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WSWS : News Analysis : South Central America
Clinton's selective declassification
Chile documents expose criminal role of US foreign policy
By Bill Vann
13 July 1999
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The Clinton administration's release of some 5,800 documents
relating to the 1973 military coup in Chile has provided a
glimpse of the murderous role of US foreign policy in Latin
America and internationally.
No major US newspaper or broadcast media outlet has conducted any
serious examination of the documents. Outside of a few cursory
news reports on the day of their release, the declassification
has been treated by the American media as a non-event having to
do with the distant history of a foreign land.
The White House has itself asserted that its principal aim in
declassifying the formerly secret material is to further the
process of truth and reconciliation in Chile," as if the bloody
events there 25 years ago had nothing to do with the activities
of the US government outside of its innocent collection and
storing of reams of cables, memoranda and secret intelligence
reports on the carnage that took place there.
In reality, the documentsthough clearly the most incriminating
material remains locked in the secret archives of the CIA and the
Pentagonshed significant light on Washington's crimes against
the Chilean people. They further illuminate US complicity in the
murder, torture and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of
workers, peasants, students and others seen as real or potential
opponents of the military dictatorship and American interests.
The Clinton administration initiated the release of the documents
at the end of May largely as a damage-control operation. Mounting
international attention has been focused on the Chilean events by
the ongoing legal wrangling over Spain's demand for the
extradition of the former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, who
is in British custody. Legal arguments over General Pinochet's
crimes have inevitably touched upon Washington's involvement in
the military coup that brought him to power in 1973 as well as in
his subsequent reign of terror.
With Pinochet's detention the White House also faced renewed
demands from the families of Americans killed in the repression,
including Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, who were among those
rounded up and executed in the National Stadium in Santiago.
Whatever the motives of the White House, the thousands of
documents chronicling Washington's role in organizing and
supporting one of the most horrific bloodbaths of the twentieth
century comprise an incontestable refutation of the democratic
pretensions of US foreign policy. Coming at a time when the
Clinton administration portrays its military intervention in the
Balkans as a matter of the US standing up to the repression of a
ruthless dictator, these papers confirm once again that US
imperialism has not only defended its interests precisely through
such regimes, but has served as their principal sponsor in Latin
America and internationally.
Significantly, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
which had the most intimate involvement in the 1973 coup and the
closest working relations with the Pinochet dictatorship's
security apparatus, supplied only a fraction of the declassified
material, just 490 documents between them.
The lion's share came from the State Department and the rest from
the Justice Department, the FBI and the presidential libraries of
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
Notwithstanding the extreme selectivity of the CIA in determining
which of the massive number of documents on Chile were fit for
release and its blacking out of incriminating material in even
these files, this material still provides a glimpse of the
intimate relations that existed between the agency and the
butchers of the Chilean military.
One declassified cable sent September 8, 1973 from the CIA's
Santiago station to the Directorate of Operations in Washington
spelled out in detail the plans for the coming coup. The name of
the agency's informant was blacked out. According to this
document, the Chilean Navy had decided to begin an action in
Valparaiso ... to overthrow the Government of Salvador Allende
and that the Air Force will support this initiative. It goes on
to state that General Gustavo Leigh, the commander-in-chief of
the Air Force, has made contact with Gen. Pinochet,
commander-in-chief of the Army, who has told him that the Army
will not oppose the Navy's action.
The cable from the CIA's operatives in Chile said that their
informant believes that the Army will join the coup after the
Air Force supports the Navy. The cable concludes that the coup
will take place on September 10 or at least during the week of
Sept. 10. On that day, the CIA mission sent a new cable to
Washington providing more specific information: The coup attempt
will begin on Sept.
