CIA Agents Infest US Mass Media -- 2nd of 4 parts

DANIEL SHEEHAN:
Well, for example, I think one of the most obvious stories is about the democratic socialist Government of Chile under Salvador Allende, when he was popularly elected by a significant majority of the populace in Chile, under a hundred-year-old democracy down there. Now the confidential documents make it perfectly evident that the Nixon Administration and Richard Helms [Director] of the Central Intelligence Agency and Henry Kissinger, the National Security Advisor, began a MAJOR covert campaign to attempt to destroy that country.

They mounted what they called the "Track One" and "Track Two" strategies. The "Track One" strategy was to engage in an overt political propaganda campaign against the Allende Government: criticizing him constantly, attacking his economic programs, attempting to give money through A.I.D. and certain other above-the-table programs to counter the democratic socialist, or mixed economy that was being advocated by Allende. Politically, it was a completely democratic process, but economically, they were looking for alternative mechanisms for stimulating the economy, having some industries supervised by democratic governmental forces, and others left completely in the private sector.

This "Track One" program, however, was not allowed to be the only mechanism by means of which the Nixon Administration tried to destabilize the Government. They had an ultra-covert program called "Track Two," and under this program, coordinated by Kissinger and the Central Intelligence Agency under Richard Helms, they did such things as, for example, they had two operatives of the Director of Latin American Affairs for the Central Intelligence Agency, one being Theodore G. Shackley, from 1971 all the way up to 1973. They, in fact, ran the "Track Two" operation wherein they did such things as physically kidnap the Chief-of-Staff of President Salvador Allende, General Schneider and had him ASSASSINATED. They also met covertly with the military forces under Ernesto Pinochet, a virtual fascist inside the military, to plan and plot a military overthrow of the democratically elected government, which they pulled off in September of 1973. And they ultimately assassinated President Salvador Allende.

They then pursued the Ambassador of the democratic Government of Chile in the United States. In fact, they tracked him down and assassinated him right on the main streets of Washington, D.C. They blew up his car and killed him.

[JD: The murder victims were Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American secretary, Ronnie Moffit.]

Now that kind of activity was being conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency all the way up to and through 1976 when George Bush was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was in 1976 that the Chilean Ambassador to the United States, from the former democratic Government, was assassinated. That democratic Government was overthrown by Ernesto Pinochet, and a military dictatorship was established down in Chile.

These are the kinds of activities that they [the CIA] have been engaged in for a long time. They have done this pursuant to a doctrine which was enunciated back in 1954 under a secret commission, that was set up inside the Central Intelligence Agency, known as "the Doolittle Commission". And they articulated -- in a classified document which has now been obtained by the Christic Institute -- stating very specifically that they were engaged in a secret war against forces of socialism and communism which had an alternative economic theory of development. And they said that it was necessary to combat these forces with any and all means necessary. And it said in the report that it was going to be necessary to abandon the normal standards of decency and fair play, that are believed in by the American Public, in order to defeat these forces of socialism and communism. And therefore, it's going to become inevitably necessary to CAUSE the People of the United States to come to grips with the need to abandon these traditional standards of decency; and that that was going to be part of the obligation of the Central Intelligence Agency: to, subtly and over time, persuade the American Public that it was naive and impossible to adhere to these standards and principles of honesty and decency in the international theater.