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Secrets, Lies and Democracy
Interview with Noam Chomsky
by David Barsamian

Nevertheless, Allende won. A few days after his victory, Nixon called in CIA Director Richard Helms, Kissinger and others for a meeting on Chile. Can you describe what happened?

As Helms reported in his notes, there were two points of view. The "soft line" was, in Nixon's words, to "make the economy scream." The "hardline" was simply to aim for a military coup.

Our ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, who was a Kennedy liberal type, was given the job of implementing the "soft line." Here's how he described his task: "to do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." That was the soft line.

There was a massive destabilization and disinformation campaign. The CIA planted stories in El Mercurio [Chile's mostprominent paper] and fomented labor unrest and strikes.

They really pulled out the stops on this one. Later, when the military coup finally came [in September, 1973] and the government was overthrown-- and thousands of people were being imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered -- the economic aid which had been cancelled immediately beganto flow again. As a reward for the military junta's achievement in reversing Chilean democracy, the US gave massive support to the new government.

Our ambassador to Chile brought up the question of torture to Kissinger. Kissinger rebuked him sharply -- saying something like, Don't give me any of those political science lectures. We don't care about torture -- we care about important things. Then he explained what the important things were.

http://www.ce-look.com/11chile1973/docs/
entrevista%20con%20Chomsky.txt