Pardoning Pinochet's Pals.

How the media let Washington off the hook

The arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet gave the U.S. news media a rare opportunity to revisit a dark chapter in U.S. history. They had the chance to explain how the Nixon Administration covertly undermined the government of Salvador Allende, and set the stage for Pinochet's bloody 1973 coup. Unfortunately, they didn't take advantage of it.

Ninety-five percent of the news stories I surveyed during the month following Pinochet's arrest failed to mention the U.S. role in bringing Pinochet to power.

U.S. reporters covering the story from London, where British police detained Pinochet on October 16, got caught up in the legal debate over Pinochet's immunity. Their American colleagues in Chile focused on the political ramifications of his arrest.

Only eight of 150 news stories in eleven newspapers (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, Cleveland's Plain Dealer, the Houston Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, The New York Times, the Seattle Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post) mentioned in passing that the United States backed the coup. Just one out of fourteen editorials--in the Houston Chronicle--alluded to it. But the Chronicle merely stated that the Pinochet case "has revived questions about U.S. involvement in the coup." Seven of twenty-two opinion columns mentioned the United States, but only in a sentence or two.

Television coverage was even skimpier. ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC collectively ran thirty-four stories on Pinochet's arrest. Only two--both on ABC--provided a sound bite on U.S. involvement in setting up the Pinochet regime.

Why did most journalists omit any reference to the United States? Some blamed space limitations. Others said their sources did not bring it up, or maintained that the U.S. role is tangential to the story of Pinochet's arrest.

"It came down to a question of relevance to our readers," said foreign editor Gary Hatcher of the Chicago Tribune, which ran twenty-eight stories on Pinochet. In only one story did the Tribune include a sentence stating that the CIA "played a role in destabilizing ... Allende's government and backed ... [the] coup."

Relevant? If it were not for U.S. meddling in internal Chilean affairs, Augusto Pinochet most likely would be a footnote in history.

Pinochet is a creature of U.S. Cold War policy. In the early 1960s, the Kennedy Administration helped defeat Salvador Allende, a socialist presidential candidate who vowed to nationalize foreign-owned industries, by funneling $20 million to a more conservative opponent. In 1970, the Nixon Administration and several U.S. corporations were lulled by faulty polls predicting that Allende would lose again, so they provided less than $1 million in covert aid to stop him. It wasn't enough: Allende narrowly won with 36 percent of the vote. Still, the Chilean Congress had to ratify his victory. That gave President Nixon, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and CIA Director Richard Helms seven weeks to overturn the results.

They concocted a convoluted scheme to influence the congressional vote, which included offering a $250,000 bribe to legislators. They also tried to incite a coup by providing weapons and cash to rightwing military officers. Both efforts failed.

But that was not the end of U.S. involvement. From November 1970 until the September 1973 coup, the CIA maintained close contact with the military and spent some $8 million to destabilize the Allende government. At the same time, the Nixon Administration drastically cut U.S. aid and blocked international lending institutions from providing loans to the country.

These actions helped cripple Chile's economy and paved the way for Pinochet. Although there is no evidence that the U.S. government was directly involved in the 1973 coup, at the very least it knew about the plans and encouraged them. Within weeks after the uprising, the Nixon Administration recognized the military junta and authorized a resumption of aid. Pinochet remained in power for seventeen years.

The silence of the news organizations last fall not only distorted the historical record, it also provided cover for the Clinton Administration, which stood quietly on the sidelines as the story of Pinochet's arrest unfolded. Pinochet's security forces killed at least two Americans on Chilean soil during the coup, and in 1976 assassinated a former Chilean diplomat and his American assistant in Washington, D.C. But the Clinton Administration did not join Spain, France, Switzerland, and other countries in calling for Pinochet's extradition. Nor did it rush to release classified documents to bolster the case against the former dictator. Is it hiding potentially embarrassing information about the Nixon Administration's role before and after the coup?

The lack of historical context also let Nixon and Kissinger off the hook for destroying Chilean democracy. Only two news stories mentioned Nixon during the month after Pinochet's arrest. And Kissinger--who said in 1970, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people"--was named in just one of the 184 news stories I surveyed. On November 7, New York Times reporter Tim Weiner told readers that Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA "were deeply involved in attempts to overthrow" Allende. Altogether, the Times cited the U.S. role in only two out of twenty news stories.

"It is shocking, in the post-Cold War era, that so few media accounts of the Pinochet affair mention the U.S. role in the coup," John Coatsworth, the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard and a former president of the American Historical Society, told me. "If Henry Kissinger is ever arrested in Harrods on a Spanish warrant, perhaps we'll hear more."

U.S. media coverage made it seem as if the Chilean economy fell apart on its own during Allende's regime. I found numerous quotes in news stories from Pinochet supporters, as well as some columns and editorials, that applauded Pinochet for saving Chile from economic ruin.

Take the lone editorial The Washington Post ran on the topic. "Gen. Augusto Pinochet ... is not your typical Latin strongman," the paper explained on October 20. "He did remove a democratically elected government and see to the killing of thousands and the detention of tens of thousands in 1973-1990. But he also saw to the rescue of his country from a chaos to which he was only one contributor, and to its controlled evolution into a prosperous Latin democracy. So it is not only Chile's military right but others grateful for his positive role who are troubled now by his arrest."

When asked why the editorial did not mention that the United States was a major contributor to Chile's "chaos," the Post's editorial page editor, Stephen Rosenfeld, responded, "We prefer to let editorials speak for themselves."

None of the eighteen news stories in the Post that month mentioned the U.S. role in wrecking the Chilean economy. One out of four opinion columns did say that "the U.S. government played a shameful part" in "one of the worst episodes in Latin American history." But there was no further explanation.

The Post's foreign news editor, Eugene Robinson, spent four years covering Latin America from Buenos Aires and is well aware of the U.S. role. "We have run a number of fairly lengthy pieces on the case, and we should have found room in at least some of them to mention--and explore more fully--the U.S. connection," he conceded when I asked him about the coverage. He said he would "rectify the omission."

Elliott Negin, a former managing editor of American Journalism Review, writes frequently on the news media and military affairs.