Can They See Our Hand in This?

Can they see our hand in this? That’s what Richard Nixon asked Henry Kissinger immediately following the September 11, 1973, coup in which Augusto Pinochet lead a military overthrown of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Which question was Nixon really asking Kissinger?

• Can THEY see our hand in this?
• Can they SEE our hand in this?
• Can they see OUR hand in this?
• Can they see our HAND in this?
• Can they see our hand in THIS?

I want to answer all of the above. Despite their decades of protestations, it has certainly been clear for a long time that WE SEE THEIR HAND IN THIS.

Like many young Americans and others, I first learned a few details about the Chilean junta nearly 10 years later when Costa-Gavras’ film Missing was released. In the film, an American journalist, Charles Horman, finds out more than he is meant to about U.S. involvement, then he comes up missing. Most of the film follows his wife and skeptical father as they work their way through the Chilean and U.S. bureaucracies to find out what happened to him. The film implied that the hand of the U.S. was at work, and subsequently declassified documents have confirmed this.

There was plenty more to learn than even an Oscar-winning film can tell. I have learned some of that history and politics since. I have sent students into libraries to find their own answers. I live with the illusion that I know something about the hand of the U.S. in Chile.

Even now, though, after Pinochet’s death yesterday on International Human Rights Day, I think of the people with whom I first saw Missing. I was a student at la Universidad de Puerto Rico at the time, and I saw the film with members of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. (If you don’t know who they are, think of them as one of the three big targets of the FBI’s CoIntelPro program, along with the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.) My companeros took it upon themselves to give me the education in U.S. foreign policy that my high school hadn’t managed to. I was skeptical of their claims, but I was also more skeptical of the U.S. government from that point on. I count this as an important moment in my seeing their hand in so much of the world.

So, if you consider Augusto Pinochet this week of his death, maybe you could consider the ways in which YOU SEE THEIR HAND IN THIS. This what? The possibilities are broad. Fill in the blank with any foreign relations incident of the 20th or 21st century and see what hands you can see.

Where to start? Some of the most interesting documents on the hand of the U.S. in Chile and elsewhere can be found at the National Security Archives, housed at my alma mater George Washington University. Nixon’s comment from a telephone conversation with Kissinger was part of an interview today with Peter Kornbluh on Democracy Now. Kornbluh is the author of “The Pinochet File.” You can read that at the NSA, too.

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