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In the choice of title for this book, Gustafson (Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, Brunel U., UK) rather cleverly manages to sum up the entire thesis for his review of US covert activity in Chile in the decade leading up to the violent military overthrow of socialist President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. He doesn't deny the hostility of the US government towards the Allende government but nevertheless argues that US covert activities that may have been intended in the long run to undermine the regime did not play the central role in the Chilean upheavals of the period or in the coup of General Augusto Pinochet. Lest this be seen as a thorough vindication of the CIA's actions at the time, Gustafson does find many missteps on the part of the Agency, much of which he blames on the failure to subject the CIA to congressional oversight, thus allowing an overweening executive to make missteps not in the interests of the United States. Distributed in the US by Books International. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Kristian Gustafson’s Hostile Intent reexamines one of the most controversial chapters in U.S. intelligence history, the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations in Chile from 1964 to 1974. At the request of successive U.S. presidents, the CIA in conjunction with the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency first acted to prevent Chilean socialist Salvador Allende from becoming the democratically elected president of his country and then tried to undermine his government once he was in office. Allende’s government eventually fell in a bloody military coup on September 11, 1973. President Richard Nixon’s administration and corporate interests were not sorry to see him go, but did U.S. covert operations actually play a decisive role in Allende’s downfall? The declassification of thousands of U.S. government documents over the last several years demands that historians take a new look. Since 1973, most observers have maintained that U.S. machinations were responsible for the success of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s coup that forced Allende’s fall and suicide. This assessment has been based on a thin documentary record of U.S. activity, the myth of an all-powerful CIA, and the CIA’s checkered history of covert action in Latin America. However, Gustafson convincingly shows the conventional wisdom about the impact of U.S. actions is badly flawed. His meticulous research is based upon an intensive examination of previously unavailable U.S. records as well as interviews with key figures. Hostile Intent is the most comprehensive account to date of U.S. involvement in Chile, and its provocative reinterpretation of this involvement will shape all future debates.
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