FYI: NEW KISSINGER ‘TELCONS’ REVEAL CHILE P LOTTING AT HIGHEST LEVELS OF U.S. GOVERNMENT

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

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

"
NEW KISSINGER 'TELCONS' REVEAL CHILE PLOTTING
AT HIGHEST LEVELS OF U.S. GOVERNMENT

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

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 255

Posted - September 10, 2008

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 formerly 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."

The telcons also reveal that just nine weeks before the Chilean
military, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and supported by the CIA,
overthrew the Allende government on September 11, 1973, Nixon called
Kissinger on July 4 to say "I think that Chilean guy might have some
problems." "Yes, I think he's definitely in difficulties," Kissinger
responded. Nixon then blamed CIA director Helms and former U.S.
Ambassador Edward Korry for failing to block Allende's inauguration
three years earlier. "They screwed it up," the President declared.

Although Kissinger never intended the public to know about these
conversations, observed Peter Kornbluh, who directs the National
Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project, he "bestowed on
history a gift that keeps on giving by secretly taping and
transcribing his phone calls."  The transcripts, Kornbluh noted,
provide historians with the ability to "eavesdrop on the most candid
conversations of the highest and most powerful U.S. officials as they
plotted covert intervention against a democratically-elected
government."
...
"

Henk Elegeert

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********