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Invited by CEP in October 1996, Edward M. Korry, US Ambassador to Santiago between 1967 and 1971, offered an account of the critical years when he was in charge of the United States mission in Chile, placing it in the broader context of US-Chilean relations during the 1960s and first half of the 1970s. Ambassador Korry draws attention to the huge financial support —approaching US$20 million of that time— provided by the government of John F. Kennedy to the Christian Democratic Party in Chile, the aim of which, according to the Ambassador, was to establish in this country "a Christian Democratic dynasty" that would constitute an opposite pole of attraction to that exerted by the Cuban revolution in Latin America (very similar to the initiative undertaken in Italy in 1948). At the end of 1967, with the arrival of Ambassador Korry in Chile, this party-party relationship was brought to an end, and State-State relations were reestablished. In the 1970 elections, the Ambassador states that only US$125 thousand were channeled through the CIA for the so-called "terror compaign". However, following the triumph of Salvador Allende in the presidential elections, a vast program was approved aimed at "facilitating the means to permit the survival of the press, broadcasting media and a democratic opposition", and thereby counteract the measures taken by the Unidad Popular government to take control of the communications media.
Along with other revelations concerning events prior and subsequent to Allende’s September 4th victory, the Ambassador also refers to the motivations that may have led the main organs of the western press to describe Salvador Allende as a "social democrat, victimized by a repressive Army", and the Hearings held by a Commission of the United States Senate (subsequently known as the Church Commission) in relation to covert CIA operations in Chile between 1963 and 1973, from which Ambassador Korry was excluded and thus prevented from testifying.
The text reproduced here is the written version that Ambassador Korry provided, and includes four appendices which expand on the following topics: (i) Soviet military aid (1971-1973); (ii) CIA activities in Chile between 1969 and 1976; (iii) the government of Eduardo Frei M., Cardenal Raúl Silva H. and Easter Island, and (iv) negotiations held in 1971 with the government of Salvador Allende. In this edition, Estudios Públicos also reproduces an interview with Ambassador Korry, and in "Chile in the archives of the EE UU", includes telegrams exchanged between the Ambassador and the US Department of State in August 1970, as well as the Contingency Paper ("‘Fidelismo’ without Fidel") which was prepared against the eventuality that Allende would win the elections and assume the presidency. The ideas contained in this latter document were to orient United States policy towards Chile during the Unidad Popular government. This is an extraordinarily interesting text which is being made public for the first time.