Regular Soviet contact with Allende after his election was maintained not by the Soviet ambassador but by Kuznetsov, who was instructed by the Centre to ‘exert a favourable influence on Chilean government policy’. According to LEADER’s KGB file:
In a cautious way Allende was made to understand the necessity of reorganizing Chile’s army and intelligence services, and of setting up a relationship between Chile’s and the USSR’s intelligence services. Allende reacted to this positively.
The KGB devoted its attention to strengthening Allende’s anti-American leanings. To this end, information obtained by the KGB Residency in Chile on the activities of American intelligence officers trying to penetrate the leaders of the army and intelligence services was conveyed to Allende. Important and goal-directed operations were conducted according to plan.
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CIA covert action against Allende continued during his presidency. Immediately after the September presidential election, Nixon gave instructions to ‘make the [Chilean] economy scream’, though in the event economic mismanagement by the Allende regime almost certainly did far more damage than the CIA.
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The intelligence supplied by Kuznetsov to Allende about CIA operations in Chile included a certain amount of disinformation, such as the claim that Nathaniel Davis, who arrived in Santiago as US ambassador in October 1971, was a CIA officer.
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There is no evidence that Allende realized he was being deceived. In 1971 he presented Kuznetsov with a Longines watch as a mark of his personal esteem.
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Kuznetsov arranged his regular meetings with Allende through the President’s personal secretary, Miria Contreras Bell, known as ‘La Payita’ and codenamed MARTA by the KGB.
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‘La Payita’ appears to have been Allende’s favourite mistress during his presidency. According to Nathaniel Davis:
Apparently it was for La Payita, and in her name, that Allende purchased El Cañaveral, a property in El Arrayán suburb outside Santiago. This estate also served as a training site for the president’s bodyguards, a political meeting place, and, allegedly, an intimate hideaway where sex films were shown and the president, UP bigwigs, and their girlfriends cavorted - and had themselves photographed as they did so.
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Kuznetsov reported more discreetly that, ‘according to available information’, Allende was spending ‘a great deal of time’ in La Payita’s company: ‘Allende is very attentive to ladies, and tries to surround himself with charming women. His relationship with his wife has more than once been harmed as a result.’
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Despite Allende’s affairs, however, his wife Hortensia remained intensely loyal to him. Kuznetsov did his best to cultivate her as well as her husband.
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Cuban intelligence also established close relations with the Allende family. Allende’s personal guard, the black-beret Grupo de Amigos Personales, contained numerous Cubans. His daughter, Beatriz, who oversaw presidential security, married a Cuban intelligence officer, Luis Fernández Oña, with the disconcerting nickname ‘tiro fijo’ (‘quick-on-the-trigger’).
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One of the CIA officers stationed in Chile recalls that he had ‘a lot of respect for the Cuban Intelligence. They were a lot more effective than the Russians in the sense that they still had revolutionary fervour, they were prepared to make sacrifices, they spoke the language, and they were prepared to mix it up with the
campesinos
.’
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In May 1971 FCD Service 1 (Intelligence Analysis), of which Leonov had become deputy head,
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sent Kuznetsov a lengthy list of topics on which it instructed him to obtain Allende’s views:
• The President’s assessment of the internal political situation in the country, and his plans to hinder the subversive activities of the right-wing opposition.
• The President’s assessment of the economic situation in the country and measures planned to strengthen the economy.
• Relations between the government and the parties in the Popular Unity coalition.
• The President’s attitude towards unilateral actions by parties within the bloc, especially the Communist Party.
• The possibility of and conditions necessary for the unification of the Communists and socialists into a single party.
• Decisions by the President to strengthen the leadership of the Chilean armed forces and government with supporters of the left-wing parties.
• Prospects for the development of economic, political and military relations between Chile and the USSR, Cuba, other socialist countries, and China.
• Relations between Chile and the United States.
• Chile’s policy with respect to the countries of Latin America.
It was a tribute to Kuznetsov’s access to the President that he was able to obtain full responses on all these topics. Nikolai Leonov, was full of praise for the quality of Allende’s information. Reports based on it were forwarded to the Politburo.
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In October 1971, on instructions from the Politburo, Allende was given $30,000 ‘in order to solidify the trusted relations’ with him.
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Allende also mentioned to Kuznetsov his desire to acquire ‘one or two icons’ for his private art collection. He was presented with two icons, valued by the Centre at 150 rubles, as a gift.
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On 7 December, in a memorandum to the Politburo personally signed by Andropov, the KGB proposed giving Allende another $60,000 for what was euphemistically termed ‘his work with [i.e. bribery of] political party leaders, military commanders, and parliamentarians’. Allende was to be urged to strengthen his authority by establishing ‘unofficial contact’ with Chilean security chiefs and ‘using the resources of friends [Communists]’ in the Interior Ministry. The KGB also proposed giving an additional $70,000 to a Chilean monthly already subsidized by the KGB, to ‘make it more combative and sharp in its defence of the interests of Popular Unity and in its exposure of the local reactionaries’ and imperialists’ intrigues’. The proposals were approved by the Politburo.
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In June 1972 Kuznetsov’s close relationship with Allende was disturbed by the arrival in Santiago of a tough new Soviet ambassador, Aleksandr Vasilyevich Basov, whose membership of the Central Committee indicated both his high rank within the nomenklatura and the importance attached by Moscow to relations with Allende’s Chile. Unlike his predecessor, Basov was not prepared to play second fiddle to a KGB officer. His relations with the residency worsened, apparently soon after his arrival in Santiago, after the discovery in the walls of both his office and apartment of American listening devices with miniature transmitters which could be activated from some distance away.
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Basov doubtless blamed the KGB for failing to protect the security of the embassy. The KGB in turn blamed the Chilean Communist Party for recommending the firm which had been employed for building work at the embassy. The Party leader, Luis Corvalán Lepe (codenamed SHEF), was secretly informed by the KGB that the firm was untrustworthy and had been penetrated by ‘hostile agents’ who had installed the devices.
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Basov initially insisted on accompanying Kuznetsov to meetings with Allende, thus hampering the conduct of KGB business which the resident was reluctant to discuss in the presence of the ambassador.
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Within a few months, however, Basov was seeking to replace Kuznetsov as the main Soviet contact with Allende. The Santiago residency complained to the Centre:
The ambassador intends to set the line himself for meetings with LEADER [Allende], and he goes to the meetings with LEADER accompanied not by LEONID [Kuznetsov] but by other officials. The ambassador is ‘jealous’ of LEONID’s visits to LEADER, because he is taking away his bread [most important business]. Therefore, he demands detailed meeting plans and reports on the meetings. He is trying to supervise us on this matter.
Basov’s ultimate aim was to reduce most Soviet contact with Allende to ‘a single channel’ controlled by himself. The residency complained that one channel ‘is insufficient for conducting active measures and other special operations’. Hitherto Kuznetsov had built up a close relationship with Allende’s wife and his daughter Beatriz. Both, according to the KGB, ‘turn[ed] directly to LEONID with various requests’. Basov, however, assigned contact with the Allende family to a member of his staff and tried to make it impossible for Kuznetsov to continue his meetings with Allende’s wife.
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In December 1972, Kuznetsov was able to renew contact with Hortensia and Beatriz Allende while they were staying at the Barvikha Sanatorium in the Soviet Union. During their stay, almost certainly without informing Basov, the Centre made, at its own expense, a two-week booking at the sanatorium for Kuznetsov and his wife Galina.
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It is clear from the tone of subsequent KGB reports that, once again probably without the ambassador’s knowledge, Kuznetsov succeeded in establishing a secret channel ‘for handling the most confidential and delicate matters’ directly with Allende.
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The tone of KGB reporting on Chile during 1972 was somewhat more cautious than during the previous year. Nixon’s visit to Moscow in 1972 and Brezhnev’s return visit to Washington in the following year represented the high point of a period of Soviet- American détente. Andropov, like the Soviet leadership in general, was anxious not to provoke the Nixon administration by too ostentatious a challenge to American influence in Latin America - all the more so because the United States seemed tacitly to accept that the Soviet Union was free to act as it wished within its own sphere of influence in eastern and central Europe. ‘Latin America’, wrote Andropov, ‘is a sphere of special US interests. The US has permitted us to act in Poland and Czechoslovakia. We must remember this. Our policy in Latin America must be cautious.’
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A further reason for caution in the level of Soviet support for Allende was the general instability of Latin American regimes - as evidenced recently in Bolivia, where President Torres had been overthrown in August 1971, only a month after Andropov had suggested supplying him with arms and economic aid. When the FCD suggested renewing contact with Torres in January 1972, Andropov gave his unenthusiastic approval:
Apparently, this is something that must be done, although experience in other countries has shown that it is almost impossible for a deposed president to regain the position he has lost. This is some sort of irreversible law of history. Perhaps it is better to turn our attention to the new leaders who will undoubtedly appear in Bolivia.
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During Torres’s exile in Chile and Argentina, the local KGB residencies maintained secret contact with him, using him for active-measures campaigns (of which Mitrokhin’s notes give no details) and giving him financial assistance.
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Andropov’s forecast that Torres would never return to power, however, turned out to be entirely correct.
There was growing anxiety in the Centre at Allende’s failure to consolidate his position by bringing the armed forces and security system under his control. Andropov decreed that the FCD’s main Latin American priorities in 1972 were to strengthen - discreetly - the Soviet footholds in Chile and Peru. Both footholds, he had concluded, were insecure:
The main thing is to keep our finger on the pulse of events, and obtain multifaceted and objective information about the situation there, and about the correlation of forces. It is necessary to direct the course of events, and make sure that events do not catch us unawares, so that we don’t have any surprises, and will be aware of the very first tremors of approaching changes and events - thus enabling us to report them to the leadership in a timely manner.
There is one particular question which perhaps does not affect us [the KGB] directly, but which cannot be avoided, and that is the interpretation that the events in Chile and Peru have received in our press, and the emphasis that has been placed on the role of the Soviet Union there. One gets the impression that the [Soviet] press is doing too much boasting and bragging. I don’t think that the friends [the Chilean and Peruvian Communist parties] have liked this.
While anxious to bolster the Allende regime by establishing close KGB liaison with Chilean intelligence, Andropov instructed that any attempt to force the pace would be counterproductive:
Do not permit anything that would cause complaints about our activity in Chile and Peru.