Nixon gave CIA $10 million to prevent Salvador Allende from ruling Chile
By Desmond Okafor ·
Salvador Allende's democratic mandate was treated as a security threat by a White House that kept its $10 million plot "Secret; Sensitive; Eyes Only" to bypass its own diplomats.
Chilean voters chose a path toward socialism, only to find that their choice had been preemptively vetoed by a man in the Oval Office. This betrayal of a national election transformed the CIA into a shadow government tasked with the removal of a democratically elected leader.
The cost of this intervention was the dismantling of Chilean democracy and the subsequent decades of state terror that followed. While the history of the coup is well-trodden, the cold arithmetic of its origin is preserved in a single, sterile memorandum for the record dated September 16, 1970.
"Not Acceptable"
On that September day, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency convened a meeting in Washington to synchronize the machinery of a regime change. The attendees read like a directory of the American security state's clandestine arm: General Cushman, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence; Col. White; Thomas Karamessines; and Cord Meyer.
The Director delivered a directive from President Richard Nixon that stripped the Chilean people of their agency. The President had decided that an Allende regime in Chile was "not acceptable to the United States." In the eyes of the White House, the ballot box was a variable to be corrected, not a result to be respected. The order was explicit: the Agency was to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him."
This was not a request for analysis or a diplomatic strategy. It was a mandate for interference. The phrasing "not acceptable" reveals the profound arrogance of the era—the belief that the internal political evolution of a sovereign South American nation was a matter of American administrative preference.
10 Million Dollars
To ensure this "unseating" was successful, Nixon authorized ten million dollars. In 1970, this was a staggering sum for a targeted political operation, a war chest intended to buy influence, destabilize the economy, or fund the very military elements that would eventually seize power in 1973.
But the money was only half of the strategy. The second half was the deliberate insulation of the operation from any semblance of oversight. The Director informed the group that the Agency was to carry out the mission "without coordination with the Departments of State or Defense."
By cutting out the State Department, the Nixon administration ensured that the diplomats—the people tasked with maintaining formal relations and international law—were kept in the dark. This created a parallel track of foreign policy where the CIA functioned as the primary diplomat, and its currency was not negotiation, but subversion. The public record recognizes this effort as Project FUBELT, a secret operation designed to bypass the traditional checks of the U.S. government to ensure a socialist victory remained an impossibility.
David Phillips and the Redactions
Responsibility for the project was handed to Thomas Karamessines, the Deputy Director for Plans, supported by a special task force in the Western Hemisphere Division. The man chosen to lead that task force was David Phillips.
Even decades after the events, the record remains guarded. In the memorandum, the specific details regarding Phillips's role are obscured; the text notes "[ 2 lines not declassified ]" immediately following his name. This gap in the record suggests that the precise nature of Phillips's instructions or his status at the time remains a sensitivity for the Agency.
The meeting's attendee list is similarly punctured by silence. While the heavy hitters are named, other key figures are missing. The file notes a "[ name not declassified ]" as the Deputy Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division and "[ 2 names not declassified ]" as the Chiefs of Covert Action. These redactions are not merely archival quirks; they are the lingering shadows of a program that operated on the principle of plausible deniability.
The memo, drafted by William V. Broe, Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, was marked "Secret; Sensitive; Eyes Only." It served as the blueprint for the destruction of a presidency. It shows a government that viewed a foreign election not as a democratic process, but as a tactical problem to be solved with a checkbook and a task force.
The record ends with a looming appointment. The Director noted he had been asked by Dr. Henry Kissinger, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, to meet on Friday, September 18, to give the Agency’s views on "how this mission could be accomplished."