President Richard Nixon famously ordered the CIA director, Richard Helms, to ‘make the economy scream’. The US blocked government loans to Chile and encouraged private banks to do the same. They placed a moratorium on Chilean copper imports for six months, thus depleting Chile’s foreign currency reserves. And the CIA used El Mercurio, a newspaper owned by US multinational ITT, to disseminate anti-Allende propaganda. But all these efforts came to naught: by 1973, Allende was still in power. In fact, his party had gained support during those three years. The US felt it had no choice but to shift
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