An ex-Canadian Army officer now historian, Kristian Gustafson, jumps into a fray that has been paved by Peter Kornbluth's The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York & London: The New Press, 2003) and John Dinges in The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (New York & London: The New Press, 2005). Gustafson uses much of the same recently released declassified CIA and State Department sources as Kornbluth, who with colleagues at the National Security Archive facilitated the release of much of this evidence. That particular endeavour took years of work.

In staking his approach, Gustafson opens with a series of questions: Did the Nixon administration … try to have Allende assassinated? Did the CIA … engineer the coup that resulted in Allende's death? Did the CIA choose and groom General Augusto Pinochet …? Controversial stuff to take on, and Gustafson engages the questions to a profound decree. In turn, he strives to stake out a vastly different argument than Dinges and Kornbluth. Moreover, Gustafson's focus remains on the CIA covert actions in Chile leading up to the overthrow of Allende and the following year. Potomac Books published this particular work, and this press focuses on military history and intelligence and security studies. Thus, his work attempts to discredit certain arguments that the United States was responsible for the overthrow of Allende and the rise of Augusto Pinochet by arguing that the United States did not attempt to organise a coup against Allende but instead to strengthen the opposition parties.

The primary accomplishment of Gustafson's book is the unravelling of the roles of the CIA, State Department and other US government agencies in Chile. He demonstrates the intra-agency competition, distrust, and lack of political agreement concerning the most appropriate Chilean party or military officers to support. In answering his questions of whether the Nixon administration attempted to assassinate Allende, Gustafson argues that it did not. However, he spends a significant portion of the book revealing how it engaged in intrigue with CIA officers, by-passing the State Department. In examining the kidnap plot and assassination of the constitutionalist General René Schneider, Gustafson does not reveal anything distinctive except to argue that the evidence does not reveal a direct connection between CIA agents and the murderers. However, he splendidly demonstrates that the CIA provided arms and funds to certain factions in the military as well as the opposition. Gustafson draws different conclusions from the evidence and engenders further questions.

In examining Nixon and Henry Kissinger's perceptions of Chile, I agree that they may not have been entirely focused on the narrow land. However there is no denying that they became interested in the wake of Allende's election and attempted to destabilise his presidency. Obviously, Chileans that disagreed with Popular Unity played a key role. However, I do not know any scholar who has attempted to dismiss Chilean agency in the overthrow and destabilisation of the regime. In the documentary Salvador Allende, Chilean film-maker Patricio Guzmán, captures the sense of responsibility even among members of the Communist Party for the overthrow and the dictatorship.

Gustafson's reading of the history of policy is at times exasperating. He writes, ‘the Nixon and Kissinger team was one of the most successful in US diplomatic history’, but in the next paragraph he reveals how ‘the team’ attempted to centralise authority and circumvent the State Department (p. 86). Further, he demonstrates the continued bumbling of the administration in Chile due in part because their needs for control and paranoia. He shows successively that the United States covert actions in Chile did not end in a clean coup and a return to democracy. In the interviews that he conducted, all those concerned argued that they assumed that the military junta would rule for a brief period followed by democratic elections. Over thirty years later in the area of policy, there is little analysis of the politicisation of memory of those who are accustomed to giving the most appropriate answer at the most appropriate time.

Gustafson's goal of demonstrating the role of covert action in Chile may not have been completely on target. Whether or not Nixon and Kissinger envisioned a democratic end to their realpolitik means, there is no denying that the covert actions undertaken facilitated the rise and tacit approval of Augusto Pinochet as Dinges and Kornbluth have shown.