very well due to his five years of service there and his broad personal contacts among the Chilean officers. Following a proposal by the Chief of Station, the CIA decided to enlist Colonel Wimert in collecting intelligence concerning the possibility of a coup and to use him as a channel to let the interested Chilean military know of U.S. support for a coup. Karamessines described this procedure for the Committee:

We also needed contact with a wider segment of the military, the senior military which we had not maintained and did not have, but which we felt confident that our military representative in Chile had....And we got the approval of the DIA to enlist the cooperation of Colonel Wimert in our effort to procure intelligence.
(Karamessines testimony, August 6, 1975, p. 6)

To obtain Wimert's services, CIA officials prepared a suggested message for the Director of DIA to send to the Army Attache in Santiago through CIA communications channels. Because the DIA Director, General Donald V. Bennett, was in Europe on official business, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, General Cushman, invited DIA Deputy Director Lt. General Jammie M. Philpott to his office on September 28, 1970.* During that meeting, General Cushman requested the assistance of the Army Attache, and General Philpott signed a letter which authorized transmission of a message directing the Army Attache:

...to work closely with the CAS chief, or in his absence, his deputy, in contacting and advising the principal military figures who might play a decisive role in any move which might, eventually, deny the presidency to Allende.

Do not, repeat not, advise the Ambassador or the Defense Attache of this message, or give them any indication of its portent. In the course of your routine activities, act in accordance with the Ambassador's instructions. Simultaneously, I wish—and now authorize you—to act in a concerted fashion with the CAS chief.

* General Bennett returned to the United States on the evening of October 10, 1970. General Philpott was Acting Director in Bennett's absence.