William Broe, 97; oversaw CIA efforts to oust Allende

[Judi Lynn]

William Broe, 97; oversaw CIA efforts to oust Allende
Washington Post / October 31, 2010

WASHINGTON — William V. Broe, 97, a CIA officer who rose to become chief of operations in the Western Hemisphere and oversaw the agency’s covert missions to destabilize the government of Salvador Allende, Chile’s Marxist president, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 28 at a nursing home in Hingham, Mass. He was a resident of North Scituate.

~snip~
In March 1973, Mr. Broe made headlines after his “unprecedented’’ appearance before Senate investigators looking into CIA activities in South America. Specifically, the investigators were interested in the agency’s alleged collaboration with International Telephone and Telegraph to interfere in Chilean political affairs.

ITT had worked actively against Allende’s election in 1970, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund political opposition. Once Allende was in power, the conglomerate feared its business interests in Chile would be nationalized.

Mr. Broe’s testimony marked the first time an active clandestine agent of the CIA spoke on the record for a Senate probe.

More:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2010/10/31/william_broe_97_oversaw_cia_efforts_to_oust_allende/

[Judi Lynn]

1. This information from the article is not well known, was deeply buried.

Need to post this snippet from the article to make certain it gets seen:

~snip~
Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University and author of a 2003 book on Chile called “The Pinochet File,’’ said in an interview that Mr. Broe was deeply “involved in operations to thwart’’ Allende’s presidency.

Kornbluh said the CIA’s connection and collaboration with ITT was one of the spy agency’s biggest blunders because it set in motion the use of corporate money to aid covert US foreign policy.

http://www.gwu.edu.nyud.net:8090/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB110/cover.jpg

The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability
A Los Angeles Times
BEST NONFICTION BOOK of 2003

WASHINGTON D.C. - President Richard Nixon acknowledged that he had given instructions to "do anything short of a Dominican-type action" to keep the democratically elected president of Chile from assuming office, according to a White House audio tape posted by the National Security Archive today. A phone conversation captured by his secret Oval Office taping system reveals Nixon telling his press secretary, Ron Zeigler, that he had given such instructions to then U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry, "but he just failed, the son of a bitch…. He should have kept Allende from getting in."

A transcript of the president's comments on March 23, 1972, made after the leak of corporate papers revealing collaboration between ITT and the CIA to rollback the election of socialist leader Salvador Allende, was recently published in the National Security Archive book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability by Peter Kornbluh; the tape marks the first time Nixon can be heard discussing his orders to undermine Chilean democracy. The conversation took place as Zeigler briefed the President on a State Department press conference to contain the growing ITT/CIA scandal which included one ITT document stating that Korry had been "given the green light to move in the name of President Nixon…to do all possible short of a Dominican Republic-type action to keep Allende from taking power." Other declassified records show that Nixon secretly ordered maximum CIA covert operations to "prevent Allende from coming to power or unseat him" in the fall of 1970 but that Ambassador Korry was deliberately not informed of covert efforts to instigate a military coup.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB110/index.htm

[EFerrari]

2. Nixon was a Bush protege.

[dipsydoodle]

3. I had read a long time ago

that ITT used the leverage of withdrawal of substantial funding to the Republican Party. ITT's interests in Chile were related to the fact that at that time they were one of the world's largest users of copper for their cabling.