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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/11/155229

Democracy Now interviews Emilio Banda, a student union leader who was tortured under Pinochet’s reign and Francisco Letelier, the son of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, who was killed in car bomb in Washington DC. Here also are comments by Peter Kornbluh, author of “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.”

AMY GOODMAN: How did Pinochet rise to power in Chile in 1973?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, I think, as so many of your listeners know, Amy, that the United States, under the Nixon administration, a policy orchestrated by then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, worked to undermine and destabilize the democratically elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende. The United States helped create the conditions to justify a coup in Chile, create the chaos and instability to promote a Pinochet. There were secret meetings with Pinochet as early as a year before the coup, in which US military officials said to him, “When you’re ready for a coup, we’re ready to help you.” And then, immediately following the coup, the message was passed to him secretly from Kissinger’s office that the United States was going to help in any way for him to consolidate his rule, so his death does remind us of the US role in undermining democracy and supporting dictatorship in Latin America…

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Kornbluh, could Pinochet have risen to power without the support of the United States? And can you talk about the latest documents out that talk about the culpability of US leaders at that time?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, we’re never going to know what would have happened in Chile without the US involvement, because the US was involved. And the declassified documents, including memos from Kissinger to Nixon in 1970, make it very specific, very specifically clear that the intent was to undermine Allende’s ability to govern to the point where a coup might be possible. The CIA’s own declassified documents say that their propaganda effort, their funneling of more than $2 million into the newspaper, El Mercurio, money that was personally approved by President Nixon, by the way, that those funds, quote, “set the stage” for the coup of September 11, 1973.

And, of course, even more importantly, but largely forgotten, is the support that the United States gave to Pinochet immediately following the coup. There’s an extraordinary set of declassified transcripts of Kissinger’s first staff meeting as Secretary of State, where his aide comes in and says, you know, “Congress is asking me about all the murders of the Pinochet regime in the days following the coup. What should I tell them?” And Kissinger is very specific: “I want you to understand our policy. No matter how badly this government, the Pinochet government, behaves, it is better for us than the last one, than Allende’s government.” And that was the operative policy from 1973, September 11, 1973, all the way ’til January of 1977, when the Ford administration and Henry Kissinger left office.

AMY GOODMAN: And the most incriminating document when it comes to Henry Kissinger and his involvement, that shows what exactly he did, what it means to, quote, “support” Pinochet?

PETER KORNBLUH: Well, there are many documents, and I would urge people to read them. Kissinger was not only the chief policymaker overseeing the effort to undermine democracy in Chile between 1970-1973, but he was also the chief policymaker pushing a policy of supporting Augusto Pinochet, despite the torture, despite the disappearances, despite the murders, the international assassinations.

And we know that from the transcripts. His aides come to him and say, “You know, Congress is going to cut off our ability to support Pinochet.” And Kissinger is railing about how bad this is for his executive privilege, how this is going to undermine and lead to the overthrow of Pinochet. And, according to Kissinger, how is it that Pinochet is any worse than any other government? And his aides are forced to say to him, “Well, it is.”

And it was. Pinochet is a name that became synonymous with human rights violations. He was not the dictator that murdered the most people in Latin America, but he was the dictator that received the most attention, that made the issue of disappearances the horror that it is today. He left 1,100 victims, who are still unaccounted for, whose bodies have never been found, whose loved ones have never been able to bury them. So his is a legacy of terror and a reminder of the worst of US policy in Latin America.

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