Part V: Chile -The First 9/11
Australia's Secret Service role in the Chilean Coup
by Heather Gray
Justice Initiative International
September 16, 2017
In 2007, when doing research about the CIA led coup of the 1975 ousting of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, I learned for the first time about the Australian secret service involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup against Salvador Allende. More information has come to light in recent years about Australia's role that I wanted to share. It is largely from the fascinating research and investigation by
Florencia Melgar (an interview with whom, by Australian Peter Boyle, is shared below).
Before going further, it is important to note that when the Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was elected in 1972, like most Australians, he was not aware of the Australian secret service being in Chile and was furious about this when he was informed. Two of the Australian secret service individuals apparently took the lead on the CIA planned coup in Chile, and they did this undercover from the Australian Embassy while posing as diplomats. Whitlam told the secret service head that the Australians needed to leave Chile and yet his orders were ignored.
In summary, the new revelation for me is that the CIA asked the Australian secret service to, as mentioned, take the "lead" in the coup in Chile and by basically overseeing the CIA operatives in Chile. The reason, it appears, was because the Americans were concerned that Allende might close the U.S. embassy, which, in my opinion, would have been a good idea! Further, the CIA was aware that the Allende government seemingly knew who the leading CIA operatives were in Chile. Nevertheless, the following is information about circumstances preceding the CIA's decision to reach out to Australia:
President Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had been nervous about Allende since well before his election in 1970, as they knew his socialist policies would harm US business interests, like copper mining.
"But they also wanted Allende to fail because they were very afraid that the socialist experiment would be successful and would encourage other left-of-centre parties in a variety of Latin American countries to try the same thing - bring about socialism by democratic means," says John Dinges, a journalist and author who has written extensively about Chile and who was in Santiago at the time of Pinochet's coup.
The CIA was funneling cash to Chile's right-wing media outlets and Allende's political opponents. But when it looked like he would win the 1970 presidential election, the agency stepped up its covert activities.
General René Schneider, head of Chile's armed forces, was a constitutionalist, and respected the professional, non-political role of the military. He stood in the way of the military coup that the United States hoped would work as a last-ditch effort to keep Allende out of power. So in the lead-up to the 1970 elections, the CIA provided machine guns and cash to a group of plotters who planned to kidnap Schneider and send him to Argentina, leaving the way clear for a military takeover. But the kidnapping went badly wrong, and the General ended up dead.
The CIA rushed to cover its tracks, paying the jailed plotters $53,000 in hush money and throwing the machine guns they'd lent them into the sea. The army, and Chilean society, upset by the attempt to destroy proper democratic process, rallied around Allende. He was elected on 4 September, 1970. Now, the US would focus it efforts on undermining Allende's government.
"They were actually organising a coup in 1970," says John Dinges, but in the lead-up to 1973, the CIA was "very much in the background, doing things like fomenting the economic subversion, paying off right wingers to do violence in the streets - stuff like that."
Nixon instructed his administration to "make the economy scream," and before long, it would.
"The US definitely wanted the economy to fail so that the military would overthrow Allende," says Dinges. "They promoted an economic blockade, preventing Chile from getting credits from international aid associations like the World Bank and the IMF."
Meanwhile, nervous that Allende had them under close watch and that he may close the US embassy, removing their cover, the CIA called on its friends and allies to help out. (SBS)
Before proceeding the 2013 recorded and transcribed interview with Melgar, I want to provide some terms that are referred to in the interview but not explained in depth about Australia's secret service entities and they are the following:
(1) The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is Australia's national security agency responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage, acts of foreign interference, politically motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system, and terrorism.
Also, the interview below refers to Felecia Melgar's excellent research, the report of which was issued by Australia's SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) and is appropriately entitled "
The Other 9/11". It
well worth reading.
I also want to share, if you want this perspective, the link to the CIA's own report about the CIA's involvement in Chile entitled "CIA Activities in Chile" posted on the CIA website. It includes the following sections:
CIA Activities in Chile
Note: Below is the 2013 interview with
Felecia Melgar followed by the transcription.
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How Australian intelligence helped Pinochet dictatorship
Peter Boyle from GLTV interviews Florencia Melgar, a former SBS journalist who talks about her research and findings into Australia's involvement in the 1973 military coup against the progressive government of Allende. It is timely now for such a discussion about the secret goings on by Australian spy agencies like ASIO and ASIS now that it has been revealed that these agencies continue to this day to spy on governments like Indonesia with whom we have had good relations with.
Friday, November 29, 2013
Green Left Weekly
Peter Boyle
interviewed Florencia Melgar, a former SBS journalist about her research into Australia's involvement in the 1973 military coup against the progressive government of Salvador Allende in Chile.
You investigated the role of Australian secret intelligence agencies in the destabilisation of the Allende regime in Chile and it's overthrow of the Pinochet coup [in 1973.] What led you to this investigation?
I have been investigating into human rights under the dictatorship. But some of these small stories led me to big stories and that was the case with this.
I was doing a lot of interviews with people who were torturers in jails in Uruguay during the dictatorship of Gregorio Alvarez. Because my husband is Australian, one of them said to me: "Do you know what Australia did in Chile? Did you know Australia helped Pinochet a lot?"
So, it has been in the back of my head since 2008, and when I came to choose a topic for my PhD I thought I would do some research into it.
A lot of people told me there was no evidence for it, it wasn't real. But then I found a quote from [former Labor minister] Clyde Cameron in the public domain and I started pulling the thread and it got bigger and bigger. I got hooked by the story because it's not just Chile, it's also Argentina. It's the participation of Australia's secret service in South America.
During the period of Allende in Chile, what exactly did Australian intelligence agents do?
Well, there was a mission of the CIA and all of that is documented. It has been declassified through the national security archive. All the details of what the CIA did - helping the strikes, giving at least $10 million in the period before Allende,
The CIA were restricted because Allende knew who they were, so they couldn't move. So the US had to ask one of their friends, it could have been the Canadians, or the British.
Australia was chosen because they were their allies.
So they played a critical role?
They were commanding the operation and reporting directly to the CIA.
So they were basically working for the CIA?
Yes, from the Australian embassy. They were posing as diplomats.
Was this known to Australian governments at the time?
Yes. The one who made the decision was the foreign minister William McMahon, who then became prime minister. The operation started in 1972.
Gough Whitlam was the following prime minister and there are so many stories about how Whitlam was a leader on this. The fact is, Whitlam didn't want the agents to be in Chile and he ordered them to be taken out but his orders were not followed.
So the way he tells the story in his memoirs was that there were no [Australian] secret agents left in Chile by mid-September 1973. He said the mission finished in June, 1973 and that's what he wanted it to be, but they were still there.
So there was a lot of coverup taking place and I understand one of the agencies involved was ASIS. This is an agency whose existence was completely secret.
Yes. It was created in 1952 and remained secret until 1972, so it operated for 20 years as a secret agency. Even parliament didn't know about it.
Was it the Whitlam government who introduced the royal commission into security agencies?
Yes, it was Whitlam who asked Justice Robert Hope to do it. According to Brian Toohey who wrote a book called Oyster, they said there isn't much in the Hope Commission. Hope didn't want to look too deeply into it, he could have done it but he didn't.
When you look at the report, the chapter on Chile is [crossed out] in black. Hope didn't do a thorough investigation.
Do you believe there have been ongoing attempts by Australian security agencies to keep this story under wraps or limit the information that is coming out?
A journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald was assigned to cover the story and to find out who these agents were. In those times, it was not illegal, as it is now, to name intelligence agents present or former.
He couldn't do it because there was a call from ASIS to the SMH to say this is not in the national interest and the SMH decided to stop doing the research. They had the names already.
I have the names but it is illegal to name them unless the director general of ASIS, in this case Nick Warner, allows it. So I made a formal request to publish the names, hoping that even if they said no they would give me some information because I'm not obsessed with putting their names in the public domain. What I want to know is the historical truth after 40 years - why are the files hidden? The normal timeframe of 25 years has already expired.
They sent me a letter saying I couldn't use their names but in that letter ASIS said that I couldn't release my report at all, at the risk of seven years' jail and no bail.
I went to SBS lawyers and they said: "This is a tricky one because most of what you've done is against what they are saying you can do."
It's illegal not just to release their names but also anything that can reveal their identity. You cannot talk about the details of the operation or anything that can lead to the details of the operation. What I agreed to with the lawyers was that I would rephrase the report, so the report released on SBS was checked by lawyers.
What kind of response have you received from this report from members of the Chilean community in Australia, many of whom fled Chile because of the terrors of the Pinochet regime?
All of them were really sad. Many of them wanted an explanation; some of them wanted an apology from the Australian government. But all of them wanted to know why, and to find out how it happened. They felt like they deserved more information.
Some of them didn't understand, because they are good-hearted people who are sometimes not aware of how evil the system is. The intelligence system flies above the political system and it doesn't matter who is in government.
They couldn't understand that the same government who gave them protection was also helping Pinochet. That happens all the time.
Do you think the Chileans who fled the Pinochet regime were also spied upon by Australian agencies, while they were here?
In 1974, there were many protests and demonstrations. One in particular in Melbourne was recorded by ASIO, I could get the footage from the national archive. I got permission from ASIO to release it.
Do you know of any Chileans who suffered consequences as a result of reports on their activities in Australia?
The question is, what did ASIO do with that footage? You can make assumptions that it was sent Chile, why would they take this footage? We don't know because it is secret and there is no accountability.
Do you feel this story is still unfinished and do you intend to look deeper into it in the future?
I hope that I can convince the two agents who worked in Chile to tell me what happened. The freedom of information laws here are very limited. All the six intelligence agencies are exempted from those laws, so the timeframe of 25 years to know the history of a country - it doesn't apply to intelligence. So basically all foreign policy of Australia [remains secret].
When can we know? In 25 years? 40, 50, never? I need to go on doing this research because I think it's just the beginning of it and I'm also going to rely on Chile's documents because I think there's a lot there.
