In his memoirs, Henry Kissinger identified Chilean millionaire, owner and publisher of El Mercurio and distributor for the Pepisco Co., Agustín Edwards, as the catalyst of Richard Nixon’s September 15 orders for a coup. “By then Nixon had taken a personal role,” he writes in White House Years. “He had been triggered into action on September 14 by Agustín Edwards, the publisher of El Mercurio, the most respected Chilean daily newspaper, who had come to Washington to warn of the consequences of an Allende takeover.
