Never Forget 9/11 – 1973: Why we don’t know about the CIA coup that ended the democratically elected government in Chile

Of course the local and national news media in the US are laser focused on 9/11, 2001. I can understand the need to focus on that attack, which happened 22 years ago. However, one major flaw in the reporting and how US society responded to that event in 2001, was the failure to learn from a critical examination of US foreign policy.

Instead, the response from the Bush Administration, with near unanimous bi-partisan support, was to use 9/11, 2001 as a pretext to continue to engage in an imperialist foreign policy that resulted in millions of mostly civilian deaths. 

Therefore, it is no surprise that it is not common knowledge that on September 11, 1973, the CIA, with full support from the Nixon Administration, perpetrated a coup against the democratically elected government of Chile and the ousting of President Salvador Allende. The CIA then created a space to replace Allende with one of the worst dictators in Latin American History, General Augusto Pinochet.

One year after the CIA coup in Chile, US President Gerald Ford stated that what the US had done in Chile was, “in the best interest of the people in Chile and certainly in our own best interest.” 

There has been a great deal of analysis of the 1973 CIA coup in Chile, so this post in primarily designed to direct people to several of what I think are some of the best resources on this topic. I also think that it is critically important that we come to terms with this history, since what the US did in Chile is standard practice for the US and has been since the US began taking land from Indigenous nations in what we now call North America. 

People might want to start with the excellent resources from the National Security Archives, which requests, collects and publishes US Declassified documents on US foreign policy. Their section on Chile is invaluable.

Some of the information collected by the National Security Archives on Chile has been published in book form, including declassified documents and analysis by staff members, such as the book by Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Decalssified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. 

Another excellent resources in the book by William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, particularly chapter 34.

Some excellent documentaries to watch on this subject are:

The Trials of Henry Kissinger, which has a section on the 1973 CIA coup in Chile, which you can watch at this link.

Then there is the 4 DVD set entitled, The Battle of Chile, produced by Patricio Guzman. 

Earlier today, Democracy Now! Devoted a segment of their show on the 50th Anniversary of the CIA coup in Chile, which featured the Argentine-Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman.

In addition, here are two other book titles worth exploring:

The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende’s Chile, by Jonathan Haslam

Chile and the Nazis: From Hitler to Pinochet, by Graeme S. Mount