US Army Attaché offered material support to Chilean generals to block Allende
By Desmond Okafor ·
Two Chilean generals were courted in secret to thwart a democratic election, using promises of military aid that remained hidden for decades under 'Destroy Immediately' orders.
The democratic will of the Chilean people was treated as a tactical obstacle to be bypassed by a handful of generals and a US Army attaché. This clandestine effort to sabotage the presidency of Salvador Allende set the stage for a decade of state terror and the erasure of a socialist dream.
An editorial note from the Foreign Relations of the United States (State Dept) archives preserves the paper trail of a plot to ensure that a democratically elected Marxist would never take power. The records describe a desperate scramble in October 1970, just weeks before Allende's scheduled inauguration, to weaponize the Chilean military against its own constitution. The instructions were delivered via a message marked "Top Secret; Sensitive; Destroy Immediately."
"Material support short of armed intervention"
On October 14, 1970, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Wimert, an Army Attaché, received a directive from Lieutenant General Donald Bennett, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The order was blunt: Wimert was to find two Chilean general officers who could be "trusted to be discreet" and offer them "material support short of armed intervention" to prevent Allende's election, his inauguration, or his "subsequent overthrow."
This was not a passive observation of Chilean politics. It was an active invitation for a coup. The US government was not merely monitoring the situation; it was providing the incentive for the Chilean military to seize power. To maintain a layer of plausible deniability, the operation was shrouded in an almost paranoid level of secrecy. Wimert was told to discuss the matter with "no one repeat no one" except the contacted generals and the CIA Chief of Station. He was explicitly forbidden from informing the US Ambassador or the Defense Attaché. If anyone else mentioned the matter, Wimert was ordered to deny all knowledge.
General Camilo Valenzuela
By October 15, Wimert had identified his targets. In a backchannel message marked "Eyes Only," he named General Camilo Valenzuela, the commander of the Santiago Garrison, and another officer, later identified as General Alfredo Canelas Márquez, the Director of Military Intelligence.
Wimert had already been in contact with these men. He didn't just offer vague promises; he used the US military budget as a lever. He informed the generals that if they successfully thwarted Allende from taking office, the United States would "reconsider cuts" to the Military Assistance Program (MAP) and would increase support in the future.
This was the essence of the trade: US military funding in exchange for the death of Chilean democracy. Wimert also promised that if a military move to block Allende triggered "civil disorder," the US government was prepared to deliver the "material support" required to maintain control. The only line the US would not cross was the deployment of American personnel. The blood, however, was expected to be Chilean.
The missing folders
The internal mechanics of the plot were fraught with contradictions and attempts to scrub the record. A follow-up telegram to the Station in Santiago noted that the instructions might "confuse Col Wimert" because they were "pro-forma," designed to hide a previous September 28 message from a wider audience within the US government. The record shows a bureaucracy trying to hide its tracks even as it actively plotted a coup.
Years later, when these activities came under congressional scrutiny, the accountability vanished. Lieutenant General Jamie Philpott, whose signature appeared on the orders to Wimert, testified that although the signature looked like his, he "could not recall seeing the message and doubted having signed it."
The paper trail ends with a chilling void. A late October memorandum from Colonel Robert C. Roth to Philpott mentioned 「key personnel」 in the Chilean military who were deemed "approachable for a potential coup." Roth's covering memorandum stated that the accompanying folders contained data on individuals who had been "discussed in a favorable light at the 21 October meeting." He noted that others had been "eliminated" from the list.
Those folders—the lists of the men the US viewed as the most reliable agents for overturning a democratic government—were not found.