Chile's Buried Secrets

[Octafish]

Important info for anyone interested in how we got to destroying democracy at home...



President Salvador Allende and bodyguards on his last day, Sept. 11, 1973.

Chile's buried secrets

By exhuming the body of Salvador Allende, an official inquiry aims to lay the past to rest.

By Peter Kornbluh and Marc Cooper
The Los Angeles Times
May 23, 2011
Op-Ed

Nearly 40 years after the violent military coup in which he perished, the remains of former Chilean President Salvador Allende will be exhumed in Santiago on Monday under the supervision of an investigating magistrate and a team of forensic experts.

SNIP...

Allende's disinterment comes as part of a sweeping criminal probe of about 725 deaths that took place under the military regime that ruled in the wake of the coup. These deaths, like Allende's, have never been fully investigated by the Chilean courts.

SNIP...

For decades, many believed that the military had executed him, a suspicion reinforced by the eventual discovery of tapes of military communications the day of the coup in which Pinochet is heard threatening to have Allende killed even if he surrendered. "Kill the bitch and you kill the litter," Pinochet declared.

SNIP...

Allende's death symbolized the murder of one of the hemisphere's most developed and civilized democracies. "My sacrifice will not be in vain," he declared in his last radio transmission to the nation as the military attacked the presidential palace. "…It will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice and treason." The methodical judicial examination of the events of Sept. 11, 1973, which cost Allende his life, will advance his final prophecy and could lead to the felony punishment of those who perpetrate political violence in the future.

CONTINUED...

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cooper-chile-allende-20110523,0,4609399,print.story

"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves... l don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." -- Henry Kissinger on the US-backed coup d'etat in Chile.

Anyone think Kissinger and his masters feel the same about voters in other, eh, jurisdictions?

[dipsydoodle]

1. The US's buried secrets more like it.

Allende either committed suicide or was driven to do so.

The background to Chile's democratically elected President no longer being considered desirable by the US was his intention to nationalise the copper mines. ITT , the world's largest users of copper at that time , lent on the Republican party to take action. That was similar in nature to a prior event when United Fruit needed action against Guatemala to prevent unused land they owned being nationalised. Both of the Dulles brothers, SOS and head of the CIA, had interests in United Fruit. In some respects "communism" may be consider to have been an excuse : corporate interests may be more accurate.

GRAPHIC WARNING :
We've got a picture in the Latin Forum of Allende's body and remarks as to whether it was likely to have been suicide. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=405&topic_id=48520

Kissinger & Co's first choice to replace Allende wasn't Pinochet : it was General Rene Schneider. Schneider declined because although he didn't support Allende he did recognise that Allende had been democratically elected. Schneider was assassinated . http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2232480 His family did take the case to a French court. There is a current arrest warrant out on Kissinger in France in connection with this.

[Octafish]

6. Heartbreaking imagery and report.

Thank you, dipsydoodle. I did not know about the controversies regarding the wounds, rifle and other evidence. Going from my own eyes and imagination, it seems like someone put a rifle under Allende's chin and opened fire. A suicide would put the rifle in the mouth in order to make sure one's teeth would not deflect the trajectory of the bullet.

Something to add about Mr. Dulles' successors and what they allowed to happen to innocent people, including American citizens:

LETELIER-MOFFITT ASSASSINATION
30 YEARS LATER

National Security Archive calls for Release of Withheld Documents Relating to Pinochet's Role in Infamous Act of Terrorism in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 1976

Archive releases new document on CIA approach to Manuel Contreras on Operation Condor

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 199

By Peter Kornbluh
Posted - September 20, 2006

Washington, DC, September 20, 2006 - On the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, the National Security Archive today called on the U.S. government to release all documents relating to the role of General Augusto Pinochet in the car bombing that brought terrorism to the capital city of the United States on September 21, 1976.

Hundreds of documents implicating Pinochet in authorizing and covering up the crime were due to be declassified under the Clinton administration but were withheld in the spring of 2000 as evidence for a Justice Department investigation into the retired dictator's role. After more than six years, according to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Chile Documentation Project, it is time to release them. "If there is not going to be a legal indictment," Kornbluh said, "the documents can and will provide an indictment of history."

The Archive today released a declassified memo to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reporting on a CIA approach in early October 1976 to the head of the Chilean secret police, Manuel Contreras, regarding U.S. concerns about Operation Condor assassination plots. The secret memo, written by Kissinger's deputy for Latin America, Harry Schlaudeman, noted that Contreras had denied that "Operation Condor has any other purpose than the exchange of intelligence." While the car bombing in downtown Washington, D.C. that killed Letelier and Moffitt took place on September 21, 1976, the memo contains no reference to any discussion with Contreras about the assassinations--even though DINA was widely considered to be the most likely perpetrator of the crime. In 1978, Contreras was indicted by a U.S. Grand Jury for directing the terrorist attack.

The document was obtained by Kornbluh under the Freedom of Information Act.

The memorandum to Kissinger adds to a series of documents that have been obtained by the National Security Archive that shed light on what the U.S. government knew about Operation Condor--a collaboration of Southern Cone secret police services to track down, abduct, torture, and assassinate opponents in the mid and late 1970s--and what actions it took or failed to take prior to the Letelier-Moffitt assassination. On August 23, 1976, Kissinger's office sent a carefully-worded demarche for U.S. ambassadors in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay to deliver to their host governments to halt assassination missions. But the next day, U.S. Ambassador to Chile David Popper balked at approaching Pinochet because "he might take as an insult any inference that he was connected with such assassination plots." Instead Popper requested permission to send the CIA station chief to talk to Contreras. For reasons that remain hidden in still-classified documents, Schlaudeman did not authorize that approach until October 4, two weeks after the car bombing in Washington.

Indeed, on September 20, 1976, the day before the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, Schlaudeman ordered his own deputy to tell the Southern Cone ambassadors "to take no further action" on pressuring the Condor nations to halt assassination plotting, because "there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme." In his October 8 memo to Kissinger transmitting the CIA memorandum of conversation with Col. Contreras, Schlaudeman argued that "the approach to Contreras seems to me to be sufficient action for the time being" because "the Chileans are the prime movers in Operation Condor."

CONTINUED...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/index.htm

What makes me crazy: What I consider criminal, others call patriotic. Thank you for knowing the difference, dipsydoodle.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Octafish]

8. Here's another secret weapon in the war on warmongers: Poetry.

Like all true art, it contains truth.

General Pinochet at the Bookstore

Santiago, Chile, July 2004

The general's limo parked at the corner of San Diego street
and his bodyguards escorted him to the bookstore
called La Oportunidad, so he could browse
for rare works of history.

There were no bloody fingerprints left on the pages.
No books turned to ash at his touch.
He did not track the soil of mass graves on his shoes,
nor did his eyes glow red with a demon's heat.

Worse: His hands were scrubbed, and his eyes were blue,
and the dementia that raged in his head like a demon,
making the general's trial impossible, had disappeared.

Desaparecido: like thousands dead but not dead,
as the crowd reminded the general,
gathered outside the bookstore to jeer
when he scurried away with his bodyguards,
so much smaller in person.

from "The Republic of Poetry" by Martin Espada

After reading that, I feel as if I've met the guy. Certainly reminds me of people I know.

PS: Thank you for the heads-up on that article. Most informative and telling, dude.

[themadstork]

3. There were two articles in the NYT yesterday regarding CIA coups.

The 1953 guatemala coup was explicitly identified as the CIA's work, but the other article managed to tell the story of the Allende coup w/o even mentioning the US.

This is part of why I want to be a historian. The bullshit propaganda historical narratives are usually the only ones endorsed by the MSM, which, as a writer inspired greatly by the Emerson of Circles/Uriel, makes the field seem ripe for mining the insecurities of "polite society." My dream work of history is probably not entirely academic--a mix of factual analysis, careful interpretation, and literary satire laced with Emerson's immortal mocking ironies. Still trying to figure out how to make such a book.

[a la izquierda]

5. 1954, you mean.

[Octafish]

16. We're still -- to this day -- running coups on behalf of the most un-democratic parties.

The rich oligarchs ruining said nations, such as Honduras, or Haiti, and the corporations that are willing to make war on labor leaders and other unarmed and innocent proponents for progress like in Columbia.

Thank you for the heads-up on the NYT articles. I look forward to reading them.

BTW: The Mad Stork was one hell of a linebacker.

[mmonk]

4. Yes, I'm planning something soon concerning the first 9/11.

[dipsydoodle]

11. This might interest you too

assuming you've not already seen it.

When The Mountains Tremble : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM5uXwAVIGE that's part 1. I'll have to leave it to you to find the parts 2 , 3 etc. Concerns Guatemala and includes ref to 1954 - combination of documentary and reenactment. Other details of the film here ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Mountains_Tremble

[mmonk]

14. Thanks.

[Octafish]

18. I look forward to reading your work, mmonk.

In addition, I look forward to purchasing a signed copy at your lecture. Your subject is central to democracy -- ours in the United States and throughout the world. Kissinger and the people and organizations for whom he toils hold no love for democracy. The record shows they are most willing to use bullets over ballots.

[a la izquierda]

7. The blame also lays with the Chilean right.

The US alone could not have caused 9/11/1973. There would have been significantly more blowback had the US attempted to bomb the shit out of Santiago and Valparaiso, for example. We must remember that Allende barely won the 1970 election: something like 36% for Allende to 35% for Alessandri and 28% for Tomic. The decision was thrown to the National Assembly (or Senate, can't remember exactly what they call it there)so, he was by no means overwhelmingly popular. At the same time, had the right not adamantly HATED the man and his programs, the US couldn't have used its financial means to overthrow him.

This is accepted throughout the academy, even if many on the far left refuse to believe it (and I'm pretty far left politically- it's not a popular ideology, despite it's factuality).

[H2O Man]

9. The more things don't change,

the more they stay the same.

Recommended.

[malaise]

10. Kissinger sounds like Paul Ryan on MTP last

Sunday.

[dipsydoodle]

12. Kissenger won't sound right until he

croaks.

[malaise]

15. Ditto

:fistbump:

[left is right]

13. He is not dressed like a man that is contemplating suicide in the very near future

flak helmet, surrounded by armed body guards, and unless he normally wore ill-fitting clothes he was wearing a bullet-proof vest. All of this says to me that he desperately wants to stay alive

[gratuitous]

17. Now, how sensible is that?

Why can't the Chileans look forward to the future, instead of lookin' backwards to the past? Follow the sterling example of the United States: If it's too messy or inconvenient, just ignore it. Forget it happened. Besides, you get poking around too much into things, and it's possible some of your own friends and allies might get a little of the taint on them. Better to just let those sleeping dogs lie. Hope! Change!

Here's hoping that the U.S. (which does an outstanding job of lecturing other countries about their past) doesn't have to wait 40 years or more to examine some of the crimes of recent years. You'd think a constitutional lawyer would appreciate the connection between justice delayed and justice denied. But, considering what our country calls "justice" anymore, it isn't to be marveled at.