Nixon Aides Bet on 'One in Twenty' Gamble to Block Allende

By Desmond Okafor · August 18, 2026

A secret 1970 memo marked "Sensitive" details a plot to manipulate Chilean elections and stir fear of communism, while officials admitted the gambit could spark widespread violence.

Chilean citizens were viewed as pawns in a game of congressional musical chairs, their democratic choice dismissed as a problem to be engineered away. The proposed price for this interference was the high probability of "widespread violence" and a potential "insurrection" in the streets of Santiago.

In a memorandum dated September 14, 1970, Viron P. Vaky of the National Security Council Staff wrote to Henry Kissinger, then the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, to weigh the options for stopping Salvador Allende from taking power. The document, marked "Secret; Sensitive," outlines a desperate attempt to steer Chile away from a Marxist government by manipulating its internal political machinery. At the center of the strategy was not a military blow, but a labyrinthine political maneuver known as the "Frei plan."

A One in Twenty Chance

The plan was as convoluted as it was cynical. It relied on the cooperation of Eduardo Frei, the outgoing president, to corral enough votes from the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the Radical Party to elect Jorge Alessandri. Once in power, Alessandri would then be expected to resign, triggering a new election. Because Frei would be eligible to run in that second round, the U.S. hoped he would emerge victorious, thereby bypassing Allende entirely.

Vaky describes the process as "constitutional and legal, if unusual and untraditional." In reality, it was a blueprint for the hollowization of Chilean democracy. The U.S. role was to be that of a shadow puppeteer, providing "support and stimulus" to a Chilean effort that Vaky admitted was a "very long shot." When asked about the probability of success, the numbers were grim: Frei himself estimated the chances at one in twenty; U.S. Ambassador Korry was slightly more optimistic at one in five.

Despite these odds, the NSC viewed the gamble as the "only possibility." The strategy involved a multi-pronged assault on Chilean political will. Vaky recommended that the Ambassador encourage Frei using every resource at his disposal, while simultaneously organizing efforts from the "outside." This included leveraging European Christian Democratic parties to funnel funds and ideas, and deploying a propaganda campaign to "stir fear of a Communist take-over" and "expose Communist machinations" within Chile.

Avoid a Second Bay of Pigs

For the men in Washington, the primary concern was not the stability of Chile or the rights of its voters, but the risk of exposure. Vaky warned that if the world discovered the U.S. government was meddling in a failed democratic gambit, the fallout would be "disastrous." He explicitly noted that such a failure "would be this Administration’s Bay of Pigs."

There was also a deeper, more structural anxiety regarding the "slippery slope" of covert intervention. Vaky cautioned that a limited plan of encouragement could easily mutate into a need to "protect the investment," sucking the United States into rising degrees of involvement and escalating risks. This phrasing reveals the cold transactionalism of the era: a sovereign nation’s political trajectory was treated as a capital investment to be hedged and managed.

Perhaps most striking is Vaky’s admission that the proposed actions were "patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets." He questioned whether those principles had any meaning at all if they could be discarded so easily. He argued that the U.S. typically only departed from its tenets to meet a "gravest threat" to its own survival. When asked if Allende constituted such a threat, Vaky replied that it was "hard to argue this." He even dismissed the "South American dominoes" theory, noting that the impact of a Marxist state in the region was "containable."

Pressure the Radical Party

Despite the admission that Allende was not a mortal threat, the NSC pursued the plot. Vaky’s final recommendations included using "separate assets" to work on the Radical Party and urging the German Social Democrat Party to apply pressure. The goal was to swing Radical votes to Alessandri, ensuring the path remained clear for Frei’s eventual return.

At this specific moment in September 1970, the military option—the one that would eventually define Chile’s tragedy—was dismissed as a "non-starter." Vaky wrote that "military action is impossible" because the Chilean military was "incapable and unwilling to seize power," and that the U.S. had "no capability to motivate or instigate a coup." He advised Kissinger to keep lines of communication open with the military only as a "standby" channel for future eventualities.

This caution is a footnote to the violence that followed years later, but it underscores the incremental nature of U.S. intervention. First came the "discreet" propaganda and the manipulation of electoral blocs; then came the "standby" channels to the generals.

Vaky concluded by requesting weekly reports to monitor the progress of the gambit. The memorandum notes that a further document, "Review of Political and Military Options in Chilean Electoral Situation," was attached to the original filing, but that record was not printed in the State Department's published volume.