The Allende Affair

“Kissinger and Chile: The Myth That Will Not Die” by Mark Falcoff, in Commentary (Nov. 2003), 165 E. 56th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.

The 1973 military coup d’état that deposed Chile’s president Salvador Allende, ushering in a decade and a half of repression during which more than 3,000 Chileans were murdered or mysteriously “disappeared,” is often blamed by the Left on Henry Kissinger and the United States. Journalist Christopher Hitchens has made the case for the prosecution in a BBC documentary and other forums. Falcoff, a Latin America specialist at the American Enter­prise Institute, rises to the defense.

In the presidential election of September 4, 1970, three years before the coup (and his death), Allende, a Marxist with “strong Soviet-bloc and Cuban connections,” says Falcoff, received 36.3 percent of the vote—1.4 percentage points more than his nearest rival—and the Chilean Congress was expected to confirm him as the winner on October 24.

In Washington, President Richard Nixon was “deeply distressed” at this turn of events, Falcoff notes, and ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to prevent an Allende presidency. Covert efforts were made, but without success. Roberto Viaux , a cashiered Chilean general, was eager to take on the challenge but was judged “not a good bet,” according to Falcoff. On October 15, national security adviser Kissinger “ordered the Viaux coup ‘turned off.’”

Hitchens contends that Kissinger merely wanted “deniability.” The October 15 memo of a meeting in which he took part and a cable the next day from the CIA to its station in Santiago directed that Viaux be warned against “precipitate action” but did not “turn off” the general; if anything, they incited him “to redouble his efforts.” Falcoff says there is no evidence that Kissinger saw the CIA cable, and cites the transcript of an October 15 phone conversation in which Kissinger told Nixon, “This looks hopeless. I turned it off. Nothing would be worse than an abortive coup.” Nixon responded, “Just tell him to do nothing.”

In the event, Viaux continued with the scheme, as did the CIA station in Santiago. Just why the plot went forward is “not clear,” according to Falcoff, but Kissinger “seems to have been unaware” of it. Blocking the plotters’ way was General René Schneider, commander in chief of the Chilean army, who refused to go along with their scheme. The plan was to kidnap him and take him to Argentina for a while. But Viaux’s men bungled the kidnapping and ended up murdering Schneider on October 22. Ironically, by turning Schneider into a martyr for the Chilean army’s “constitutionalist” traditions, Falcoff says, the assassination helped assure the orderly transfer of power to the Allende administration.

Despite the tough talk in the White House in 1970, writes Falcoff, once Allende was in office, “the thrust of U.S. policy shifted to sustaining a democratic opposition and an independent press until Allende could be defeated in the presidential elections scheduled for 1976.” The “real causes” of the 1973 coup, he believes, are to be found not in Washington but in “the devastating collapse of the Chilean economy that took place during the Allende presidency, as well as in Chile’s increasingly polarized political environment.” The Allende administration itself, he concludes, brought about the situation that “drove the military into action” and led to General Augusto Pinochet’s murderous right-wing dictatorship.