Archive
director discusses Kissinger telcons on NPR's
All Things Considered, 27 May 2004
New
Kissinger Telcons Released 26 May 2004
The
Dobrynin File: "Happy Birthday" Henry Kissinger
Telcons Previously Released in Other Nixon Presidential Files
A Side-by-Side Comparison of a Kissinger Telcon and a Nixon Tape
of the Same Conversation
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KISSINGER
TO NIXON: "WE HELPED" COUP FORCES IN CHILE
New
Telephone transcript records conversation with President
TELCON:
September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon (pages
1,2)
Washington D.C. May 26, 2004 - In one of his first
conversations with President Richard Nixon following the bloody
military coup in Chile, Henry Kissinger stated "we helped them,"
according to declassified
transcripts of a telephone conversation obtained today
by the National Security Archive. "That is right," Nixon
responded.
The transcript records a call made by President Nixon to Kissinger's
home on the weekend following General Augusto Pinochet's violent
overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende
in Chile. Kissinger reports to the president that the new military
regime was "getting consolidated" and complains that the
press is "bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been
overthrown." When Nixon notes that "our hand doesn't show
on this one though," Kissinger responds that "We didn't
do it" [referring to the coup itself]. I mean we helped them….created
the conditions as great as possible."
The September 16, 1973, "telcon" was found by the Archive's
Chile analyst, Peter Kornbluh, among thousands of pages of transcriptions
of Kissinger's telephone calls dated between 1969 and 1974, declassified
today at the initiative of the Archive. Kornbluh, the author of
The Pinochet File, called the new document "damning
proof, in Kissinger's own words, that the Nixon administration directly
contributed to creating a coup climate in Chile which made the September
11, 1973, military takeover possible."
In his confirmation hearings as Secretary of State that very week,
Kissinger denied that the U.S. Government played any role whatsoever
in Allende's overthrow. A year later, after details of a CIA destabilization
program had leaked to the press, he again testified before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee that "the intent of the United
States was not to destabilize or to subvert [Allende]….Our
concern was with the election of 1976 and not at all with a coup
in 1973 about which we knew nothing and [with] which we had nothing
to do…."
In his conversation with Nixon, Kissinger suggested that the press
should be "celebrating" instead of being critical of the
coup. "In the Eisenhower period we would be heroes," he
tells the President. "But listen," Nixon replies to his
national security adviser, "as far as people are concerned
let me say they aren't going to buy this crap from the Liberals
on this one."
Watch this site for more "telcons" on the U.S. role in
Chile.
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