On the occasion of the 100th birthday of the powerful former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (1970–1977), the National Security Archive has declassified a series of documents that reveal controversial aspects of his career. Among them is the transcript of a private meeting that took place in 1976 in Santiago, Chile, with dictator Augusto Pinochet, which sheds light on US support for the military regime and its role in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.
According to the archive, Chile represents the underbelly of Kissinger’s legacy, and the declassified documents make clear that he was the principal architect of US efforts to destabilize the Allende government. In the transcript of the meeting with Pinochet, although Kissinger’s advisors counseled him to reproach the dictator for the human rights violations perpetrated by his regime, Kissinger chose to express his strong support for him. He even asserted that Pinochet was a victim of leftist groups and that his greatest sin had been to overthrow a government that was turning communist.
Kissinger expressed his intention to help Pinochet rather than undermine him and asked him for information on the steps he was taking on human rights. Pinochet responded that Chile was moving toward institutionalization step by step but that he was constantly under attack by the Christian Democrats, who had strong influence in Washington. This conversation takes place in a context in which the CIA has declassified documents showing that Pinochet ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier, Allende’s former minister exiled in Washington.
The file also highlights that Kissinger designed US policy to prevent Allende from consolidating his elected government and convinced President Nixon to authorize a clandestine intervention in order to intensify Allende’s problems and create the conditions for his collapse or overthrow. Kissinger claimed that the United States had created the best possible conditions for the overthrow to take place and added that, in Eisenhower’s time, they would have been considered heroes.
These declassified documents shed light on Kissinger’s role in US foreign policy during that period and its implications for the overthrow of a democratic government and human rights violations in Chile.