Edwards the owner of the most influential newspaper in chile and. Kept to a story that yes he did meet with the director of the cia Richard Helms here in washington d. C. And ok he did talk about some other day in this election but no there was never talk of hoopla saying not true. Years later these now declassified cia and white house documents prove thats exactly what he did and that the cia financed his newspaper funding both negative coverage of the a in the government and the positive coverage of the dictatorship that followed i must set up the sorrow i was born in chile and im going to tell you about why maybe 50 years on we still need to talk about and recorded all. Chileans will tell you cant really understand the history of this country without understanding the history material and the foam and. If you need a modern day equivalent think of the murdoch media empire only its much older it dates but in the 19th century when the Edwards Family must afford. Mining agriculture. The family used economic power to shape key moments in chinas political history to give you an idea back in the 19th century the edwards played a major role in todays civil war and the pacific war with bolivia and peru to protect their business interests there was one the only family empire in chile a handful of families owned the country and still do well set them apart with their newspapers. The thing about Edwards Family line is that they understood the way in which the link between politics and economics operates like a sort of. That him is the media yes im going to follow me over. There but. Its much more than a newspaper its a Political Institution that brings together an ideological and Economic Group one that campaigns and influences Public Opinion in ways from a point of view that defends its interests given. The. American deal has always been the most important paper in the country very conservative in its editorial perspective and closely linked to the countrys political and business elites and its had significant political impact throughout chiles recent history including wars Economic Affairs and coups. And i sort of another son its not just al mercurio there are 3 means papers in santiago and a regional chain and it followed a similar trend to that of many newspapers and that in america powerful influential business minded families who set up a powerful media outlet in order to achieve the next level. In a flat up that had all the melding for us and. By the 960. 00 is the next level of interest the Edwards Family were looking for was no longer to be found in chile so they were not moved to the United States to its government and to a Central Intelligence agency the cia. Political winds were shifting socialist movements were gathering momentum across the continent and in chile president ial candidates some other agendas and left wing ideas pledges Agrarian Reform or nationalization Wealth Redistribution capturing the popular imagination felt they stood to lose the Edwards Family certainly but also the u. S. Government as the documents showed we now know that as early as 960. 00 fool the cia was injecting money into quote anti communist propaganda. And its other peoples emotional d. C. S. And i say wonder of support for a human there to rein it in. The United States and the cia started bankrolling a campaign that was essentially against any leftist movements in chile in the 1960. This us aid helped with their campaign to undermine support for the left wing groups led by salvador and in terms of their growing presence on the political stage both at the poles and in social terminals and even. Through his News Coverage and Opinion Pieces and. Some other day in this candidacy. But in september of 1970 again they won the election. He became the worlds 1st democratically elected marxist president was. As left wing supporters took to the streets to celebrate ousting jumped on a plane. Flew to washington and sat down with 2 americans who would shape the future of chile u. S. Secretary of state Henry Kissinger and director of the cia Richard Helms. What was proposed about meeting has been consistently denied for years but in these documents declassified decades later reveal Chinese Media mogul was asking the cia for support in a military coup. And that support came the form of money the money that was passed to overcurrent to sustain. Abuses of truth the propaganda. Fomenting violence and the creation of a cool climate the money came from the cia. As the director of the National Security archives chile documentation project in washington d. C. Peter kornbluh has made it his mission to get to the truth on chile using the freedom of information act its been a trip by trip process but in 27. 00 teams paid off. So you have a document. In which kissinger actually calls over to the cia and says the president has just approved the proposal for supporting al mccurry oh at the amount of 700000. 00 the president wished to see the paper kept going and the amount stipulated could be exceeded if that would be usefully served that purpose i cant think of another time when i have seen micromanagement by the president of United States of covert propaganda operations in another country and here is the living proof of nixons personal involvement in making sure that the cia kept elma korea go. Classified documents all kind of here in washington d. C. Show that president nixon himself directly authorized funding for a medical deal to the tune of 2000000 dollars a serious amount of money in the 1970 s. Enough to keep a paper that was in Financial Difficulties alive and more importantly shape Public Opinion the cia essentially passed money physically to members of the edwards group. Bags full of money and the cia bag man if you will in the cia station santiago was named jack divine. And he was then a young man with a big afro if you look at him you would have thought he was a Foreign Exchange student during the age of hippies but in fact he was an undercover cia officer in one of his 1st postings. As an agent and he was responsible for carrying this money for meeting with periodically with the helmet for real people with the divine thanks for talking to us here in the think its a pleasure you touched down in chile in the 1970 s. During the age in the government you put in charge of an important brief in medical your project a key part of the cia operation in chile at the time can you tell us about your specific role in this post is an extraordinary assignment was my 1st assignment a lot of them are my job is actually to help keep the funding. Recording because the agenda government. Who is 3 would say putting the screws on the home according to my 1st major test that i can recall was trying to find funding so that public order could tend to continue to obtain the paper did that actually print the newspapers so this is on the record as cables written by me asking for a fairly large several several 100000. 00 to support the the maintenance of running the paper well mccourty it was for the whole market you want to preserve it. With High Integrity as a journalistic back with us so you were on the ground in chile you were reading a medical deal and you were seeing what was happening what do you make of criticisms then that during the 3 years of president and administration and medical do you. Is propaganda to the neighborly misleading readers let me put it in the context of time i think blocking. The i. N. D. Government at the time it is. Participation in the government in the context of the cold war. Was an important thing to do the we know from other reporting that the russians really looked at chile as an experimental case where you could use the voting box to bring communists the power in the hemisphere there was a sentiment among those of us watching that the i. N. D. Government was in the process of falling of its own weight his policies were so wrong footed that it was they were the architect of the economic problems that they were confronting. That albacore deo would be critical of this is is not surprising i know understating the power of the media. Not just to report on stories but to produce them creating stories and this is where the bottom line is and nobody of course once they hear this on the left i ended created most of the stories i mean economic policies are very hard to justify today and. At the end of the day when i stand back where brought down the brother record it was softer art it was a barely fall government economic. Thats the story of journalists and it is theres a little town at the time mr boehner says thank you very much for joining us here in the past he was working for him a good deal and says that without cia money the paper would never have been able to tell it not because president you know there was explicitly censoring the press but because his government was tightening the screws on him and financially they were in a loony apple related yet clear plan today and the government wanted to close down and market it but they couldnt just send the police in and shut the paper down so what they did was to found all its accounts they blocked its newsprint supplies they took away all Public Sector advertising as a result the paper was then in serious financial trouble so the people who did want and marketing to survive did what they could to find funding for it among them the u. S. Government this was a fight between 2 armies income but one employed methods the poor in my opinion unlawful by draining the life out of it while the other wanted to provide it with a life like you to get your limited period in israel according to bit is the art of the cia offered that lifeline however for victor that read of edwards unofficial biographer that cash. Allowed and unleashed a Propaganda Campaign that would lead to you in this downfall and the thousands of deaths that followed you went there when i had finished with a good life here but it can for instance amongst various interventions there was the financing of a general strike particularly Truck Drivers and the transport industry which paralyzed the whole country and play the key part as a spokesman for this movement showing how the country was supposedly falling apart at the seams and the code you have been generating fear around communism ever since the bolshevik revolution itself from a very early stage Edwards Mcclure was the grandfather of Augustine Edwards identified this revolution as something very dangerous and makoto has always been furiously anti communist always thought he would. Get on our companion. Carried out an anti communist campaign the liberty spreading panic were talking about the cold war the early seventies i mean it was the communists are coming to kill your kids that kind of thing the establishing of a totalitarian state where all freedoms would be taken away and many people bought it. We have cia documents from the spring of 1973 in which the cia station chief identifies emma choreo as one of the key entities in chile that is pushing for instability and confrontation in order to instigate military action in chile no discussion of democracy nothing peaceful violence that was the purpose. In september of 1973 again that was overthrown in a military. Led by general. Mass open air prisons. The houses disappearances in the thousands bodies dumped at sea the result a culture of fear and repression repression that spread to the media and near total crap down in the press with an exception. And the other 2 papers that opened a filmed are and. Thats when most chileans got their news from during the 17 year that tater ship that followed. Where Barbara Hayes a Young Journalist at the time got her start. I am without a paper political yes i i was really interested in political journalism but by then it was clear that there was absolutely no chance of being able to do that under dictatorship not in El Marco Rubio not anywhere else you have to realize that in those years the clampdown on the media was brutal the information wed be able to gather even those of us who studied journalism would be very little and there was a lot of selfcensorship around aside from straight up censorship the editors and publishers of the media were only too aware that there were certain topics that could not be reported and they would be constantly summoned by the Governments National directorate for communications which controlled anything to do anywhere on this to control our bought them out of mail. In july of 1975 so when the one of inmate who is more liberal papers published a headline that still lives on exterminated like rats the rats were the 190 members of the me and the revolutionary Left Movement and on opposition training for a counter coup. According to. Thered been an internal fight which ended in a bloodbath the real story the Chilean Secret Police heard disappeared. I asked but is there so but the story of the 119. 00 and why audioboo covered it the way they did. If youre a journalist and youre given a story you take that story to your paper and it gets published there was no prior knowledge of anything i mean we had the judicial inquiry that took place 30 years later that exposed. The story came to journalists from argentina it was published in argentinean paper then over time it emerged that everything had been fabricated but nobody could have known that at the time. That did was to quote the official source thats what they publish and what they were like when you go. Out of the 119 disappeared by chiles secret police whose mere member martin. His sister gloria told me shes been campaigning for justice ever since well and i was baffled was well this is the notorious front page of last i go and exterminated like rats it was painful really very painful its probably difficult to imagine what it means to know that your brother has been arrested the authorities to spend a year denying it and then to be faced with this information was extremely shocking. Even though it was officially denied his death become a possibility after a few months and with that report we knew it was true it said yes they killed them best still killing them that killing us and they will carry on. Killing isnt there to pull of the adios in a better the more i say so. In a game. In the world where you have. A lot of anger indignation and at the time a lot of impotence because it was just impossible to counter those arguments these were official truths that were established in just tributed in the media there were practically no media you could call on to disprove any of this even though we the families of the disappeared tried with every single one of the media organizations in chile theres not a single media outlet at the time who can say they didnt know they didnt have a chance to find out about it because all this information all the information to disprove this government information was delivered to all media for well. Into the overnight many decades all the way not only documentary and wrote in the dictatorship and yet. I was the news paper. Here. Through national t. V. But im aware of what the boy. Cost it. But he didnt mention it against me on that or is. Because it took another 6 years for the film to be broadcast late at night on a on t. V. An independent channel that day t. V. Listings left that slot blank more than food 3 years after the military coup the films director found that daring to question him a coolio whos still to the door with us you know live alternately the censorship operation against the film came from officials at chiles National Broadcaster from within the directors board it came from within because in my career generates fear among those who want power because. Coolio is also a means to being an empowered kid in a bullet on a lack of activity i think because of anything other than a fun thing i would have him take with you not only for myself and the young. Men we invent the world with and it was the 1st step in a series of attempts to expose the role of Augustine Edwards and the medical you during the dictatorship many people knew but its one thing to talk about and another to show medium to change. And to start with an intersection just to believe there is a new truth to see that i mean anything a 2nd a day to instantly see if the weather has got over him again if the problem is that in medical you and i will stay in edwards are the victors of history and the victors dont apologize apologize for what we called for a coded and thats what we have. Apologized for wanting a mere liberal state that we now have winners dont say sorry. This is the basic article so to demand this from the victors of history strange why should you demand this and why should they apologize if they want on all fronts that are. Mobile of printing and i dont want to get all the mounds have been made legal ones in 20132 groups representing families of the disappeared to go was denied was to cool it for his role in covering up Human Rights Violations it was the 1st time charges had been brought against the civilian for his or her role in the coup nothing came of it. Today and google still dominates the media markets and when i was dean edwards died in 2017 but he and his people remained officially unblemished. But i know where weve been legally challenging these cases for more than 40 years what happened during the dictatorship. Was an ability to cover up any dissent and a thing that could have been construed as a criticism of the a stop a shipment of the power elites throughout history there are instances of this kind of lies and distortions of reality last man also. Moving also this is a memorial to the thousands of people who disappeared during the pinochet regime a symbol of the chin in states at times to confront a brutal postes but not Everyone Wants to do that we tried not for weeks but for months to get an official response from women who are on a legit crimes against journalism the paper committed during that time but to no avail its as if an ordeal is taking a story its own story and trying to bury its. Peace between ethiopia and eritrea has meant a park areas future for the iraqi people here are some of it wasnt we have to create farmland for our souls for iraq its a matter of survival. Im a veteran shows us how the iraq coping with life on the edge of the border. Might if youre on aljazeera. In. Women news breaks. When people need to be heard and the story needs to be told pretty remarkable too to about how we had died last week crossing from mexico to the United States with exclusive interviews and indepth reports we can live according to the fishing life or section of aljazeera has teams on the ground to bring you more Award Winning documentaries and live news. The kickout growers of togo. Defenseless against the winds have been indifferent to international marketplace. Chocolate and political activist on a mission to establish a cooperative to make and sell chocolate on their own internal. Power plant a taste of independents announces iraq. Helen has im saying the top stories on a jersey or is your 2nd general election this year looks unlikely to break its political stalemate benny gantz from the blue and white party and the kurds Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appear almost neck and neck that could lead to weeks of political wrangling kerry forcing reports from tel aviv. To music blurred Benjamin Netanyahu smiles but more than 5 hours after voting finished it was clear this was the victory even if he was far from ready to admit defeat. A government committed to the jewish state the night
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