Kissinger and Helms Plot to Covertly Support Jorge Alessandri
By Harlan Pryce ·
Secret directives from a "higher authority" urged a covert push for Jorge Alessandri in Chile, though the record remains blank on the assets and money deployed.
On April 15, 1969, in a room in Washington, Henry Kissinger, Richard Helms, and a small circle of aides gathered to discuss the state of Latin America. The record of this meeting, a memorandum for the record dated April 17, identifies the gathering as a session of the 303 Committee. According to the public record, such sub-committees of the National Security Council served as the mechanism for executive oversight of United States covert operations.
In the room were Mr. Johnson and Mr. Helms, along with Colonel Alexander Haig and William Trueheart. William Broe was present for the first item of business: a report on the March 1969 Chilean congressional elections and a wider briefing on covert activities in the region. For anyone who has spent time in the field, the phrasing of the memo is telling. It describes the March operation as a "successful limited Chilean congressional election operation."
"Successful Limited Operation"
In the language of the clandestine service, "limited" is a qualifier that often masks the actual scale of an effort, but "successful" is a binary. The 303 Committee had achieved its immediate objective in the congressional race. However, the momentum of a limited win is rarely enough to secure a long-term strategic position. The meeting quickly pivoted from the victory of March to the looming contest of the following year.
The Chairman—Kissinger—raised the question of whether the United States should intervene in the presidential election scheduled for September 1970. This was not a question of if, but of when and how. The memorandum notes that Kissinger mentioned a conversation where "a friend of higher authority had urged higher authority to provide assistance to rightist Alessandri."
This is the kind of carefully calibrated vagueness common in high-level memos. "Higher authority" is a placeholder for the presidency, and the "friend" is an unnamed conduit of influence. It suggests that the impulse to tilt the scales in Chile was not merely a departmental preference of the CIA or the NSC, but a directive floating down from the very top of the executive branch. The committee members conceded that Jorge Alessandri’s prospects were "reasonably good," which, in the cold calculus of election interference, means he was a viable vessel for U.S. interests but not a guaranteed winner.
A Friend of Higher Authority
Despite the nudge from the "higher authority," the committee decided that no immediate steps were necessary. The logic was simple: the presidential candidates had not yet been formally declared. To move too early is to risk exposing the hand; to move too late is to find the concrete already poured.
This tension is where the professional tradecraft of Richard Helms entered the conversation. Helms, then Director of Central Intelligence, warned that once the candidates were declared, a decision on covert support needed to be made quickly. He did not suggest hesitation; he suggested preparation. Helms observed that "a great deal of preliminary work is necessary," noting that the Agency had learned from experience that an election operation would fail unless an "early enough start is made."
Helms was speaking from a career spent understanding that influence is not a switch you flip on election eve. It is an infrastructure. It requires the quiet identification of local assets, the establishment of funding channels, and the subtle priming of the political environment. If you wait until the candidates are on the ballot, you are merely reacting to the momentum of the street. To control the outcome, you must create the momentum yourself.
September 1970
The 303 Committee’s focus on Chile was part of a broader pattern of executive oversight. Other archival records from the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States series indicate that the 303 Committee handled similar memoranda regarding operations in Japan, Africa, and the region encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The Chilean operation was simply one theater in a global strategy of managed outcomes.
In April 1969, the committee left the matter of Alessandri in a state of suspended animation, waiting for the formal declarations of candidacy. They had the "successful limited" experience of the congressional race to lean on, but Helms knew that a presidency is a different animal than a legislature. The gap between the April meeting and the September 1970 election provided the window for the "preliminary work" Helms demanded.
The record of the meeting is brief, lacking the granular detail of the actual assets deployed or the sums of money allocated. It captures only the high-level steering of the ship. The memorandum concludes by noting that copies of the minutes were sent to Mitchell, Packard, Johnson, and Helms.