Assassination of Gen. Rene Schneider

[William Kelly]

In Jeff Morley's 48th anniversary JFK Assassination article in Salon The holy grail of the JFK story - Salon.com he suggests a seven step approach to unlocking the historical truth to the assassination, and I agree. While they should be taken in succession, I had never seen some of the documents he posted under Step 6.

MORLEY WROTE:

Step 6: Understand how U.S. national security operatives organized political assassinations in the 1960s and 1970s.

David Phillips was still alive when I arrived in Washington in the 1980s. He had retired from the Agency to found a pro-CIA lobbying group, the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers. Phillips was a charming, cunning man, and a lively writer, even penning the occasional column for the Washington Post Outlook section where I later worked. One colleague at the Post, well-versed in the intelligence world, once told me that he had gotten to know Phillips. "He wasn't the type" to be involved in a plot against JFK, this colleagues assured me.

A couple of years later, the nonprofit National Security Archive obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) a cache of CIA records about a notorious political assassination in October 1970. The documents showed President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to take action to prevent leftist Salvatore Allende from assuming the presidency of Chile. The assignment was given to a task force directed by Phillips, by then one of the most senior operative in the Agency's Latin America division, which identified a target: Gen. Rene Schneider, the commander in chief of the Chilean armed forces. Schneider's crime: He had decided that Allende, winner of a recent election, should take office.

If you want to know how the CIA went about killing a political enemy at that time, study the records of this operation. Phillips brought in a team of four Agency operatives to organize a group of Chilean co-conspirators who were supplied with "three sterile 45 caliber machine guns." The Agency's operatives consulted with the Chileans about when to act and how they might justify the crime. The conspirators ambushed Schneider's car in traffic, smashed the window with a sledgehammer, and shot him with the U.S.-supplied guns. After Schneider died a day later, Chile scholar Peter Kornbluh notes that Phillips co-authored a cable saying the CIA station had "done [an] excellent job of guiding [the] Chileans."

Perhaps David Phillips was not the type to participate in the assassination of a U.S. president. But he did orchestrate the murder of a Latin American commander in chief. And his operational expertise in political assassination was never disclosed to congressional JFK investigators in the late 1970s.

Of course, this appalling episode in 1970 does not prove that Phillips participated in a JFK conspiracy in 1963. But if the CIA is interested in quelling long-standing conspiratorial speculation about Phillips, it should practice full disclosure to set the record straight.....

END MORLEY

Particularly intriguing is the reference to the four agents Phillips sent in to help conduct the operation:

.....It consisted of four CIA officers with the appearance, language, and experience to sustain the fiction of various foreign nationalities. They were recalled from their overseas posts to Washington, briefed, and inserted individually into Chile [REDACTED] nationals. In Santiago, their only U.S. contact was a CIA officer who had resided in Santiago [REDACTED] established contact with Chilean intermediaries or principals increased in promoting a military coup.... By a special (and unique) arrangement requested by CIA the U.S. Army Attache in Santiago was placed under operational direction of the CIA Chief of Station there. His assistance and Chilean Military contacts were invaluable in this program........

The reports go on if you link to them and read them and see how, in the end, Gen. Schneider was assassinated, Allende killed and kept from being democratically elected and Pinochet placed in power in a coup. The book and movie Missing - (Staring Jack Lemon) is also about this coup, and the US role in it. If you continue reading the documents provided by the National Security Archives www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch01-03.htm they go on to show how the CIA's first choice to prevent Allende from power was President Frei, a liberal Christian Democrat. After the coup, Frei visited the University of Dayton (a Catholic school), where I recall he gave a talk to students and faculty. I also knew a few exchange students from Chile so there was a connection between my school and the Chile government at the time.

In any case, how the CIA engineered the coup that resulted in the assassinations of Schneider, Allende and eventually Orlando Letelier in DC, gives us great insight into how the same operational procedures, covert techniques and even personnel were used in the Dealey Plaza Operation.

As Morley notes: "The Agency's operatives consulted with the Chileans about when to act and how they might justify the crime. The conspirators ambushed Schneider's car in traffic, smashed the window with a sledgehammer, and shot him with the U.S.-supplied guns."

www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch05-01.htm Reads:

• ….. POLICY, OBJECTIVES, AND ACTIONS WERE REVIEWED AT HIGH USG LEVEL AFTERNOON 15 OCTOBER, CONCLUSIONS, WHICH ARE TO BE YOUR OPERATIONSL GUIDE, FOLLOW:
• IT IS FIRM AND CONTINUING POLICY THAT ALLENDE BE OVERTHROWN BY A COUP. IT WOULD BE MUCH PREFERABLE TO HAVE THIS TRANSPIRE PRIOR TO 24 OCTOBER BUT EFFORTS IN THIS REGARD WILL CONTINUE VIGOROUSLY BEYOND THIS DATE. WE ARE TO CONTINUE TO GENERATE MAXIMUM PRESSURE TOWARD THIS END UTILIZING EVERY APPROPRIATE RESOURCE. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THESE ACTIONS BE IMPLEMENTED CLANDESTINELY AND SECURELY SO THAT THE USG AND AMERICAN HAND BE WELL HIDDEN. WHILE THIS IMPOSES A HIGH DEGREEE OF SELECTIVELY IN MAKING MILITARY CONTACTS AND DICTATES THAT THESE CONTACTS BE MADE IN THE MOST SECURE MANNER. IT DEFINITELY DOES NOT PRECLUDE CONTACTS SUCH AS REPORTED IN SANTIAGO 544 WHICH WAS A MASTERFUL PIECE OF WORK.

• AFTER THE MOST CAREFUL CONSIDERATION IT WAS DETERMINED THAT A VIAUX COUP ATTEMPT CARRIED OUT BY HIM ALONE WITH THE FORCES NOW AT HIS DISPOSAL WOULD FAIL. THUS IT WOULD BE CONTERPRODUCTIVE TO OUR ………. OJECTIVES. IT WAS DECIDED THAT CIA GET A MESSAGE TO VIAUX WARNING HIM AGAINST PRECIPITATE ACTION. IN ESSENCE OUR MESSAGE IS TO STATE, "WE HAVE REVIEWED YOUR PLANS, AND BASED ON YOUR INFORMATION AND OURS, WE COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT YOUR PLANS FOR A COUP AT THIS TIME CANNOT SUCCCED. FAILING, THEY MAY REDUCE YOUR CAPABILITIES FOR THE FUTURE PRESERVE YOUR ASSETS. WE WILL STAY IN TOUCH. THE TIME WILL COME WHEN YOU TOGETHER WITH ALL YOUR OTHER FRIENDS CAN DO SOMETHING. YOU WILL CONTINUE TO HAVE OUR SUPPORT." YOU ARE REQUESTED TO DELIVER THE MESSAGE TO VIAUX ESSENTIALLY AS NOTED ABOVE, OUR OBJECTIVES ARE AS FOLLOWS: (A) TO ADVISE HIM OF OUR OPINION AND DISCOURGE HIM FROM ACTING ALONE; ( CONTINUE TO ENCOURAGE HIM TO AMPLIFY HIS PLANNING; © ENCOUAGE HIM TO JOIN FORCES WITH OTHER COUP PLANNERS SO THAT THEY MAY ACT IN CONCERT EITEHR BEFORE OR AFTER 24 OCTOBER. (N.B. SIX GAS MASKS AND SIX C5 CANNISTERS ARE BEING CARRIED TO SANTIAGO BY SPECIAL …….COURIER EDT WASHINGTON 1100 HOURS 16 OCTOBER
• THERE IS GREAT AND CONTINUING INTREST IN THE ACTIVITIES OF TIRADO,M CANALES VALENZUELA ET AL AND WE WISH THEM OPTIMUM GOOD FORTUNE
• THE ABOVE IS YOUR OPERATING GUIDENCE. NO OTHER POLICY GUIDENCE YOU MAY PERCEIVE FROM ….. OR ITS MAXIMUM EXPONENT IN SANTIAGO, ON HIS RETURN, ARE TO SWAY YOU FROM YOUR COURSE.
• PLEASE REVIEW ALL YOUR PRESENT AND POSSIBLY NEW ACTIVITIES TO INCLUDE PROPAGANDA, BLACK OPERATIONS, SURFACING OF INTELLIGENCE OR DISINFORMATION, PERSONAL CONTACTS, OR ANYTHING ELSE YOUR IMAGINATION CAN CONJURE WHICH WILL PERMIT YOU TO CONTINUE TO PRESS FORWARD TOWARDS OUR …… OBJECTIVE IN A SECURE MANNER.

END OF MESSAGE

For more on this subject -

See: Sparticus on Salvador Allende

See: on murder of Gen. Schneider: icai - International Campaign against Impunity

General René Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, was killed in 1970 by Chilean military coup-plotters with the full support of Henry Kissinger and other high-level officials of the intelligence community.

Edited November 23, 2011 by William Kelly