Contrary to public misrepresentation to the contrary, the CIA carried out a psychological warfare operation (which the CIA called a "deception campaign) against the Chilean military in a successful effort to sufficiently anger the Officer Corps to carry out a coup. The CIA also gathered documents,including the arrest lists, and knew exactly who the military intended to detain after the coup: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/churchreport.htm
As part of its attempt to induce the Chilean military to intervene before the October 24 congressional vote, the United States had threatened to cut off military aid if the military refused to act. That was accompanied by a promise of support in the aftermath of a coup. However, military assistance was not cut off at the time of Allende's confirmation (see Table III). Military sales jumped sharply from 1972 to 1973 and even more sharply from 1973 to 1974 after the coup (see Table IV). Training of Chilean military personnel in Panama also rose during the Allende years (see Table V)
C. 1970-1973
After the failure of Track II, the CIA rebuilt its network of contacts and remained close to Chilean military officers in order to monitor developments within the armed forces. For their part, Chilean officers who were aware that the United States once had sought a coup to prevent Allende from becoming president must have been sensitive to indications of continuing U.S. support for a coup.
By September 1971 a new network of agents was in place and the Station was receiving almost daily reports of new coup plotting. The Station and Headquarters began to explore ways to use this network. At the same time, and in parallel, the Station and Headquarters discussed a "deception operation" designed to alert Chilean officers to real or purported Cuban involvement in the Chilean army. Throughout the fall of 1971 the Station and Headquarters carried on a dialogue about both the general question of what to do with the intelligence network and the objectives of the specific operation.
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The Station proposed, in September, to provide information -some of it fabricated by the CIA- which would convince senior Chilean Army officers that the Carabineros' Investigations unit, with the approval of Allende was acting in concert with Cuban intelligence (DGI) to gather intelligence prejudicial to the Army high command. It was hoped that the extort would arouse the military against Allende's involvement with the Cubans, inducing the armed services to press the government to alter its orientation and to move against it if necessary. A month later CIA Headquarters suggested that the deception operation be shelved, in favor of passing "verifiable" information to the leader of the coup group which Headquarters and the Station perceived as having the highest probability of success.
After a further Station request, Headquarters agreed to the operation with the objective of educating senior Chilean officers and keeping them on alert. In December 1971 a packet of material, including a fabricated letter, was passed to a Chilean officer outside Chile. The CIA did not receive any subsequent reports on the effect if any, this "information" had on the Chilean military. While the initial conception of the operation had included a series of such passages, no further packets were passed.
The Station/Headquarters dialogue over the use of the intelligence network paralleled the discussion of the deception operation. In November the Station suggested that the ultimate objective of the military penetration program was a military coup. Headquarters responded by rejecting that formulation of the objective, cautioning that the CIA did not have 40 Committee approval to become involved in a coup. However, Headquarters acknowledged the difficulty of drawing a firm line between monitoring coup plotting and becoming involved in it. It also realized that the U.S. government's desire to be in clandestine contract with military plotters, for whatever purpose, might well imply to them U.S. support for their future plans.
During I970-73, the Station collected operational intelligence necessary in the event of a coup -arrest lists, key civilian installations and personnel that needed protection, key government installations which need to be taken over, and government contingency plans which would be used in case of a military uprising. According to the CIA the data was collected only against the contingency of future Headquarters requests and was never passed to the Chilean military.
The intelligence network continued to report throughout 1972 and 1973 on coup plotting activities. During 1972 the Station continued to monitor the group which might mount a successful coup, and it spent a significantly greater amount of time and effort penetrating this
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group than it had on previous groups. This group had originally come to the Station's attention in October 1971. By January 1972 the Station had successfully penetrated it and was in contact through an intermediary with its leader.
During late 1971 and early 1972, the CIA adopted a more active stance vis a vis its military penetration program, including a short-lived effort to subsidize a small anti-government news pamphlet directed at the armed services, its compilation of arrest lists and other operational data, and its deception operation.
Intelligence reporting on coup plotting reached two peak periods, one in the last week of June 1973 and the other during the end of August and the first two weeks in September. It is clear the CIA received intelligence reports on the coup planning of the group which carried out the successful September 11 coup throughout the months of July, August, and September 1973.
The CIA's information-gathering efforts with regard to the Chilean military included activity which went beyond the mere collection of information. More generally, those efforts must be viewed in the context of United States opposition, overt and covert, to the Allende government. They put the United States Government in contact with those Chileans who sought a military alternative to the Allende presidency.
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