Twice upon a time, on September 11

Before the atrocities of September 11, 2001, seared the consciousness of history forever, there was another September 11 that also left its indelible mark for all time. The contexts were not the same. Yet they are certainly related. In many respects, but above all in one particular and terrible irony.

Two years ago, as the screams of those plunging to their deaths from New York's Twin Towers horribly recorded, the US was the victim of the terrible ruthlessness of those who planned and executed the attacks with passenger planes cold-bloodedly turned into missiles of death and destruction.

Thirty years ago, the US - for which read its government, not the American people - was behind and essentially part of the aggression that bloodied democracy in Allende's Chile. What happened exactly is frequently smudged through contrasting accounts and differing interpretations.

What is certain is that September 11, 1973, was a day of terror and bloodshed in Chile. Months of rising tension culminated in army troops storming the Presidential palace. It housed Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist President. He was left dead, possibly having been led to commit suicide. The army imprisoned thousands of people throughout the whole of the country.

Coups are no rare ominous bird in Latin America. But why did that of 1973 take place in Chile, hitherto a democratic nation? For two decades the debate has raged between adherents of the left and of the right. Through time, interest in the truth has not waned. It did not require international television projection of the exiled and aging General Augusto Pinochet.

That monstrous man turned Chile into a place where fear took up residence following the brutal removal of President Allende and the ugly dawn of a 17-year military dictatorship, one of the worst ever known to the modern world, taking into consideration even dictatorships that blighted the hopes of so many newly independent countries in Africa following the withering away of colonialism.

The left always accused the American government of instigating the overthrow of Allende's government, and that its policy of regime change was based on a belief that the end - overthrowing a regime to US liking - justified the means, no matter how intrusive and cruel they were. The American government always fielded the accusations levelled at it with glibness.

Now and then glimpses of what really happened emerge. Last week the UK liberal newspaper The Guardian was among those that turned a harsh spotlight on the events that scarred Chile so savagely. And on what really happened.

That newspaper reported baldly (September 10) that a series of declassified US documents have revealed the extent of America's role in the Chilean coup. It did so in a context whereby, on the 30th anniversary of the coup, professors, journalists and citizen activists around the world are continuing to expose the full role of the US government in financing and promoting the bloody 1973 coup which ushered in Pinochet's dictatorship.

Thousands of top-secret documents declassified over the past five years have now been synthesised in a book, The Pinochet File, by investigative reporter Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, a Washington-based investigative centre. Kornbluh's core point is that the US had "created a climate of a coup in Chile, a situation of chaos and agitation... The CIA and State Department were worried that the [Chilean] military... were not ready (sic) for a coup." Mighty America took upon itself to massage them into killing shape.

Detailed analysis of the hitherto top-secret documents revealed the deliberate way in which Washington operated during the Cold War. In October 1970 a Central Intelligence Agency document included the blunt statement that it was "firm and continuing policy (of the US) that Allende be overthrown by a coup..." It was imperative, the document went on, "that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG (US government) and American hand be well hidden".

The CIA wasted no time to move from proposal to action. Just two days after that document was written, top CIA officials proposed a terrorist campaign to "stun" the Chilean people into accepting a military regime.

The Guardian records that a CIA memo dated October 18, 1970, included the following sample of methods to be used to destabilise Chile and contribute towards creating the 'right' atmosphere for a coup: "Concur giving tear gas canisters and gas masks... working on obtaining machine guns... Use good officers... Some low-level overflights of Santiago and bomb drops in areas not likely to cause casualties could have great psychological effect and might swing balance as they have so many times in the past in similar circumstances."

Such words from the bowels of a relentlessly scheming CIA add weight to the belief of those, like the current Chilean minister of education, Sergio Bitar, who hold that the internal crisis in Chile was activated by the North American policies against it. The US also used its massive leverage as an economic and military superpower to obstructed granting of credit to Allende's Chile by the World Bank and the InterAmerican Bank... These political and financial pressures were very relevant to the coming coup.

The involvement of the US in Chile's internal politics was not restricted to planning what to do. America's long arm went ahead and did it, plus some more. American efforts to destabilise Chile were led by a policy of extending large amounts to fund and bribe non-leftist Chilean politicians. Throughout the 1960s, investigators report, the US secretly spent millions funding political parties of their choosing.

That notwithstanding - or possibly because of it - Chilean society became very leftwing. Washington, in the pursuit of its ends, revised the means it was prepared to use to achieve them. President Nixon authorised $10 million to be spent "to make the economy scream". He also authorised pro-coup initiatives designed to destroy the traditional reluctance of Chilean military men to take over civilian government.

"Pinochet will not be a stumbling block to coup plans," reads one memo that has now come to light. It was written six months before the coup. It records that the American government was setting about to construct a specialised team of coup plotters. "The (Chilean) navy and air force are ready... the military is getting ready to move." The CIA set about attempting to remove Chilean army officers who supported democratic rule.

Pinochet was given a clear field by his American friends.

That was not the least of the US government's involvement. Among other things The Guardian recalls that the CIA organised the kidnap of René Schneider, a Chilean army general. The plot went awry. General Schneider was killed. Thirty years on his family is suing the US government and Henry Kissinger in particular for playing a role in his murder.

The lawsuit uses documents declassified in the past few years. It charges the US government with paying out $35,000 to the men who plotted the actions against General Schneider.

Not many may have dwelled enough on it in due course, but not everybody has forgotten that, after the coup, US officials worked hard to ease international criticism of the human rights record of the Pinochet regime. The emboldened military dictatorship used to seek help and advice from Washington.

Declassified documents show that, just weeks after the coup, the US ambassador in Chile sent a memo to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In it he noted that "the military government of Chile requires adviser assistance of a person qualified in establishing a detention centre for detainees... (the) adviser must have knowledge in the establishment and operation of a detention centre."

Eventually the extent of the torture and executions in Pinochet's Chile became known to the world, not just to terrified, yet uncowed Chileans. Still, the US government sought to integrate the Pinochet regime into international business circles.

The head of Pinochet's secret DINA police force, Manuel Contreras, was on the CIA's payroll. At the peak of human rights abuses by the Chilean military regime, Contreras visited Washington.

He was not given any dressing down, or warned that Pinochet must change his horrific course. Instead the US State Department encouraged Contreras to press for leading American companies to resume operations in Chile.

Whatever the American government did to destabilise Chile, destroy democratic outcomes and ensure that Allende was removed by the military, which then turned the country into a dictatorship with impunity, does not mitigate the brutal evil addressed at the American people on 9/11 of two years ago.

It is a separate chapter in the history of our times when, we naively believe, civilisation rules and peace is the primary objective of all right-thinking people. It is a chapter that also presses its own argument against the hypocritical manner in which successive American governments conduct US foreign policy to try to knock the world into their image.

In the process they have been responsible, as in Chile, for toppling democratically elected leaders. They have financed and supported men, even regimes - examples being Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - to whom human rights were alien concepts and butchery was on their regular breakfast menu.

September 11, 2001, must never happen again; nothing can justify it. But can the US government ever justify their selective and manifestly contradictory actions, whereby terror and evildoers are countenanced when it suits American interests? Will it ever stop messing about with the lives and destinies of other nations and their people?

The experience of Allende's Chile and the role of the US in it do not offer encouragement in the latter regard.