US did it first

[Mark Pavlick]

>
>
>New York Times, March  31, 2002
>
>From Old Files, a New Story of U.S. Role in Angolan War.  By HOWARD W. FRENCH
>
>In the summer of 1975, with the cold war raging and the memory of 
>Saigon's fall terribly fresh, the United States sponsored a covert 
>operation to prevent another Communist takeover, this time across 
>the world, in Angola.
>
>The effort failed to keep a Marxist government from taking power but 
>ushered in a long and chaotic civil war, involving American, Chinese 
>and Russian interests, and Cuban and South African soldiers.
>
>Now, coinciding with the death last month of Washington's longtime 
>rebel ally in Angola, Jonas Savimbi, a trove of recently 
>declassified American documents seem to overturn conventional 
>explanations of the war's origins.
>
>Historians and former diplomats who have studied the documents say 
>they show conclusively that the United States intervened in Angola 
>weeks before the arrival of any Cubans, not afterward as Washington 
>claimed. Moreover, though a connection between Washington and South 
>Africa, which was then ruled by a white government under the 
>apartheid policy, was strongly denied at the time, the documents 
>appear to demonstrate their broad collaboration.
>
>"When the United States decided to launch the covert intervention, 
>in June and July, not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the 
>U.S. government and the CIA were not even thinking about any Cuban 
>presence in Angola," said Piero Gleijeses, a history professor at 
>Johns Hopkins University, who used the Freedom of Information Act to 
>uncover the documents. Similarly, cables of the time have now been 
>published by the National Security Archive, a private research group.
>
>"If you look at the CIA reports which were done at the time, the 
>Cubans were totally out of the picture," Dr. Gleijeses said. But in 
>reports presented to the Senate in December 1975, "what you find is 
>really nothing less than the rewriting of history."
>
>Cuba eventually poured 50,000 troops into Angola in support of a 
>Marxist independence group, the Popular Movement for the Liberation 
>of Angola. The group held the capital in the months just before 
>independence from Portugal, declared in August 1975.
>
>But Dr. Gleijeses's research shows that the Cuban intervention came 
>in response to a CIA-financed> covert invasion via neighboring 
>Zaire, now known as Congo, and South Africa's simultaneous drive on 
>the capital, using troops who posed as Western mercenaries.
>
>The United States gradually switched its support to Mr. Savimbi's 
>movement, Unita, and continued to support it intermittently during 
>nearly two decades of warfare.
>
>Dr. Gleijeses's research documents significant coordination between 
>the United States and South Africa, from joint training missions to 
>airlifts, and bluntly contradicts the Congressional testimony of the 
>era and the memoirs of Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of 
>state.
>
>The work draws heavily on White House, State Department and National 
>Security Council memorandums, as well as extensive interviews and 
>archival research in Cuba, Angola, Germany and elsewhere. It was 
>carried out in preparation of Dr. Gleijeses's recently published 
>history of the conflict, "Conflicting Missions, Havana, Washington 
>and Africa, 1959-1976" (Chapel Hill).
>
>The book strongly challenges common perceptions of Cuban behavior in 
>Africa. In the 1960's and 1970's, when Havana and Washington clashed 
>repeatedly in central and southern Africa, Cuban troops in the 
>continent were typically seen as foot soldiers for Soviet 
>imperialism.
>
>In fact, Dr. Gleijeses writes, Cuba intervened in Angola without 
>seeking Soviet permission. Eager not to derail an easing of tension 
>with Washington, the Soviets limited themselves to providing 10 
>charter flights to transport Cubans to Angola in January 1976. The 
>next year, Havana and Moscow supported opposite sides in an 
>attempted coup in Angola, in which the Marxist government, Cuba's 
>ally, prevailed.
>
>After reviewing Dr. Gleijeses's work, several former senior United 
>States diplomats who were involved in making policy toward Angola 
>broadly endorsed its conclusions. "Considering that things came to a 
>head over covert action in the U.S. government in mid-July, there is 
>no reason to believe we were responding to Cuban involvement in 
>Angola," said Nathaniel Davis, who resigned as Mr. Kissinger's 
>assistant secretary of state for African affairs in July 1975 over 
>the Angola intervention.
>
>Mr. Davis said he could find no fault with Mr. Gleijeses's 
>scholarship. Asked why the story of America responding to Cuban 
>intervention in Angola had persisted for so long, Mr. Davis said: 
>"Life is funny. What catches on in terms of public debate is hard to 
>predict."
>
>The United States denied collaboration with South Africa during the 
>Angolan war, but it was quickly discovered by China, an erstwhile 
>American ally against the Marxists in Angola, and was suspected and 
>deeply resented by Washington's main African partners.

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