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The coup was carefully planned and meticulously executed, reported TIME Correspondent Charles Eisendrath, who watched the action from a window overlooking the palace. Early last Tuesday morning, armored cars rolled across Santiago's broad Plaza de la Constitucion to block the portals of La Moneda, the somber 18th century-style Presidential Palace. As army sharpshooters took up positions, at least 100 armed carabineros−Chile's paramilitary police−jumped out of buses and double-timed across the square. Their mission, according to the secret order of the day, was "to restore institutional normality" in South America's most democratic nation and "stop a disastrous dictatorship from installing itself."
Allende had apparently heard ru mors; at the uncharacteristically early hour of 7:15, he had driven to La Moneda from his comfortable villa in Santiago's Barrio Alto district. As the troops began to assemble outside the palace, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, commander in chief of the army, telephoned an ultimatum to the palace. If Allende surrendered his office, he would be given safe-conduct out of the country; otherwise he would be deposed by force. Allende refused. "I will not resign," he declared in a very brief radio broadcast. "I am prepared to die if necessary." He urged workers−the most loyal and enthusiastic supporters of his socialist program−to seize their factories as a sign of defiance. As Hawker Hunters of the Chilean air force swooped low over the palace, Allende made a final appearance on his second-floor balcony and waved to a small band of curious citizens whom the army had not yet shooed away.
Allende immediately recognized that he faced the worst crisis of his stormy three-year presidency. An hour before the military's ultimatum, he telephoned his wife Hortensia at their villa. "I'm calling from La Moneda," he told her. "The situation has become very grave. The navy has revolted and I am going to stay here." Allende was right. Even before the junta's troops surrounded the palace, the navy had announced that it had taken over and sealed off the port city of Valparaiso, 75 miles away. Marines from Valparaiso were advancing on the capital to join the soldiers, airmen and carabineros commanded by leaders of the coup.
Allende soon found himself isolated from all potential supporters. A radio station operated by his Socialist Party went silent after making a final appeal to enlisted men to disobey the orders of their officers. Another station operated by Allende's Communist partners* in the Chilean Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) coalition went dead. Soon the only station left on the air in Santiago was one that identified itself as "the military government radio." Its first order: "The President of the republic must proceed immediately to hand over his high office."