- [Reporter] This is no ordinary factory.
But look at a recent edition of a Washington newspaper
and you will learn
that this is where the CIA deciphers
and decodes all the material it gets
from the various American spy satellites.
Such disclosures about the CIA, and above all,
about what goes on here
at its headquarters, just outside Washington,
these are the hot news stories of the moment.
Meanwhile, the full story of the military coup
in Chile, is causing the CIA yet more trouble.
As post-Watergate digging continued,
it came out that the CIA had sent millions of dollars
to various groups who opposed President Allende,
who was overthrown in the coup.
The United States was attempting
to get the sort of government it liked into power,
in a foreign country.
(solemn music)
(cassette player clicking)
- [Historian] I'm glad to repeat this story
because, there's a new generation growing up
who believe what they're told by history books, I suppose.
And it wasn't at all like that.
Allende was very successful,
and of course, the machinery he was using,
which we provided, was part of that success.
The CIA acted, and moved in,
and destroyed the government, and killed Allende.
And, I've often felt that, if we hadn't been so successful,
Allende would still be alive,
and the democratic government
of Chile wouldn't have gone into decline
for all those years.
By, a very strange quirk of fate,
I think that the very success of what we did
in Chile, was instrumental in bringing down the government.
(equipment whirring)
(light techno music)
- Within the computing community
within the last decade, the key thing
that was being observed was,
that there was a lot better way to interact with a computer.
Computer networks were, not only needed, but were valuable.
And they are gradually coming into fruition.
(suspenseful orchestral music)
- [Narrator] In California in the 1970s,
something new was happening.
- The Network Information Center, which is located
at Stanford Research Institute in California,
sees the network as this multi-leveled experiment.
And resource sharing, allows data
to be shared, computers to talk to each other, and so forth.
- [Narrator] The ARPANET had one goal,
to connect large mainframe computers, separated
by thousands of miles.
The U.S. government, who financed the network,
and the American universities carrying out the work,
wanted the fastest possible way
to communicate, with the fewest obstacles.
- [F.J Corbato] It's quite clear
that, material will be moved, and handled,
and stored in computer systems,
rather than in filing cabinets.
- [Narrator] We know the end of this story,
the ARPANET would become the basis for the modern internet.
The networks we now depend on, still reflect the purpose,
and worldview of its time,
and place, open, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable.
But there is another story.
A hemisphere way, a group of programmers
in Santiago, Chile, were building a network
of their own.
Project Cybersyn had a purpose, ethos,
and design, completely different
from the American network.
In the two brief years it lasted,
Cybersyn's creators saw the shape of something unique,
something that was lost
before we ever really learned what it could have meant
to a networked world.
- [Reporter] With the Andes Mountains
only a few miles away, Santiago, capital of Chile,
has a spectacular setting.
Growing each year, in size, and importance,
Santiago's population approaches the million mark.
Santiago is a real metropolis.
Perhaps what most impresses the newcomers,
is the modern architecture.
(solemn techno music)
- Chile was a, for many, an exceptional case
in Latin America,
because it was, an apparently strong democracy
with strong institutions,
and it had developed in the '60s, a close relationship
with the United States.
- Chile, was part of the informal U.S. empire,
both economically, and politically.
The key industries in Chile were controlled
by U.S. multinational corporations.
- So, Chile had this image of a country
that was politically advanced, but, its society lived
in still underdeveloped economic conditions,
which made Chilean society very unequal.
The corporate companies, the U.S. corporate companies
in Chile, have taken more out of the country
than they had actually left in the country.
And that was, the mark of Chilean politics in the 1960s.
The idea that transformation was necessary,
that radical change in some areas was necessary.
- In 1970, there was the election
of a new president for Chile.
And, at that time, the person who was
at the forefront was Salvador Allende.
He was elected, and that was an extraordinary change
in the direction of the country.
- Allende, and his government promised,
and planned, nationalizing,
that is expropriating, some particular factories,
some businesses, that they thought were central
to the carrying out of their economic project.
- [Lubna] Allende intended to expropriate the copper mines,
and the telephone service, which were controlled
by these U.S. multinational corporations.
The Nixon administration feared Allende
for what he represented for the rest of Latin America.
- [President Nixon] Everything we do
with the Chilean government, will be watched
by other, governments,
and revolutionary groups in Latin America
as a signal as to what they can do and get away with.
- The idea was to have an industrial sector,
run by the government.
The idea was to nationalize a number of industries,
rather than having big televisions to very few.
The companies were transformed
to produce small televisions
for the large number of people.
I was there, working in aspect of regional development.
Curiously enough, Fernando Flores was given responsibility
for regional development, as well.
He was the person, who
was the tutor of my own work.
- And I was 27 years old,
I found myself a very important job
in the government Allende,
in charge of the, of the supervision
of the whole, industrial complex.
I was, more mature than the people of that age.
They were all young people,
that's what revolutions have.
I reached position of influence, and power,
and intellectual that none of my companions get.
Not because I was more intelligent,
it's because I said I was more involved with it.
And involvement is something very important in life.
This is not all theory for me,
it was always about, how to improve the problem,
the issue, the organization I am working.
- We need to change the direction of the industry.
We need to, make it much more responsive
to the needs of the people.
- We knew that we have a big challenge
that, with the normal idea of management,
it's going to work.
- The traditional way of sending reports,
and managing industries,
where you have the bureaucrats preparing memos,
sending them through the post,
and if you wanted to have an overview
of the whole company, of the whole industry,
it might have taken months.
It was necessary for us.
And, I think it was particularly important for me,
to connect information with communications.
- Inspiration of Cybersyn,
the political merit in myself,
and the intellectual contribution, Stafford Beer.
I found his book,
that he called "Cybernetic and Management".
And year after, I recalled a second book
of him called, "Decision and Control".
- [Raul] So, he arrived with a book,
and passed it to a number of us,
and new things came of it.
- [Fernando] Stafford have the talent,
then he can see things that we don't see.
- Suddenly, our eyes we're opened.
Cybernetics offered an alternative.
- Cybernetics, dealt with a new world.
It offered mechanisms to dealing with things,
that nobody knew anything about.
I mean, it's almost impossible, even for my generation
let alone yours, to understand, what it was like
to be confronted by, a computer!
I mean, these people had only just come
to grips with the steam engine (laughs).
I used to go to my father's office,
and see these, huge machines.
They spat out bits of paper that people had to decode.
And as I say, they had virtually no function,
they could just add up, and subtract if you were lucky.
Nonetheless, it was shocking, these great big machines
that had all this potentiality that was emerging.
How do you manage a world like that?
We need a new science, that moves between the gaps,
between the sciences to cope with the, new world.
The science of control, and communication
in the human, and the machine.
(mellow instrumental music)
- [Stafford] The computer can generate untold variety.
And all of this is pumped into a system,
originally designed to handle the output
of 100 quill pens.
If one of those unworkable institutions
we were discussing buys a computer, what happens?
- [Reporter] Computers have made it possible
for IRS to process millions more returns,
than would have been possible by hand.
- [Stafford] It uses the thing
to do more elaborately, exactly what was done before.
You know how this looks.
The institution's activity is divided into chunks.
In every chunk, there is a boss man,
with lesser bosses reporting to him,
and running the smaller chunks.
We're not dealing with pistons, pumps, and distributor arms,
but with people, and the connections
between the parts are not crankshafts,
pipes, and electrical wires, but human relationships.
- Myself, and Flores, we start
to talk about how to proceed
with the management of the industry.
- There, I begin to think how it can go to the sources,
we send this letter to Stafford Beer.
And he replied to me, "You come to London,
please come to see me, because we can talk more."
I never been in Europe, and I went there,
and I meet with Stafford Beer.
- And they discussed how to proceed,
with these ideas of the nationalized industry.
- Surprise, surprise, during the conversation,
he offer himself, to come to Chile,
something unexpected with me.
We knew also that, maybe we don't have the time,
that it going to be a, coup before.
- The victory of Allende would be a sort
of demonstration that, there was a possibility
of socialism through democracy,
and that there was no vital contradiction
between socialism, and democracy,
which is what the political discourse
of the United States in the Cold War was.
You can't have socialism, and democracy at the same time.
- [Henry Kissinger] He's heading for a one-party state.
He's getting control of the press.
He's isolating the military.
He's treating the military just like Hitler did.
There'll never be another free election in Chile.
I think, unless we become too dangerous
to tackle, there's going to be a constant erosion
of our international position.
- There were two different means to achieve that end.
But the one that actually was implemented,
in all its breadth, was the attempt
to create conditions for a coup, for a military coup.
And that was done, under Nixon's explicit orders.
So, the CIA provided weapons, and money
to these groups that were plotting,
to kidnap the head of the army,
and provoke an institutional crisis,
and push the army to intervene, taking over.
The attempt was botched, the general was killed,
and no coup occurred.
It lead to, the opposite effect,
a consolidation of the idea
that Allende, was the legitimate winner of the election.
And that's because, it was very apparent
that there was some sort of foreign intervention in it.
- [Lubna] Nixon summoned CIA director, Richard Helms
to the Oval Office.
- [President Nixon] The real thing you need
to have from me is first, this assurance.
- [Richard Helms] That's all I want.
- [President Nixon] I am not going to embarrass the CIA,
because it's terribly important.
Second, I believe in dirty tricks.
I think we've got to do it.
- [Lubna] And gave Helms a list of instructions,
and on this list was the expression,
"Make the economy scream."
(solemn music)