The Nation: Chile: A Case Study

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While owning up to CIA efforts to weaken Allende, Colby insists: "We didn't support the coup, we didn't stimulate it, we didn't bring it about in any way. We were quite meticulous in making sure there was no encouragement from our side." Most U.S. policymakers would have preferred that Allende be ousted in democratic fashion at the election scheduled for 1976. That kind of exit, they feel, would have decisively proved the bankruptcy of his policies.

Clearly the CIA considers the junta to be the lesser of two evils. Still, it rates the Chilean enterprise a failure since it ended in military dictatorship. Several years of dangerous, costly and now nationally divisive intervention in another country's internal politics might better have been avoided. Though Soviet propaganda blames the CIA for the Chilean coup and the death of Allende, Soviet intelligence analysts do not give the CIA any credit. The Russians think the fault lay with Allende himself for not being enough of a strongman. He temporized with constitutional processes when he should have disregarded them. He did not follow the example of Fidel Castro, who executed more than 1,000 of his opponents when he came to power; 15 years later, he still rules Cuba. Nor did the CIA have any better luck against him.