76-11-7

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Chile I

Transcript A few weeks ago, in March, our delegate to the United Nations, Brady Tyson said, --QUOTE -- "We could be less than candid and untrue to ourselves and our people if we did not express our profound regrets for the role some government officials, agencies and private groups played in the subversion of the previous democratically elected Chilean Government" -- UNQUOTE. He was speaking, of course, of the election of the late President Salvador Allende. Thank heaven our government, by way of State Department and White House immediately disavowed Tyson's apology and made it plain he was speaking only for himself. Yet, in spite of that disavowal our government does maintain a discriminatory policy against the present Chilean regime. In Congress, particularly, the attitude is first that Allende was truly elected by the people in democratic style, and second that he was deposed in September of 1973 by a military coup covertly aided and/or directed by the CIA and U.S. military. Let's take a closer look at these assumptions. In September 1970 , Allende won 36.2 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Thus, he was not the choice of 63.8 percent of the voters. Under the Chilean constitution the Congress is empowered to ratify a winner. The Congress did ratify Allende as President, but only after he signed a constitutional amendment reaffirming freedom of the press, education, the electoral process and the non-involvement of the military in political matters. Following his election by the Congress, Allende told a French journalist, Regis De Bray, -- QUOTE -- "I signed the amendment as a simple tactical necessity to gain power." -- UNQUOTE. There is little or no evidence to support Mr. Tyson's statement that the United States, through either the military or the CIA rigged, ran or even participated in the subsequent overthrow of Allende. We apparently did give some small campaign assistance to one or the other of his opponents in the election, but the Soviet Union was giving the Allende campaign 20 million dollars. After he assumed office, no foreign government, including our own, played any significant part in the failure of Allende's Marxist experiment. We withheld relatively minor amounts of aid or credit, but this had to be expected in the face of his seizure of private assets owned by Americans. All the facts, few of which have been made available to Americans, make it plain that Allende's 1,000 days as President were a disaster for the people of Chile. One witness on the scene for all those 1,000 days has said, -- QUOTE -- "if Allende was the creator of the Chilean Marxist experiment he also was without doubt its executioner. The record speaks for itself for those who are willing to listen." -- UNQUOTE. I hope you are willing to listen, because on the next broadcast I'm going to give that record. With the Soviet Union spreading its influence in Latin America as energetically as it is, I think we, the American people, should have the facts about a Latin American neighbor with a long record of democratic traditions similar to our own. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 76-11-7 Production Date 03/23/1977 Book/Page RPtV-135 Audio Youtube? No
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