speaker. His campaign benefited from the prestige of being ambassador to Washington, as well as his friendship with President Frei. However, it was hurt by his continued insistence on forming a coalition, as well as directly criticizing and attacking the Christian Democratic Party’s own bills and the Frei administration’s reforms. Voters often turned away from him due to his confusing campaign platform coming off as a more convoluted way of implementing socialism compared to instead electing Marxist Allende. Jorge Alessandri Prior to running in the 1970 election, Jorge Alessandri was a career politician and served as the 27th President of Chile from 1958 to 1964, until the constitution barred him from succeeding himself. He was the prior administration to Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. His conservative independent platform represented voters who were concerned by the reforms Frei had implemented over the course of his administration. Due to his prestige of formerly being the President of Chile, his campaign started out very strong. However, over time he lost support for a variety of reasons. One major factor was his age and health. At the time of the 1970 election, Alessandri was 74 years old and had experienced a variety of health issues, mental and physical, including on national TV. According to Sergio Riesenberg, Alessandri's appearance on TV backfired and cost him the election. On the TV program Tres Bandas hosted by Gonzalo Bertrán there were two separate shots that showed him in bad light. In the first Alessandri said that he would be determined and that his "hands would not shake", subsequently the camera focused his hands that were actually shaking. In the second frame he was seen next to a stove warming his legs with a blanket despite it being spring. According to Riesenberg all this gave the public the impression of a man who was not longer of "an adequate age to become president". Another major factor was his campaign being staffed mostly by amateurs, which led to the wasting of resources, creating of ineffective propaganda, issues mobilizing supporters, and trouble spreading a positive message to voters. US intelligence reports stated that supporters believed that Alessandri could win using his name alone and spent most of the campaign attacking Frei's reforms instead of directly promoting Alessandri. In the end, he finished second, meaning that the congressional vote was between him and Allende. International involvement Intelligence agencies Both the Central Intelligence