Oh Steve Edwards the owner of the most influential newspaper in chile and it 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 guy and theres a direction but you know there was never talk of. Not true. Years later these now deep cuts of fight cia 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 this article i was born in chile and im going to tell you about why maybe 50 years on we still need to talk about the mic or deal. Chileans will tell you cant really understand the history of this country without understanding the history of women and the farming. If you need a modern equivalent think of the murdoch media empire only its much older dates but in the 19th century when the Edwards Family amassed a fortune bunking 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 both into the civil war and the pacific war with bolivia and peru to protect their business interests yet it was one of the only family children a handful of families owned the country can still do was set them apart with their newspapers. For me. The thing about the Edwards Family line is that they understood the way in which the link between politics and economics operates like a sort of. That he is the media yes and we say going to follow me over. There. Is 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. Real 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 there. Yeah. I know solomon orders and i was on it and its not just al mercurio there remains papers and santiago and regional change that 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 other melding for us and. By the 1960s the next level of interest they had was family were looking for was no longer to be found in chile so they looked more to the United States to its government and to its Central Intelligence agency the cia. Political winds were shifting socialist movements were gathering momentum across the continent and in chile president ial candidate some other agendas and left wing ideals pledges Agrarian Reform nationalization world 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 still wonder who would have support for a year in 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 here in terms of their growing presence on the political stage both at the polls and in social terminals and. Through its News Coverage and Opinion Pieces and. Some other young discount. But in september of 1971 the election. He became the worlds 1st democratically elected marxist president. Has left supporters took to the streets to celebrate a loss to edwards jumped on a plane flew to washington and some time with 2 americans who would shape the future of chile u. S. National security adviser to the president and regis and john and director of the cia Richard Helms. What was proposed about meeting has been consistently denied for years because these documents declassified decades later reveal Chinese Media mogul was asking the cia for support in a military coup. And that support came in the form of money the money that was passed to occur 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 cheney 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 budget process that 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 mccurry 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 archives here in washington d. C. Show that president nixon himself directly authorized funding for and made to the tune of 2000000. 00 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. A young man with a big afro if you looked 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 mr devine 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 was an extraordinary assignment was my 1st assignment a lot of our my job was actually to help keep the funding of record because the agenda government at the time was 3 was a 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 wanted 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 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 with a communist. 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 communist to 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 you were being critical of the. Is is but surprising i you 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 were brought down the brother record it was softer art it was a barely fall government economic. Thats the story of journalist 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 nearby weird cliff and a and the government wanted to close down and market it but they couldnt just send the police you know 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 what could or 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 of the 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 a limited area in israel according to bit is the art of the cia offered that lifeline however for victor that read of edwards an official biographer that cash. Allowed and unleashed a Propaganda Campaign that would lead to a young this downfall and the thousands of deaths that followed he went there with. 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 played a key part as a spokesman for this movement showing how the country was supposedly falling apart at the seams and there could 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. Carried out an anti communist campaign liberally 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 and i think peaceful violence that was the purpose. In september of 1973 again that was overthrown in a military coup led by general to pinochet. Mass open air prisons to the houses disappearances in the thousands bodies dumped at sea the result a culture of fear and repression repression the spread to the media a new total crackdown on the press with an exception i made and the other 2 papers and opened a film im not on the monotheists yes thats where most chileans got their news from during the 17 years it taitz a ship that followed. Where Barbara Hayes a Young Journalist at the time got her start i mean with thousands of people political body yes 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 elmer coolio 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 they could. Be reported and they will be constantly summoned by the Governments National directorate for communications which controlled anything to do with media rollout bought them. In july of 975 so when their 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 opposition training for a counter coup. According to less a war that had been an internal fight which ended in a blood. The real story the children could police heard disappeared. I asked police there say about the story of the 119 and why. 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 and there was no prior knowledge of anything i mean we had a 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. Did was to quote the official source thats what they publish and what they really want to go. One of the 119 disappeared by chiles secret police whose mere member martin get. His sister gloria told me shes been campaigning for justice ever since while i was baffled was well this is the notorious front page of last 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 3 or thirtys to spend a year denying it and then to be faced with this information was extremely shocking. Even that 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. A bit of the most to say so in a game. And the one video 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 and distributed 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. Him to go willingly many decades all the way not to let a documentary on and wrote in the dictatorship and yet although i was the news paper. Here. For the national team. But im aware of what the boy cost it. But he. Mentioned it against me on little risk. 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 and they could use t. V. Listings left that slot blank more than food see years after the military coup the films director found the daring to question and make sure you know whos still to be done all that us you know live with ultimately the censorship operation against the film came from officials at chiles National Broadcaster from within the directors board it came from within because in mccooey or generates fear among those who want power because america is also a means to being an empowered kid in a bully on an academic they think of it that they got a kick out of anything other than a fun thing i would have and they went there not only for myself and the young. And we invent the world with and it was the 1st step in a series of attempts to expose the role of Augustine Edwards and their medical you during the dictatorship many people knew but its one thing to talk about it and another to show it to the union to see. If you need to start with an intersection just to be listening to see more of that i mean immediately the 2nd day it is instantly you see again and it is a well it has become an immigrant the problem is that in medical you and i was to an edwards of the victors of history of the victors dont apologize apologize for what we called for could it and thats what we have. Apologized for wanting a new liberal state that we now have winners dont say sorry. This is the basic article so to demand this from the victors of history is strange why should you demand this and why should they apologize if they want on all fronts and that im. Afraid of being an atom bomb. In the mountains have been made legal ones in 20132 groups represent. Families of the disappeared to come to court 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 im a good deal still dominates the media market and when i was dean edwards started in 2017 but he and his paper remains officially unblemished most of us who are more or whatever look 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 anything that could have been construed as a criticism of the establishment of the power elites throughout history there are instances of this kind of lies and distortions of reality last when i was. Moving also this is a memorial to the thousands of people who had disappeared during the you know chair regime a symbol of the chilean states attempts to confront a brutal past but not Everyone Wants to do that so we tried not for weeks bu