 1961-1974,” part of the Digital National Security Archive series published by ProQuest.  It is the third in an ongoing series edited by John Prados and focuses on CIA decision making and operations in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, Iraq, Indonesia, and elsewhere (…)

Para seguir leyendo: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba-intelligence/2020-10-09/che-guevara-cia-mountains-bolivia?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=718a1bb9-5db5-42bf-91cf-6435edb0c1ee

“Allende Wins”

Chile Marks 50th Anniversary of Salvador Allende’s Election

Declassified Records Capture U.S. Reaction to First Free Election of a Socialist Leader 

September 4, 1970, Historic Vote Prompted Nixon/Kissinger Regime Change Effort

National Security Archives – Washington D.C., September 4, 2020 – “Chile voted calmly to have a Marxist-Leninist state, the first nation in the world to make this choice freely and knowingly,” U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry dramatically reported to Washington in a cable titled “Allende Wins” on September 4, 1970. “[W]e have suffered a grievous defeat; the consequences will be domestic and international; the repercussions will have immediate impact in some lands and delayed effect in others.”

On the 50th anniversary of the history-changing election of Salvador Allende in Chile, the National Security Archive today posted a selection of previously declassified documents recording the reaction of U.S. officials to the first democratic election of a Socialist leader in Latin America, or elsewhere. Since the early 1960s, U.S. policy makers had dedicated tens of millions of dollars in overt aid and covert actions to preventing the popular head of the Chilean Socialist party from being elected. Allende’s victory set in motion a furious effort, ordered by President Nixon, supervised by his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, and implemented by the CIA, to destabilize Chile and undermine Allende’s ability to govern—an effort that set the stage for the September 11, 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet (…)

Para seguir leyendo: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2020-09-04/allende-wins?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=4428305b-f207-4f9a-96c0-0c7690e9bb7e

 
Published: Sep 4, 2020
Briefing Book #719

Edited by Peter Kornbluh

For more information, contact:
 nsarchiv@gwu.edu

Argentina’s House of Horrors

CIA Document Leads Human Rights Investigators to Previously Unidentified Clandestine Torture Center. Declassified U.S. Records Reveal Address of House Used by State Intelligence Service to Interrogate, Disappear Victims after March 1976 Military CoupU.S. Citizen was Detained, Abused at Black Site on Bacacay street in Buenos Aires

Washington D.C., July 21, 2020 – Forty-four years after the Argentine military began disappearing thousands of citizens following the March 24, 1976, coup, human rights investigators have located one of the first clandestine torture sites used by state intelligence operatives. The clandestine center was identified after the declassification of thousands of U.S. intelligence records last year, among them a secret CIA report on the disappearance of an Argentine diplomat which stated that he had been kidnapped by agents of the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) and “taken to a house at Bacabay (sic) 3570 in the Federal Capital which SIDE rents and uses for official operations….”.

Para seguir leyendo: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2020-07-21/argentinas-house-of-horrors?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6e9ccb94-15d9-4a0a-8008-30359cf38485

 

Kennedy and Cuba: Operation Mongoose – A new post of NSA

Exhibits from CIA Document Set III: A Digital National Security Archive collection published through ProQuest

Washington, DC, October 3, 2019 – When the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba nearly 60 years ago, American officials refused to believe that at least one Soviet motivation was the defense of Cuba. But declassified U.S. documents published in the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) confirm a series of sometimes frenetic covert operations ordered by the Kennedy White House and run by the CIA in those years to overthrow the Castro regime that in hindsight make Moscow’s (and Havana’s) concerns about defending the island much more credible.

Documents in the recently published DNSA collection, many of them first uncovered by the National Security Archive’s Cuba Project[1], detail the discussions of highest-level decision groups such as the 5412 Committee and the Special Group (Augmented), the ramping up of covert operations after the April 1961 failure at the Bay of Pigs, the specific CIA and Pentagon plans for infiltrations, sabotage, espionage, and regime change, and the ultimate winding down of the program after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The evidence describes what Archive Senior Fellow John Prados terms the “disturbing” obsession of the Kennedy brothers with Cuba, and the disbursement of millions of dollars of CIA funds on raids by Cuban exiles (…)

Para seguir leyendo: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2019-10-03/kennedy-cuba-operation-mongoose

Estados Unidos entrega la prueba de que Pinochet ordenó el asesinato de Orlando Letelier

Desclasificados los últimos documentos sobre el asesinato en EE UU del canciller de Allende
Por Silvia Ayuso,
El País, 23/09/2016

Estados Unidos entregó este viernes a la presidenta chilena, Michelle Bachelet, los últimos documentos desclasificados que demuestran que el dictador Augusto Pinochet ordenó el asesinato en Washington del último canciller del derrocado gobierno de Salvador Allende, Orlando Letelier, hace 40 años.
El más interesante es el documento original de la CIA que afirma que Pinochet fue el que ordenó la creación de un comando que atentara contra Letelier, un político incómodo para la dictadura por sus constantes denuncias en Washington, aliado clave en esa época del dictador, de los crímenes cometidos por el régimen autoritario de Santiago.

“Una revisión de nuestros archivos sobre el asesinato de Letelier nos ha proporcionado lo que consideramos pruebas convincentes de que Pinochet ordenó a su jefe de inteligencia perpetrar el asesinato”, señala el informe de la CIA fechado el 1 de mayo de 1987, redactado durante el Gobierno de Ronald Reagan.

Que la mano de Pinochet estaba detrás del asesinato de Letelier era algo de lo que nadie duda desde hace tiempo. Ya el año pasado se desclasificó un primer paquete de documentos entre los que figura un memorando del entonces secretario de Estado, George Shultz, enviado en octubre de 1987 a Reagan. En él, Shultz cita ese informe de la CIA para responsabilizar a Pinochet. Pero faltaba —hasta hoy— el documento original, el “santo grial”, como lo ha denominado el investigador estadounidense Peter Kornbluh, responsable en buena parte de que EE UU haya desclasificado tantos documentos sobre la dictadura chilena (…)

Para seguir leyendo: http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/09/23/estados_unidos/1474658001_549935.html

 

SECRET CIA REPORT: Pinochet “Personally Ordered” Washington Car-Bombing

bookPInochetPRESIDENT REAGAN INFORMED THAT PINOCHET’s ROLE WAS “a blatant example of a chief of state’s direct involvement in an act of state terrorism”
National Security Archive Seeks Declassification of CIA Assessment in the Letelier-Moffitt Assassinations
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 532
Edited by Peter Kornbluh
Posted – October 9, 2015

Washington D.C., October 8, 2015 – The CIA concluded that there was “convincing evidence” that Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet “personally ordered his intelligence chief to carry out the murder” of exiled critic Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., according to a SECRET memo prepared for President Ronald Reagan in 1987. “Pinochet decided to stonewall on the US investigation to hide his involvement,” the CIA review also noted, and as part of the cover-up considered “even the elimination of his former intelligence chief,” DINA director Manuel Contreras, who had overseen the assassination plot.
The CIA intelligence review remains classified. But it was quoted in a dramatic report to President Reagan, dated on October 6, 1987, from his Secretary of State, George Shultz, as part of his efforts to convince the president to cut U.S. ties to Pinochet and press for the return of democracy in Chile. “The CIA has never before drawn and presented its conclusion that such strong evidence exists of his [Pinochet’s] leadership role in this act of terrorism,” the Secretary of State informed the President. Continuar leyendo “SECRET CIA REPORT: Pinochet “Personally Ordered” Washington Car-Bombing”

La Mata Hari del Caribe

Marita Lorenz fue contratada por la CIA para asesinar a Fidel Castro. No pudo hacerlo: se había enamorado de él. Ahora recupera en una biografía su historia
Por Yolanda Monge, El País, 6/6/2015

El rumbo de la isla caribeña de los cubanos y de la guerra fría reposaba en forma de píldoras venenosas en un bote de crema rejuvenecedora Pons. Allí las había escondido Marita Lorenz cuando embarcó en Miami a principios de 1960, rumbo a La Habana. Su misión: matar a Fidel Castro, su amante durante ocho meses. Ella era la Mata Hari del Caribe.

Nerviosa, casi en estado de pánico y temerosa de que a su llegada al aeropuerto José Martí fuera registrada y encontrasen las pastillas envenenadas que llevaba consigo, Lorenz las depositó en un bote de crema facial. “Me sentía incapaz de llevar a cabo la misión que Frank Fiorini [Frank Sturgis, condenado luego por el Watergate] me había encomendado. No iba a matar a Fidel, no fallé, como otros cientos que lo intentaron después. Sencillamente, fui incapaz y no me arrepiento”, explica hoy Lorenz.

Pero incluso si hubiera decidido seguir adelante con la llamada Operación 40, una trama gubernamental que, según Lorenz, unía a la CIA, al FBI, al exilio cubano y la mafia, no podría haberlo hecho. Cuando en la habitación del hotel Habana Libre, que solía compartir con Castro, abrió el bote de crema comprobó que las pastillas se habían desintegrado y solo quedaba una masa pastosa del arma que debía de acabar con la vida del líder del Movimiento 26 de Julio. (…)

Para seguir leyendo: http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/06/05/estilo/1433520676_831676.html

U.S. Covert Intervention in Chile: Planning to Block Allende Began Long before September 1970 Election

U.S. Covert Intervention in Chile: Planning to Block Allende Began Long before September 1970 Election
Nixon Alerted in Advance to Date of Coup, Retired CIA Operative Writes in Foreign Affairs
Archive Commends Long-Awaited Release of State Department Compendium of Records on U.S. Involvement in Promoting Chilean Coup
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 470

Posted May 23, 2014
For more information contact:
peter.kornbluh@gmail.com

The Pinochet File
By Peter Kornbluh, The New Press, Updated edition (September 11, 2013)

Washington, DC, May 23, 2014 – Covert U.S. planning to block the democratic election of Salvador Allende in Chile began weeks before his September 4, 1970, victory, according to just declassified minutes of an August 19, 1970, meeting of the high-level interagency committee known as the Special Review Group, chaired by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. “Kissinger asked that the plan be as precise as possible and include what orders would be given September 5, to whom, and in what way,” as the summary recorded Kissinger’s instructions to CIA Director Richard Helms. “Kissinger said we should present to the President an action plan to prevent [the Chilean Congress from ratifying] an Allende victory…and noted that the President may decide to move even if we do not recommend it.”

The document is one of a compendium of some 366 records released by the State Department as part of its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The much-delayed collection, titled “Chile: 1969-1973,” addresses Richard Nixon’s and Kissinger’s efforts to destabilize the democratically elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende, and the U.S.-supported coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in 1973. The controversial volume was edited by two former officials of the State Department’s Office of the Historian, James Siekmeier and James McElveen.

“This collection represents a substantive step forward in opening the historical record on U.S. intervention in Chile,” said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Chile documentation project at the National Security Archive, and is the author of The Pinochet File (…)

In the aftermath of General Augusto Pinochet’s arrest in October 1998, the National Security Archive, along with victims of the Pinochet regime, led a campaign to press the Clinton administration to declassify the still-secret documents on Chile, the coup and the repression that followed (…) The release of the records comes amidst renewed debate over the CIA role in supporting the military coup in Chile.

The Kissinger-Nixon transcript is reproduced in the 2013 edition of The Pinochet File. http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21

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