Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
Recent
Stories
September 9, 2003
William A. Cook
Eating
Humble Pie
Robert Jensen / Rahul
Mahajan
Bush
Speech: a Shell Game on the American Electorate
Bill Glahn
A Kinder, Gentler RIAA?
Janet Kauffman
A Dirty River Runs Beneath It
Chris Floyd
Strange Attractors: White House Bawds Breed New Terror
Bridget Gibson
A Helping of Crow with Those Fries?
Robert Fisk
Thugs
in Business Suit: Meet the New Iraqi Strongman
Website of the Day
Pot TV International
September 8, 2003
David Lindorff
The
Bush Speech: Spinning a Fiasco
Robert Jensen
Through the Eyes of Foreigners: the US Political Crisis
Gila Svirsky
Of
Dialogue and Assassination: Off Their Heads
Bob Fitrakis
Demostration Democracy
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Echo Chamber: Globalizing the Whirlwind
Sean Carter
Thou Shalt Not Campaign from the Bench
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Website of the Day
Rabbis v. the Patriot Act
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Chilean
Coup Memorial Edition
September 11, 2003
The
Pinochet Files
The
CIA and the Chilean Coup
By JONATHAN FRANKLIN
In this never-before-published photograph, General
Augusto Pinochet (second from left) and President Salvador Allende
(in white jacket) are seen on a trip in northern Chile in the
months before the 1973 coup that left Allende dead and Pinochet
in command of the government. Photograph: Fundacion Salvador
Allende
September 11 1973 was a day of terror
and bloodshed in Chile. After months of rising tension, army
troops stormed the presidential palace, leaving President Salvador
Allende dead and thousands prisoners throughout this previously
democratic nation.
Now, on the 30th anniversary of the coup,
professors, journalists and citizen activists around the world
are continuing to expose the full role of the US government in
financing and promoting this bloody coup, which ushered in the
17-year military dictatorship headed by General Augusto Pinochet.
Thousands of top secret documents which
were declassified over the past five years have now been synthesized
in a new book, The Pinochet File, by investigative reporter Peter
Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, a Washington-based
investigative centre. "The US created a climate of a coup
in Chile, a situation of chaos and agitation," said Kornbluh.
"The CIA and state department were worried that the [Chilean]
military ... were not ready for a coup."
The top secret documents accumulatively
detail the crude workings of Washington during the Cold War.
"It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown
by a coup," reads a CIA document from October 1970. "It
is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely
and securely so that the USG [US government] and American hand
be well hidden."
Two days after this document was written,
top CIA officials proposed a terrorist campaign to stun the Chilean
people into accepting a military regime.
"Concur giving tear gas cannisters
and gas masks ... working on obtaining machine guns," reads
a CIA memo dated October 18 1970.
"Use good officers ... Some low-level
overflights of Santiago and bomb drops in areas not likely to
cause casualties could have great psychological effect and might
swing balance as they have so many times in past in similar circumstances."
While conservative Chileans argue that
the coup was a home-grown affair, the current Chilean minister
of education, Sergio Bitar, says: "That internal crisis
was activated by the North American policies against it. We see
how they energetically obstructed all types of credit from the
World Bank and the InterAmerican Bank ... these were decisive
actions. This were political and financial pressures that were
very relevant [to the ensuing coup.]"
The US effort to destabilise Chile was
led by a policy of massively funding and bribing non-leftwing
Chilean politicians.
Throughout the 1960s, the US secretly
spent millions funding political parties of their choosing -
usually the moderate Christian Democrats led by Eduardo Frei
Montalva. By the early 1970s, Chilean society had become so leftwing
that Washington decided to change tactics. First, President Nixon
authorised $10m to be spent "to make the economy scream".
He also authorised pro-coup initiatives
designed to destroy the traditional reluctance of Chilean military
men to take over civilian government.
"Pinochet will not be a stumbling
block to coup plans", reads one memo written six months
before the coup, in which the American government looks to build
a veritable Dream Team of coup plotters. "The navy and air
force are ready ... the military is getting ready to move."
As part of a particularly crude effort
to remove army officers who supported democratic rule, the CIA
organised to kidnap Rene Schneider, a Chilean army general.
That plot was botched; Schneider died,
and today his family is suing the US government and Henry Kissinger
in particular for playing a role in his murder.
Citing documents declassified in the
past few years, the lawsuit alleges that the US government paid
$35,000 to the men who plotted the actions against Schneider.
"I don't want revenge, I want the
truth to be established," said a son of the murdered general,
also named Rene, who now lives in Santiago and works for a television
station.
Immediately after the coup, US officials
worked hard to ease international criticism of the human rights
record of the Pinochet regime. Rather than fear Washington?s
reproach, the military regime repeatedly sought help and advice.
Just weeks after the coup, the US ambassador
in Chile sent a memo to Henry Kissinger noting that "the
military government of Chile requires adviser assistance of a
person qualified in establishing a detention centre for the detainees
... adviser must have knowledge in the establishment and operation
of a detention centre".
Even when the full extent of the torture
and executions in Chile were well known, the US government sought
to integrate the Pinochet regime into international business
circles.
Probably no figure more personalised
the cruelty of the Pinochet regime than the head of its secret
DINA police force, Manuel Contreras.
Previously classified documents now confirm
that, not only was Contreras on the CIA payroll, but that when
he came to Washington during the height of human rights abuses,
the US state department had specific tasks for him.
"Contreras was also asked to check
in with Anaconda [Copper] and General Motors to encourage them
to resume operations in Chile."
Jonathan Franklin lives in Santiago, Chile, where he works as
a reporter and producer. This article originally appeared in
The Guardian.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 1 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
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