BRINGING ON PINOCHET

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706570006-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 12, 2011
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: July 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/12 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706570006-4
i i
h~N; YORK TI~~ES li(10K REVIEW
1 July 1985
Brin in On Pinoche
g g
THE LAST TWO YEARS
OF SALVADOR ALLENDE
By Nathaniel Davis.
480 pp. I thaca, N. Y.
Cornell University Press. :24.95.
By Tad Szulc
N his poignant and illuminating tale of the
events surrounding the military coup in Chile
and the death of the elected Marxist President,
Nathaniel Davis describes the entire Chilean
drama as a "morality play" in which "the United
States assumed a central role."
A career Foreign Service officer with a firm
sense of morality, Mr. Davis was United States Am-
bassador in Santiago from October 1971 to Novem-
ber 1973. He draws from this experience judgments
that are as penetrating as they are profoundly dis-
turbing about the continuing American policies to-
ward small countries that incur Washington's idea
logical displeasure.
The great importance and timeliness of Mr.
Davis': ' `The Last Two Years of Salvador Allende"
(the same years Mr. Davis was in Chile) lies not in
any major revelations -.there are very few -but
in what it tells philosophically and politically about
the tendency of United States administrations of
both major parties to intervene in the affairs of
Latin American nations. For that matter, Amer-
ican interventions are not confined to this hemi-
sphere, and two years after his assignment to Chile
Mr. Davis resigned as Assistant Secretary of State
for African Affairs because he opposed the Ford Ad-
ministration's plans for American covert opera-
tions in Angola (his prestige, however, was enough
to assure him immediately afterward the ambassa-
dorship to Switzerland before his retirement). His
book therefore is very relevant to the Reagan Ad-
ministration's overt and covert operations designed
to oust the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua -and to
the changing justifications given for these endeav-
ors. As in the case of Chile, the United States Gov-
ernment does not acknowledge that its efforts are
intended to overthrow the Government in Nicara-
wa, and Mr. Davis provides a superb study of the
theory and practice of covert interventions.
To be sure, open United States interventions in
Latin America after World War II did occur in Cuba
(the Bay of Pigs in 1961), the Dominican Republic
(1985), and Grenada (1983), but the interventionist
enterprise in Chile was carried out indirectly and
with relative sophistication.
All these interventions were designed to stem
the possible rise of Communism in this hemisphere
-and in the eyes of Richard Nixon and his national
security adviser Henry Kissinger, the democratic
election of Salvador Allende to the Chilean presi-
dency in 1970 represented a Communist threat. Mr.
Davis emphasizes that a National Security Decision
Memorandum, issued by Mr. Kissinger on the
Presidettt's behalf a month after Allende took of-
fice, "established a policy of applying unacknowl-
edged pressure on Allende': government to prevent
its consolidation and to limit its ability to imple-
mentpolicies contrary to U.S. interests and those of
our friends." In_total secrecy, Mr. Nixon had also
authorized a plan (the so-called Track II) for a coup
d'~tat to prevent Allende': inauguration as Presi-
dent, and it remains unclear whether these instruc-
tions were ever canceled. In any event, Mr. Davis
writes that he learned of Track II only in 1975, when
a Senate committee investigated the Chileanopera-
tions oJ' the Central Intelligence Agency.
What appears to matter to Mr. Davis the most
- and I imagine it should matter to ail Americans
-'is the moral aspect of United States policies. He
refutes very credibly the charges that the Amer-
ican Government had ~ actually "masterminded"
the 1973 soup, yet he instantly notes the existence of
a debate over "U.S. moral complicity in Allende':
murder." He writes that the impact of the coup and
Allende': suicide (Mr. Davis explains in enormous
detail why he believes. it was a suicide though in
other instances he uses the word "murder" for the
Allende death) was "searing," certainly to him; it
is here that the former Ambassador assigns the
"central role" to the United States in the Chilean
"morality play."
Mr. Davis chooses not to answer his own ques-
tion about the American "moral complicity," but
the clear conclusion emerging from his book Is that,
if nothing else, the Nixon Administration had led
the Chilean military to assume that a coup against
Allende was desirable and therefore the United
States. it~vitably shares the blame (or the credit)
for it. His.~arrative shows how Washington had ap-
plied intepse economic pressures to bring Allende
down, and?rhere seems to be no doubt that the
United States had helped create a political climate
conducive to a coup even though - as Mr. Davis re-
peatedlypoints out -Allende was guilty of colossal
economic, political and ideological mismanage-
ment. In fact, Mr. Davis presents a great deal of
evidence that Allende would have been overthrown
sooner or later because of his own policies, his vacil-
lations, and the disarray he had allowed to develop
Inside his Government.
TILL, the crucial point remains that j+-mer-
ican hands in Chile were not clean - Mr.
Davis reports that the C.I.A. spent at least
i6 million on covert operations during Al-
lende': three yhars in power -and that the United
States helped kill an experiment in alternatives tol
rightist or leftist totalitariani'sms in the third world.
Allende': concept was the "Chilean Way" to social-'
ism -through elections and not revolution. This
was the first time in history that a Marxist regime
was elected, and Mr. Davis deplores Allende': tol-
eration of the often foolish behavior of his leftist
allies, which ultimately led to his defeat and death.
"All this matters," Mr. Davi's writes, "because
C~1V
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/12 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706570006-4
 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/12 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706570006-4
z
it is important that hopes of social transformation
through democracy and law be kept alive if possi-
ble, across the spectrum of the left. The Chilean
Way was the highest expression we have yet seen of
central-core Marxists trying to follow the peaceful
road to socialism."
Fifteen years after Allende was thus elected to
travel this road, the Chilean experience is obviously
crucial as the United States seeks rational solutions
in Central America and beyond. Mr. Davis advo-
cafes realism in dealing with the world around us
when he comments [hat "Socialism may not be the
best or even a good way to order a society's affairs, ~
but the ability of tree citizens to choose socialism,
or capitalism, or some other economic system, is
bevond Drice." ~
Tad Ssulc, author of "The Illusion of Peace"
aad other books on foreign affairs, is working on a
biography of Fidel Castro.
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/12 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706570006-4