The Nation: Chile: A Case Study

The U.S. began its heavy investment in the political fate of Chile in the early 1960s. President John Kennedy had met Eduardo Frei, leader of the Christian Democratic Party in Chile, and decided that he was the hope of Latin America. Frei was a man of the left, but not too far left, a man who was not hostile to U.S. interests and just might be able to achieve needed reform without violent revolution. When Frei faced Salvador Allende, a self-professed Marxist with a Communist following, in the 1964 election, the U.S. made no secret of where its sympathies lay.

Frei became the recipient of American political advice, encouragement and hefty financial aid. Between 1962 and 1965, the U.S. gave Chile $618 million in direct economic assistance —more per capita than any other Latin American country. In a diary due to be published in Britain this year, former CIA Operative Philip Agee describes how he was called upon for assistance from his post in Montevideo in 1964: "The Santiago station has a really big operation going to keep Salvador Allende from being elected President. He was almost elected at the last elections in 1958, and this time nobody's taking any chances. The trouble is that the office of finance in headquarters [Langley, Va.] couldn't get enough Chilean escudos from the New York banks; so they had to set up regional purchasing offices in Lima and Rio. But even these offices can't satisfy the requirement, so we have been asked to help." The results were gratifying. Frei won with 56% of the vote, and the future of Chile seemed to be assured.

But from the outset, Frei ran into trouble. He was attacked by the right for moving too fast and by the left for going too slowly. Allende's Socialist Party continued to grow, picking up defecting left-wing Christian Democrats and uniting with other opposition parties. It became a case for the CIA. A station chief had been sent to Santiago in 1964; later the agency's presence began to multiply in preparation for the 1970 election, when Frei would be constitutionally barred from seeking a second term and Allende would pose more of a threat than before.

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TIME has learned that a CIA team was posted to Chile with orders from the National Security Council to keep the election "fair." The agents interpreted these instructions to mean: Stop Allende, and they asked for a whopping $20 million to do the job. They were given $5 million and ultimately spent less than $1 million. "You buy votes in Boston, you buy votes in Santiago," commented a former CIA agent assigned to the mission. But not enough votes were bought; Allende had a substantial following. He was prevented from winning a majority, but with only 36% of the vote he narrowly won a three-way race that was finally decided in the Chilean Congress. CIA officials in Washington were furious.