40 Years After CIA and ITT's 1973 Coup In Chile: A Look At `Democracy Now!''s ITT-Lannan Foundation Connection--Part 7

"The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier On Atrocity and Accountability" recalled that there were “some 40 contacts between highest-level CIA and ITT officials on Chile in 1970 and 1971.”

ITT’s involvement in the CIA’s secret funding of the anti-Allende right-wing Chilean newspaper, "El Mercurio", between 1970 and 1973 apparently helped to bring about the September 11, 1973 military coup in Chile which installed Chilean General Pinochet as the Chilean dictator for many years. As "The Pinochet File" noted:

“The covert operation that, according to the CIA’s own internal records, played `a significant role’ in bringing about a coup was clandestine funding for the `El Mercurio' project…After the paper’s owner, Agustin Edwards, came to Washington in September 1970 to lobby Nixon for action against Allende, the CIA used `El Mercurio' as a key outlet for a massive propaganda campaign…Additional secret monies flowed to `El Mercurio' through the CIA’s main corporate collaborator in Chile—the ITT Corporation. A declassified May 15, 1972 memorandum of a conversation between CIA officer Jonathan Hanke and ITT official Hal Hendrix recorded a discussion about $100,000 bank deposits ITT was secretly making to Agustin Edwards. `He had told me money for the Edwards group went through a Swiss account,’ Hanke reported to his superiors…The CIA asserted that the propaganda effort, in which `El Mercurio' was the dominant actor, `played a significant role in setting the stage for the military coup of 11 September 1973.’”…
(end of part 7)