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#10822 - 04/02/02 11:19 PM
U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola -
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ddread_dup1
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Registered: 02/16/01
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Historian
Mon Apr 1,10:30 PM ET
By Anthony Boadle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and South Africa intervened in Angola months before Cuban troops arrived in 1975, and not afterward as Washington claimed, according to a historian who recently wrote a book on the subject.
Piero Gleijeses, a professor at Johns Hopkins' School of International Studies, said that President Gerald Ford's administration lied about Cuban military presence to justify its covert operations against Marxist guerrillas. Angola was a Portuguese colony until 1975.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger denied then and in his memoirs later that the U.S. government knew that South African troops invaded Angola posing as mercenaries in 1975, he said.
He also required the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) to rewrite a document on Angola to show an earlier Cuban presence than was accurate, Gleijeses said in an interview.
"Kissinger had the CIA (news - web sites) rewrite its report to serve the political aim of the administration, and so the poor CIA ended up lying," he said, speaking tongue-in-cheek.
Declassified CIA papers for August through October of 1975 talk of the presence of only a few Cubans in Angola trying to pass themselves off as tourists, the historian said.
The first academic to gain access to archives in Havana, Gleijeses has put together a almost day-to-day account of the arrival of Cuban troops in Angola.
With the departure of the Portuguese in 1975, Angola had a power vacuum that the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, and conservative UNITA sought to take advantage of. The fighting that marked the struggle for independence became a civil war.
A CIA-funded covert operation was launched from Zaire in July, at the same time as a South African operation from the south backed the UNITA rebel group, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, led by led by Jonas Savimbi, who died this year.
But by October 1975, the groups with U.S. and South African support were losing the war and white-ruled South Africa sent in regular troops.
Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) decided on Nov. 4, 1975, to send soldiers to Angola but did so without informing Moscow, which two months later halfheartedly provided Aeroflot IL-62 planes for an airlift.
The arrival of 30,000 Cubans tilted the civil war in favor of the MPLA which had controlled the capital of Luanda, Gleijeses said, and the South Africans withdrew in March 1976. The war stretched on for another 25 years, with the latest cease-fire deal signed just last weekend.
SOUTH AFRICAN LINK DENIED
"The key element of the covert operation was cooperation with South Africa, and that was totally denied," Gleijeses said. "Kissinger went to the extreme of saying he only learned a couple of weeks later that South Africa had invaded."
In his book "Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa 1959-1976," based on U.S. documents and archival research in Cuba and Angola, Gleijeses maintains that Cuba dispatched troops as a result of the South African invasion.
He argues that Kissinger's account of the U.S. role in Angola was misleading, both in testimony to Congress in 1976 and more recently in the third volume of his memoirs "Years of Renewal."
The historian interviewed the then CIA station chief in Luanda, Robert Hultslander who, speaking on the record for the first time, criticized U.S. policy in Angola as "shortsighted and flawed."
The former CIA agent told Gleijeses that he was unaware at the time that "the U.S. would eventually beg South Africa to directly intervene to pull its chestnuts out of the fire."
CHINA'S DENG HELD OFF
Gleijeses also argues that Kissinger misled Americans by saying that an attempt to gain China's help in Angola was thwarted by the refusal of the U.S. Congress to approve funding for the covert operation.
In his memoirs, Kissinger recounts a meeting he and Ford had on Dec. 2, 1975, in Beijing with Chairman Mao Tse-tung in which Angola was discussed and Mao suggested China was willing to cooperate.
Gleijeses said Kissinger failed to mention a meeting held the following day with Deng Xiaoping in which, according to a White House memorandum, the Chinese president refused to help in Angola while South Africa was involved.
"The reason why China held back was not Congress' refusal to vote additional aid. It was because the South Africans were there," he said, adding that Mao was very ill by then and Deng was in charge of decisions of state.
"Kissinger ignores the other document which contradicts what he wants to say, and that is very dishonest," Gleijeses said.
The documents can be found at http:/www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB67/.
_________________________
Jah Love
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#10823 - 04/03/02 02:59 AM
Re: U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola -
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Chez
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Not directed at you ddread.
I don't know if this was directly true of course but, if it is, does it surprise you?
The only people it can surprise are those who have fallen hook, line ans sinker for that propaganda they get on a ceaseless basis from their TV, newspapers and radio.
It is the same way that the mainstream media talk about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the US arming of the Islamic fundamentalists as of that were a reaction. Yet Zbigniew Brzinzski, the former NSA chief, has categorically stated that the arming was done beforehand and the invasion was a response to that.
It is the nature of people to only see the true face of imperialists after the empire has crumbled.
I see Henry Kissinger is deep amongst the s**t again.
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#10824 - 04/03/02 12:41 PM
Re: U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola -
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rasputin
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I remember reading the articles and debates at the time. There was no doubt that Savimbi and UNITA worked hand in hand with the South African forces. The Cubans arrived after the South African threat became evident.
In fact the idiot Roy Innis of CORE, in public speeches at the time, tried to recruit African Americans to fight alongside UNITA.
With the help of the Cubans, the MPLA were able to beat back the South Africans. Mandela always sings praises for the Cuban's help.
Holden Roberto's FNLA was Based in Zaire- can't remember his role with South Africa.
Kissenger.......
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#10825 - 04/04/02 01:44 PM
Re: U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola -
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jt
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I wonder if Castro can send some of his troops to Palestine.
_________________________
They make the world so hard
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#10826 - 04/04/02 02:18 PM
Re: U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola -
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rasputin
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Be careful jt. Since 911 every thing linked to terrorism. All the revisionists have come out of the woodwork .It will only be a matter of time before them start with Fidel.
The great Algerian revolutionaries were recently described as terrorists. It is only a matter of time that even Nelson Mandela will be defined as such.
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#10827 - 04/04/02 02:27 PM
Re: U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola -
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jt
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But that is exactly what Chez is talking about Rasputin... Its us who allow them to throw these Labels around...
_________________________
They make the world so hard
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#10828 - 04/05/02 03:11 AM
Re: U.S. Lied About Cuban Role in Angola -
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Chez
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Margaret Thatcher called Nelson Mandela a terrorist.
It was a centrepiece of conservative British politics to call Mandela and the ANC terrorists.
That is why on many UN resolutions against South Africa, the UK, "the Big Kahuna" and Israel voted in favour of South Africa.
The first people to be called "terrorist" on a mainstream level were the Jewish groups who waged war against the British.
Many of their leaders have become major Israeli leaders and now act as if nothing happened before.
Terrorsit joins terms like "political correctness", "communist", "socialist", "conspiracy theorist" among others used to invoke feelings of anger or ridicule amongst the populace such is the power of propaganda........I mean public relations.
If a man says I believe public utilities should be nationalised and power should be given back to the people. He will be "ridiculed" as a socialist. This is because the corporately owned media has convinced the public that it is something to be ashamed of. Yet that same media will always talk about overpaid footballers and sportsmne and how we need to salary cap them when in fact there are far more higher paid people around who do more damage.
If he says a small group of rich people own the factories, services and media and heavily finance the political parties, he is ridiculed as a "conspiracy theorist" even though they can't dispute the fact.
Whilst I don't condone the suicide bombing, the Israeli Defence Force says it is only doing self defence. But there is no self defence for an occupying force. So Palestinians are commiting terrorist acts and israelis are defending themselves.
A small country in the Caribbean Sea has been under a blockade for decades now and yet they hold a place on a list held by the blockaders as a country that supports terrorism.
Terrorism is the new oil!!!
Disclaimer: All names directly identifying the country that lies south of Canada and north of Mexico have been removed so as not to incur the wrath of the apologists and harbour sharks 
[This message has been edited by Chez (edited 04-05-2002).]
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