• DOI:10.1017/S0021875811000855
• Corpus ID: 144737906

CIA Intervention in Chile and the Fall of the Allende Government in 1973

@article{Shiraz2011CIAII,
  title={CIA Intervention in Chile and the Fall of the Allende Government in 1973},
  author={Zakia Shiraz},
  journal={Journal of American Studies},
  year={2011},
  volume={45},
  pages={603 - 613}
}

• Z. Shiraz
• Published 1 August 2011
• Political Science
• Journal of American Studies

Since 1947, US foreign policy and the CIA have been inextricably intertwined. This is partly because of the heightened use of covert action during the Cold War, which at times resulted in very public ‘‘bungled ’’ interventions, the most obvious example being the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Intervention is always hard to hide and the Cold War saw the execution of more than two hundred American covert actions, ranging from large-scale paramilitary operations and secret wars to more discreet economic and propaganda activities. In the wake of these secret battles, public controversies have erupted about the nature and legitimacy of covert action. A sizeable body of scholarship, which encompasses contributions from officials, academics, journalists and disaffected CIA retirees, has emerged that asks whether CIA covert operations have not delegitimized US foreign policy. Furthermore, many insist that the result has been ‘‘blowback, ’’ the creation of unnecessary enemies. CIA intervention in Chile remains one of the most controversial episodes in the history of American foreign policy. Figures such as Chalmers Johnson and Robert Blum belong to the ‘‘blowback’’ school and argue that covert CIA operations have contributed to the sorrows of the empire by sowing seeds of hate in the global south. Noam Chomsky, one the world’s most-cited philosophers and political