National Security Archive Update, September 10, 2008

Nixon Vetoed Proposed Coexistence with an Allende Government Kissinger to the CIA: “We will not let Chile go down the drain.”

For more information contact:
Peter Kornbluh- (202) 994-7116, peter.kornbluh@gmail.com

www.nsarchive.org

Washington D.C., September 10, 2008 – On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formally secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms responding.

The telephone call transcripts—known as ‘telcons’—include previously-unreported conversations between Kissinger and President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers. Just eight days after Allende’s election, Kissinger informed the president that the State Department had recommended an approach to “see what we can work out [with Allende].” Nixon responded by instructing Kissinger: “Don’t let them do it.”

After Nixon spoke directly to Rogers, Kissinger recorded a conversation in which the Secretary of State agreed that “we ought, as you say, to cold-bloodedly decide what to do and then do it,” but warned it should be done “discreetly so that it doesn’t backfire.” Secretary Rogers predicted that “after all we have said about elections, 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.”

www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB255/index.htm

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