Hostile Intent

Description:

Kristian Gustafson’s Hostile Intent reexamines one of the most controversial chapters in U.S. intelligence history, the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations in Chile from 1964 to 1974. At the request of successive U.S. presidents, the CIA in conjunction with the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency first acted to prevent Chilean socialist Salvador Allende from becoming the democratically elected president of his country and then tried to undermine his government once he was in office. Allende’s government eventually fell in a bloody military coup on September 11, 1973. President Richard Nixon’s administration and corporate interests were not sorry to see him go, but did U.S. covert operations actually play a decisive role in Allende’s downfall? The declassification of thousands of U.S. government documents over the last several years demands that historians take a new look.

Since 1973, most observers have maintained that U.S. machinations were responsible for the success of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s coup that forced Allende’s fall and suicide. This assessment has been based on a thin documentary record of U.S. activity, the myth of an all-powerful CIA, and the CIA’s checkered history of covert action in Latin America. However, Gustafson convincingly shows the conventional wisdom about the impact of U.S. actions is badly flawed. His meticulous research is based upon an intensive examination of previously unavailable U.S. records as well as interviews with key figures. Hostile Intent is the most comprehensive account to date of U.S. involvement in Chile, and its provocative reinterpretation of this involvement will shape all future debates.

Reviews/Endorsements:

“A fascinating monograph that questions long-held assumptions about the State Department’s and CIA’s ability to influence the course of events.”
-- The Historian, Volume 72, Number 1

“A study worthy of consideration.”
-- Hispanic American Historical Review, August 2009

"Kristian Gustafson has produced a well-documented analytical study that argues persuasively that the real hostility toward Chile originated in the Nixon White House and that the CIA, far from being omnipotent was often a mere instrument of White House directives that frequently ignored intelligence in favor of ill-conceived solutions."
-- H-War, H-Net Reviews, December 2008

"Thoroughly researched and clearly written, Gustafson's book provides a balanced assessment of intelligence community actions in Chile that will be valuable to students, scholars, and policy elites."
-- Choice, August 2008

“….provocative….makes good use of newly declassified U.S. government documents, fresh interviews, and Chilean accounts.”
-- Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008

“Gustafson demolishes some of the most enduring myths and exaggerations about the CIA and Allende’s Chile. This is a thoroughly researched and argued account, using newly declassified records and interviews, of how the CIA impacted Chile during the most explosive years of its modern history. The author is prudent, balanced, and astute and his account is gracefully written.
-- Brian Latell, Senior Research Associate at the University of Miami and former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America

“Gustafson’s thoughtful book challenges many of the simple orthodoxies about American intervention in Chile. He shows that assumptions of American responsibility for the 11 September 1973 coup are overstated. He similarly undermines claims about American Realpolitik in the region. Gustafson persuasively argues that U.S. policy-makers perceived a serious communist threat in Chile, but their reactions were mixed, uncertain, and ultimately counterproductive. American covert activities in Chile failed because they did not match basic American aims and capabilities in the region. This is a provocative assessment with enormous implications for the ways we think about covert action in the Middle East and other parts of the world today.”
-- Jeremi Suri, author of Henry Kissinger and the American Century

Related Books:

• Spymaster: My Life in the CIA
• The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations in Cuba, 1959-1965