Files reveal Nixon role in plot to block Allende from Chilean presidency

Richard Nixon. Transcripts of a phone call Nixon made to his national security adviser Henry Kissinger the following day are also among the revelations. Photograph: Washington Post/Getty

Days before Salvador Allende’s confirmation as Chile’s president in 1970, US President Richard Nixon met with a rightwing Chilean media mogul to discuss blocking the socialist leader’s path to the presidency, newly declassified documents have revealed.

The documents, published in a new Spanish edition of the Pinochet files by archivist and writer Peter Kornbluh, include Nixon’s agenda for 15 September 1970, which shows a meeting in the Oval Office with Agustín Edwards, the owner of the conservative El Mercurio media group.