As
Chile nears its 45th anniversary since the socialist government of
Salvador Allende was overthrown, former National Intelligence
Directorate (DINA) and National Information Centre (CNI) agents are
being released from prison on parole, despite having been handed
multiple lengthy prison sentences.
by
Ramona Wadi
Part
2 - U.S. and CIA involvement in Plan Condor
“Chile
voted calmly and knowingly to have a Marxist-Leninist state. The
first nation in the world to make this choice freely and knowingly …
There is no reason to believe that the Chilean armed forces will
unleash a civil war or that any other intervening miracle will undo
his victory.”
This is
the first observation communicated, on September 5, 1970, by the
former U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, who also commented in
the same cable about how Salvador Allende had managed to achieve a
revolutionary victory without the guerrilla tactics utilized by Fidel
Castro in Cuba.
Within
10 days — by September 15, 1970 — former Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) Director Richard Helms and U.S.President Richard Nixon
had drawn up the preliminary, covert plans to overthrow Allende’s
democratically-elected government.
A
declassified memorandum shows how the U.S. planned to counter
possible moves by Allende in ways that would isolate the country both
diplomatically and economically. One planned strategy was to offer
military aid and internal security assistance to South American
countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay,
“based on the threat of Chilean-exported subversion.” The
group of countries, including Chile, participated in the U.S-backed
operation known as Plan Condor, in which the group of South American
governments collaborated to exterminate left-wing opponents.
In the
region and within its frontiers, Chile was at the helm of unleashing
horrors as a result of the U.S.-backed dictatorship. Collaboration
among the Chilean military, the U.S. government, and the CIA resulted
in the detention, torture, extermination and disappearance of
left-wing adherents and militants.
According
to the Valech and Rettig Reports, 27,255 Chileans were tortured and
2,279 executed and disappeared. The latter — tortured detainees
destined for extermination and disappearance — were usually
packaged, weighted down with metal rails, and disposed of into the
ocean from helicopters.
This
method of disappearance was copied by Argentina during the Videla
dictatorship. Research by Giancarlo Ceraudo, published in a book of
testimony and photographs titled “Destino Final,” records
Argentinian Admiral Luis Maria Mendia as having stated: “The
political situation made it unacceptable to present firing squads to
the international public eye, and that the experience of Chile’s
military government and its reclusiveness indicated that this was the
best method of execution.”
Last
May, a Chilean retired military officer identified former DINA agent
and torturer Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko as having disposed of three
MIR militants from a PUMA helicopter flight that departed from Rocas
de Santo Domingo.
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