Although CIA did not instigate the coup that ended Allende's government on 11 September 1973, it was aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters, and—because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970—probably appeared to condone it.
Church Committee.
On this day in 1973 nearly the whole of the Chilean military rose up to depose Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president of the country. The crisis had been brewing for months, and this coup was actually the second one attempted that year.
In the weeks and years to follow, hundreds would die at the hands of the military regime with many people, including the sister of a friend of mine, simply disappearing. Allende refused to surrender himself and instead killed himself with an AK47 that had been given to him by Fidel Castro. Augusto Pinochet would become the military ruler of the country until democracy was restored in 1990. Pinochet retired as commander of the Chilean Army in 1998.
As the Church Committee's report noted, the CIA did not initiate the coup or have a role in it, although the US has tended to be blamed for it. The Administration was not sympathetic to Allende's regime, so the conclusion was probably natural enough. Having said that, Allende had been in trouble for months and the coup was probably inevitable. The coup was positively received, if not openly, by many Western nations, which saw it as preventing a Chilean descent into Communist rule.
Dealing with the coup in Chile has been problematic, with the country never getting over, for obvious reasons, the large number of people who disappeared. At the same time, support for the coup itself has grown in recent years, although it is still a minority of Chileans who feel it was justified.
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