The subject of our meeting was internal State Department organization and personnel. It resulted in my appointing Davis Director General of the Foreign Service. Before turning to my principal concern, however, I asked him to bring me up to date about Chile. Davis emphasized that Chile was sliding toward crisis; there was a growing chance of a military coup. Less certain was whether a coup would result in a pro-Western nationalist regime like Brazil’s or a Third World radical regime like Peru’s. The military might yet back off at the last moment. In that case — and perhaps in any event — Allende might succeed in establishing a Cuban-type dictatorship. I speculated that if Allende were forced to resign, the Senate President, Eduardo Frei — for whom we had high regard as a patriot and a democrat — would take over according to the Chilean Constitution. Davis warned that if the military did overcome their inhibitions against a coup, they would not give up power in a hurry. He was prescient.
I told Davis to keep the American Embassy out of the developing crisis. He emphasized that his “firm instructions to everybody on the staff are that we are not to involve ourselves in any way.” Davis stuck to that resolve meticulously. Because of the retroactive importance that has been (erroneously) given to this meeting, I have placed the transcript of the Chilean portion of the conversation in the backnotes.14
That conversation leaves no doubt of the state of our knowledge and of our intentions immediately before the coup. We were aware of what was well known to every Chilean, including Allende: that the military who already controlled key positions in the government were seriously considering the takeover that had been virtually invited by the Chamber of Deputies and the President of the Christian Democratic Party. But we were unaware of any specific plan or date. And we were party to none.
The move came at approximately 6:30 A.M. on September 11, 1973. Opposition radio stations broadcast a proclamation by the commanders-in-chief of the army, air force, and national police and the chief of naval operations calling on President Allende to resign immediately. The commanders declared that the armed forces and the police were united in their fight against Marxism and against an incompetent government that was leading the country to chaos. They assured the workers that their social and economic gains would be maintained. All pro-government media were ordered to stop broadcasting.
Allende arrived at the Presidential Palace at 7:30 A.M. with a heavily armed escort. On nationwide radio he refused to resign; he called upon workers to occupy their factories and mount resistance. After the air force bombed the Presidential Palace, army troops entered it around noon. They found Allende dead. Our Embassy conveyed to Washington the report that he had committed suicide, apparently with a submachine gun that had been a gift from Fidel Castro. I am unable to assess the contrary allegations which have been made.15
I have described Allende’s fall in some detail as a case history of political mythology. In some quarters our alleged “destabilization” of Chile has become the code word for all that they consider baleful in American policy. The only difficulty is that nothing of the sort took place. It was not the United States but Allende’s own government, aided by Cuba, that plotted paramilitary insurgency and subversion, supplying arms clandestinely to the radical Communist element. What we did was fund free newspapers and political parties that sought our help against a heavy-handed, calculated campaign to suppress them before the next election.
The United States was hardly the crucial determinant of events. It was Allende who brought the economic and political system so close to breakdown by 1973 that our Ambassador withheld our subventions to the private sector for fear of being blamed for the inevitable collapse. Perhaps the most astute postmortem on Allende was expressed by that old revolutionary veteran, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, who was strongly sympathetic to Allende’s Marxist experiment. On my visit to China a few months after Allende’s death, Zhou told me he had urged Allende to go slower, to be less doctrinaire. But Allende had systematically ignored Chinese advice:
We told them about [the risks], but they didn’t believe us. That kind of phenomenon was caused by themselves. . . . I only wrote one letter to President Allende, asking him not to do too many things in [a] hurry. It only concerned economic problems, that they should make preparation beforehand. They shouldn’t do everything at one go; they should take steps. They should not promise too many things to people; otherwise, they would not be able to honor these things. Because we believe the life of the people can only be improved on the basis of production. Whenever one speaks of Socialism, also think of welfare. And my letter to President Allende was carried in the newspaper, but it was useless because the word of a foreigner meant nothing.
Either by design or through the dynamics of his radical coalition — most likely a combination of both — Salvador Allende had by 1973 produced such a polarization in Chile that it could end only in one of two ways: a Cuban-style dictatorship or a military government. All the democratic parties had come to the same conclusion, though they no doubt underestimated the eagerness of the military, once it had abandoned its historic stance as guardian of the Constitution, to maintain itself in power. The Chilean junta was triggered into action by incipient chaos and the pleas of the democratic parties. It moved, and from all the evidence with extreme reluctance, only when it felt it had the support of the majority of Chileans. When it took on political responsibility its political inexperience, if not naiveté, became apparent — though one should not lightly dismiss its basic judgment that the existing party structure, having brought Chile to the brink of civil war, was unlikely to be able to overcome the conditions that had made military intervention necessary.
It is important to remember what so dedicated a democrat as former President Frei said immediately after the military coup:
The military have saved Chile and all of us whose lives are certainly not as important as Chile’s, but they are human lives, and many, and all of them are not yet safe because the armed forces continue discovering hideouts and arsenals. A civil war was being well prepared by the Marxists. And that is what the world does not know, refuses to know.16
Washington Reaction
AS it happened, the coup occurred in the middle of my confirmation hearings for Secretary of State. This slowed down American responses; it did not affect our ultimate attitude.
A meeting of the Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG) was called for the next morning, September 12. William Colby’s briefing, which began the meeting, was extremely cautious but on the mark. Colby characterized General Augusto Pinochet, the coup leader, as a heretofore not especially forceful officer with a reputation for being pro-American. Colby correctly predicted that the military would insist on fundamental changes in the political system. Their distrust of civilian politicians made early elections highly unlikely. He predicted that the junta would not reverse all of Allende’s social programs but would permit a gradual return to private ownership. In foreign policy, Colby expected an end to invective against the United States and a mellowing of Allende’s Third World stance. The new government was breaking relations with Cuba and had expelled 150 Cubans.
Against this background, the WSAG turned to operational questions: Should we recognize the junta? What should be our attitude to Chilean requests for aid, either economic or military? And what public position should we take toward the new regime? As is often the case in the midst of upheaval, two random, accidental decisions preoccupied the policymakers. There was the problem of what to do about the imminent visit to Chile of a US Air Force stunt-flying team and a US naval exercise on the high seas off the coast of Chile and Peru — both events scheduled months before. The consensus of the WSAG undoubtedly was relief at Allende’s overthrow (though not his death). We were conscious of the danger that we might be blamed for both. In the post-Vietnam, Watergate atmosphere, the United States had to bend over backward to avoid charges of American complicity in an event that everyone in the room considered in our national interest.
With this in min
d, the WSAG advised the President that the issue of diplomatic recognition be muted. As a general proposition we recognize countries, not governments. Practically, however, we would do our utmost to avoid being among the first to acknowledge and deal with the new government. We would, as I wrote the President, favor “a low-key posture to allow time for Latin American governments and possibly some Europeans to announce the continuation of their relations.” Such a course, I argued — with wild optimism — would “defuse any charge of our implication which would not only be damaging to us but more importantly to the new Chilean government.” We recommended, however, that Ambassador Davis inform the new Chilean authorities discreetly and through an intermediary that our basic disposition was favorable. The delay in formal recognition, they should understand, was in our mutual interest.
With respect to economic aid, an interagency task force was assigned to anticipate requests from Chile and propose suitable responses. We decided routinely to fulfill the military supply obligations undertaken while Allende was in office. As to the stunt fliers, we would let the Chilean government decide whether it wanted the visit to go forward. (It did not.) The naval exercise was canceled and the US Navy ordered to stay away from the Chilean coast even beyond Chile’s territorial waters. The Joint Chiefs of Staff representative objected, reasonably enough, that we could not forgo our rights to use of the high seas near every country that had undergone a revolution. To defend ourselves against the expected charge of complicity, the WSAG requested the CIA to prepare a list of all its activities in Chile over the past three years — an assignment that would hardly have been given had we planned the coup. The list would enable us to rebut inaccurate charges and to assure ourselves there had not been any unauthorized action that might be used to implicate the United States. The CIA turned up no such event. This did not, however, prevent the charges.
The first contact between the military junta and United States officials occurred the day after the coup, on September 12, when General Pinochet initiated a secret meeting with the head of the US Military Assistance Advisory Group.IX Pinochet stressed, as I reported to Nixon, that “he and his colleagues had not even hinted to us beforehand of their planned action and said he thought it had been better that way.” The junta’s fundamental desire was to restore the traditional ties of friendship with the United States. Chile needed help with food and one year’s debt relief. My report concluded:
Pinochet understands and is relaxed about the matter of recognition. He volunteered that obviously the U.S. should not be the first to announce its intention to continue relations with the new Chilean Government. He also recognized the advisability of avoiding too much public identification with us for the moment.
On September 13, I reported to Nixon that the Christian Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party had issued statements supporting the junta, as had the President of the Supreme Court. The WSAG met again on September 14. The key question was what assistance the United States could provide the new regime without becoming tarred by repressive actions it might take.
No specific decisions were reached at the meeting. I resisted pressures from William Simon, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, to “use the coup as a bargaining point” to settle the expropriation and debt issues. To do so, I argued, might make the new government appear to be the tool of the economic interests of multinational companies.
The pattern of ambivalence continued throughout September. At a WSAG meeting of September 20, we sidestepped a Chilean request for 1,000 helmets and 2,000 flares for night-fighting. But it was decided to announce on September 24 that the United States considered its relationship with the government of Chile to be a “continuing” one — which amounted to a recognition of the junta. By then Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, France, and Switzerland had already extended some form of recognition. Delay had thus served our strategy of not being out front. Self-interest, too, may have been the handmaiden of good policy. Nobody was eager to complicate my confirmation as Secretary of State.
Similar ambivalence marked our response to Chile’s requests for economic aid. Ambassador Davis was authorized to inform the Chilean government that we would assist with emergency food and medical supplies. We were prepared to discuss middle- and long-term economic needs. The WSAG decided to send a team to assess those needs if the junta requested it.
The junta was meanwhile tightening its grip. On September 21, it outlawed the Marxist political parties and declared the non-Marxist parties to be “in recess.” On September 25 it abolished the pro-Allende Central Labor Confederation, removed all mayors and city councilmen, and shortly thereafter took control of the universities by replacing the rectors with military delegates.
On September 27, the junta appealed to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for assistance to rescue Chile from “the brink of bankruptcy.” It promised to “create the conditions that will form an environment in which external assistance can prove effective.” On September 28 the new Foreign Minister, Rear Admiral Ismael Huerta, declared Chile’s willingness to resume negotiations on compensation for American copper companies whose Chilean properties had been nationalized. Agencies administering food and price controls were abolished, and the government pledged to restore lands illegally expropriated under Allende. The Chilean escudo was devalued by 143 percent.
We continued to walk our tightrope, trying to balance our conviction that developments within Chile were geopolitically in our national interest with our view that too ardent an embrace might embarrass us domestically with the Congressional majority, always suspicious of conservative governments. Publicly we maintained some distance from the military government; privately we responded to several of its requests. On October 1, I told my State Department staff:
that so far as the new government of Chile is concerned, we should not support moves against them by seeming to dissociate ourselves from the Chileans and on the other hand should not be in a position of defending what they are doing in Santiago.
In accordance with this, it was decided the following day that Foreign Minister Huerta, who was in New York for the UN General Assembly, should not be excluded from the Secretary of State’s luncheon for the heads of the Latin American delegations on the ground that his government was not yet fully recognized; he should be seated in accordance with regular protocol. And I agreed to meet Huerta during his stay in the United States. That all these matters should have required formal decisions was a reflection of the atmosphere of the times in which the overthrow of a radical government by its own people would be almost ritualistically ascribed to America’s pernicious influence.
Our meeting took place on October 11. A naval officer of great courtesy but no experience in diplomacy, Huerta was genuinely baffled on how to deal with this strange country whose press and Congress were increasingly antagonistic to a friendly government in Santiago while they had largely ignored, or been mildly sympathetic to, a Marxist predecessor explicitly whipping up anti-American radicalism throughout the Western Hemisphere. He was convinced that the Chilean military had saved Chile from a totalitarian regime and the United States from an enemy — and he was right in both judgments. When I warned that Chile would pay a heavy price in its international image if it resorted to brutal repression, he replied that his government’s first priority was to control the “internal situation.” I stressed that we considered the new government basically in our interest but that I would feel free to call to his attention actions by the junta that might weaken its international standing — a delicate way of raising the human rights issue.
It soon emerged that there were major obstacles to assisting the new Chilean authorities. To be sure, loans from private banks increased sharply as the expropriation issues were settled and the austerity program began to take effect. But the intensity of feeling against military governments in the post-Vietnam, Watergate Congress made it very hard to obtain governmental aid. The Commodity Credit Corporation loaned $24 million to replace food s
hipments from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union that had been turned around on the high seas on the day of the coup. (This gave dramatic proof of the political motivations of Soviet aid programs.) In mid-November, our Department of Agriculture granted Chile an additional loan of $28 million. For the rest, we relied primarily on the PL–480 food program as a vehicle for meeting Chilean needs. Food assistance was less controversial since it would go to the hungry and because the Administration had considerable discretion in allocating it.
Ironically, the Nixon Administration was reluctant to carry out agreements on military supply even when they had been made with Allende’s government, lest they cause an explosion in Congress jeopardizing our entire foreign aid program. For this reason the delivery to Chile of three destroyers — promised to Allende! — was delayed by several weeks until the foreign aid bill had passed.
A Chilean economic delegation arrived in Washington on December 12, and on December 21 State and Treasury announced that an agreement had finally been signed rescheduling Chile’s debt payments to the United States (totaling $124 million) for the period from November 1971 through December 1972. Chile began making payments in accordance with the new schedule. It reiterated its commitment to fulfill all the provisions of the creditor nations’ agreement of April 1972 and, in particular, its intention to negotiate with the companies on just compensation for nationalized properties. Rescheduling of Chile’s debt for 1973 and 1974 was to be taken up at a meeting of the Paris Club in February 1974.
All of these maneuvers obscured the fundamental problem: How was the United States to reconcile its geopolitical interests and its concern for human rights? It would be idle to deny that we felt a sense of relief at Allende’s collapse. The new Chilean government, whatever its faults, would not assault our interests in every international forum as its predecessor had done. It would not be a haven for terrorists from all over the world threatening to solidify totalitarianism in Chile and to subvert neighboring Western Hemisphere governments. We could not convince ourselves that undermining the new government would serve either the cause of human rights or our own security. Yet there was no blinking the fact, either, that the very opposition parties and newspapers that we had attempted to keep alive under Allende were suppressed by the junta. The imposition of an authoritarian regime in a country with the longstanding democratic tradition of Chile was a special pity — but the circumstances that brought it about were extraordinary, too.
Years of Upheaval Page 61