Peter Kornbluh, head of the Chile project at the National Security Archive, studies this question in his new book, The Pinochet File. Referring to Augusto Pinochet, general-turned-Chilean dictator after a U.S.-backed coup ousted the democratically elected, though socialist, Salvador Allende. Kornbluh’s research draws on a wealth of new information made available through the declassification of documents concerning the coup and Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement.

He recently presented his book at the Elliott School. Present was Professor Karl Inderfurth - who helped write the first report on covert action in Chile for a Senate committee investigating the CIA’s role. “I’m absolutely sure there were key documents that were not shown to you,” Kornbluh said to Inderfurth. Kornbluh also pointed out that one key controversy that is made clearer by the documents is the issue of Henry Kissinger’s direct involvement in the coup.

“As Kissinger stated in his confirmation hearings, the intent of the U.S. was not to subvert or destabilize Allende, but to maintain opposition political parties,” Kornbluh said. Kornbluth argued that this was a “slight truth” because the U.S. concern was mostly with the upcoming 1976 election.

Framing the issue, Kornbluth defined the important questions as: “What was the policy as Allende, the socialist, took office? What were the US actions? and What was the response after Allende took office?”

According to the author, in the earlier 1970 election, half of the campaign of the moderate Christian Democrat candidate, Eduardo Frei Montalva, was funded by the CIA. This statistic points to a strong U.S. involvement prior to the 1973 election that brought Allende to power. Kornbluh repeated a quote from the U.S. ambassador to Chile, Edward Kory in 1970, three years before the coup: “It was a question of how and when the U.S. would intervene against Allende.”

Allende won the 1970 election by a very slim majority; however, Kornbluh pointed out that it was a greater margin of victory than George Bush received in the 2000 election. Allende won with 33 percent of the vote. According to Kornbluh, on September 14, 1970, President Richard Nixon gave an order to the CIA to foment a coup in Chile, which he referred to as “the quintessential preemptive strike.”

CIA reports document that they were ordered to “create a coup climate.” According to Kornbluh, “You have asked us to provoke chaos in Chile,” is how the CIA responded to the order.

“This is the kind of language that is terribly revealing, … We were going to try to turn a country upside down” commented Kornbluh.

“Latin America can not kick us around this way,” said President Richard Nixon.

Kornbluh’s final conclusion held that “the U.S. played a direct role in creating a climate in which a coup could take place.” He also added that “we still do not know which documents, we don’t have.”

Lauren Ready, an ESIA graduate student who studied in Cordoba, Argentina, said that “the seminar was informative, very clearly laid out the information and evidence, and was fairly unbiased.”