I was actually at the event yesterday where Senator Isabel Allende spoke. She was incredibly moving, particularly standing in front of the very building in which she last saw her father alive 50 years ago. And I do want to say to your audience that The Nation magazine has published an excerpt of her memoir just yesterday, where — in English, where she recounts that very day 50 years ago in dramatic and very, very heartbreaking detail.
You know, there’s a lot known about the U.S. role in Chile, but there’s a lot to be reminded of, as well, and then there are the secrets that remain. And just to give your audience a sense of what we know, 50 years ago today, on the 12th of September, 1973, Henry Kissinger called together a special interagency committee known as the WASAG, the Washington Special Action Group. And literally within 24 hours of the coup, he was in discussion with these interagency representatives on how to help the Pinochet regime consolidate, even as people were being killed and their bodies dumped in the street and rounded up and put into a concentration camp at the stadium and bodies floating in the Mapocho River here in Santiago. Kissinger convened this committee, and we have the declassified memoranda of conversation. And, you know, actually, the officials there just started joking about the coup. Kissinger told everybody, “President Nixon is concerned that we might want to send somebody to Salvador Allende’s
— source democracynow.org | Sep 12, 2023