Richard Gott was a groundbreaking, schmooze-proof journalist

Richard Gott, an independent candidate in the Hull-North byelection, pictured in a phone box in 1966 listening to the Dial Your Candidate service. Photograph: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy

I was sad to read about the death of Richard Gott (Obituary, 2 November), whose reports from Chile and Argentina in the 1970s revealed the atrocities committed by the dictatorships at the time.

While I was researching a book on British links to those regimes at the National Archives, his name came up again and again. During the early 1970s, a cold war propaganda unit, the Information Research Department (IRD), was based at the British embassy in Santiago. It encouraged journalists to take a pro-Pinochet stance. An IRD official at the embassy said: “We point them towards the new military authorities for contacts and background.” He hoped that the hours of briefings and the gin and tonics on the patio had achieved the desired effect. But the schmoozing did not work on Gott. The same diplomat noted “private mutterings” from the Chilean military, complaining of Gott’s reporting.