Remembering 9/11

Remembering 9/11

Since if we forget our history, we are doomed to repeat it, I thought that it would be fitting to once again chronicle that fateful event that happened on September 11th, 1973.

On October 24th, 1970, Salvador Allende’s victory was ratified by the Chilean Congress. It had been a fair election, something of a rarity in South America, at that time. Although Richard Nixon had larger worries on his mind (the Vietnam War), he was troubled that Allende’s victory in Chile would be perceived as weakening US influence in the area. This was also a prominent worry for Head of State Henry Kissinger. Thus, even before the election, the US government began devising various ways of thwarting an Allende victory. (1)

Their first course of action, was to try to get the Chilean Congress to ratify the runner up, Jorge Alessandri. However, when this plan fell through, the US had to move on to their second plan of action, “Track II”, or military action, which included the assasination of a top military official, who pledged to respect the election results. (1)

Allende was formerly inagurated on November 3rd, 1970.(1)

A CIA postmortem dated Nov. 12, 1970 noted that “Dr. Salvador Allende became the first democratically-elected Marxist head of state in the history of Latin America – despite the opposition of the U.S. Government.

“As a result, U.S. prestige and interests … are being affected materially at a time when the U.S. can ill afford problems in an area that has been traditionally accepted as the U.S. ‘backyard’.” (1)

For the next three years, the CIA used a three-pronged attack on Chile’s democratically-elected leader – pouring money into congressional campaigns and Chilean newspapers, a cool diplomatic policy, and an “invisible blockade” of loans and credit to Chile. (1) This money from the CIA included more than one million dollars to various opposition parties. (2)

The CIA’s plan worked – inflation and other economic woes increased, diplomatic ties between Chile and other nations worsened, and at every turn he ran into well-funded opposition.

On September 11th, 1973, a military coup seized control throughout Chile, and Salvador Allende “committed suicide”. (2)

Nineteen days after the coup, a briefing paper prepared by Henry Kissinger put the “total dead” at 1,500, including 320 executions. (1)

“Now that they are in fact again a ‘country in liberty’ no obstacle is too high, no problem too difficult to solve. Their progress may be slow, but it will be as free men aspiring to goals which are for the benefit of Chile.”
– Navy report dated Oct. 1, 1973

Three weeks after the coup, US aid to Chile was turned back on, including loans and commodity credits for wheat and the such – things denied to the previous democratically-elected Allende goverment. (1)

Under Pinochet’s direction, mass arrests, executions, torture and “disappearances” became the norm. By November 16th, 1973, US intelligence estimated that more than 13,500 individuals had been arrested. (1)

Pinochet ruled for some 17 years, gradually handing the reigns over in 1990. It was a period of brutal repression – by the end of his rule, conservative estimates report 3,000 people either dead or missing. (2)

According to government documents, after engineering the conditions necessary, the CIA then went on to fund the 1973 coup with over $350,000. (2)

The amount of misery and sorrow, of death and torture, is immeasurable, and can be directly attributed to the efforts of the Nixon Administration, including most prominently Henry Kissinger, and of the Ford Administration, for their compliancy in continuing the previous administration’s policies.

1) http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terroris…oup_USHand.html
2) http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/11/13/cia.chile.02/

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