Reply #2: introduce the Chilean people to democracy, American-style [View All]

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Nothing But Human Rights
by Mickey Z.
August 16, 2001

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The 40 Committee was formed with HK as chair. According to Kissinger, Chile was a ‘virus’ that would ‘infect’ the region...” At a Sept. 15 meeting called to halt the spread of infection, Kissinger and President Nixon told CIA Director Richard Helms it would be necessary to “make the economy scream.” Edward Korry, U.S. ambassador to Chile at the time, articulated the soft sell by declaring that the U.S. task was “to do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.” Korry warned, “not a nut or bolt be allowed to reach Chile under Allende.”

He was worried that successful economic development, where the economy produces benefits for the general population — not just profits for private corporations — would have a contagious effect. In those comments, Kissinger revealed the basic story of U.S. foreign policy for decades.”

“The stage was set for a clash of two experiments,” says Blum. Allende’s socialism was pitted against what was later called a “prototype or laboratory experiment to test the techniques of heavy financial investment in an effort to discredit and bring down a government.” This clash would reach its climax on Sept. 11, 1973. Allende was dead.


http://web.mit.edu/hemisphere/events/kissinger-chile.shtml