stewart (12/05/82)
This is in response to Ralph Johnson's article a little while back
concerning adventurism. The following is from the Washington Post, 23
Nov. 82. (I'm sorry I don't have the Atlantic Monthly article
referenced.) -- John Stewart
"New Charges Reported in CIA Plot on Allende" by John Dinges, Special
to The Washington Post
CIA activities to prevent Salvador Allende from assuming the
Chilean presidency in 1970 were more extensive than previously
acknowledged in official accounts, author Seymour M. Hersh asserts in
the December issue of Atlantic Monthly.
Hersh charges, based on the account of an unnamed "close associate"
of then-CIA director Richard Helms, that President Nixon "specifically
ordered the CIA to get rid of Allende"--an order that Hersh contends
amounted to a go-ahead to assassinate Allende if necessary.
"Helms told the associate there was no doubt in his mind at the
time what Nixon meant," Hersh writes.
The "close associate," Hersh writes, was relating Helms' personal
account of a Sept. 15, 1970, Oval Office meeting of Nixon and then
national security advisor Henry A. Kissinger, who the source said
later "pressured [Helms] again on the subject."
Helms testified in 1975 hearings before the Senate Intelligence
Committee that Nixon's orders at that meeting referred to Allende's
overthrow and did not "in his mind" include assassination.
Hersh's account, which is adapted from his forthcoming biography
of Kissinger, does not contain the kind of smoking gun evidence that
would drastically alter the picture drawn in the 1975 Senate hearings.
Testimony then revealed that the CIA financed an unsuccessful
covert propaganda campaign against Allende's election, and later
participated in various plots with Chilean politicians and military
leaders to keep him from taking office after his plurality victory in
September, 1970.
The article, however, has direct accounts from a half-dozen
alleged participants in the Chile operations, including two deep-cover
CIA operatives whose identities were previously unknown.
The agents, called "false-flaggers" by the CIA because of their
use of false Latin American passports as cover, were veteran agents
assigned to give CIA money and instructions to "extreme right-wing
terrorists," including cashiered Gen. Roberto Viaux and other Chilean
military leaders plotting against Allende, Hersh writes.
Viaux led a kidnapping attempt Oct. 22, 1970, that resulted in
the murder of the head of the Chilean armed forces, Gen. Rene
Schneider--an operation the CIA has disavowed.
Hersh quotes the U.S. military attache in Chile at the time, Col.
Paul C. Wimert Jr., as saying he "figured they [the false-flaggers]
had been sent to Santiago to arrange for Allende's death."
According to the article, an aide in the National Security
Council, Yeoman Charles E. Radford, told Hersh that he saw option
papers that discussed ways to assassinate Allende. Hersh's article
does not cite any evidence that plans to kill Allende were put into
operation.