Chile held the first round of its elections on the weekend.

The leading candidate is Michelle Bachelet, a socialist who was once imprisoned by the military junta that ran things in the wake of the overthrowal of President Salvadore Allende on Sept. 11, 1973.

Here is what the CIA World "Fact" Book says about Chile:

A three-year-old Marxist government of Salvador ALLENDE was overthrown in 1973 by a dictatorial military regime led by Augusto PINOCHET, who ruled until a freely elected president was installed in 1990. Sound economic policies, maintained consistently since the 1980s, have contributed to steady growth and have helped secure the country's commitment to democratic and representative government.

The CIA is much too modest! :)

The CIA had been involved in efforts to shape Chile's political evolution, and you can read the agency's own account of that here.  There is also SUBJECT: CIA activities in Chile.

There is some interesting stuff in the latter:

Awareness of Coup Plotting in 1973.  Although CIA did not instigate the coup that ended Allende’s government on 11 September 1973, it was aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence collection relationships with some plotters, and—because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970—probably appeared to condone it.  There was no way that anyone, including CIA, could have known that Allende would refuse the putchists’ offer of safe passage out of the country and that instead—with La Moneda Palace under bombardment from tanks and airplanes and in flames—would take his own life.

Knowledge of Human Rights Violations.  CIA officers were aware of and reported to analysts and policymakers in 1973 that General Pinochet and the forces that overthrew the Allende Government were conducting a severe campaign against leftists and perceived political enemies in the early months after the coup.  Activities of some security services portended a long-term effort to suppress opponents.  In January 1974, CIA officers and assets were tasked to report on human rights violations by the Chilean government.

Liaison with Chilean Security Services.  The CIA had liaison relationships in Chile with the primary purpose of securing assistance in gathering intelligence on external targets.  The CIA offered these services assistance in internal organization and training to combat subversion and terrorism from abroad, not in combating internal opponents of the government.  The CIA also used these relationships to admonish these services concerning human rights abuses in Chile.  The policy community and CIA recognized that the relationships opened the CIA to possible identification with the liaison services’ internal operations involving human rights abuses but determined that the contact was necessary for CIA’s mission.

Propaganda in Support of Pinochet Regime.  After the coup in September 1973, CIA suspended new covert action funding but continued some ongoing propaganda projects, including support for news media committed to creating a positive image for the military Junta.  Chilean individuals who had collaborated with the CIA but were not acting at CIA direction assisted in the preparation of the “White Book,” a document intended to justify overthrowing Allende.  It contained an allegation that leftists had a secret “Plan Z” to murder the high command in the months before the coup, which CIA believed was probably disinformation by the Junta.

Actually, the National Security Archive saw the release of the above information by the CIA on Sept. 18, 2000 as significant:

    After twenty-seven years of withholding details about covert activities following the 1973 military coup in Chile, the CIA released a report yesterday acknowledging its close relations with General Augusto Pinochet’s violent regime. The report, “CIA Activities in Chile,” revealed for the first time that the head of the Chile’s feared secret police, DINA, was a paid CIA asset in 1975, and that CIA contacts continued with him long after he dispatched his agents to Washington D.C. to assassinate former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his 25-year old American associate, Ronni Karpen Moffitt.

    “CIA actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende,” the report states. “Many of Pinochet’s officers were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses....Some of these were contacts or agents of the CIA or US military.”

Among the report’s other major revelations: Within a year of the coup, the CIA was aware of bilateral arrangements between the Pinochet regime and other Southern Cone intelligence services to track and kill opponents—arrangements that developed into Operation Condor.

The CIA made Gen. Manuel Contreras, head of DINA, a paid asset only several months after concluding that he “was the principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy within the Junta.” After the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., the CIA continued to work with Contreras even as “his possible role in the Letelier assassination became an issue.”

The CIA made a payment of $35,000 to a group of coup plotters in Chile after that group had murdered the Chilean commander-in-chief, Gen. Rene Schneider in October 1970—a fact that was apparently withheld in 1975 from the special Senate Committee investigating CIA involvement in assassinations. The report says the payment was made “in an effort to keep the prior contact secret, maintain the good will of the group, and for humanitarian reasons.”

The CIA has an October 25, 1973 intelligence report on Gen. Arellano Stark, Pinochet’s right-hand man after the coup, showing that Stark ordered the murders of 21 political prisoners during the now infamous “Caravan of Death.” This document is likely to be relevant to the ongoing prosecution of General Pinochet, who is facing trial for the disappearances of 14 prisoners at the hands of Gen. Stark’s military death squad.

This Guardian report is useful.

Personally, I find it beyond ironic that the CIA doesn't mention the murders, imprisonments and torture that were mainstays of the Pinochet regime. The U.S. government worked actively to destabilize the democratically-elected Allende regime and then utters bromides about "sound economic policies, maintained consistently since the 1980s ..." -- the heart of the Pinochet years.

But I guess it would go without saying that the soundest economic policies are the ones that the U.S. sees as being in its national interest.