Chile | Al menos 10 detenidos en las manifestaciones por el aniversario del golpe de Estado
Subsecretario Galli llama a condenar violencia en manifestaciones del 11-S: al menos 10 detenidos
Por Gerson Guzmán D.
Durante la tarde de este sábado el subsecretario de Interior, Juan Francisco Galli, llamó a todos los actores políticos a condenar los destrozos producidos por manifestantes en las comunas de Santiago Y Recoleta, en el marco de las marchas por la conmemoración del 11 de septiembre.
“Quienes participaron en la marcha de hoy deben hacerse responsables de los desmanes ocasionados en la comuna de Santiago y Recoleta, con bombas de ruido, fuegos artificiales e incluso lanzamiento de bombas molotov en contra de carabineros”, indicó.
“El daño ocasionado a los vecinos de Recoleta y de Santiago, incluso con la participación de la alcaldesa en la marcha, debe ser condenada por todos los actores políticos”, agregó.
Paralelamente, durante el primer balance de Carabineros se informó que hasta las 16:00 horas ya se habían registrado cinco personas detenidas por desórdenes y una por amenazas de muerte contra personal policial.
Pasadas las 20:00 horas, se reportó el arresto de otros cuatro hombres adultos por desórdenes en Villa Francia.
Espías australianos ayudaron a la CIA en intervención en Chile durante gobierno de Salvador Allende
Australia realizó operaciones de espionaje en Chile en la década de 1970 para apoyar la intervención de Estados Unidos durante el gobierno de Salvador Allende, derrocado hace 48 años, indican documentos de inteligencia revelados el viernes.
El Servicio Secreto de Inteligencia de Australia instaló una “estación” en Santiago de 1971 a 1973 a pedido de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA).
Esto, según registros australianos desclasificados publicados por el National Security Archive (NSA), un centro de investigación con sede en Washington.
“Cincuenta años después, se sigue conociendo la historia oculta de esfuerzos concertados y encubiertos. Todo para desestabilizar al gobierno democráticamente electo de Salvador Allende”, dijo Peter Kornbluh, historiador del NSA.
“El veredicto de la historia para países como Australia y Brasil, que también intervino en Chile, depende de que este oscuro pasado sea entendido en su totalidad”, señaló.
Allende, elegido presidente por la coalición de partidos de izquierda Unidad Popular en 1970, fue derrocado el 11 de septiembre de 1973 por un golpe de Estado liderado por el general Augusto Pinochet. Cercado, el mandatario se suicidó en el palacio presidencial de La Moneda.
Tres años antes, la CIA había solicitado ayuda al ASIS para realizar operaciones encubiertas en Chile.
Célula secreta contra Allende
De acuerdo con los memorandos e informes citados por el NSA, en diciembre de 1970, el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores australiano, William McMahon, autorizó abrir una célula secreta en la capital chilena, cuyos equipos y agentes llegaron a mediados de 1971.
Las operaciones duraron 18 meses e implicaron reclutar activos chilenos y presentar informes de inteligencia. Los documentos llegaban directamente a la sede de la CIA en Langley, Virginia.
Para principios de 1973, el nuevo primer ministro australiano, Gough Whitlam, ordenó al director del ASIS poner fin a la operativa en Chile.
La autoridad permanecía “inquieta” por la posibilidad de que se hiciera pública una participación de Australia “extremadamente difícil” de justificar.
La célula de espionaje australiana se cerró aparentemente en julio de 1973.
Pese a esto, un agente del ASIS siguió en Santiago hasta después del golpe militar del 11 de septiembre.
“Destruir la democracia chilena”
Australia desclasificó estos documentos tras las peticiones de Clinton Fernandes, un exanalista de inteligencia del ejército australiano, quien invocó la libertad de información.
El gobierno australiano proporcionó en junio a Fernandes archivos relacionados con la apertura y cierre de la estación del ASIS en Santiago entre 1970 y 1973.
Sin embargo, el material resultó estar “muy censurado” y tener “pocas revelaciones de operaciones encubiertas reales. A esto además se suma la recopilación de inteligencia o relaciones de enlace con la CIA en Chile”, señala el NSA en su sitio web.
La mayoría de los cables, memorandos e informes tratan de “aspectos prácticos”, agrega.
Aún así, los documentos confirman detalles de las operaciones secretas de Australia en Chile y admitidas por políticos a lo largo de los años.
En octubre de 1974, el diario Sydney Morning Herald publicó el artículo “Unos espías ayudaron a la CIA a planificar el derrocamiento de Allende”.
Y en 1977, el propio Whitlam, entonces líder de la oposición, reconoció las actividades de personal de inteligencia australiano “para desestabilizar al gobierno de Chile”.
Fernandes busca ahora una mayor desclasificación del registro histórico sobre las operaciones de Australia en Chile, con la nueva publicación de los documentos pero sin censura.
“El gobierno australiano insiste en el secreto para evitar tener que admitir ante la opinión pública australiana que ayudó a destruir la democracia chilena”, opinó Fernandes, citado por el NSA.
Australian Spies Aided and Abetted CIA in Chile
At the behest of the CIA, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) established a “station” in Santiago in 1971 and conducted clandestine spy operations to directly support U.S. intervention in Chile, according to declassified Australian records made public for the first time today by the National Security Archive. Released fifty years after ASIS secretly initiated its covert action in Chile, the documentation sheds further light on the multinational effort to destabilize the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende who was overthrown in a military coup 48 years ago on September 11, 1973.
Following a CIA request for support in the fall of 1970, the declassified memos and reports indicate, ASIS officials obtained approval from Liberal Party Foreign Minister William McMahon in December 1970 to secretly open a station in the Chilean capital. In the spring and summer of 1971, ASIS officials sent agents and equipment to Chile to organize the station. “[Deleted] advises that our Station safe and typewriter will arrive in Valparaiso approximately 11th September, and be delivered to the [deleted] within a week,” noted one secret progress report in mid-1971.
But, after more than 18 months of operations that appear to have involved handling several CIA-recruited Chilean assets in Santiago and filing intelligence reports directly to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in the spring of 1973 the new Labor Party Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, ordered the director of ASIS to close down the Chile operations. Whitlam was “uneasy” about Australia’s involvement because if it were to “receive any publicity as a result of these matters, then he would find it extremely difficult to justify our presence there,” according to one declassified memorandum of conversation written by then ASIS Director-General William Robertson. “The Prime Minister said,” according to another declassified memcon, “he was very aware of the importance of this [operation] to the Americans and he was most concerned that they should not interpret his decision as being anti-American …. He said he was most concerned that the Americans should not believe that he personally necessarily disapproved of what they were doing in Chile nor did he support Allende [redacted].” The Prime Minister “was most concerned that CIA should not interpret this decision as being an unfriendly gesture towards the U.S. in general or towards CIA in particular,” according to another report on their conversation.
The Australian ASIS station appears to have been closed down as of July 1973, although one ASIS agent reportedly stayed in Santiago until after the September 11, 1973, military coup. “All remaining station records etc. have been destroyed,” a Santiago cable advised headquarters on shuttering its spy operations. “… Station has been closed as planned.”
The rare declassification comes as the result of a series of freedom of information petitions filed by Dr. Clinton Fernandes, a former Australian Army intelligence analyst and professor of international and political studies at the University of New South Wales in Canberra who has pressed the government to declassify historical national security files on secret ASIS operations in Indonesia, Cambodia, and Chile. “Many Australians would be entitled to express legitimate concern if ASIS … were exposed as having cooperated with the CIA in toppling the democratically elected government of Chile led by President Salvador Allende,” Professor Fernandes argued in a legal brief presented to Australia’s Administrative Appeals Tribunal in May 2021.
In his challenge to the government’s contention that, a half century later, any release of documents would still “harm” Australia’s ability to conduct international relations, Fernandes cited the declassification of thousands of top secret CIA documents in the United States during the Clinton administration, and even submitted copies of the National Security Archive book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, as evidence that transparency would strengthen, rather than damage, Australian democracy.
At a closed hearing of the Tribunal in June, government officials provided Fernandes with several hundred heavily redacted records–ASIS is referred to by the codename MO9 in the documents–relating to the opening, administration, and closing of the ASIS station in Santiago between 1970 and 1973. As a result of Fernandes’ declassification efforts, the Tribunal is currently deliberating whether to compel the government to re-release those heavily censored historical records on Chile – with fewer redactions.
The Australian government is renowned for its culture of secrecy. Australia May Well Be the World’s Most Secretive Democracy, the New York Times declared in a headline two years ago. “No other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets,” the article reported.
Indeed, the documents turned over to Fernandes contain few revelations of actual covert operations, intelligence gathering or liaison relations with the CIA in Chile; those sections of the records are completely censored. The majority of the cables, memos and reports focus on the banal nuts-and-bolts of establishing, staffing, supplying, and administering an intelligence station: among other issues, they record monthly expense reports, housing arrangements, communications methods, security inspections, and numerous authorization requests to acquire equipment such as safes, cameras, stationery, and vehicles for the ASIS agents to use in Santiago. “We recommend [deleted] place order for German, repeat German made Volkswagen “Beetle … light grey or fawn in colour,” with an estimated cost of $1800, one cable stated as the station was being established. “You should be aware this vehicle took a sad beating,” the station reported to ASIS headquarters on a second car – a Fiat 600 – as it disposed of its assets two years later before closing down. “The windscreen was broken and body work damaged in the course of a rock fight between opposing factions during the riots in Santiago.” Despite being damaged, the report concluded, “the vehicle was sold at a higher price than we originally paid for it.”
The documents do, however, confirm details of Australia’s covert operations in Chile that have leaked to the press, and appeared in accounts of former officials over the years. Following the episode on Chile, Prime Minister Whitlam requested an investigation of all Australian intelligence activities by the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security. An 8-volume secret report, written by Justice Robert Hope, included a detailed account of the Chile operations, parts of which leaked to the press. As early as October 1974, the Sydney Morning Herald published a short story titled “Aust spies helped CIA plan to topple Allende.” In 1977, Whitlam (then opposition leader) briefly acknowledged the Chile operations in Parliament. “It has been written – I cannot deny it – that when my Government took office Australian intelligence personnel were still working as proxies and nominees of the CIA in destabilizing the Government of Chile,” he conceded. An investigative history published in 1990, Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, by Brian Toohey and William Pinwell, drew on the information in the Hope report; but the Australian government subjected the book to pre-publication censorship and managed to keep most of the details on ASIS’s CIA-Chile operations secret.
“The Australian government insists on secrecy to avoid having to admit to the Australian public that it helped destroy Chilean democracy,” according to Fernandes who continues to await a decision by the Tribunal for further declassification of the historical record on Australia’s covert role in Chile. “The primary beneficiary of this secrecy is the Australian government, which enjoys security from democratic accountability, and security from robust, evidence-based debate as to how the intelligence services should be used. But,” he concludes, “this is not national security in any meaningful sense.”
Documentos que prueban la participación secreta de Australia para derrocar a Salvador Allende
Document 1ASIS, memorandum, [Approval to Open Station], ca. December 1970, SecretDec 1970Source:
National Archives of Australia
After specific CIA “representations” in November 1970 for Australian intelligence operational support in Chile, ASIS officials receive approval from Foreign Minister William McMahon to open a station in Santiago to support U.S. covert operations. In the documents, ASIS is referred to by a codename, “MO9.”
Document 2
ASIS, Memorandum, [Concerns about Opening Station], ca. 15 June 1971, Secret
Jun 15, 1971
Source: National Archives of Australia
After months of preparations, and only a few weeks before the station is set to become operational, a high Australian official (whose name is redacted in the document) questions whether the opening should be deferred because “the situation in Chile has not deteriorated to the extent that was feared.” This memorandum records that ASIS officials plan to present arguments as to why the opening should proceed according to arrangements made with CIA, which appear to include reviewing Australia’s role in Chile twelve months after the station opens.
Document 3
ASIS, Report, “1971 Progress Report,” December 1971, Secret
Dec 1971
Source: National Archives of Australia
Completing its first 6 months of operations, the ASIS station sends a year-end progress report to the “main office”—ASIS headquarters. The censored report covers administrative “settling in” problems, as well as the station’s interaction with Australian Embassy personnel and the CIA—although that section of the report remains completely redacted.
Document 4
ASIS, Memorandum, “[Deleted] Relations with [Deleted],” December 1972, Secret
Dec 1972
Source: National Archives of Australia
The Santiago station files a report on various problems it is experiencing, including in its collaboration with the CIA. Those appear to involve lack of timely communications on policies and operations with the Americans. Several episodes relating to Australia’s spying operations have been cause for embarrassment, the head of the station reports. “Apart from embarrassment, such incidents do little for our Service reputation.” Other operational problems identified in the memorandum involve communication with ASIS headquarters—referenced as the “main office” in the memo. Apparently, the restricted budget of the station does not permit the frequent use of telegraphic communications. But use of the secure diplomatic “bag” to send reports takes longer to get back to Australia than the unclassified bag, which the station has started to use—apparently because the Australians are using the British Embassy’s secure pouch to transmit secret documentation to camouflage the fact that they are conducting clandestine operations in Chile.
Document 5
Apr 1973
Source: National Archives of Australia
In a status meeting on the Santiago station with ASIS chief William T. Robertson, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam rejects an ASIS proposal to continue clandestine operations in Chile. Instead, he orders Robertson to close down the station in a way that will not offend the CIA. According to the memcon, Whitlam agrees to a series of Robertson’s suggestions for phasing out operations, which involves returning management of the CIA’s Chilean informants to the CIA, disposing of station equipment, and repatriating the Australian agents in Chile, at which point clandestine activity would cease.
Document 6
ASIS, Note to File, “[Redacted] Station,” 6 April 1973, Top Secret
Apr 6, 1973
Source: National Archives of Australia
Following his meeting with Prime Minister Whitlam, ASIS Director-General William T. Robertson writes a “note to file” recording the discussion on closing down the spy station in Santiago. The memcon underscores Whitlam’s concerns that the CIA will be offended by Australia’s pullout, and will interpret his decision as “anti-American.” According to the memcon, “The Prime Minister said that the last thing he wanted to do was to take precipitate action that would embarrass the CIA.”
Document 7
May 1973
Source: National Archives of Australia
Following his meeting with Prime Minister Whitlam, ASIS chief William T. Robertson sends a telegram to station officers in Santiago advising them of the decision to close down their operations. According to Robertson, Whitlam ordered that they cease “our clandestine activity” “as soon as possible.” At the same time, Whitlam “was most concerned that CIA should not interpret this decision as being an unfriendly gesture towards the U.S. in general or towards CIA in particular.”
Document 8
ASIS, Memorandum, [Instructions to Coordinate Closing of ASIS Station in Santiago], circa April 1973
Apr 1973
Source: National Archives of Australia
A memo on the pending closure of the ASIS station is distributed to a number of high Australian national security officials. It provides the clearest explanation of Prime Minister Whitlam’s decision to shutter the operation: if Australia’s role in Chile at the behest of the CIA became public, “he would find himself in an extremely difficult political situation as, quite clearly, it would be impossible for him to present the MO9 presence in Santiago as being in the direct Australian national interest.”
Document 9
ASIS, Memorandum to Whitlam, “Progress Note on Closure of MO9 Station in Santiago,” 1973, Top Secret
1973
Source: National Archives of Australia
“With regards to your decision to close the MO9 station in Santiago,” ASIS director William Robertson writes to Prime Minister Whitlam in a Top Secret, two-page memo, “I wish to report that the closure has been completed.” The details of closing the station remain censored; even the date of the document is blacked out, making it unclear exactly when the document was transmitted. Only four copies of the document are made: one for Whitlam and the rest for ASIS files.
Document 10
ASIS Station, Santiago, Telex Cable, [Station Closing Status Report], July 1973
Jul 1973
Source: National Archives of Australia
The Santiago station reports that it has completed final requirements to close down, including sending final expense reports and receipts to headquarters, and disposing of equipment—with the exception of the safe, which will be shipped back to Australia later in the year. “All remaining station records etc. have been destroyed,” the cable advises.
Document 11
May 25, 2021
Source: Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal
Professor Clinton Fernandes, represented by legal counsel, files a 16-page set of arguments for the declassification of ASIS records on Chile, and the right of Australians to know the full history of their government’s foreign policies and operations. “Many Australians would be entitled to express legitimate concern if ASIS … were exposed as having cooperated with the CIA in toppling the democratically elected government of Chile led by President Salvador Allende,” the brief states. To refute the government’s position that secrecy is needed to protect Australia’s national security, the Fernandes brief provides a lengthy review of the declassification of intelligence records in the United States and England on the covert operations in Chile. He points out that transparency and freedom of information in those countries do not appear to have damaged their ability to conduct foreign relations and advance their national security interests.
