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The Nixon Administration’s Response to Salvador Allende and Chilean Expropriation

The often-overlooked Nixon Tapes, which were in operation for approximately 85 percent of Salvador Allende’s tenure in office in Chile, are one source that can help re-focus the debate on U.S. policy, particularly the Nixon Administration’s response to the Allende Government’s expropriation policy. To that end, nixontapes.org is pleased to bring you a selection of nearly 100 pages of excerpted transcripts on Chile and Allende, downloadable as an online briefing book at: http://nixontapeaudio.org/chile/chile.pdf

Transcripts, digital audio clips, and tape summaries are available online at http://nixontapes.org/chile.htm. Please direct any questions or requests for broadcast-quality audio to nixontapes@nixontapes.org. Please see below for sample materials from the collection:

“Friends of the United States will be rewarded! Enemies of the United States will be punished! And that includes Peru to the extent we can. It includes Bolivia to the extent we can. And it includes, by all means, Chile, to the extent we can. That's the way the game has to be played.”

—President Nixon, June 16, 1971, OVAL Conv. No. 523-004 

“I have decided…You give us a plan, we’ll carry it out…We're going to play it very tough with him [Allende]…I’ve decided we're going to give Allende the hook.”

—Nixon, October 5, 1971, OVAL Conv. No. 584-003

“The only thing you can ever hope is to have him overthrown, and, in the meantime, you will make your point to prove, by your actions against him, what you want, that you are looking after American interests.”

—Connally, October 5, 1971, OVAL Conv. No. 584-003

“I would go to a confrontation with him; the quicker the better…Maybe not in a brutal way, but in a clear way.”

—Kissinger, October 5, 1971, OVAL Conv. No. 584-003

“Now, that he [Allende] is elected, and he is expropriating, and he is taking an anti-American attitude in foreign policy, to hell with him, at this point, on renegotiating loans! …I'm not taking him on personally; not taking him on rhetoric; we just drag our feet at the negotiation.”

—Nixon, January 18, 1972, OVAL Conv. No. 650-012 

“[The Chileans] brought this on themselves; they're ruining the Chilean economy with their expropriation and everything else…Cuba sucks from Russia a million dollars a day, and that's one of the reasons we are not going to change our attitude toward Cuba…Now the same with Chile…If they want more support from us, they must come a long way.”

—Nixon, February 8, 1972, EOB Conv. No. 320-028

Read entire article at Press Release