ITT’s response was equally disingenuous. A company spokesman said, “I.T.T. never intervened or interfered in the internal affairs of Chile in any way…. I.T.T. has always respected a host’s [sic] country’s desire to nationalize an I.T.T. property.”79
In delivering his courageous speech to the United Nations, Allende may have been signing his own death warrant. In early 1973, the CIA urged its Chilean agents to “induce as much of the military as possible, if not all, to take over and displace the Allende govt.”80 Strikes and antigovernment protests escalated. Chilean military leaders, directed by General Augusto Pinochet, the army commander, set the coup for September 11, 1973. When Allende heard that military uprisings had begun across the country, he made a final radio address from the presidential palace: “I will not resign…. Foreign capital—imperialism united with reaction—created the climate for the army to break with their tradition…. Long live Chile! Long live the people! These are my last words. I am sure that my sacrifice will not be in vain. I am sure it will be at least a moral lesson, and a rebuke to crime, cowardice and treason.”81 Allende took his own life with a rifle he had been given as a gift. A gold-medal plate embedded in the stock was inscribed, “To my good friend Salvador Allende from Fidel Castro.”82
Pinochet seized power. After the coup, Nixon and Kissinger assessed the possible damage. Speaking by phone, Kissinger, who was getting ready to attend the Redskins’ season opener, complained that the newspapers were “bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.” Nixon muttered, “Isn’t that something. Isn’t that something.” Kissinger replied, “I mean instead of celebrating—in the Eisenhower period we would have been heroes.” Nixon said, “Well we didn’t—as you know—our hand doesn’t show on this one though.” Kissinger amended that statement: “We didn’t do it. I mean we helped them. _____ created the conditions as great as possible.” To which Nixon responded, “That is right… as far as people are concerned… they aren’t going to buy this crap from the Liberals on this one…. it is a pro-Communist government and that is the way it is.” “Exactly. And pro-Castro,” Kissinger agreed. “Well the main thing was. Let’s forget the pro-Communist. It was an anti-American government all the way,” Nixon added. “Oh wildly,” Kissinger concurred. He assured Nixon that he was just reporting the criticism. But it wasn’t bothering him. Nixon reflected, “Yes, you are reporting it because it is just typical of the crap we are up against.” “And the unbelievable filthy hypocrisy,” Kissinger averred.83
Pinochet murdered more than 3,200 of his opponents and jailed and tortured tens of thousands more in a reign of terror that began with the actions of the Chilean Army death squad known as Caravan of Death. Kissinger saw to it that the United States quickly recognized and provided aid to the murderous regime. In June 1976, he visited the Chilean dictator and assured him, “We are sympathetic to what you are trying to do here.”84
Pinochet didn’t limit his killing to Chile. Three months after Kissinger’s visit, Pinochet’s assassins killed Orlando Letelier, Allende’s ambassador to the United States, and Ronni Moffitt, Letelier’s colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies. The car bombing, which occurred fourteen blocks from the White House, had been carried out under Operation Condor, an assassination ring run by a network of Latin American intelligence agencies based in Chile. Members included the right-wing governments of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. At a minimum, the United States facilitated communications among the intelligence chiefs. The operation was masterminded by Colonel Manuel Contreras, the head of Chilean intelligence, who served as a CIA asset and received at least one payment for his services. Many of those assassinated were left-wing guerrilla leaders. But Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Harry Shlaudeman informed Kissinger that the targets actually included “nearly anyone who opposes government policy.”85
Kissinger could have disrupted the Condor operations, including the Letelier-Moffitt assassinations. On August 30, 1976, Shlaudeman sent him a memo, stating, “what we are trying to head off is a series of international murders that could do serious damage to the international status and reputation of the countries involved.”86 Kissinger had already approved sending a diplomatic protest to the heads of state of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, expressing “our deep concern” over “plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad.” But the démarche was never delivered because, on September 16, Kissinger canceled the warning, cabling Shlaudeman that he had “instructed that no further action be taken on this matter.”87
Under Condor, assassination squads tracked down and killed more than 13,000 dissidents outside their home countries. Hundreds of thousands more were thrown into concentration camps.88
Although Nixon and Kissinger have been rightly condemned for the viciousness of their policies in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Chile, they have also garnered praise for easing tensions in other areas. Normalizing relations with China was the most obvious case in point.
Nixon followed up his triumphal February 1972 visit to China with a May visit to the Soviet Union. Wary of the United States’ new friendship with China, the Soviets greeted him warmly. In Moscow, Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), the first strategic arms agreement, which restricted each side to two defensive antiballistic missile systems and placed limits on the number of offensive ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The treaty failed to slow the growth of nuclear warheads because it placed no restraints on multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs)—missiles that could carry several bombs aimed at separate targets. Nor did it do anything to roll back the massive existing arsenals that gave each side the ability to destroy the other several times over. But as a first step, the agreement was of great symbolic importance. Brezhnev and Nixon also initiated the process that resulted in recognition of Eastern Europe’s borders in return for pledges to respect human rights in the Helsinki Accords of 1975. They issued a joint communiqué and a statement of “Basic Principles.” The first of those principles stated that both countries “will proceed from the common determination that in the nuclear age there is no alternative to conducting their mutual relations on the basis of peaceful coexistence.”89 Nixon addressed a joint session of Congress upon his return, saying:
Everywhere new hopes are rising for a world no longer shadowed by fear and want and war…. To millions of Americans for the past quarter century the Kremlin has stood for implacable hostility toward all we cherish, and to millions of Russians the American flag has long been held up as a symbol of evil. No one would have believed even a short time ago that these two apparently irreconcilable symbols would be seen together as we saw them for those few days…. Three-fifths of all the people alive in the world today have spent their whole lifetimes under the shadow of a nuclear war…. Last Friday in Moscow we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era.90