Richard Nixon Quotes
One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile $10 million available best men we have make the economy scream
These are the instructions that Helms scribbled on a note pad during the meeting with the President and Henry Kissinger at the White House. The decision was very controversial because Allende was a very popular political figure who had just defeated the Right Wing establishment party in an election where the anti-Allende forces, had much more money which the used profusely, and the tools of government to influence the election processes and results. Yet Allende won handily. Nixon did not allow Helms to even tell his Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, the American Ambassador, or the CIA station chief in Chile.
Richard M. Nixon, 1913-1994, 37th President of the United States (Republican, CA), Instructions to CIA Director, Richard Helms, Regarding initiating a coup against the democratically elected President of Chile, Meeting, The White House, September 19, 1970
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was a training manual for the conduct of Guerrilla wars in general and the Contra insurrection in Nicaragua.
The popularly elected president Salvador Allende was a left leaning socialist and Nixon wanted a right wing Government in place who would deal more firmly with the communists. General Augusto Pinochet thus came to power, murdered Allende, and instituted a reign of terror with death squads, torture and disappearances, that eventually led him to be indicted for crimes against humanity.
This coup has been the biggest trauma for the Iranian people in the last centuries. The blowback from it, has soured relationships between America and Iran for decades. Khamenei personally was traumatized by the coup and publicly refers to it quite frequently. Ironically, reasons and policy logic for the CIA orchestration of the coup are even today murky. The desires of the British may well have been the main reason. “Arrogance” is the term Khamenei uses to describe the British-American alliance and their propensity to try and shape the affairs of other nations.
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, Nixon previously served as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961, having risen to national prominence as a representative and senator from California. After five years in the White House that saw the conclusion to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, he became the only president to resign from the office, following the Watergate scandal.
