50 years ago: Henry Kissinger and the death of democracy in Chile

[Judi Lynn]

(This article was shared by a terrific journalist who found it a couple of days ago.)

Kissinger is still alive and should be held accountable for his war crimes
ROBERT REICH
SEP 10, 2023

As Chile marks the 50th anniversary tomorrow of the coup that brought strongman Augusto Pinochet to power for almost 17 years — toppling Chile’s democratically elected socialist government and resulting in the murders and “disappearances” of thousands of Pinochet’s political opponents — it’s important to recall the central role played by Richard Nixon and Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, in this atrocity.

Kissinger — now 100 years old, and who in my humble opinion should be considered a war criminal — urged Nixon to overthrow Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvador Allende because Allende’s “‘model’ effect can be insidious,” according to declassified documents posted by the U.S. National Security Archive.

On September 12, 1970, eight days after Allende’s election, Kissinger initiated discussion on the telephone with CIA Director Richard Helms about a preemptive coup in Chile. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger declared. “I am with you,” Helms responded. Three days later, Nixon, in a 15-minute meeting that included Kissinger, ordered the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream,” and named Kissinger as the supervisor of the covert efforts to keep Allende from being inaugurated.

Kissinger ignored a recommendation from his top deputy on the NSC, Viron Vaky, who strongly advised against covert action to undermine Allende. On September 14, 1970, Vaky wrote a memo to Kissinger arguing that coup plotting would lead to “widespread violence and even insurrection.” He also argued that such a policy was immoral: “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”

After U.S. covert operations, which led to the assassination of Chilean Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces General Rene Schneider, failed to stop Allende’s inauguration on November 4, 1970, Kissinger lobbied President Nixon to reject the State Department’s recommendation that the U.S. seek a modus vivendi with Allende. While Schneider was dying in the Military Hospital in Santiago on October 22, 1970, Kissinger told Nixon that the Chilean military turned out to be “a pretty incompetent bunch.” Nixon replied: “They are out of practice,” according to documents released in early August by the U.S. National Security Archive.

More:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/today-50-years-ago-henry-kissinger

[ArizonaLib]

1. This subject should be required material in high school

In the mid 80's during my high schooling they spent more time and resources on how the Kennedy assassination was a one man operation and changing out our text books from 'civics' and 'economics' to things like 'Free Enterprise' and nothing about Watergate.

Shameless

[BigmanPigman]

2. I just replied to a post about that murderer after reading about Carter's

health status...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3130633

That bastard should have been sent to prison 50 years ago, instead he celebrates his 100 birthday. Another example of our screwed up judicial system where there is no justice. He was involved in the coup in Chile and a zillion more crimes. Evil bastard!!!!!

I watched the film "Missing" about the American Govt lying at every level. Disgusting! It takes a while to download but it is worth it. You can't see this film often in the USA.

https://archive.org/details/7.7-7.4-missing-1982

"Missing (stylized as missing.) is a 1982 biographical drama film directed by Costa-Gavras from a screenplay written by Gavras and Donald E. Stewart, adapted from the book The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice (1978) by Thomas Hauser (later republished under the title Missing in 1982), based on the disappearance of American journalist Charles Horman, in the aftermath of the United States-backed Chilean coup of 1973, that deposed the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende.
It stars Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea, Janice Rule and Charles Cioffi.
Set largely during the days and weeks following Horman's disappearance, the film examines the relationship between Horman's wife Beth and his father Edmund and their subsequent quest to find Horman."

"In 1983, a year after the film's theatrical release, both the film (then in the home video market) and Thomas Hauser's book The Execution of Charles Horman were removed from the United States market following a lawsuit filed against Costa-Gavras and Universal Pictures's (then) parent company MCA by former ambassador Nathaniel Davis and two others for libel.[8] A lawsuit against Hauser himself was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired. Davis and his associates lost their lawsuit, after which the film was re-released by Universal in 2006."