the U.S. government supported Pinochet for more than half of the duration of his military dictatorship—in the U.S.’s case, because of his strong anti-communist stance. U.S. government policy was to extend economic and military aid to Chile, and publicly to deny Pinochet’s human rights abuses, even when those being tortured and killed were American citizens. As American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expressed it, “… however unpleasantly they [the junta] act, this government [i.e., Pinochet’s] is better for us than Allende was.” That American government support of Pinochet, and that blind
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