The Info Web

#Chile

52 entries

People (40)

  • 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.
  • Armando Fernandez Larios Chilean army officer of the 1973 Caravan of Death and DINA's advance man in the Letelier murder, who defected to the United States in 1987, served five months, and was detained by ICE in 2025.
  • Augusto Pinochet Augusto Pinochet was Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army who, with CIA backing, led the September 11, 1973 coup against President Salvador Allende and governed Chile as dictator until 1990; his regime participated in Operation Condor, a CIA-coordinated transnational assassination program targeting leftists across Latin America.
  • Bernardo Leighton Founder of Chile's Christian Democratic Party and former interior minister, exiled in Rome, who was shot with his wife on October 6, 1975, by Italian fascists engaged by DINA's agent Michael Townley.
  • Camilo Valenzuela Chilean brigadier general to whose group the CIA delivered three submachine guns and pledged 50,000 dollars for the kidnapping of General René Schneider in October 1970.
  • Carlos Prats Commander of the Chilean army under Salvador Allende, who recommended Augusto Pinochet as his successor and was killed with his wife by a secret police car bomb in Buenos Aires on September 30, 1974.
  • Charles Horman American writer seized at his Santiago home by the Chilean army on September 17, 1973, and shot the next day, whose death the American embassy attributed to leftists while the State Department's inquiries concluded otherwise.
  • David Atlee Phillips CIA propaganda officer in the 1954 Guatemala coup, chief of Cuban operations in Mexico City during Oswald's 1963 visit, co-director of the 1970 Chile task force, and the man Antonio Veciana named as Maurice Bishop.
  • David Popper US ambassador to Chile from 1974 to 1977 whose human rights approaches drew Kissinger's marginalia, and who in August 1976 advised against warning Pinochet about Condor, proposing that the CIA raise it with Contreras instead.
  • Donald Kendall Chairman of PepsiCo and benefactor of Richard Nixon who in September 1970 brought the Chilean publisher Agustín Edwards to the president's men the day before Nixon ordered a coup, and was later investigated for perjury.
  • Edward Gerrity ITT senior vice president to whom the CIA's William Broe proposed economic pressure on Chile in September 1970, charged in 1978 with lying to the Senate in a case dropped on national security grounds.
  • Edward Korry United States ambassador to Chile from 1967 to 1971 who planned the covert campaign against Salvador Allende, was kept ignorant of the CIA's coup plot, was blamed for it, and accused the Church Committee of a cover-up.
  • Frank Teruggi American student in Santiago, the subject of an FBI subversive file that recorded his Chilean address, who was taken from his house after the 1973 coup and shot at the National Stadium.
  • George Landau American ambassador to Paraguay who in July 1976 copied the photographs in the false passports of two Chilean agents bound for Washington and sent them to the CIA, weeks before the murder of Orlando Letelier.
  • Hal Hendrix Latin America correspondent who joined ITT in 1967, co-wrote its 1970 memorandum urging action against Allende, and was named an unindicted co-conspirator when his superiors were charged with lying to the Senate.
  • Harold Geneen Chairman of ITT who in 1970 offered the CIA a fund to keep Salvador Allende from the Chilean presidency, swore to the Senate that ITT had done nothing, and was not charged with perjury.
  • Harry Shlaudeman Assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs who warned Kissinger of Operation Condor's assassination plans on August 3, 1976, received Landau's cable on the DINA passports, and saw no warning delivered before Letelier died.
  • Héctor Orozco Chilean brigade general named ad hoc military prosecutor in March 1978 for the Letelier passport case, who took the DINA officers' statements and had the FBI interview Vernon Walters.
  • Henry Hecksher CIA station chief in Santiago in 1970 who advised against a coup, was recalled to Langley and told to stop objecting, ran the contacts with Chilean officers, and on instructions deceived his ambassador about them.
  • Jesse Helms North Carolina broadcaster and senator whose direct-mail organization was built by two Pioneer Fund directors, took Nelson Bunker Hunt's money, tried to buy CBS, and was investigated in 1986 for a leak to Pinochet's government.
  • Jonathan Moyle Editor of Defence Helicopter World found hanged in a Santiago hotel in March 1990 while reporting on a helicopter Carlos Cardoen was converting for Iraq, and afterward described by British officials as a sexual deviant.
  • Jorge Alessandri Conservative president of Chile from 1958 and runner-up to Salvador Allende in 1970, whose campaign took 350,000 dollars of ITT money and whose post-election resignation pledge the U.S. ambassador helped draft.
  • Manuel Contreras Chief of the Chilean secret police DINA, in contact with the CIA from 1974 to 1977 and paid by it once in 1975, who said he had Orlando Letelier killed on Pinochet's orders.
  • Mariana Callejas Chilean wife of Michael Townley, hired with him by DINA in 1974, who travelled as an equal member of his assassination team to Buenos Aires, Mexico, and Rome.
  • Nilo Floody Chilean division general who headed the military mission in Washington in 1976, received the two DINA captains at his home in late August, and had his secretary telephone Vernon Walters's office.
  • Orlando Bosch Cuban exile pediatrician trained by the CIA in 1960 who turned to bombing, lived under the protection of Pinochet's Chile, founded CORU in 1976, and was named that October in the Cubana airliner bombing.
  • Orlando Letelier Former Chilean foreign minister killed with his colleague Ronni Moffitt by a car bomb in Washington on September 21, 1976, on orders the CIA later concluded came personally from Augusto Pinochet.
  • Paul Wimert American army attaché in Santiago who in October 1970 carried the CIA's guns and money to the Chilean officers plotting against General Schneider, and afterward threw the weapons into the sea.
  • Pedro Espinoza Operations director of DINA, indicted in Washington for the Letelier murder in 1978, named by Michael Townley as the man who asked for the killing of General Prats, and convicted in the Horman case.
  • René Riveros DINA captain who flew to Washington on August 21, 1976, as Juan Williams Rose, the false name Townley had carried on a Paraguayan passport, on a mission to find General Vernon Walters.
  • Rene Schneider Commander of the Chilean army who held that the military must respect the 1970 election and was shot on October 22, 1970, by officers whom the CIA had paid, armed, and encouraged to kidnap him.
  • Richard Helms Richard Helms served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973, authorizing Operation CHAOS domestic surveillance and ordering destruction of CHAOS and MKULTRA records before congressional investigation.
  • Robert Berrellez Associated Press correspondent turned ITT public relations man in Latin America, coauthor of the September 1970 memorandum against Allende, charged in 1978 with lying to the Senate in a case dropped to protect CIA secrets.
  • Roberto Viaux Retired Chilean general whom the CIA paid and encouraged in October 1970 through officers posing as third country nationals, and whose men shot General René Schneider.
  • Rolando Mosqueira DINA captain who went to Washington with René Riveros in August 1976 as Alejandro Romeral Jara, on a passport handed to him already filled in and signed in a hand not his own.
  • Rolando Otero Cuban exile charged with nine Miami bombings of 1975, including the FBI office, who fled to Chile and was handed to the FBI by Pinochet's government in 1976, a surrender the Cuban Nationalist Movement resented.
  • Ronald McIntyre Chilean admiral at the naval mission in Washington from 1976 to 1978 who met the leadership of Brigade 2506 in September 1976 to enlist Miami Cubans as a lobby for Chile.
  • Salvador Allende Socialist president of Chile from 1970 to 1973, the object of fourteen million dollars of CIA covert action over a decade, who died in the presidential palace during the military coup of September 11, 1973.
  • Thomas Karamessines OSS officer who helped organize Greece's intelligence service, ran the CIA's clandestine service from 1967 to 1973, and chaired the 1970 task force formed to keep Salvador Allende from office.
  • William Broe Chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division who supervised the 1970 task force against Allende, put to ITT a plan to induce economic collapse in Chile, and ordered a stonewall after Schneider was shot.

Organizations (8)

  • 40 Committee National Security Council subcommittee that approved CIA covert action under Nixon, chaired by Henry Kissinger, which voted 1.665 million dollars to El Mercurio and was never told of the 1970 order for a coup in Chile.
  • AIFLD The CIA-funded American Institute for Free Labor Development, the AFL-CIO's Latin American arm, which organized anticommunist labor unions throughout the hemisphere and whose operatives played a documented role in the 1964 Brazilian coup and other Cold War regime changes.
  • CIA Western Hemisphere Division The CIA's clandestine service division for Latin America, which ran the 1954 Guatemala coup under J.C. King and the 1970 Chile task force under William Broe and David Atlee Phillips.
  • DINA Pinochet's secret police under Manuel Contreras, 1974 to 1977, which killed Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires and Orlando Letelier in Washington while its director was in liaison with, and once paid by, the CIA.
  • El Mercurio Santiago daily of the Edwards family, to which the 40 Committee voted 1.665 million dollars in CIA money in 1971 and 1972, a month after an intelligence estimate found that it had kept its independence.
  • ITT Corporation American conglomerate whose chairman offered the CIA one million dollars in 1970 to stop Salvador Allende, and whose executives' perjury charges over it were dropped in 1979 to protect intelligence secrets.
  • Overseas Private Investment Corporation Federal corporation created by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1969 to insure and finance American private investment in less developed countries, which paid ITT for its expropriated Chilean telephone company.
  • Patria y Libertad Chilean rightist paramilitary group formed after Salvador Allende's election in 1970, which received 38,500 dollars from the CIA during the agency's coup plotting and joined the failed tank uprising of June 1973.

Programs (3)

  • Operation Condor Arrangement of six South American military governments from November 1975, founded by DINA's Manuel Contreras, for exchanging intelligence on exiles and killing them abroad, of which Washington had notice before the Letelier murder.
  • Project Camelot A 1964 US Army project run through SORO at American University under contract ARO-7 and a budget Secretary of State Rusk described as 'more than $4,000,000' that attempted to build a predictive social science model for revolution in developing countries; cancelled in July 1965 after its exposure by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung provoked a Chilean diplomatic protest, congressional hearings, and a permanent rupture between the military and academic social science communities.
  • Project FUBELT CIA operation ordered by President Nixon on September 15, 1970, to provoke a military coup before Salvador Allende could take office, in the course of which the agency armed and paid officers plotting to kidnap General Rene Schneider.

Places (1)

  • Santiago Santiago is the capital of Chile and the site of the September 11, 1973 CIA-backed coup that installed Augusto Pinochet, including the bombing of La Moneda presidential palace; it was subsequently the operational base for DINA and the founding location of Operation Condor.