CIA 'Ran Covert Missions' to Stop Communist Coup

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

London Independent

Friday April 5th 2002

American forces were involved in a pre-emptive covert attempt to prevent the Communist takeover of Angola, according to newly released documents that reveal the US lied about events that led to years of chaos and war in southern Africa. The revelation has also led to further criticism of the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

America has always claimed that it sponsored the CIA-run operation in 1975 in response to the arrival of up to 50,000 Cuban troops who came to support the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). The group held the capital, Luanda, in the months before independence from Portugal, declared in August 1975.

But the documents show the American-sponsored forces arrived in Angola several weeks before the Cubans – invading via neighbouring Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. At the same time South African troops, posing as Western mercenaries, attacked Luanda.

Piero Gleijeses, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the documents, said: "When the United States decided to launch the covert intervention, in June and July, not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the US Government and the CIA were not even thinking about any Cuban presence in Angola.

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