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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:12 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| why did the first attempt on the 19th transpire with tear gas grenades provided by the U.S.? |
I don't know what you're talking about at this point. There were three, bumbling attempts to abduct Schneider, the last one fatal, but none of them involving the use of tear gas grenades. I've read on the tear gas grenades in the Church Committee report, but it did not strike me as something that actually had occurred. I've seen little or nothing on these grenades in the Chile Declassification Project.
CIA did pass $50K to Valenzuela's group to cover the costs of the abduction, it passed three submachine guns to him, and, I believe, also about 500 rounds of ammunition to go with those weapons -- supposedly Valenzuela was using Puerto Rican mercenaries to carry out the abduction, and supposedly Viaux had planned to use right-wing students who were already backing him, because neither wanted to be implicated in the abduction. CIA had also already taken out $250K in life insurance policies for Viaux and his associates, as they asked for it as a sign of good faith that Washington would really back them. (They also asked for a weapons airdrop, but this made Helms and others very suspicious of them -- why would a flag officer need a foreign power to airdrop weapons for a coup attempt? Helms and Karamessines asked -- and Viaux stopped asking for this.)
Later, Viaux apparently attempted to blackmail CIA, promising that if the courts-martial convicted him that he would publish a detailed notebook he had kept of the affair, and had since deposited in a foreign safe-deposit box...but that is another story -- I think they paid him "hush" money after he was convicted and exiled, although I'm not sure if this was actually paid or just talked about, and, if paid, how much. I think one official proposed a single $10K payment to Viaux and $10K to each of his followers who were convicted.
In any case, here's how Schneider's death transpired:
The conspiracy arranged for Schneider to attend an Army "stag party" on the evening of 19 October. They planned to kidnap Schneider there. Schneider, however, inadvertently thwarted the plan when he left in his private vehicle instead of his official car. His would-be abductors were inexperienced in operations and could not improvise. On the following day the conspirators again lost Schneider's vehicle in traffic after he left the Ministry of Defense that afternoon at rush hour, on the Alameda.
On the morning of 22 October 1970 Schneider's luck expired. The general's abductors forced him to stop while he was traveling to the Ministry of Defense. They used a sledgehammer and handguns to force Schneider out of his vehicle, but he drew his sidearm and exchanged gunfire. The abductors shot Schneider several times and he died from his wounds three days later. This was clearly a murder but not an assassination. Again, this is the Church Committee's conclusion and not mine. I simply find no evidence to undermine this conclusion or to suggest another conclusion.
In_seoul_2003, I think I've shown good faith here in meeting you where you want me to meet you, to discuss the U.S. role in all of its fine details.
Are you able to discuss, in detail, Allende's bad politics, the Chilean armed forces' independent decision to move against the govt in '73, and Havana and Moscow's roles in polarizing Chile and backing and encouraging a rather chaotic regime? Or are you only interested in the doings of Washington and U.S.-based transnationals? |
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in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 5:57 am Post subject: |
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Last edited by in_seoul_2003 on Fri Aug 17, 2007 7:55 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 6:30 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
"As you know, In_seoul_2003, Washington's strategic goal in Chile was to counter the Soviet- and Cuban-backed model for revolutionary change in Latin America with an alternative model for democratic left-of-center reform"
Gopher, if you insist that the Chilean military would likely have overthrown Allende even without U.S. intervention, then I may agree with you (after all even Allende's translator, Marc Cooper, says as much) as long as it's tempered with American complicity in the murder of a Chilean general who was opposed to the overthrow of Allende. And this is the extent of my willingness to make our exchanges meet on some common ground.
As for the above quote, I know nothing of the sort. In fact, I'm quite surprised that you would say this given my explicit and rather detailed rejection of the idea in several posts earlier on. Absolutely not. |
In_seoul_2003: with respect to your points that I've placed in italics, I don't disagree with what you wrote very much. The fact is that the U.S. was involved in the coup, it's just that Washington didn't create, organize, or supervise it -- it looks to me like the U.S. did cultivate, enable, and enhance it in many respects, but still, that coup took on a life of its own, and its genesis was in the Chilean armed forces, not in a Langley conference room or the Oval Office.
On the underlined portion of your commentary, and without dragging detailed evidence into this, U.S. involvement in Chilean elections and Chilean affairs, between 1962-1973 was part of the overall U.S. response to the Cuban Revolution and fidelismo in Latin America. The Alliance for Progress was the umbrella program, and, as you know, it aimed to reform and modernize the region in order to take the wind out of Castro's sails. It included large grants in aid (financial, technical, and military), educational programs, counterinsurgency training and advice (e.g. the School of the Americas), and CIA-sponsored covert action. It was already dead (for several reasons) by the time Nixon officially killed it and reverted to a traditional program of strict military aid in 1969-1970.
So you can't take U.S. involvement in Chile out of that context -- it was a response to Castro's efforts to lead, or at least cultivate, enhance, and aid guerrilla movements throughout the western hemisphere. At least I don't, several professional historians I know and interact with don't, and the Church Committee didn't either.
Rather than arguing the point with you, however, I'm hoping that you'll agree to disagree with me on this, and let me thank you for your views, so that we can move on to other projects. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2005 7:07 am Post subject: ... |
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| So you can't take U.S. involvement in Chile out of that context |
Hmm. You suggest, "No one anticipated what Pinochet would do." Is that in or out of context? |
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in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 3:38 am Post subject: |
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Last edited by in_seoul_2003 on Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:11 am; edited 1 time in total |
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in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 3:42 am Post subject: |
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Last edited by in_seoul_2003 on Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 4:26 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| ...Cuba is itself a certain product of America's subversive acts in Cuba, then, what we have here is a very fascinating context, particularly when this context is multipled by the preceding two. We have a web here, the likes of which cannot be singularly reduced to one (not even several) context... |
When I read your language here (and elsewhere), I ask myself: what the hell are we arguing about?
But when we go into details, my doubts quickly fade away.
You dismiss the influence of fidelismo and the well-known Soviet perception of its own leadership concerning the spread of world Communism as "a joke."
I think that you may be caught up in revisionist thinking on this point, that is, that the U.S. forced the Cold War down everyone's throat, ignoring local contexts, and perceiving everything in a non-existent East-West conflict.
This tendency to exaggerate the Soviet threat was certainly the case in Vietnam in the '60s and also in Central America in the '80s.
The Soviets were still there, however. They just weren't pulling the strings like Washington continually alleged.
But this was not the case in Chile between '62-'73, although Allende was his own man and no Soviet puppet -- and I never said or implied that he was. The Soviets were behind the Chilean Communist Party, passing it grants of money through KGB front companies, even indirectly contributing $100K to Allende's 1970 campaign, and encouraging the Communists to bring about the revolution in their own way, esp. between 1962 and 1973.
So I don't see it the way that you do, and, as I've referenced before, neither did the United States Senate, in a committee that was openly hostile to the Nixon Administration and particularly to the CIA. Read the Church Committee's staff report again if you don't believe me. (I'm not interested in citing detailed evidence anymore; I think I've gotten my point across as best I can; additional citations won't change much.)
Again, and I won't go into too much detail here, you seem entirely unaware of such Soviet foreign policy tools as its "International Union Fund for Aid to Worker Organizations of the Left," initially headquartered in Bucharest. You seem entirely unaware of the effect Castro's revolution had on Soviet foreign policy in Latin America, especially in Chile. Why do you think the Soviets separated Latin America from the United States in KGB's operations and analysis divisions after 1959 (before this year it was just a Western Hemisphere division and, according to former Soviet leaders, Latin America seemed like something of an untouchable "exotic backwater.")? Why do you think Moscow's foreign ministry created a Latin America division and the Russian Academy of Sciences founded a Latin American Institute and published a new journal, Latin America, after 1959? Why did several strategic Soviet universities, for example, Moscow's Lomonsov University, begin offering Latin American Studies programs, training a cadre of experts and advisers on the region's affairs, after 1959?
Were these developments related to former Sub-Director of KGB General Nikolai Leonov's admission that his intelligence organization saw Latin America as a newly opened "hunting ground" after 1959, with new possibilities, with new rules to the game, and where Moscow clearly understood that it could systematically undermine U.S. influence in the region and drive wedges between the U.S. and individual Latin American states on a case by case basis? I believe it did. And, are you sure you've taken a look at the evidence I've linked here on the very tight relationship between Moscow and the Chilean Communist Party, dating back to the Second World War, and the increasingly close relationship between Moscow and the Allende regime -- $100 million arms sales, $30 million cash loans, increased trade, even a GOSPLAN mission to Santiago in 1973?
Respectfully suggest, however, again, that we agree to disagree here, and call it a day. I truly respect your ability to debate me on these (and undoubtedly other) issues. You are clearly very well informed, intelligent, and reasonable.
Because of our tendencies to disagree on fine details, however, I'm not going to get into the history of U.S.-Cuban relations with you. And in any case, I flatly take no issue with anything you wrote about U.S.-Cuban relations above.
Last edited by Gopher on Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:46 pm; edited 7 times in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 7:50 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| The fundamental flaw with such an argument is not only that the U.S. is on record as stating that they did not consider Allende such a threat... |
I think we are arguing over two different points here, and we are not on the same page. You're talking about fall 1970; I'm talking about 1962-1973, with particular emphasis on why Washington got involved in Chile in 1962-1963. Here it goes:
PostWar European affairs led Washington to engage in massive, overlapping interventionist programs from the late 1940s there. Stalin was threatening Western Europe, and the U.S. and its allies did not want him to have influence there. Berlin, France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey: these were the contested areas. And they were very contested areas.
Moscow controlled the French and Italian labor unions, and, in Italy in particular, the Soviets were threatening to bring down Italian democracy through covert action -- recall that they had already done this in Czechoslovakia.
Washington responded massively: the Truman Doctrine and NATO, the Marshall Plan, and CIA-sponsored covert action, namely, they matched the Soviet efforts to influence public opinion and elections in this theater. See Operations LARGO (France) and PIKESTAFF (Italy).
The Italian election ops were seen as one of CIA's great Cold War success stories, involving not only Washington, but the Vatican and, of course European and especially Italian Christian Democrats.
First the Korean War came out of nowhere (CIA failed to predict it) and convinced many in Washington that World War III had arrived. Then, approximately one decade later, Fidel Castro arrived in Latin America. He proposed to bring down govts all over Latin America, replace them with Marxist or Socialist states, and subvert U.S. influence in the region and elsewhere (see especially subSaharan Africa). Castro also told the Communists to get off their asses and make revolution: the job of revolutionaries, he and Che said, is to bring about the revolution, not talk about it theoretically.
The Soviets backed Castro at first, but they grew increasingly concerned that they, like Washington, could not afford any more "Cubas" either. So, in a sense, the Soviets and the Cubans competed in Latin America: Moscow backed orthodox Communists like the Chilean Communist Party; Castro backed militant revolutionaries like Allende. Inside Chile these were real differences, but the Communists and the Socialists also collaborated, first through the FRAP coaltion, then the Popular Unity coalition in 1970.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. (backed by the Vatican, the Italian Christian Democrats, and other allies, including Brazilian statesmen like Kubischeck) responded with the Alliance for Progress, counterinsurgency, and a series of CIA-sponsored covert operations that moved to modernize and democratize the region as an alternative to Castro's Soviet-backed model of revolutionary change. Indeed, the Alliance (and all its sub-programs cited above) sought to alleviate the region's poverty and general backwardness to undermine fidelismo's influence there. It was a proactive style of government.
In 1962-1963, then, the Kennedy Administration, followed by the Johnson Administration, selected Chile as its showcase for democracy. They selected -- no surprise -- the Chilean Christian Democratic Party, whose most prominent factions, led by Frei, were promising a "Revolution in Liberty." Washington (and its allies) moved into Chile, then, in this specific context: they transplanted the Italian operation there.
They enjoyed immense success in the 1964 elections. Frei won more than half the vote. Their involvement was continuous and systematic through 1967, when the Ramparts scandal forced CIA to begin dismantling its propaganda operations.
However, the Chilean Christian Democrats weren't the Italian Christian Democrats, Chile was not Italy, and indeed, South America was not Western Europe.
It was a Eurocentric flaw. It was perhaps the most common flaw I've found in all of CIA's doings in Latin America. What worked for the OSS in wartime Europe did not work for the CIA in peacetime Latin America. They seem to never have understood this.
In any case, the situation became unteneable for Washington by the late 1960s. The Christian Democrats' program had awakened more hopes than any reformist govt could fulfill. The right was no longer willing to collaborate at all with the Chrisitian Democrats either, so the moderates fell by the wayside. It was not unlike Mexico under Madero. Diaz supposedly once said: "Don't stampede my horses." Well, a whole lot of people had stampeded the Chilean horses by the late 1960s.
Moreover, Nixon won in 1968. And he didn't care about the Alliance, about showcases for democracy, or about Chilean affairs or anyone else. He reverted to a program of strict miiltary assistance, and instructed CIA to merely oppose Allende without supporting anyone. (Those types of negative political campaigns, however, don't usually work.)
It was a reactive program after 1968-1969.
It became acutely reactive after Allende won, when, as you point out, the U.S. opposed an Allende inaguration and an Allende presidency for increasingly hegemonic reasons and not so much for anticommunism, although Helms, Kissinger, and Mitchell, in a 40 Committee meeting just after Allende's victory, expressed serious concerns that Allende would be worse than Castro, and would transform Chile into a police state -- "consolodate his position" was one way of saying this in the 40 Committee meetings. Backing "the opposition," then, was one strategy to prevent Allende from "consolidating" his position. (A difference between us is that you seem to think of these descriptions as euphemisms for something more sinister, while I think these officials probably meant what they said.)
So the older context from the early 1960s had morphed into this one: the Soviets were very busy on their Chinese border, and they were busy and increasingly concerned in Eastern Europe, like in Czechosovakia in particular, and Che Guevara was dead -- executed in Bolivia in 1967.)
In this environment, in the environment of the DI's NSSM 97, and Vaky's advice to Kissinger that Allende was "not a mortal threat" to the U.S., that is, Nixon simply threw a temper tantrum and screamed at CIA, according to Helms, "to do something, for God's sake, get in there and do anything..." Karamessines backs this up in his testimony before the Church Committee where he states that he was under "constant, constant...just contiunal pressure...it was coming from the White House."
Following this, Nixon shifted to other levers to harm and pressure the Allende regime, it was almost as personal as JFK and RFK's personal little war against Castro between 1961-1963, otherwise known as MONGOOSE or Task Force W ("W" for William Walker, by the way).
CIA was instructed to go low profile, and continue to support "the opposition" (the Christian Democrats, the National Party, El Mercurio, etc.), to prevent Allende's consolidation of power, and to also monitor and report on any coup plotting that might have been undertaken by locals.
When Shackley succeeded Broe as chief of Latin American operations in 1972, for example, he met with his counterpart at State, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Charles Meyer. Meyer brought Shackley up to speed and also cautioned him "to keep focused" on Chilean affairs:
"If the military decides to take Allende out with a coup, don't let that be a surprise on the day it occurs�Should Allende consolidate power and start to turn Chile into a police state � la Cuba, Washington can't afford to be blind or deaf. We must have a continuous and timely flow of intelligence from Chile. Sorting out the options in Chile is vastly more important than chasing Soviets or finding out whether the Communist Party of Brazil is thinking about initiating a war of national liberation."
But as far as some longterm Track II-like conspiracy, like Kornbluh seems to continue to allege (and you, too?), that would be a laughable claim. Nixon purged the CIA throughout most of 1973 (between 1970-1973: 3 DCIs and the related senior execs came and went, 3 DDPs, and 3 Chiefs of Western Hemisphere as well, not to mention the 7 to 10 percent of the operations directorate that Schlesinger simply threw out the door); the President had no faith whatsoever in CIA; and CIA formed no special task force and planned no operations designed to overthrow the Allende regime between November 1970 and September 1973. Phillips was back in Rio, where he was Chief of Station, after November 1973, having earlier reported that, after Schneider's death, "Track II had no more rails" to go on.
Last edited by Gopher on Sat Sep 17, 2005 8:57 pm; edited 6 times in total |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 8:58 am Post subject: ... |
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| I think that you may be caught up in revisionist thinking on this point, that is, that the U.S. forced the Cold War down everyone's throat, ignoring local contexts, and perceiving everything in a non-existent East-West conflict. |
Translation: I disagree with you. To be diplomatic, I'm now going to tell you what you think. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:07 am Post subject: Re: ... |
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| Nowhere Man wrote: |
| gopher wrote: |
| I think that you may be caught up in revisionist thinking on this point, that is, that the U.S. forced the Cold War down everyone's throat, ignoring local contexts, and perceiving everything in a non-existent East-West conflict. |
Translation: I disagree with you. To be diplomatic, I'm now going to tell you what you think. |
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