Gonzalo Vial Correa (29 August 1930 – 30 October 2009) was a Chilean historian, lawyer and journalist. He was a member of the State Defense Council and the Council on Ethics in Social Media. In addition he was president of the Barnechea Foundation for Education, which he founded with his wife, María Luisa Vial Cox. In 2005, Vial was voted the most influential intellectual in Chile by 112 Chilean scholars and politicians. In August 2010 the Faculty of History at Finis Terrae University instituted a prize bearing his name. Despite this recognition, Gonzalo Vial has been widely criticized for his work White Book on the Change of Government in Chile, written immediately after the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and supervised by Admiral Patricio Carvajal, which described the so-called "Plan Zeta". Plan Zeta disseminated the false idea that left-wing elements were organizing a self-coup against President Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular, and for years this was the main justification of the coup and subsequent establishment of a military government. Under the pretense of countering Plan Zeta, the DINA arrested, tortured, and murdered many people. Biography Gonzalo Vial Correa was the fourth child of six born of Wenceslao Vial Ovalle and Ana Correa Sánchez, and his brother was the doctor Juan de Dios Vial Correa. He went to school at Sacred Hearts School and after this he studied law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, graduating in 1957 and receiving the Tocornal Prize which is awarded to the best law student from each graduating class. At the same time he studied the history of education and some of his mentors in this field were Jaime Eyzaguirre, Mario Góngora and Ricardo Krebs. Professional activities Vial taught in the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile's Faculty of Law and in its Faculty of Sociology. He had also served as Dean of History, Geography, and Arts at the Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Education at Finis Terrae University. During the second administration of President Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, Vial was private secretary to Finance Minister Jorge Prat. Journalism and works of history Vial was a full member of the Royal Academy of History and of the Chilean Academy of History, which had awarded him the Miguel Cruchaga Prize. A disciple of Jaime Eyzaguirre, Vial was an exponent of conservative historiography and his work was criticized by leftist historians