General Augusto Pinochet (left) greets Henry Kissinger in Chile, 1976. (Graphic: Brian Covert / Photo: Getty)

It is early morning on a Tuesday, September 11, a day like any other day. Soon that feeling of ordinariness and calm will be shattered by two planes attacking iconic buildings. By the end of this day many people’s lives will be destroyed, a nation will be shaken to its core, a tainted page in history will be written and the world will be changed forever.

9/11 in New York City, USA in the year 2001? No, that 9/11 came much later. The day we are commemorating here is the first 9/11 — in the South American nation of Chile in 1973, exactly 50 years ago today. It was a day that top United States government officials at the time had helped plan, pay for and put in motion. It was a day marked by the worst kind of political and military treachery, violence and cowardice, both American and Chilean, with the singular goal of bringing one of the most stable democracies in Latin America at the time to heel and getting rid of a democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, by any means necessary.

By the end of this day, Tuesday, September 11, 1973, it will be “mission accomplished”: a fascist military junta takes over all branches of government and starts to stamp out every bit of democracy that remains in Chilean society, of course with the blessing of the powers that be in Washington and on Wall Street. The economy of Chile will soon be fully returned to the American sphere of influence. The military, under Chilean army general Augusto Pinochet as the self-appointed commander in chief, will rule the country with an iron fist and attempt to brutally crush every trace of public dissent, human resistance and social cohesion in the country. It is the beginning of officially sanctioned executions, disappearances, torture and exile for the people of Chile under a military dictatorship’s takeover of their own government.

Today, September 11, is the story of Chile’s own 9/11 a half-century on, and in the telling, it is also the story of America, both then and now.

The Seeds of a Coup

Dr. Salvador Allende, a physician by profession, first got on the radar of the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies during the 1958 presidential election in Chile, when he ran for president of the country on the Socialist Party ticket. The party embraced the political ideology of Marxism, to be sure, though Allende himself was reputedly not a hardliner when it came to ideology. The party’s aim was to distribute the nation’s wealth more evenly among the social classes, with working-class people being the prime beneficiaries. Allende was a staunch Socialist Party man but also believed that democracy and socialism could work well together in transforming society and meeting the people’s needs. He also believed that the country’s military had a positive role to play in Chile’s democratic system of government.

Allende lost that election but came in second place with 28 percent of the popular vote. When the Cuban revolution overturned a U.S.-backed capitalist system in Cuba the next year in 1959, that’s when the powers that be in Washington started paying closer attention. It was the height of the Cold War and an anti-communist sentiment reigned supreme in the USA. The world was viewed by the U.S. government through deep-red lenses — a “communist versus anti-communist” type of fear and paranoia. There was no in-between as far as the Yankees were concerned.

Six years later in 1964, Allende ran again as a socialist in the next Chilean president election, and this time the U.S. government wasn’t taking any chances. We now know from documents and research on the subject that have been made public over the years that the U.S. government’s Central Intelligence Agency (created back in 1947) had interfered in a major way in Chile’s 1964 democratically held national election. The goal of the CIA in 1964: to stop Allende from being elected president. Toward this end, the CIA secretly funded most of the presidential campaign of Allende’s main opponent, Eduardo Frei Montalva of the conservative Christian Democratic Party.

The CIA countered the USSR’s financial support of Allende by spending about $3 million of American taxpayer money — mostly on radio and print advertising — to secretly influence the outcome of the 1964 presidential election in Chile. Most U.S. citizens probably couldn’t find Chile on a South American map (then and now), but that’s indeed where a chunk of their hard-earned U.S. tax money went. In the end, the CIA’s secret operation there worked as planned: Frei handily defeated Allende, who came in second place with 38 percent of the popular vote. It was a defeat for Allende, but not as big a loss for him as the CIA had hoped. It was clear that a growing number of poor and working people in Chile were now turning out to vote for the Socialist Party and Allende as an alternative to the exploitative capitalist system Chile then had in place.

Come 1970, six years later, Allende decided yet again to run for president. This time, Allende ran for the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) coalition, a broad leftist political alliance that included Chile’s communist and socialist parties. His platform centered on policies that would benefit the country’s lower class of citizens, including ending inflation, sharply cutting the cost of medicine and making public housing more affordable. He promised agrarian reform and the nationalization of key Chilean industries, such as the copper industry, that were then dominated by western multinational mining companies, especially American companies.

At that point, a major operation to overturn the upcoming election and prevent Allende from ever assuming the presidency — even if he legally won — was actively set in motion at the highest levels of the U.S. government. By this time Richard Nixon was president and his hands were already full with America’s losing war in the southeast Asian nation of Vietnam. But Nixon saw red, literally, when Allende pursued his presidential run in 1970, and from his perch in the U.S. Oval Office in Washington DC, Nixon began putting the full weight of U.S. government pressure on stopping Allende from becoming president in Chile. It was a risky venture: The Chilean presidential election was going to be a democratic vote, as it always had been, in line with the accepted constitutional norms of other democratic countries; interfering with that process could potentially be a crime. Plus, Chile at the time was officially an ally of the USA, not an enemy. Unfazed, Nixon and Co. decided to do their dirty work behind closed doors and in the utmost secrecy, away from the prying eyes of the press and the public.

‘Make the Economy Scream’

A two-track system was put into place by agencies within the U.S. government. “Track I,” led by the U.S. State Department, involved manipulating Chile’s politics within the bounds of the Chilean constitution to have Eduardo Frei be re-elected — in other words, getting the anti-Allende members of Chile’s national congress to bend the rules just enough to deny Allende the presidency even if he should win. Track I didn’t work, and Allende awaited the Chilean congress’s formal approval of his ascension into office.

The U.S. government’s “Track II” plan came into play then. Track II or Project FUBELT, as it was known, was a covert operation led by the CIA. Whereas the spy agency back in 1964 had directly supported the candidate (Frei) who opposed Allende in the presidential election, this time in 1970 the CIA secretly launched an all-out propaganda campaign against Allende directly. As part of its secret Track II plan, the CIA also formed and supported a group of high-ranking officers within Chile’s military who would be willing to stage a coup during the period when Allende was getting ready to assume the presidency.

The news media in Chile were a key part of the U.S. government strategy to remove Allende from power. In September 1970, as Allende was awaiting the formality of being sworn in by Chile’s national congress, Agustín Edwards, the influential publisher of the right-wing El Mercurio daily newspaper and other media outlets in Chile, met in Washington DC with U.S. president Nixon, then-national security advisor Henry Kissinger and CIA director Richard Helms, among others. The main topic of discussion: Edwards’ plea for financial help to depose Allende before he took office, along with details on the waging of a possible military coup in the country and how that might come about. Nixon himself later approved more than a million U.S. dollars to help Edwards and El Mercurio carry out their media propaganda campaign against Allende and the Popular Unity alliance.

U.S. president Nixon, as the historical record makes clear, was directly involved in setting up a possible military coup in Chile. Around the time of that right-wing Chilean media baron’s secret visit to Washington in September 1970, Nixon ordered CIA director Helms to “make the economy scream” in Chile by whatever means available. Three days after Allende’s inauguration on 3 November 1970, Nixon reaffirmed his orders to the CIA director to “unseat” Allende from power.

To make Chile’s economy “scream,” the U.S. government discreetly pressured both U.S. domestic and international financial agencies to block any loans or other economic aid to Chile’s government under Allende. This included the World Bank, which was being chaired at that time by former U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara. McNamara played footsy with the Nixon administration in ensuring that the powerful financial institution he led would dry up any possible funds to Chile that were in the pipeline.

One big obstacle for the CIA remained, though: To get to Allende, the CIA first had to get past some selected generals in the Chilean military. These generals were not loyal to Allende and his socialist platform, per se, but they were very loyal to Chile’s constitution and understood their role to be that of defending Chile’s democratic system of government. General René Schneider was the commander in chief of Chile’s army at the time — a staunch pro-constitutionalist — and the CIA wanted Schneider out of the way so that Allende would be more exposed and another general could step in to stop Allende from taking office. Toward that end, the CIA secretly funneled money and weapons to a particular Chilean army general, who then set out to kidnap General Schneider and get him out of the way.

But the kidnapping did not go as planned and General Schneider was publicly killed in the process. Schneider’s assassination by traitorous elements of Chile’s military establishment broke a strict tradition of no involvement by the military in Chile’s civilian political affairs. The CIA’s plan had backfired greatly in the end: Schneider’s shocking assassination brought overwhelming sympathy and popular support to Allende from members of Congress and the public alike, and Allende was formally sworn in by the Chilean congress as president on 3 November 1970. Another general, Carlos Prats, took over after Schneider’s assassination and continued to support the constitution and the new democratically elected government.

Along with Nixon himself, then-U.S. national security advisor Henry Kissinger was especially enraged by Allende taking power and was strongly in favor of taking some kind of action against him. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people,” Kissinger infamously remarked about Chile to his top aides at the time.

Allende was starting out on a very perilous six-year term of office as the only democratically elected socialist leader of a country in Latin America, pushing ahead with a political experiment of sorts of fusing socialism and democracy. Could such an experiment possibly work? The United States government, for its part, was intent on making sure it failed.

American Day of Infamy

We know today that once Allende had overcome all obstacles, both Chilean and American, to begin serving as president of his country in 1970 and carrying out his policy of La via Chileno — a Chilean path to socialism — all stops were then pulled out by Chile’s oligarchy to bring the Allende government to its knees financially, politically, economically, militarily and every other way. This included targeting key industries in Chile, such as the cooper industry, and shutting down factories to help weaken the economy. Workers who were loyal to Allende stayed on the job, however, and kept the factories going and the national economy stable for the time being. Other companies, such as trucking and private transportation companies in Chile, went on a nationwide strike to help bring the economy to a standstill and create a climate of social crisis that was ripe for a military intervention.

Artificial shortages of food and other necessary daily items were created by private-sector organizations in Chile, again with the idea of crippling the domestic economy under Allende. The black market flourished in the country as a result and food rationing had to be carried out at the local level by sectors of the public, especially those still supporting the Allende government. Meanwhile, the Chilean military was stepping up its own random searches throughout the country for supposed weapons stockpiles by Allende supporters. No such hording of weapons was found anywhere; the Chilean military’s unilateral actions served only to provoke more protests and divide the country even more deeply.

Amidst all the tension and chaos in Chile, Allende was invited in December 1972 to deliver an extended address at the United Nations — an address in which he assailed the worldwide neo-liberal economic order and for which he was warmly welcomed in the UN chamber. Allende requested a meeting directly with U.S. president Nixon during that trip to work out their differences, but Nixon refused to meet face to face with Allende in Washington. This, despite Chile being an official ally of the U.S., not an enemy state.

A few months later in June 1973 a military coup was launched against the Allende government. It was quickly put down, but the threat of a future military takeover loomed constantly over the country from that point on. It seemed to be a matter of when, not if, a full-scale military coup would be launched again in Chile.

Allende planned to give a major policy address on Tuesday, September 11, 1973 in which he would announce a plan to hold a national referendum that he was confident would reaffirm the will of the voters and their continuing support for his government and the Popular Unity platform. But on the morning of that very day, the military moved first. Allende never had the chance to deliver that address. The coup d’état was launched early that morning, with General Augusto Pinochet — appointed by Allende as head of the armed forces not long before — installing himself as commander in chief of the military junta. Allende refused to leave the La Moneda presidential palace in downtown Santiago, the nation’s capital, and Pinochet ordered two military jets to bomb the palace.

Allende gave his last speech by radio during the attack, understanding the severity of the situation and knowing the end was near. The six-minute-long radio address was his final message to the nation, and it has stood the test of time as one as one of the world’s most well-known farewell addresses from a head of state. “Placed at a historical juncture,” he spoke as the coup was well underway, “my loyalty to the people will cost me my life.”

“And to them, I say that I am sure that the seed we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be cut down forever. They have the power to overwhelm us, but social movements cannot be stopped by crime or by force. History is ours, and is made by the people. …I hope you will learn this lesson: Foreign capital, imperialism and their consequences created the climate in which the armed forces betrayed tradition. …Viva [Long live] Chile! Viva the people! Viva the workers! These are my final words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain.”

Moments after that, Allende, rather than exit the presidential palace as General Pinochet and the military coup plotters were demanding, committed suicide in the building with a machine gun that had reportedly been gifted to him earlier by Cuban president Fidel Castro. It was a tragic end to the short-lived Chilean experiment of effectively merging socialism and democracy. But the real tragedy under the fascist rule of Pinochet was only just beginning.

The Case Against Kissinger

In June 1976, just three years after the coup in Chile that overthrew the Allende government and installed a military dictatorship firmly in its place, Henry Kissinger was in Chile’s capital, Santiago, for a meeting of the Organization of American States. U.S. president Nixon had promoted Kissinger to secretary of state less than two weeks after Chile’s brutal coup on September 11, 1973. U.S. president Gerald Ford was now in office, and as his secretary of state, Kissinger was paying an official visit to the office of Chile’s military junta leader, General Augusto Pinochet. Kissinger came to meet Pinochet not to upbraid him for all the reports of human rights violations that were then coming out of Chile — extrajudicial executions, torture and disappearances, to name a few — but to praise Pinochet to his face and reassure him of U.S. government support for his military dictatorship. (see top photo)

“In the United States, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger told Pinochet early on in their conversation. “I think that the previous government [under Allende] was headed toward Communism. We wish your government well.” Kissinger reminded Pinochet that the U.S. Congress currently was debating whether to continue sending military aid to Chile. “We are opposed” to any such cut-off of aid, Kissinger said.

Noting that he wanted to give Pinochet advance notice about his speech to the OAS on the issue of human rights in Chile, Kissinger asked Pinochet for any progress the military regime in Chile was making on human rights so that he, Kissinger, could essentially run defense for the Pinochet regime before the OAS audience and back home in the USA. “It would really be helpful if you would let us know the measures you are taking in the human rights field. None of this is said with the hope of undermining your government. I want you to succeed and I want to retain the possibility of aid” to Chile.

Discussing Chile’s relations with other Latin American neighbors, especially Peru, Kissinger reminded Pinochet: “We welcomed the overthrow of the communist-inclined government [of Allende] here. We are not out to weaken your position.” Kissinger went on to tell Pinochet that “We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende. Otherwise, Chile would have followed Cuba.” Here was Kissinger, a top representative of the United States government, cuddling up to one of the world’s most notorious dictators — a military dictator who had been making his disdain for democracy well known before the eyes of the world.

Kissinger and Pinochet in their meeting that day in 1976 also briefly discussed Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean ambassador to the U.S. and foreign minister under Allende. An outspoken critic of Pinochet, Letelier was out of the Chilean government by that time and living in Washington DC. In September 1976, just three months after the Kissinger-Pinochet meeting in Chile, Letelier was killed by a car bomb not far from his home in DC — a political hit job that was ordered by Pinochet himself and carried out by his spy agency, the DINA, it was revealed later. There was a bureaucratic Kissinger link to Letelier’s assassination as well, and it appeared that the CIA also tried to provide cover for the Letelier killing after the fact.

All of which is to say this: Kissinger today stands accused of having sided with fascism over democracy in his role as a high U.S. government official dealing with Chile. And it is not just about Chile in 1973: It’s also about the foreign policies that Kissinger carried out as official representative of the U.S. government in various other countries, policies that resulted in the deaths of thousands, if not millions, of innocent civilians: the secret U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971, Indonesia/East Timor in 1975 and the “dirty war” in Argentina from 1976 onward, to name a few. Kissinger not only gave his blessing to these atrocities, but he also used his powerful position as the top diplomat in the U.S. government to make sure such crimes were successfully carried out…and then to lie and publicly deny later that he had any connection whatsoever to those crimes.

Kissinger has long been feted as a geopolitical guru of sorts by leading members of both of America’s two major political parties, and he recently celebrated his 100th birthday. But to his many critics and doubters, including in the U.S. news media, Kissinger today stands accused of being a war criminal by virtue of his actions decades ago as secretary of state. In the Chilean saga, most of the main players such as Richard Nixon, Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet are dead. Kissinger is the last remaining survivor from that era, and in 2023, it is long overdue for Kissinger to be granted a special seat at the International Criminal Court at The Hague in Europe — not as a VIP observer but as a defendant in the dock being prosecuted for his official roles in aiding and abetting crimes of war and crimes against humanity in Chile and elsewhere. It is quite reasonable to demand that Kissinger, still arrogant and unrepentant of the wrongs he committed decades ago, have whatever immunity he holds today stripped and that he be held accountable to the people of the world in an international court of law.

“It’s easy to cast Kissinger as a master geostrategist, an expert player in the game of nations,” one progressive U.S. media outlet has aptly observed. “But do the math. Hundreds of thousands of dead in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and East Timor, perhaps a million in total. Tens of thousands dead in Argentina’s Dirty War. Thousands killed and tens of thousands tortured by the Chilean military dictatorship, and a democracy destroyed. His hands are drenched in blood.”

Al Futuro

Looking to the future, Chile as a nation still faces much uncertainty and instability. Fifty years on from the day of that “first 9/11” — the U.S.-supported military coup of September 11, 1973 in Chile — and far beyond the 17 years that Pinochet and the junta subsequently ruled the nation and ruthlessly oppressed the Chilean people up until 1990, echoes of the death and destruction remain. Chile today is a traumatized society in many ways and is still dealing with a lingering case of national PTSD. Some positive steps forward have been made in Chile in recent years, but the painful past has still not been fully confronted and changed in that country. Could it ever be?

Immediately after assuming power in September 1973, Pinochet and his government proceed to give his American handlers in Washington DC what they most wanted: steering the economy sharply away from socialism under Allende and back into the U.S. neo-liberal capitalist sphere of influence, where multinational corporations could once again feed at the trough of Chile’s vast natural resources and profit handsomely. Pinochet, following the coup d’état, sold out the economy of Chile to the U.S. and other economic forces of globalization for literally the price of a cheap bottle of wine. For its part, the CIA has publicly admitted to spending $8 million (the equivalent of about $45 million today) between 1970 and 1973 to destabilize Allende’s government in Chile — a real bargain for the USA.

The numbers give only a hint of what Pinochet’s reign of terror did to the Chilean people. Before democracy was restored in Chile in 1990, more than 40,000 Chileans and others became victims of political imprisonment, torture, execution or “forced disappearance.” Breaking that number down further, at least 3,200 of those people alone were murdered or made to disappear during that time. According to Chile’s Ministry of Justice, 1,469 people were victims of forced disappearance; of those, 1,092 people were under arrest at the time of their disappearance. As of 2023, the bodies of 377 executed people still have not been returned to their families and only 307 victims of forced disappearance have been identified. Gabriel Boric, 37, the recently elected progressive president of Chile, has just announced the creation of a permanent “Truth and Justice Search Plan” in which Chile’s government would, for the first time ever, assume the official burden of searching for the many people who were disappeared during the Pinochet years.

Prosecution of Chilean military officers for the deaths and disappearances of civilians during the Pinochet dictatorship has been rare over the years. One case, however recently reached its conclusion with justice finally achieved: Seven Chilean military soldiers, including officers, were found guilty in the kidnapping, torture and death of Chile’s beloved folk singer Víctor Jara in the days after the September 11 coup in 1973. The military soldiers and officers, now senior citizens in their 70s and 80s, were sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for their crimes. It took a half-century for justice in this case to be served. Being the cowards that these military killers were, however, some of them managed to escape punishment: One of the convicted seven soldiers, a military officer, committed suicide before police could arrest him and take him to prison; two others have since gone into hiding and are now evading arrest. Meanwhile, Estadio Chile (Chile Stadium), the multi-purpose auditorium in downtown Santiago where they had brutally tortured and executed Jara back in 1973, is today a memorial site and event space that bears his name: Estadio Victor Jara.

In the run-up to the 50th anniversary today of Chile’s 9/11, U.S. Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) recently led a delegation of Latinos in the U.S. Congress to Chile. Ocasio-Cortez, along with Chilean president Boric, called on the U.S. government to declassify and release the still-secret documents on the American role in Chile’s 9/11. “It’s very important to frame the history of what happened here in Chile with Pinochet’s dictatorship,” Ocasio-Cortez announced, “and also to acknowledge and reflect on the role of the United States in those events.” The U.S. congressional delegation, while in Chile, had a chance to visit the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights), a museum in downtown Santiago that commemorates the victims of human rights violations during the Pinochet military dictatorship. The museum was inaugurated in 2010 by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet — a torture victim herself during the Pinochet years.

Today, a half-century on from the horrific events of the first 9/11 in Chile in 1973, a deep political chasm in society remains. The economic divide between the haves and have-nots in Chile still exists, and in recent years public protests and demonstrations by a younger generation against Chile’s government and military and police forces have only grown. A rise in the number of leftist politicians and politically progressive voices in society has also been met with a rise in violent far-right voices in Chile. Pinochet’s murderous legacy is being whitewashed and even remembered fondly by a growing number of Chileans. Back in the USA, meanwhile, some of the extreme-right supporters of former U.S. president Donald Trump see the late dictator Pinochet of Chile as someone to be admired and emulated in the United States.

Where does that leave us today, September 11, a day of historical infamy in both Chile and the United States? At the very least, it leaves us in a place of reflection how about easy it is for the political far-right forces in any country to do lasting damage to democracy. At most, it requires each of us to stand up, speak out and work even more actively, even more passionately, for a better world for all — a task that is easier said than done these days. Yet it must be done. There must never again be the rise of a fascist military dictator anywhere in the world who is warmly embraced by the president of the United States, just as there must never again be a neo-fascist American president occupying the White House.

Uncertain days loom on the horizon for us all now, as the final words of Salvador Allende reverberate from Chile’s 9/11, 50 years ago today: “Go forward knowing that, much sooner than later, the great avenues through which free men [and women] pass will open again to build a better society.” Have those avenues yet opened, a half-century on? In many ways, yes; in other ways no, not fully. Still, that’s the path we must stay on, come hell or high water. We can do no less in the memory of those who lived and died before us so that a more peaceful, more just and more equal world might come into being in our lifetimes. For that is indeed the story of Chile a half-century on, and in the telling, also the story of America, both then and now.