Agustin Edwards
Owner of the Santiago daily El Mercurio who met Richard Helms in Washington before Nixon ordered a coup in Chile, and whose paper received 1.665 million dollars in CIA subsidies.
Agustin Edwards Eastman (died April 24, 2017, aged 89) owned El Mercurio, the principal newspaper of Chile. In September 1970, after Salvador Allende won the presidential vote, he went to Washington, where Donald Kendall, the president of Pepsi-Cola, arranged for him to see Henry Kissinger, Attorney General John Mitchell, and the director of central intelligence, Richard Helms. The 40 Committee later voted his newspaper 1,665,000 dollars. He spent the Allende years in the United States as a vice president of PepsiCo.123
September 1970
Kissinger and Mitchell had breakfast with Kendall and Edwards on the morning of September 15, 1970, according to Mitchell's calendar. Helms testified in 1975: "Prior to this meeting with the President the editor of El Mercurio had come to Washington and I had been asked to go and talk to him at one of the hotels here, this having been arranged through Don Kendall, the head of the Pepsi Cola Company." He added: "I have this impression that the President called this meeting where I have my handwritten notes because of Edwards' presence in Washington and what he heard from Kendall about what Edwards was saying about conditions in Chile." At the meeting that afternoon President Richard Nixon instructed Helms to organize a military coup, the operation that became Project FUBELT. An ethics tribunal of the Chilean journalists' guild found in 2015 that Edwards had briefed Helms on the disposition of Chilean politicians and senior officers and on the equipment and logistical capacity of the navy, air force, and army.13
Two days after the breakfast, the ITT representatives Hal Hendrix and Robert Berrellez recommended that American companies "pump some advertising into Mercurio" and help revive propagandists formerly supported by "the Matte and Edwards groups."4
The Subsidies
The 40 Committee authorized 700,000 dollars for El Mercurio on September 9, 1971, and 965,000 dollars more on April 11, 1972. A National Intelligence Estimate of August 1971 had concluded that the paper "had managed to retain its independence" under Allende. The Church Committee described the vote a month later as "at some variance" with that finding. From 1970 to 1975 Edwards lived in the United States as a vice president of PepsiCo and president of its Foods International division. He resumed the direction of El Mercurio in 1982 and held it until 2008.23
Expulsion
On April 21, 2015, the ethics tribunal of the metropolitan council of the Colegio de Periodistas de Chile expelled Edwards on a petition filed by members in November 2014. It cited his receipt of CIA money "aimed at destabilizing Salvador Allende's government through communications operations," and his paper's part in April 1987, during the visit of Pope John Paul II, in a staged operation with the security services that accused two young men of subversion and was used to justify their torture. He did not appeal. The researcher Peter Kornbluh called him "the most important collaborator according to the CIA in creating the conditions for a coup d'état."35
Sources
- Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, interim report, S. Rept. 94-465, 1975, quoting testimony of Richard Helms, July 15, 1975, pp. 4-5. ↩
- Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, staff report, 1975. ↩
- "El fin de un intocable: Colegio de Periodistas decide expulsar a Agustín Edwards," El Mostrador, April 21, 2015. ↩
- Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy, hearings on the International Telephone and Telegraph Company and Chile, 1973. ↩
- "Colegio de Periodistas expulsa a Agustín Edwards por graves faltas éticas," Le Monde Diplomatique (Chilean edition), May 2015. ↩
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