A delegation of Kissinger’s Harvard friends informed him that they would no longer serve as advisors. Thomas Schelling explained, “As we see it there are two possibilities. Either, one, the President didn’t understand when he went into Cambodia that he was invading another country; or, two, he did understand. We just don’t know which one is scarier.”56
Nixon’s behavior became increasingly erratic. He and his valet visited the Lincoln Memorial at 5 A.M. for an awkward exchange with student protesters. Kissinger feared that Nixon might have a nervous breakdown. Under mounting pressure, Nixon announced that all combat troops would be out of Cambodia by the end of June. As Joint Chiefs Chairman Moorer acknowledged, “The reaction of noisy radical groups was considered all the time. And it served to inhibit and restrain the decision makers.”57 But the bombing campaign intensified, devastating much of Cambodia.
The White House made broad claims about its authority to break the law in order to curb dissent. Testifying before the Senate, Tom Huston, who was in charge of White House internal security, explained, “It was my opinion at the time that simply the Fourth Amendment did not apply to the president in the exercise of matters relating to the internal security or national security.”58 When David Frost later confronted Nixon with his lawbreaking, Nixon replied simply, “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”59 That argument was very similar to the one the George W. Bush White House would make years later to justify its own illegal measures.
Nixon also justified overthrowing a popular government in Chile. A rarity in Latin America, Chile had been a democracy since 1932. Nixon and Kissinger would soon change that. Chile’s importance was magnified by the fact that it was the world’s leading copper producer, with production dominated by two American-owned firms, Kennecott and Anaconda. In 1964, the CIA, which had been meddling in Chilean affairs since 1958, helped moderate Eduardo Frei defeat Socialist Salvador Allende for the presidency. Over the next few years, the United States spent millions more supporting anti-Communist groups and provided $163 million in military aid, placing Chile, among the Latin American states, second only to Brazil, whose reform government the United States had helped overthrow in 1964. Meanwhile, the United States trained some four thousand Chilean military officers in counterinsurgency methods at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone and on U.S. military bases.60
Whereas Kennedy and, to some extent, Johnson had tried to work with democratic elements in the region, Nixon and Kissinger opted for the naked use of force. Nixon informed the NSC, “I will never agree with the policy of downgrading the military in Latin America. They are power centers subject to our influence. The others, the intellectuals, are not subject to our influence.”61
Allende ran again in 1970, promising to redistribute wealth and nationalize U.S. companies that controlled Chile’s economy, such as ITT. Prodded by Chase Manhattan Bank’s David Rockefeller and former CIA director and ITT board member John McCone, Kissinger instructed U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry and CIA station chief Henry Hecksher to stop Allende. Hecksher enlisted the help of Chilean power broker Agustín Edwards, who owned copper mines, the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant, and El Mercurio, Chile’s biggest newspaper. The CIA conducted a massive propaganda campaign to convince the Chilean people that Allende would destroy democracy. Korry later deplored the CIA’s incompetence: “I had never seen such dreadful propaganda in a campaign anywhere in the world. I said that the idiots in the CIA who had helped create the ‘campaign of terror’… should have been sacked immediately for not understanding Chile and Chileans.”62 Despite U.S. efforts, Allende narrowly outpolled his two rivals. When Kissinger told Nixon that Rogers wanted to “see what we can work out [with Allende],” Nixon shot back, “Don’t let them do it.”63
At a September 15 meeting with Attorney General John Mitchell and Kissinger, Nixon instructed Helms “to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.” He told him to use his “best men” and gave assurances that he was “not concerned [about the] risks involved.” “Make the economy scream,” he ordered. He told Helms to run the coup planning without notifying Rogers, Laird, or the “40 Committee,” the five-member Kissinger-chaired review panel that authorized and oversaw all CIA clandestine activity. McCone informed Kissinger that ITT’s chief executive officer, Harold Geneen, had offered $1 million to support the effort.64
Nixon instructed the CIA to pursue a two-track operation. Track one had two components: spreading propaganda to terrify the Chilean public about the consequences of an Allende presidency and bribing elected officials to block Allende’s confirmation by the Chilean Congress. Track two called for a military coup. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Charles Meyer, Hecksher, and Viron Vaky, Kissinger’s chief advisor on Latin America, all opposed the coup option. Trying to reason with Kissinger, Vaky wrote, “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets…. If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us., e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”65
Clearly, Allende posed no “mortal threat” to the American people. A National Security Study Memo commissioned by Kissinger concluded that “the U.S. has no vital national interests within Chile” and an Allende government would not significantly change the balance of power.66 Kissinger himself had earlier disparaged Chile as “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica.”67 But he now feared that a successful democratic socialist government in Chile could inspire similar uprisings elsewhere. “What happens in Chile,” he figured, would have an effect “on what happens in the rest of Latin America and the developing world… and on the larger world picture, including… relations with the USSR.”68
For Kissinger, Chile’s democratic traditions and the freely expressed will of the Chilean people were of little, if any, concern. While chairing a meeting of the “40 Committee,” Kissinger remarked, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”69
Helms chose Brazil station chief David Atlee Phillips to head the Chile task force. Phillips was well suited to the job, having helped overthrow a democratic government in Guatemala, and suppress a democratic uprising in the Dominican Republic. Despite having twenty-three foreign correspondents on his payroll, he doubted that track one would succeed. Chilean elected officials were simply too honest to bribe. He also doubted the efficacy of track two. Chile’s military, under General René Schneider, a strong supporter of the Constitution, was staying out of politics.
CIA propaganda was having more of an impact in the United States than it was in Chile. Time magazine’s October 19 issue had a bright red cover featuring Allende titled “Marxist Threat in the Americas—Chile’s Salvador Allende.” Time trumpeted the CIA line, warning that if Allende “is acknowledged the winner, as seemed virtually certain last week, Chile may not have another free election for a long, long time.” Even worse, it opined, a Communist takeover would inevitably follow.70