Project FUBELT (also known as Track II) is the codename for the secret Central Intelligence Agency operations that were to prevent Salvador Allende's rise to power before his confirmation and to promote a military coup in Chile. This project came after the circumstantial failure of Track I, which involved making president Eduardo Frei Montlava interfere with the 1970 national election in opposition to Allende. The highlights of Project FUBELT are cited in declassified US government documents released by the National Security Archive on September 11, 1998, 25 years after the coup, as well as in papers uncovered by a 1975 congressional inquiry. CIA memoranda and reports on Project FUBELT include meetings between United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of secret action in 1970, detailing decisions and operations to undermine the election of Salvador Allende in September 1970 and to promote a military coup. In November 1970, after the failure of the operation with the killing of general René Schneider, the US National Security Council issued National Security Decision Memorandum 93, which replaced FUBELT. Background The US was particularly interested in the election of Salvador Allende because of his Marxist ideologies. Taking place during the Cold War and after the Cuban Revolution, then US president Richard Nixon was worried that Chile would become another communist link in Latin America. He authorized the CIA to involve itself in the Chilean national election of 1970. There were two plans in this involvement, Track I and Track II. After the circumstantial failure of Track I, Project FUBELT, being Track II, was pursued. Plan The operation itself was aimed at creating a ‘coup-climate’ in which a coup would best take place. This, as ordered by Richard Nixon, authorized $10 million to the CIA to conduct this operation. To this day, this is the only record in US history of a US president ordering the overthrow of a democratically-elected leader in a foreign country. Several days after Nixon’s 15 September directive to create a coup in Chile, the CIA began to plan economic, political, and psychological warfare tactics to create a climate in which a coup would thrive. Then commander in chief, Gen. René Schneider, stood in the way of this operation because he was a constitutionalist and thus did not support a coup to overthrow Allende. As part of the plan to dispel