United States Intervention in Chile - Pinochet Regime

Pinochet Regime

See also: Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Background histories
Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil
Chile · Paraguay
Peru · Uruguay
Events
Dirty War
National Reorganization Process
Operation Colombo · Operation Charly
Operation Gladio · Night of the Pencils
Operation Independence
Ezeiza massacre
Margarita Belén massacre
Death flights
Desaparecidos
Government leaders
Alfredo Stroessner · Augusto Pinochet
Basilio Lami Dozo · Hugo Banzer
João Figueiredo · Jorge Anaya
Jorge Rafael Videla · Leopoldo Galtieri
Targeted militias
Montoneros · ERP · Tupamaros · MIR
Principal operatives
Manuel Contreras · Stefano Delle Chiaie
Michael Townley · Luis Posada Carriles
Virgilio Paz Romero · Orlando Bosch
Hugo Campos Hermida · José López Rega
Paul Schäfer · Alfredo Astiz
Organizations responsible
DINA · Caravan of Death
Batallón de Inteligencia 601
CORU · SNI · SOA · SISMI · Triple A · CIA
Places
Esmeralda · Estadio Nacional de Chile
Villa Grimaldi · Colonia Dignidad · ESMA
Laws
Full stop
Due Obedience
Archives and reports
Archives of Terror · Rettig Report
Valech Report · National Security Archive
Reactions
CONADEP · Trial of the Juntas
Augusto Pinochet's arrest and trial
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

The U.S. provided material support to the military regime after the coup, although criticizing it in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled "CIA Activities in Chile", revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses.

CIA documents show that the CIA had close contact with members of the Chilean secret police, DINA, and its chief Manuel Contreras (paid asset from 1975 to 1977 according to the CIA in 2000). Some have alleged that the CIA's one-time payment to Contreras is proof that the U.S. approved of Operation Condor and military repression within Chile. The CIA's official documents state that at one time, some members of the intelligence community recommended making Contreras into a paid contact because of his closeness to Pinochet; the plan was rejected based on Contreras' poor human rights track record, but the single payment was made due to miscommunication.

On March 6, 2001, the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who had published several articles on Operation Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor."

In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was concerned that the U.S. connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in U.S. interest."

The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released in November 2000 on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final batch of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.

Read more about this topic:  United States Intervention In Chile

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