FAR TOO MANY American observers, impressed with the novelty of Salvador Allende's election and the thrill of an experiment, ignored the realities of power in Chile. There were popular slogans and lines from Neruda's poetry painted on the walls, there was a visit from Fidel Castro, there were rallies of hundreds of thousands in the streets. This carnival of revolutionary optimism belied Allende's dilemma: elected by a modest plurality, his Popular Unity government never held parliamentary power during his three years as President. He was unable to pass any major legislative initiatives. Only by zealous enforcement of laws previously enacted by the Christian Democratic government could he achieve the famous land reforms and nationalizations.

Yet as Robinson Rojas Sanford makes clear in The Murder of Allende, the weakness of Allende's political power was trivial compared to the threat of military rebellion. The Chilean armed forces, whose function until then had been to deter an unlikely Peruvian invasion and to suppress internal dissent, clearly held veto power over the Popular Unity government. But Allende, though imprisoned by these restrictions, refused to acknowledge them, speaking as though socialism had taken hold in Chile. His temerity and the myth of an apolitical armed forces made the coup a great surprise to those who had believed in him.

The Murder of Allende claims to be a complete account of the confrontation between the socialist reformism of Allende and the raw power of the military. Rojas argues that the military and its cohorts decided to stop Allende as soon as it appeared that he would win the 1970 presidential elections. Acting in harmony or actual conspiracy with the Pentagon, the CIA, "the Chilean oligopolists, and the North American multinationals," they first attempted to defeat him through parliamentary maneuvers, economic sabotage, or a victory in the 1973 congressional elections. When it became apparent that his popular support was growing, they carefully prepared to take power without provoking a civil war and then to run the country without civilian allies.

The Chilean armed forces had a tradition of non-involvement that was rare in Latin America, but Rojas shows that only disagreements among three factions within the military postponed the coup until September 1973. The "reformists" wanted to run the country alone; the "hardliners" wanted to give power back to the centrist parties immediately; the "constitutionalists" wanted to enter into a coalition government, with Allende on hand to "control the masses." The deterioration of a compromise worked out by the "constitutionalist" generals--as well as the knowledge that powerful Chilean industrialists and the United States government urged intervention--precipitated the coup.

ROJAS CALLS HIS BOOK "an accusation" and says that it was written "in the style of a police report." It begins with a detailed version of Allende's murder on the day of the coup, refuting the junta's assertion that he committed suicide. After taking 30 pages to decide that pointless issue, Rojas offers a rambling chronological account of Allende's downfall: from the military's initial disorientation after his election, through the right-wing campaign of terrorism and economic sabotage, the Pentagon's secret 1972 proposal for his overthrow, the coup itself, and finally the "inferno" of torture and mass murder that followed it.

Unfortunately, Rojas's "accusation" has the defects of pamphletary polemics without the virtues of a police report's rigor and documentation. While it is understandable that much of his information about a conspiracy among members of the Chilean general staff would come "through channels that I cannot reveal at this time," it would be more convincing if he revealed who overheard the generals agree to enter Allende's cabinet so that "one of us can get some on-the-job training." There is a great contrast between the methods of a book like I.F. Stone's Hidden History of the Korean War, which constructs a reinterpretation of the war by analyzing the internal contradictions of official sources, and those of this behind-the-scenes history that relies on privileged gossip and other confidential evidence.

Because of its dubious proofs and Rojas's apparent partisanship, The Murder of Allende is not a brief that could persuade a skeptical jury of readers, but rather a text for true believers. And even sympathetic readers will lose patience with its sloppy style and careless organization. But if we can believe this book, it narrates a tragedy: Allende, blinded by his trust in legality and the integrity of the generals, refuses to depart from constitutional tactics in order to defend his revolution. With hindsight, Rojas points out the fatal errors of disarming the workers and preaching restraint, which together destroyed the only potential check to military insurrection.

IRONICALLY, the best documented assertions that Rojas can make concern the complicity of the CIA, the Pentagon, and American corporations such as ITT and Kennecott Copper in the plotting. There is now ample testimony before Congress on the sordid, illegal activities carried out under the innocuous name of "destabilization." From 1964, when the CIA bought so many Chilean escudos to contribute to Allende's opponents that it caused a shortage on the money market, through the conspiracy to kidnap General Rene Schneider and the 1972 truck owners' strike that was funded largely with CIA donations, the history of American intervention in Chilean politics is a catalogue of dirty tricks. The actions of American corporations that led to an unofficial economic blockade and the sabotage of the CIA shrink, however, in comparison with the pervasive influence that the Pentagon has exerted on the Chilean armed forces, as well as the military elsewhere in Latin America.

Acting as a continental godfather, the American military has equipped, trained and educated armies in Latin America whose exaggerated prestige and lack of legitimate purpose leads them to rebellion. And they have rebelled. With the Argentine coup of last month, there are now only two South American nations--Venezuela and Columbia--with nominally civilian governments. Allende's failure to appreciate the extent of this American influence, shaping the military's new role, was largely responsible for his downfall.