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The CIA-in-Chile Scandal at 50
- jampekka 2y ago"I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the United States succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s ghastly regime in office. The dictatorship then installed the Chicago Boys—economists trained at the University of Chicago—to reshape Chile’s economy. Consider the economic destruction, the torture and kidnappings, and multiply the numbers killed by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, and you will see just how much more devastating the first 9/11 was." - Noam Chomsky https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/noam-chomsky-responsibility-of-intellectuals-redux/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/noam-chomsky-responsib...
- animal_spirits 2y agoI by no means support the efforts of the CIA in Chile, however it is worth noting how transformative the economy of Chile has been since then.
- pirate787 2y agoAlso worth noting that Allende was backed by the Soviets and Cuba, there's important Cold War context to the US intervention. https://issforum.org/reviews/106-chile https://issforum.org/reviews/106-chile
- jampekka 2y agoNot that Allende government had much choice after USA imposed heavy sanctions "to make the economy scream" after they nationalized some industries.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoWell that's the story some people tell to justify fascism, but it's not actually true: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/pinochets-economic-policy-is-vastly https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/pinochets-economic-policy-... "Pinochet's economic policy is vastly overrated" > Mining a bunch of copper, helping your cronies get rich, and pumping up land prices is not a "miracle".
- animal_spirits 2y agoDuring the rule of Pinochet the people of Chile we oppressed horrendously. Fascism is no excuse to justify economic growth. That is not the point. The point is to look at different economic systems and compare the results; not compare how they were implemented. Fortunately Pinochet’s power was not indefinite and Chileans became much freer economically and politically after he left.
- jampekka 2y ago> The point is to look at different economic systems and compare the results; not compare how they were implemented. We never got to look at Allende's economic system and how it compares. Politically Allende was freedom minded to a fault in the sense that the coup would have been a lot harder if he'd accepted violence. Economic freedom doesn't mean anything.
- animal_spirits 2y agoTrue, though I was referring socialism in general as the system. Yes we don't know how it could have turned out, but we can estimate the results by looking at the failure of the other socialist systems that were tried in the 20th century. By economic freedom I mean the measure of freedom from coercion to spend your money. All governments must collect taxes, but the more you are forced to pay in taxes the less economic freedom you have. If you can spend your money how you like, and if you want to save it to fund your own or other's political activity, you are more able to campaign for your political freedoms. This seems to be how Pinochet was removed from power.
- t-3 2y agoCan that be said to be a result of the coup, though? The nationalization of copper mines was never reversed and the post-coup economy was pretty bad and unstable until the tail end when Pinochet was already on the way out.
- animal_spirits 2y agoIt is definitely not the result of the coup. However I think it is a result of the economic policies put in place after the coup. You can see how different the other South American economies have been since then.
- jampekka 2y agoChile's economy started really growing only in the late 1980's when Pinochet was ousted and the "monetarist experiment" had ended (in a huge banking crisis in 1982). And the poverty rate increased from 29% to 36% under the Chicago boys.
- diggan 2y agoI see your September 11, 1973 and raise you the actual first 9/11, the fall of Barcelona in 1713 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510919 ( tongue in cheek, no event is more important than another of course ) Remembered on this very day as "La Diada" in Catalunya.
- inputError 2y ago[dead]
- tazu 2y agoI am eagerly awaiting the complete declassification of the JFK assasination documents, which will further damage the CIA's reputation.
- jajko 2y agoIf there is anything really damning that happened, there is no reason it will be revealed, ever, or that documents about it still exist. Why should they? Who is doing full constant oversight of whole CIA that has always upper hand above them to make it happen? Sorry but this is just a pipe dream, just look how that agency behaved when SHTF. Boeing kills whistleblowers despite literally whole world seeing what a shitshow that company is now. That's just effin Boeing, not folks who can kill almost anybody anywhere and not caring about consequences.
- tazu 2y agoIt's promising that RFK Jr could potentially be in a future administration and push to declassify these documents[1]. It would really only take an executive order. He probably has enough of a chip on his shoulder to accomplish this. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/23/trump-arizona-rally--rfk-jr https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/23/trum...
- reginald78 2y agoI think parents point is you can't declassify documents that no longer exist. IIRC many of the CIA's more heinous acts only have documentation because some one misfiled them allowing them to escape intentional destruction.
- cryptonector 2y agoBackups have a way of appearing that surprise those who try to destroy evidence.
- GordonS 2y agoDo you truly believe these documents will ever be released, unedited?
- Joker_vD 2y ago> Secret White House Memo Documented Kissinger's Attitude: "I Don't See Why We Have to Sit Around and Let a Country Go Communist Due to the Irresponsibility of its Own People" There is a saying, attributed to Stalin during the Yalta conference (but it's most definitely apocryphal): "I always thought that 'democracy' means the rule of the people but comrade Roosevelt here quite clearly explained to me that 'democracy' actually means the rule of the U.S. people". It's funny because apparently the top US diplomats and leaders genuinely do believe that.
- m_a_g 2y agoWhat the US did in South America is appalling, and I can't believe they got away with it. The women of Calama have been searching for decades for their children, brothers, and husbands who disappeared during the dictatorship of Pinochet.
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- snapcaster 2y agoThat was the old CIA, i'm sure they've stopped doing this and we should just accept what they say about countries today
- Zigurd 2y agoThe CIA was never one thing, working toward a single coherent goal. The liberation of Eastern Europe in the 1990s and the defense of Ukraine were partly the work of the CIA and allied intelligence services. Except for the Cold War aspects of regime change in South America, and we know a lot of it had very little to do with geostrategic concerns and a lot to do with US private sector economic interests, the South American dictators they installed have done a lot that harms US interests in addition to the obvious harm to the people living there. The CIA is capable of both and a lot more.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- riehwvfbk 2y agoIt's so nice to have free media to tell us which is which!
- cpursley 2y agoYep, at least they don't do this sort of thing any more: https://archive.ph/TnumH https://archive.ph/TnumH
- hindsightbias 2y agoThey don't have to. You can't travel anywhere in LA, SA or the ME without encountering the view that people have no agency. Their leaders even cultivate that view as a means to stay in power. And there is an endless queue of commenters to percolate it forever. Greatest psyop ever. The CIA could have gone out of business decades back and it wouldn't change anything.
- callmeal 2y agoOf course. They achieved their goal. Director William Casey Quote: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything they believe is false!"
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoI think it’s exceptionally appropriate on 911 for us to reconcile and understand that as a nation from the 1960s onward, and accelerating with the growth of the intelligence community since 9/11, the United States has covertly or clandestinely interfered with every nations political process worldwide since the end of WWII and the “Pax Americana.” I was an intelligence officer for ~17 years, served in Iraq and saw first hand how heavy of a hand the US plays globally in a way that is so expansive and embedded there’s no single body (HPSCI, commissions etc…) that can control it. Yes technically all collection, processing, dissemination etc… activities are still under congressional budget authorities and executive control and subject to judicial review. However, the fact that title 10 and title 50 authorities are so broad and interchangable, in addition to the reach into industry for any ability to do data collection, that you couldn’t dismantle the US influence system even from the inside at this point. There’s also a million checks internally to ensure OPs are LEGALLY allowed, but that just means you found a loophole or have topcover, or find an OCA that will make your activity SAP
- ricksunny 2y agoWell articulated. I hope you will continue this advocacy. If I can be of help at all even just as moral support, lmk.
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoGenuinely the best thing you can do is build non-governmental non-oligarchic cooperatively owned organizations The only way out is through and it is by seizing the means of production, such that the ownership and control is exclusively and explicitly done by labor power
- ricksunny 2y agoWhile I was speaking to the intel-community-run-amok aspects, I can soeak to tbe governance-economic aspect frim your reply: I appreciated DK too, but I think its usage of the word 'seize' (or tyoical attribution to it in any case) may have been counterproductive to its author's motivations. Perhaps because I don't believe the English language contains precisely the alternative concept I'm looking for in one word, but I'm inclined to think 'saturate & outclass' is both much more palatable to all the parties concerned, in place of 'seize', and better-descriptive of what modus operandi I believe will be more effective. The image I want to convey is of a market producton volume under the co-op context that performs so much betterand is so much more engaged with by its 'customer-stakeholders' that the oligarchic-driven incumbents are rendered irrelevant into insignificance by tbe size, expansion, and caliber of the cooperativrly-owned concerns.
- throw4847285 2y agoI went to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, and I appreciate how blunt it is about US involvement in the coup. All-in-all a phenomenal museum.
- feedforward 2y agoRead about how a 25 year old American girl, Ronni Moffitt, who was a fundraiser and opponent of Chile's dictatorship, was killed by car bomb, along with Orlando Letelier, in Washington DC in 1976 by Chile's intelligence service. Convicted of the murder was Michael Townley, a US born man who moved to Chile and worked for Chile's intelligence service. Lots of interesting aspects of the case.
- NickC25 2y ago[flagged]
- 1oooqooq 2y agoUrge Anyone interested in this topic to read (or hear the free audio book read by the author on several platforms) the book about alende bringing the father or cybernetics to organize the country factories. It also show what the cia meddling actually cause on the ground. Title is a joke on chigago boys: the Santigo boys
- jampekka 2y agoThere are also many YouTube documentaries/videos about Chile's "Cybersyn", e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ACfgc1o3P6o&pp=ygUIY3liZXJzeW4%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ACfgc1o3P6o&pp=ygUIY3liZXJzeW4... And a decent Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
- cholantesh 2y agoNuts that when the coup was mounted the military completely gutted the Cybersyn facility out of sheer ignorance about what was being done inside.
- SSJPython 2y agoI think the US was very concerned at the time that Chile under Allende would become a client state or a vassal of the Soviet Union similar to Cuba. The US still upholds the Monroe Doctrine which states that any intervention in the politics of the New World by foreign powers is a threat to the US. The US does not want any foreign interference or potential military bases in its 'backyard'.
- diggan 2y agoThat sounds scarily familiar to how Russia sees Ukraine today, and I'm unable to see how it could justify what happened in the past or justify what is happening now. From a HN commentator in 2054: > I think Russia was very concerned at the time that Ukraine under Zelensky would become a client state or a vassal of the US. Russia still upholds the "No outsiders" Doctrine which states that any intervention in the politics of the Russian World by foreign powers is a threat to Russia. Russia does not want any foreign interference or potential military bases in its 'backyard'.
- SSJPython 2y agoYes, it's pretty much identical to Russia-Ukraine. And I'm not justifying it, I am just explaining how the US sees it. There is no morality in geopolitics. In the anarchic international system, there is no global enforcement mechanism, so states will always try to maximize their security at the expense of others. In short, might makes right in this system. "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." - Thucydides
- diggan 2y ago> And I'm not justifying it, I am just explaining how the US sees it. Yeah, I guess it's a thin line between "providing neutral historical context and reasoning" and "implicitly suggesting that the reasoning makes the actions acceptable or understandable". I'll trust what you're saying though and assume you're not actually trying to justifying it. > states will always try to maximize their security at the expense of others I don't think this is true for every single country in the world, especially those more concerned with their own well-being above their "global security status". That's the kind of black and white view that leads to more division and separation rather than humans trying to work together.
- neilv 2y agoIf you have fatigue from years of reading about all sorts of underhanded spy action and diplomatic choices, one noteworthy thing about this writeup is that it shows multiple US officials who seemed to be acting with integrity and admirable values. One of the earlier times I was reading about underhandedness, it involved a US ambassador raising red flags about grave human rights abuses by the foreign gov't. For whatever reason, that ambassador was replaced by one who would publicly deny what was going on. At the time I read that (long after it happened), I paid attention to the latter, villain ambassador, but not enough attention to the earlier ambassador, who seemed to be on the right side. A bit like the saying from Mister Rogers lore, "Look for the helpers."[1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/198594-when-i-was-a-boy-and-i-would-see-scary https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/198594-when-i-was-a-boy-and...
- bantunes 2y agoThe honest, moral ones seem to be the minority far too often.
- ganoushoreilly 2y agoI think a lot get pushed out for not going with the plan. It's like this in a lot of organizations. The other problem is morality is based on an individuals view. Most of the most egregious actions were likely deemed morally fine by those that perpetrated it. It's messed up. Working in the IC can be amazing and also nerve wrecking. Many bad decisions start out more as a Bad choice 1, bad choice 2, or bad choice 3.. and that's the only real options out there. The CIA have been cowboys.. and I suspect that the modern CIA still has this going on.
- idoubtit 2y agoIt may be soothing to focus on a few individuals who acted "with integrity and admirable values". The Guardian has a few articles about diplomats that recently resigned because they wanted no collusion with clear crimes against humanity. But that's anecdotal. The USA did their best to destroy democracy in South-America, put millions of people under military dictatures for decades, and induce the torture of tens of thousands. And most people in the USA agreed or didn't care.
- jmyeet 2y agoHenry Kissinger is a war criminal in the same club as Adolf Eichmann and Pol Pot. He is responsible for the deaths of millions. The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys. Look at what happened to the perpetrators of Unit 731. Or all the Nazis that ended up in positions of power in the West. I mean, look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger [1]. The US were the bad guys in the Cuban missile crisis, almost precipitating WW3. The USSR putting missiles in Cuba was a direct response to the US putting Jupiter MRBMs in Turkey. It's for the restraint of one man (Vasili Arkhopov [2]) that we didn't have a nuclear war. In the 1950s, we started overthrowing governments at the behest of the interests of Western companies (eg Guatemala [3], Iran [4]). Anytime any country has even hinted that they'd nationalize extraction industries of someone who was left-leaning won an election, that country would have a coup and the CIA's fingerprints would be all over it. Pinochet is just one of dozens of examples. Now we largely exact vengeance for defying US interests by starving people to death (aka "economic sanctions"), a policy that has also killed millions. None of this is principled. People may point to the Monroe doctrine or the Truman doctrine or defending democracy but we've overthrown too many democracies for that claim to have any credibility. If this were Star Wars, we we would be the Empire. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
- ricksunny 2y ago"The president’s White House lawyer subsequently advised Ford that his statement “was not fully consistent with the facts because all the facts had not been made known to you.” Plus ça change...
- motohagiography 2y agoThose central and south american civil wars against communism were dirty, and consistent with how people there fought. CIA torture progams at black sites continue to the modern day where they let the local authorities use their own ethics in interrogations. CIA's history is ugly, but mostly because they partner with the local devils they know. However, communists never won elections, they manipulated them, and anyone familiar with 20th century history knows fighting communist expansion was a just war. It appears CIA has stared into the abyss a bit too long and have turned their tactics against americans though. First with mk-ultra, then with the crack epidemic, and then with tolerating the fentanyl crisis by picking winners in the cartels and literally training the Zeta cartel at WHINSEC, along with abetting a refugee crisis to secure electoral influence for whoever the anti-populist party is. The rationale appears to be they think they come out on top as the central committee if they orchestrate 20th century totalitarian playbooks in the west and become, as Karl Rove famously said, "history's actors." Nations needed their intelligence services, but in a post-national framework, many parts of them have become malignant. People should take heed of what is done on their behalf as after decades of dealing with devils to fight totalitarian communism, their chickens appear to be coming home to roost.