Beyond  /  Discovery

“Allende Wins”

Chile voted calmly to have a Marxist-Leninist state, the first nation in the world to make this choice freely and knowingly, on September 4, 1970.

Even before the votes were fully counted, Allende’s election triggered a series of covert U.S. contingency plans designed to block his inauguration. Since no candidate had won a plurality of the balloting, the strategy focused on influencing the October 24, 1970, vote of the Chilean Congress to ratify the winner—through bribery and economic disruption, and a possible military coup. On the day of the election, Kissinger’s office reviewed a TOP SECRET/EYES ONLY CIA planning paper for the “40 Committee” which approved covert operations. The CIA initially saw “no chance that any action by US can influence [Chilean] Congressional vote to defeat Allende”—a position that Nixon and Kissinger refused to accept. The next day, CIA headquarters transmitted a cable to its station chief in Santiago asking for an assessment on “chances of overturning an Allende’s victory.”

Proposals to covertly intervene in Chile’s political affairs did prompt a brief debate inside the Nixon administration. Viron “Pete” Vaky, a State Department official assigned to Kissinger’s office, argued that efforts to bribe Chilean congressmen, if exposed, “would be disastrous, this administration’s Bay of Pigs.” Wimberley Coerr in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research also used the “Pigs’ Bay” analogy in presenting his “personal view” on “Post-September 4 Operations.” Coerr argued that “subornation” of Chile’s internal political system was “beyond the pale” and “would hurt our prestige and effectiveness in Latin America (not to mention the United States Government’s reputation with its own citizens) even more than did Pigs’ Bay.” Secretary of State William Rogers also expressed his concern about “getting caught doing something.” “After all we’ve said about elections,” Rogers stated in a phone call to Kissinger, “if the first time a Communist wins the U.S. tries to prevent the constitutional process from coming into play we will look very bad.”

Both Nixon and Kissinger rejected these arguments as well as the broader State Department position that the U.S. should establish a modus vivendi with Allende and bolster the opposition in the next presidential election in 1976. On September 12, they discussed Allende’s election on the phone. “Does State want to give [Chile] aid?,” Nixon asked. “Let Alicande [sic] come in and see what we work out and work out opposition to him,” Kissinger responded describing the State Department position. “Like against Castro? Like in Czech?,” Nixon responded. “The same people said the same thing. Don’t let them do that,” the President instructed Kissinger.

Three days later on September 15, 1970, Nixon gave an explicit order to CIA Director Richard Helms to foment a military coup in Chile in order to prevent Allende’s inauguration.