More Evidence Regarding Henry Kissinger's Lies About Chile

[Judi Lynn]

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

BY MELVIN GOODMAN

“Chile is a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.”

– Henry A. Kissinger.

Our 240 years of history have not produced a more controversial secretary of state than Henry A. Kissinger. There are enormous achievements associated with Kissinger, including the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972; the step-by-step agreements in 1974 between Israel and Egypt as well as between Israel and Syria; and the opening of a substantive political dialogue with China that began with his secret diplomacy in 1971. Conversely, Kissinger will be remembered for the wiretapping of his senior aides; the secret bombing of Cambodia; the outrageous “tilt” toward Pakistan in 1971 in order to protect his opening toward China; the secret arms supplies to the Shah of Iran, who was supporting a Kurdish rebel faction in Iraq; the profound lies associated with the Vietnam War and the U.S. role in the bloody military coup in Chile fifty years ago. The evidence of his lies regarding Chile continue to mount.

In his memoirs (“White House Years” and “Years of Upheaval”), Kissinger claimed that “Latin America was an area in which I did not then have expertise of my own,” and that, as a result, he had paid little attention to Central and South America. However, as Seymour Hersh documented in his “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House,” Kissinger intended that Latin America was to be “permitted little independence,” and that the region was to be “controlled and manipulated by American intelligence” (i.e., the Central Intelligence Agency). In fact, Kissinger began manipulating policy toward Chile’s socialist leader, Salvador Allende, as early as 1970. He remarked at the time that there was no reason for the United States to “stand by and let Chile go communist merely due to the stupidity of its own people.”

Kissinger was a master at manipulating the bureaucratic national security machinery. His bureaucratic device for orchestrating the CIA’s covert role in Latin America was the 40 Committee, which Nixon created in February 1970 to review and approve covert action progams. Kissinger chaired the Committee, whose work enabled Kissinger to say in his memoirs that “No further NSC meetings were held on the subject” of Chile. He added deceitfully that “I was not deeply engaged in Chilean matters.”

The CIA’s covert action campaign against Allende began in 1970 after his unanticipated election victory in the first round of presidential voting in September and before his inauguration. In a memorandum to President Richard Nixon in November 1970, Kissinger argued fatuously that the “election of Allende as President of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere.” (underlined in the memorandum marked “Secret/Sensitive”)

Kissinger devised a “two track” policy for Chile; Track I was the diplomatic one under Ambassador Edward Korry. Track II was unknown to Korry; it called for the destabilization of Chile with CIA director Richard Helms playing the lead role. Nixon wanted to make the Chilean “economy scream.”

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/09/01/more-evidence-regarding-henry-kissingers-lies-about-chile/

[erronis]

1. Thanks for these reminders of the corruption of the top levels of the gov't, JL.

Kissinger was so wrong about so many things but his germanic appearance of certainty was hard to resist by people that knew better.