Files reveal Nixon role in plot to block Allende from Chilean presidency [View all]

Source: The Guardian

Files reveal Nixon role in plot to block Allende from Chilean presidency

President hosted rightwing mogul Agustín Edwards in September 1970 and discussed plans to foil socialist election-winner

John Bartlett in Santiago
Tue 8 Aug 2023 18.49 BST
Last modified on Tue 8 Aug 2023 20.25 BST

Days before Salvador Allende’s confirmation as Chile’s president in 1970, US President Richard Nixon met with a rightwing Chilean media mogul to discuss blocking the socialist leader’s path to the presidency, newly declassified documents have revealed.

The documents, published in a new Spanish edition of the Pinochet files by archivist and writer Peter Kornbluh, include Nixon’s agenda for 15 September 1970, which shows a meeting in the Oval Office with Agustín Edwards, the owner of the conservative El Mercurio media group.

A day earlier, Edwards had met CIA director Richard Helms. Notes from that conversation detail the media baron’s observations on various members of the military, prompting Nixon to request a “gameplan” for a coup that would prevent Allende’s inauguration.

Allende had won a slender victory over rival Jorge Alessandri in presidential elections, but with no clear majority, the electoral system at the time required congress to ratify the candidate who would form a government.

In secret, and with the support of President Nixon’s White House, a plan was hatched for the military to seize power, dissolve congress and block Allende’s inauguration.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/08/richard-nixon-plot-allende-chile-presidency

Non-walled link: https://archive.li/LyY66