Allende Accuses US Multinational ITT of Plot to Overthrow him | December 1972

Monday, December 4th 1972. Footage of part of a 90-minute speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations in which Chilean President Salvador Allende accused the US multinational giant International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) of plotting to overthrow his government. Allende produced a document which he said incriminated the company. He said: "In July the world was shocked to learn details of a new plan of action, which the ITT itself presented to the United States Government, aimed at overthrowing my government within a period of six months. This document, which I have here, is dated October 1971 and contains the eighteen points of this plan. Its objectives included strangling the economy, diplomatic sabotage, fomenting social disorder, and sowing panic among the population so that the Government, it was hoped, would lose control of the situation and the Armed Forces would be impelled to break the democratic system and impose a dictatorship." Allende, the western world's first democratically-elected Marxist leader, accused US multinationals such as ITT and the Kennecott Copper Corporation of working against the interests of developing countries. His speech brought a rare standing ovation of a full minute from the delegates, the majority of them from developing nations. They repeated the ovation when he left the hall. Source of footage: Reuters News Archive. Note: Salvador Allende would be proved right. He was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup on September 11th 1973 during which he lost his life. It followed years of CIA-sponsored machinations against Allende which included the assassination of General Rene Schneider, the Army Chief of Staff who developed a doctrine of military non-interference in Chilean politics (the "Schneider Doctrine"). The combination of corporate and ideological interests leading to US covert action to effect "regime change" had occurred in 1953 and 1954 respectively in Iran and Guatemala. The CIA's overthrow of Iranian Prime Minster Mohammad Mosaddegh ("Operation Ajax") came after Mosaddegh nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, while the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz ("Operation PBSUCCESS") came after much agitation by the United Fruit Company (UFC). The International Telephone and Telegraph company later became widely known to fans of Nigerian music superstar Fela Anikulapo-Kuti whose song "ITT" ("International Thief Thief") lambasted the corrupt practices of Nigerian military and business interests who he perceived to be working in the interests of foreign multinationals and intelligence agencies such as the CIA.