NYTimes | The Central Intelligence Agency secretly financed striking labor unions and trade groups in Chile for more than 18 months before President Salvador Allende Gossens was overthrown, intelligence sources revealed today.
They said that the majority of more than $8‐million authorized for clandestine C.I.A. activities in Chile was used in 1972 and 1973 to provide strike benefits and other means of support for anti‐Allende strikers and workers.
William E, Colby, Director of Central Intelligence, had no comment when told of The Times's information.
In testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Kissinger asserted that the intelligence agency's involvement in Chile had beeen authorized solely to keep alive political parties and news media threatened by Mr. Allende's minority Government. The clandestine activities, Mr. Kissinger said, were not aimed at subverting that Government.
Among those heavily subsidized, the sources said, were the organizers of a nationwide truck strike that lasted 26 days in the fall of 1972, seriously disrupting Chile's economy and provoking the first of a series of labor crises for President Allende.
Direct subsidies, the sources said, also were provided for a strike of middle‐class shopkeepers and a taxi strike among others, that disrupted the capital city of Santiago in the summer of 1973, shortly before Mr. Allende was over thrown by a military coup.
At its peak, the 1973 strikes involved more than 250,000 truck drivers, shopkeepers and professionals who banded to gether in a middle‐class move ment that, many analysts have concluded, made a violent overthrow inevitable.
The Times's sources, while readily, acknowledging the intelligence agency's secret support for the middle classes, insisted that the Nixon Administration's goal had not been to force an end to the Presidency of Mr. Allende.
The sources noted that a request from the truckers union for more C.I.A. financial aid in August, 1973, one month before the coup, was rejected by the 40 Committee, the intelligence review board headed by Secretary of State Kissinger.
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