Coup Attempt Quotes
At the time Devine was a clandestine CIA agent in Santiago, Chile. The top secret CRITIC cable took precedence over all other cables and messages and also got immediately delivered to the President and other key government officials. The US position at the time was that this coup ousting the very popular, elected left wing, President Salvador Allende was a spontaneous act of the Chilean armed forces in which the United States had no part. President Richard M. Nixon had ordered a series of economic attacks and sanctions on Chile, and the negative economic effect had set the mood for the coup. Years later this secret Cable come to light. It showed that our chief CIA operative in Chile knew about the coup in advance including minute details, and transmitted this data to the President and others in Washington. For many, it was unlikely that the coup plotters would share this level of detail in advance with any country that was not part of the team plotting the coup or had at least given their approval in advance.