Blowback - S6 Episode 5 - "Kicking the Dog"

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

The MPLA and Jimmy Carter struggle to find their footing. Jonas Savimbi licks his wounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We did kill when we had no particular reason to. We tortured to achieve information that they probably didn't have. And that atmosphere permeated its way through the whole unit. We were just a loose band of bandits. In February 1976, Danny Gerhardt disappeared. A 34-year-old father of four from Maryland, Gerhardt was a veteran of Vietnam, who had last served in the military a full decade earlier. Now a maintenance mechanic in government cafeterias,

Gerhardt told his boss that he was taking a job in France. To his wife, he said that he had something he needed to do. What Gerhardt needed to do, evidently, was to go to Angola and fight as a mercenary. A hobbyist skydiver with a paunch, thousands of dollars of personal debt, and a head full of Walter Middish dreams, Daniel F. Gerhardt was no real soldier. Quote, it was in character for him to become a mail-order mercenary, the New York Times reported. To get to Angola, Gerhard had responded to an ad in Soldier of Fortune, the magazine favored by anti-communists, gun nuts, and would-be adventurers. Despite having been 10 years out of the army, despite never having been in real combat, Gerhardt was successfully recruited with other mercenaries, and he arrived in Angola in February

1976, ostensibly to support Angolan anti-communist Holden Roberto and his organization, the FNLA. But what Gerhardt found upon arrival was grift and defeat. He reportedly gave his $1,000 hiring bonus to another Merck headed back to the U.S. to pass on to Gerhardt's wife. But the man was never heard from again. It took only a couple days after his arrival for the Cuban troops stationed in Angola to capture Gerhardt and other mercenaries following a quick skirmish. Gerhardt's African adventure was already over. The MPLA, the progressive revolutionaries now in control of the capital, put the foreign mercenaries on trial in Luanda, opening the event up to the international press.

Convicted on the evidence of his recruitment in June 1976, Gerhardt was sentenced to death. In a particularly surreal moment, NBC news cameras were actually on the front porch of Gerhardt's home in Maryland, when this happened. With the cameras rolling, NBC actually caught Gerhardt's wife Sheila learning from the radio that her husband had been condemned to execution. This is Gerhardt said her husband, who is a veteran of Vietnam, left home in February, and she hasn't heard from him since. She said he did it for money, that he was to have been paid $1,000 to start, then $300 a week. She said she hasn't seen a penny of it, that she and her four children have applied for welfare. Mrs. Gerhardt said she was shocked by the death sentence.

I knew that it was going to be dangerous, but I had no idea this would be the result. I did not know anything about mercenaries and what they really did, all as I knew that they were paid to fight for other countries, and I did not approve of it. By mid-1976, the United States was already washing its hands of the anti-comi war in Angola. The Ford administration failed to get Gerhardt freed. In July, he was executed by a firing squad. The Italian embassy kindly sent his body back to the United States. Although the CIA repeatedly denied recruiting American mercenaries to Angola, as that would have been illegal, it's hard to imagine Langley simply twiddling its thumbs as Americans did, in fact, join up.

After all, John Stockwell, the former head of the agency's Angola Task Force, wrote in his memoir that the agency's financial accounting was set up so that Merck's like Gerhardt could be plausibly denied as CIA assets. What's more? The month before Gerhardt was captured in Angola, the FBI disclosed that it was investigating a possible violation of the Neutrality Act. a vague pre-war law meant to curb U.S. involvement in foreign wars. It turned out that two veterans of Brigade 2.506, the Cuban exiles recruited by the CIA in the Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, they were now themselves seeking to recruit Americans to fight in Angola against Cuban troops. In a CNN documentary years later, Holden Roberto spoke to.

fondly of the mercenaries sent to fight in Angola. Among the mercenaries, there were some very fine soldiers. Callan, for instance. I've seldom seen such a good soldier. He had phenomenal courage. John Stockwell himself was less enthusiastic. He was a psychopath, a raving psychopath, and a couple of men right near him were psychopaths.

Welcome to blowback. I'm Brendan James. I'm Noah Colwyn. And this is season six, episode five, kicking the dog. Last episode, we witnessed the fall of the Portuguese Empire. After anti-colonial forces racked up victories and influence in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and finally Angola, left-wing Portuguese military officers revolted in what was called. called the Carnation Revolution of 1974, throwing out the creaky old dictatorship. Set to take charge were Angola's three independence factions, the left-leaning MPLA, based in the capital, Luanda, the Holden-Roberto group, largely based in the north,

and backed by the CIA and Zaire's dictator Mobutu Seseko, and Unita, the group of Jonas Savimbi, a charismatic and power-hungry, wildcard, supported by communist China, apartheid South Africa, and increasingly the United States of America. The Angolan nationalist factions and the departing Portuguese set the handover for an independent Angola to be November 11, 1975. And despite a formal peace agreement, the three Angolan factions spent that whole year alternately fighting each other and preparing for the war that now seemed inevitable after independence.

The MPLA received support and arms from Soviet bloc countries in Europe, and days before independence welcomed a military detachment from Cuba to support their cause. Roberto and Savimbi, meanwhile, were the beneficiaries of a secret CIA operation to counter the MPLA. Henry Kissinger and his colleagues in Washington were afraid that communists were gaining in Angola, and, still smarting from the end of the Vietnam War, they felt the U.S. had to do something about it. But it was the government of white South Africa that jumped in with both feet.

Fearful of what a black majority ruled Angola would mean not only for South Africa's ambitions in the region, but also for its domestic apartheid regime, Pretoria launched an invasion. Two South African columns, supported by Savimbi and Roberto, drove into the country, but they were thwarted by the MPLA's Cuban Ace in the Hole, which repelled the invaders. At the start of 1976, having retained control of the capital, the MPLA was, for all intents and purposes, the new official government of Angola. The South Africans had retreated. It was a stunning, defeat of a white army by black African forces. And we will now see the fallout. In America, congressional scandal will consume Angola policy until the arrival of a new president.

In Angola, the MPLA will adjust to life as the ruling party. But South Africa will lick its wounds, as will the MPLA's remaining rival for power, Jonas Savimbi and Unita. One war, the war against the Portuguese Empire, was over. And the South Africans had been repulsed with the help of the Cubans. Angolan independence was secured, but war in Angola was far from over. ABC News correspondent Barry Dunsmore was told by a top State Department official today that last summer, President Ford sent arms aid to Angola on Secretary Kissinger's recommendation. Kissinger apparently was convinced by intelligence reports that without

American support, Angola would collapse within a few weeks. The victory of the MPLA and the failures of Roberto, Savimbi, and South Africa had blown up the CIA's 1975 operation in Angola. Quote, only roving bands of dissidents continued to operate in remote districts of the Southeast, writes historian David Birmingham. He continues, American intelligence estimated that its covert contribution of $30 million to the arming of the FNLA and Unita had been dwarfed by a Russian grant of $400 million,

spent on arming the MPLA and its Cuban allies. End quote. This failure on the battlefield was also a difficult pill to swallow politically for American hawks, in no small part because the spooks who had designed this war at Kissinger's and the 40 committee's direction had consistently lied to Congress to cover up its truques. True dimensions. Throughout 1975, CIA director William Colby had been giving briefings to select members of Congress on the Angola operation. In these briefings, a number of lies provided the appearance that everything the agency was doing conformed to the law. In the post-Vietnam reality,

Congress was reasserting its authority of war-making powers. The Ford administration was only allowed, to do so much without getting congressional approval. Congress dictated no American arms, no American personnel. Colby will not admit to American aid in Angola. All he would tell the House Intelligence Committee was that the administration is obeying the War Powers Act, which forbids the president to send American troops to war on his own. Delance, there are no Americans involved in that war. The CIA and the United States government is, in compliance with the decision made by the Congress as to how this question should be answered. The CIA is spending its own money in Angola, and in the Senate, a foreign affairs subcommittee

is thinking about stopping that, making any future spending subject to Congress is okay, giving Congress control over an involvement many members are clearly against. But despite Colby's assurances, there were many skeptics in Congress. Iowa Senator Dick Clark, a liberal on the Foreign Relations Committee, did not believe Colby's mild representations of the Angola program. Clark even visited Africa to make his own appraisal of the operation, but it wasn't so easy for critics like Clark to speak out. The CIA had negotiated for Colby's briefings to come with rules of their own. Most importantly, all these members of Congress briefed were forbidden from going public with whatever he told them,

even if much of it was hogwash. Although Congress was trying to assert authority, the agency had found a way to keep senators ignorant and quiet. Dozens of other legislators were similarly entrapped, right Stockwell, as Colby methodically continued his briefings throughout the program, 35 briefings altogether between January 75 and January 76. The Congress would have stopped us up front if we had not successfully lied to them, putting in arms, putting in advisors, bringing in South Africa. We kept it propped up for a while, but opposition was mounting. Colby's limited cover story to Congress came apart after Angolan independence.

News reports routinely indicated CIA involvement with the factions of a burgeoning Angolan Civil War, far beyond the limits imposed by Congress. Senator Dick Clark still bound to to secrecy, was ultimately able to tear off his muzzle with a clever trick in early December of 75. When one CIA official arrived at a scheduled briefing of the Foreign Relations Committee before the other CIA official, Clark grilled the man alone. Were U.S. weapons going directly to Angola? The CIA man answered, yes, directly contradicting his boss, Colby. When the second, more senior CIA official showed up, Clark pounced and asked the same question. The spook answered, no. Confronted with the first official's honesty about U.S. weapons in Angola, the senior CIA man

fessed up. The 40 committee and Colby had been lying to the Senate. Whatever support for the Angola operation that had existed among the Senate now quickly dried up. This congressional fracas led to other embarrassing disclosures. The following week, Seymour Hirsch, reported another blockbuster in the New York Times. Hirsch reported that Nat Davis, a respected State Department official, had resigned his post in the Africa Division in August after the Angola covert op had been approved. quote, the decision had gone against him, a source said, and he was unable to carry out a policy he was inimically opposed to.

Combined with other revelations in the New York Times, that actually the U.S. had been involved with Angolan factions for years, that actually the U.S. was now coordinating on Angola with apartheid South Africa, while Angola had become a full-fledged scandal. Kissinger was bombarded with so many questions about Angola in this NATO setting that he finally protested. Is it about Angola again to you ladies and gentlemen that this was a NATO meeting, that you may have received certain briefings yesterday, that it was not, the subject was not Angola, the subject was the Western Alliance?

Although Kissinger and the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both attempted to sound the alarm on Soviet imperialism in Africa, they had lost command of the narrative. Our ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, made a tough speech against Russia today, saying Soviet intervention in Angola was part of a scheme to colonize all of Africa. It is fair to assume that they mean to colonize Africa

and manifest that they are already partially successful Blocked at one point, they shifted to another. Last month, in an infamous act, the General Assembly declared that Zionism is a form of racism. This was seen as an Arab initiative, but was it the Ukraine, for one, was a sponsor of the resolution, which directly served and announced Soviet course. On December 20th, the Senate passed the Tunney American. which, paired with the more famous and more powerful Clark Amendment the following year, would restrict direct American action in Angola.

Because by now, there was far greater political pressure to walk back such cloak and dagger operations. In our last season, we saw the exit of Richard Nixon in 1974. As a result, there were a swirl of congressional committees at that time looking into the crime, crimes of Nixon and other presidents, the CIA, the Pentagon, with topics ranging from assassinations to overthrows of foreign governments, psychedelic experimentation to secret torture, and campus surveillance to blackmail. From the perspective of America's war and spy machine, vultures were circling over the agencies weakened by scandal.

The vultures in the Senate made up the Church Committee, headed by Frank Church, and And in the House, they made up the Pike Committee, headed by Otis Elevator Pike. But Gerald Ford had other ideas. In his January 76 State of the Union, he defended the three-letter agencies, affirming that America was still very much in a worldwide Cold War. And he shouted out Angola in particular. We must now, must not face a future in which we can no longer help us. our friends, such as Angola. Some hasty actions of the Congress during the past year, most recently

in respect to Angola, were in my view very short-sighted. Congress, by the time of Ford's speech, had come around to his broader point of view, if not on Angola. Nixon was gone, and now there was little stomach for actually challenging the power of the executive branch and the spy agencies and the military. The fate of the Pike Committee's findings is a case in point. On January 29th, writes historian Rick Perlstein, quote, the full house led by conservatives voted by a ratio of two to one to suppress the very report it had authorized and which took a year of work and several hundred thousand dollars to produce, end quote. The Church Committee, despite its lasting legacy, ultimately went out.

with a whimper. The unhappy endings of the Pike and Church committees, though, did not save the Angola operation. Even as it had run out of steam, Congress had successfully reasserted its authority over Angola. But although Washington was now kept at arm's length from Angola with the MPLA in control, this did not mean the U.S. would leave Angola alone forever. In fact, a major reason for it had shouted out Angola, and the State of the Union, was that it was about to become part of the American election. The Jimmy Carter campaign, seen as a breath of fresh air for decent, liberal-minded Americans,

a new day after the shameful aftermath of Watergate, Carter's campaign hoped that Southern Africa would join other hotspots, such as Southeast Asia and Latin America, as stops on a tour for normalized relations with the United States. Carter, at least as his supporters would tell it, wanted to bring a moral imperative back to politics after the years of Nixon's gangsterism and Kissinger's Realpolitik. The hope was not merely detente with the communist world,

but a new foot forward for America and the third world nations. Be they nationalist, socialist, whatever. There's only one person in this nation who can speak with a clear voice to the American people. There's only one person in this country who can set a standard of ethics and morality and performance. There's only one person in this country. They can call on the American people to make a sacrifice and explain the purpose of the sacrifice. There's only one person in this country who can answer difficult questions or carve out bold proposals

for giving our people services that they need. There's only one person in this country that can root out discrimination and hatred. and divisions in our nation. There's only one person that could speak for our country with a bold and compassionate and an honest voice to the foreign community. And that person is a president. Carter's campaign found a key advisor in Andrew Young,

a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., who had become a Georgia congressman. Young's thinking on Africa seemed to provide an obvious place to start repairing America's cynical outlook. Quote, it was Young who first briefed Carter on the problems of Southern Africa, writes historian Nancy Mitchell. Not only did Young encourage Carter to draw parallels between the U.S. civil rights struggle and the crisis in Southern Africa,

he also led him to view the struggle in Africa through a progressive, religious lens, end quote. President Ford, meanwhile, was dealing with the equal and opposite reaction to Carter's campaign. On November 2nd, vote for Jimmy Carter. Ladies and gentlemen, Ronald Reagan. Good evening to all of you from California. Tonight, I'd like to talk to you about issues, issues which I think are involved or should be involved in this primary election season. Ronald Wilson Reagan, the actor-turned-governor of California, had by now become the face of hard-right

conservatism in America. Strapping and charismatic, if not exactly fast on his feet, Reagan had the ability to sell right-wing ideas as simple common sense with a slick B-movie gloss. As governor of the Golden State, Reagan had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, deployed helicopters and shock troops on college campuses infected with radical thought, helped create the language and mythology of black welfare queens robbing white America, and, of course, declared himself a sworn enemy of communism at home and abroad. During his reign, violent crime shot up, public education atrophied, and public services collapsed. When Portugal's dictatorship crumbled in the last year of his governorship. Reagan saw the same villains in Lisbon that he did in Los Angeles.

On his viewpoints radio spot, several months later, he called Portugal's Carnation Revolution a nefarious pact between a quote-unquote left-wing military dictatorship, which was at that moment handing power to an elected civilian government, and quote-unquote, leftist street hoodlums. The right-wing voters and conservative commentariat had found their war chief in Reagan. But with the Republican primary on the horizon, it was not the Pinko Democrats that Reagan cast himself against. It was the GOP itself. Now a self-annointed elite in our nation's capital would have us believe we're incapable of guiding our own destiny. They practiced government by mystery, telling us it's too complex for our understanding.

Having opposed several of Richard Nixon, zone social welfare programs. Reagan, the candidate, would represent the id of the Republican Party, suspicious of those elites preaching Bismarckian ideas like balance of power and detente or relaxation with the Soviet Union. America shouldn't have been managing the Cold War. It should have been trying to win it. Now we must ask if someone is giving away our own freedom.

Dr. Kissinger is quoted as saying that he thinks of the United States as Athens and the Soviet Union as Sparta. The day of the U.S. is passed and today is the day of the Soviet Union. And he added, my job as Secretary of State is to negotiate the most acceptable second best position available. Well, I believe in the peace of which Mr. Ford speaks as much as any man, but peace does not come from weakness or from retreat. It comes from the restoration of American military superiority. And so, among many other issues, issues. Reagan blasted Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger for giving up on the Soviet challenge in Africa. America had folded, surrendered, leaving its friends, particularly the white minority

governments of Rhodesia and South Africa in the lurch. The Reagan-Kissinger feud over Africa crescendoed in mid-1976. Kissinger was announcing that Rhodesia, today called Zimbabwe, could no longer be ruled by its privileged white minority. The country was buckling under the weight of a black insurgency, and the idea of collapse was not far off. The United States' position on Rhodesia is clear and unmistakable, as President Ford has said. United States is totally dedicated to seeing to it

that the majority becomes the ruling power in Rhodesia. For months, the Ford administration had been, working furiously to manage America's reputation in Africa. America's alliance with apartheid South Africa was, needless to say, unpopular with most of the continent. Reversing Richard Nixon's infamous tar baby policy, which had recognized the legitimacy of white rule in Africa, Kissinger was offering an African olive branch, which became ammo for Ronald Reagan.

We were letting down another friend in the fight against global communism. just like we had done in Angola. As one pro-Ragan columnist put it in late 75, curbing the power of America's Secret Services had put the communists, whether Cuban, Angolan, Soviet, or all of the above, on the brink of victory in the massive African nation. Quote, it might have been possible

for the Central Intelligence Agency to avert this calamity, but the CIA has been crippled by immoralizing. Senate. Reagan wasn't afraid to cut ads calling Ford soft on Angola and the supposed Soviet threat there. His campaign put the issue front and center in its TV commercials. Wandering without aim describes the United States foreign policy. Angola is a case in point. We gave just enough support to one side to encourage it to fight and die, but too little to give them a chance of winning. And while we're disliked by the winner, distrusted by the loser, and view,

viewed by the world as weak and unsure. If detente were the two-way street it's supposed to be, we could have told the Soviet Union to stop its troublemaking and leave Angola to the Angolans. But it didn't work out that way. While on the campaign trail, Reagan thwacked Kissinger, saying that America needed not only a new president, but a new secretary of state.

As Rick Pearlstein puts it, that made news, news that a Republican presidential administration might not star Henry Kissinger any longer. Reagan said, last year and this, the Soviet Union, using Castro's mercenaries, intervened decisively in the Angolan Civil War and routed pro-Western forces. Yet Ford and Kissinger continue to tell us that we must not let that interfere with detente. I believe in the piece of which Mr. Ford speaks, as much as any man, but in places such as Angola, Cambodia, and Vietnam, the peace they have come to know is the peace of the grave, end quote. Burlstein continues. The same morning, left-leaning Mozambique closed its border with Rhodesia,

and Kissinger testified before Congress that Cuba should act with great circumspection in southern Africa. Compared to that, Reagan's dagger threat. that quote under Kissinger and Ford, this nation has become number two in military power in a world where it is dangerous, if not fatal, to be second best, sounded swell to Florida's retirees. There's a change that's come over America,

a change that's great to see. President Ford has restored my faith in the United States government. Ford makes me feel like America's going in the right direction. I'm feeling good. Ford caught a break. Reagan got over his skis on Cold War policy closer to the 1976 Republican Convention. Asked by a journalist

whether he would commit troops to preserve the Rhodesian government, Reagan left the possibility open, immediately triggering an avalanche of bad press. Newspapers around the country ran with variations on the headline that, quote, Reagan might use U.S. troops in

Africa. Although Reagan's public positions weren't great fodder for a national election at this time, according to surveys, much of the Republican base agreed with him. That August, Gerald Ford only squeaked by Reagan to win the Republican nomination for the presidency. But Reagan's revolution against the GOP establishment had only been deferred, not defeated. Instead, it would now be Jimmy Carter's turn as president. But Carter would end up a much more traditional president than he is remembered as today. Andrew Young was not the only advisor in Carter's orbit. Arch Cold Warrior Zabignov Rizinski was also always by his side. Despite progressive aspirations, as Nancy Mitchell phrases it, Carter too would be a cold warrior from day one. On March 27,

1976, the last South African troops left Angola. Gone was the final piece of the imminent military threat that had faced the MPLA since Independence Day in November. But the situation was rickety. The MPLA was not a strong military force on its own. As we've seen, it was the help of the Cubans. 3,000 Cubans had arrived in Angola by January 76 that had turned to the army. the tides against South Africa, Unita, and the FNLA.A. By early April, writes Glahesis, quote, there were 36,000 Cuban soldiers in the country. After this victory, Castro was in no hurry to withdraw his troops. There was also the matter of Soviet aid. Until Moscow saw the success of Cuba's Angola operation, the USSR had been cautious to get too involved. Now,

sensing that Kissinger could renege on detente using Angola as a pretext, Moscow committed $25 million worth of weapons to Cuba and the MPLA, with a plan to create a formal Angolan army. This agreement, writes Natalia Telepneva, officially launched the long-term Soviet-Cuban cooperation in Angola. Good vibes were possible not just because of the military victory, writes historian Piero Glerhesis, but because, quote,

Castro agreed to withdraw the Cuban troops from Angola, albeit at a slower temple than Leonid Brezhnev wished, end quote, with plans for all soldiers to leave by the end of 1978, until only military instructors were left. When Raul Castro visited Augustino Netto in April 76, the Angolan president agreed to the timetable. But there was a tension now emerging among Augustinio Neto, Vidal Castro, and Moscow. While the Soviet Union emphasized creating an Angolan military that would repel a foreign invader like South Africa,

the Cubans instead argued that the Angolan military should focus on confronting the burgeoning insurgency inside the country and leave fighting the South Africans to the Cubans. because although Holden-Roberto's FNLA was at this point totally shattered, Jonas Savimbi and Unita were not going quietly. In his first meeting with Netto, in March of 1977, Fidel Castro emphasized this.

In my opinion, what you need to do now is focus on liquidating the bandits. This is the critical task. By bandits, Fidel meant Unita. According to Glehessa's quote, this concern became almost an obsession for Castro during his visit as he talked with Cuban officers

and gained a firsthand impression of the situation in the country. The Angolan's would have liked Cuba to shoulder more of the burden in resisting Savimbi and his bandits. Understandably, they felt that without the Cubans, their entire national security was in jeopardy. When Raul Castro had earlier visited Angola and met Netto negotiating the timetable for a Cuban withdrawal, Raul learned after the fact that despite the amicable meeting, the Angolan's had been upset by the discussions of a Cuban withdrawal. Fortunately for Netto, and less fortunately for Cuban-American relations,

Cuba would soon have an opportunity to demonstrate such loyalty. Jimmy Carter, writes Piero Glehassas, quote, assumed office in January 1977, determined to reestablish the prestige of the United States in Africa, shattered by the Angolan fiasco. In no other region of the world did U.S. interests appear as threatened as in southern Africa. There was good reason to believe that an accommodation could be reached in Angola. American corporations such as Gulf Oil, which maintained lucrative operations in the North Cabinda province, or Boeing, which sold planes to the Angolan government, companies like this indicated that there were good capitalist principles for recognizing

the MPLA as Angola's rightful government. Communist Cuban troops stationed to protect Gulf Oil on behalf of that company's socialist client, that image alone was enough to short circuit a more simple-minded Cold War partisan, right or left. Furthermore, there was the appointment of Andrew Young as ambassador to the UN, which was treated as a cabinet-level position, a symbol to Africans of the new administration's priorities, as Glehessus puts it. In addition to setting up a multinational group to negotiate Namibian independence with South Africa, quote, the administration also in intended to move toward establishing diplomatic relations with Angola, part of a more general

approach that included establishing relations with Vietnam and Cuba. But Andrew Young was not the most powerful voice in the Carter administration, not by a long shot. As we discussed in our season about Afghanistan, the Carter White House was driven by a dispute between the so-called bleeders and the dealers. The bleeders sought active conflict with the Soviet Union and its allies, intending to weigh Moscow down by fomenting lots of little wars in the third world. The leader of this group was Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbignov Brzynski. The dealers, on the other hand, wanted to more or less continue detente. This was epitomized by Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State, who also believed in moving

toward normal relations with Angola and the MPLA. Early on, the dealers showed promise. Direct talks with Angola in New York were planned for April 1, 77, and in March, Carter both addressed the UN about the importance of arms control and he reinstituted sanctions against Rhodesia. But Carter's dealers were unprepared for the next round of violence and intrigue in Southern Africa. The pan with oil needs scouring. Use Pam instead of oil. Save money, calories and time. At least six people, possibly seven, were killed near Johannesburg, South Africa today, when police fired into a large crowd of black African high school students. For the leaders of apartheid South Africa,

1976, was a bruising year. The South African Defense Forces, or the SADF, had failed to dislodge the MPLA from Luanda. Even worse, the Angolan's and the Cubans had effectively destroyed Holden-Roberto's FNLA and greatly wounded Jonas Savimbi's Unita. And the Angolan Front was just one of many

South Africa faced. There was aid needed for their fellow racist travelers in Rhodesia. There was the support for Renamo, the anti-leftist guerrillas in Mozambique, and there was South Africa's continuing occupation of Namibia. But increasingly perilous for South Africa was the domestic situation. After black resistance had picked up in the early 1960s, the apartheid government cracked down hard, forcing the main Liberation Group, the African National Congress, or ANC, into exile. And this had temporarily put down the resistance. But by the early 1970s, challenges to apartheid rule had returned.

After a surge in cost of living, over 60,000 workers went on strike in the city of Durban, according to the historian Robert Ross, as Africans in South Africa began to take heart from the collapse of the Portuguese Empire, and the victory this represented for the insurgents. These strikes signaled the end of the political calm, which, through the 60s, had seemed like the victory of apartheid. Ninety-six was anything but calm. In June, thousands of schoolchildren in the black enclave of Soweto went marching to protest the mandatory teaching of Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch settlement.

class, the Boers, in the dilapidated, under-resourced schools for blacks. These radical protests quickly spread to other cities. In the weeks that followed, writes Ross, the uprising was put down with great harshness. Hundreds of blacks were arrested, and many were killed. The violence of Soweto was worldwide news. It was also for the Americans' bad timing. The violence has escalated, despite police efforts to contain the protest in the African township of a million people. Passing motorists were among the targets which also included public transportation, government buildings, police stations, and a hospital. What began as a black protest against being taught in Afrikaans, a language they regard as useless

and that of their masters, is now a manifestation of urban black frustration. The pupils themselves would become the militants, as elsewhere in white rules southern Africa, increasingly less tolerant of their parents' reluctance to resist. Justice Soweto had exploded. Henry Kissinger had begun meeting with South African Prime Minister, John Vorster, about ending white rule in Rhodesia. The friendly relations between Washington and Pretoria were well summed up by an editorial cartoon in the L.A. Times.

The cartoon depicted Vorster offering a bloody hand, asking, Dr. Kissinger, I presume? Kissinger and Vorster hashed out the terms of White Rhodesia's expiration, which both agreed was a necessary concession with the state on the verge of collapse. Both leaders wanted to avoid another Angola scenario, even if open U.S. military support was no longer viable. Quote, although their regular forces had been defeated in the 76 Angolan campaign, the South African generals knew that the survival of the white logger, or state,

hinged on undermining Swapo, the Namibian resistance, and the ANC, both of which needed the MPLA in Angola. Write journalists, Michael Wolfer's, and Jane Bergerall. As a result, they continue, an undeclared war would now have to be waged against the New Angolan government. Despite withdrawing its own regulars, South Africa ramped up its training camps for black soldiers, who still did make up a substantial part of the white ruling classes forces,

and now set them up for Angolan's fleeing into Namibia, who were convinced that they would have been murdered by the MPLA and the Cubans, just as they had murdered the members of the MPLA. Some were taken to South Africa for advanced training. Others were placed in bush camps in northern Namibia. Male refugees were taken from their families and forced to join the military structure. During the next six years, kidnapped Angolan civilians were also thrust into this force, end quote.

Speaking to us, historian Justin Pierce elaborated on this. I can remember one of the Unita generals recalling about how, when they were in the bush in about 1976, 1976, 1977, they realized they were going to need teachers to build this movement. it. So they sent a delegation to one of the mission schools where they themselves had studied to talk to the teachers and the pastors and then said, come and come and visit us. And then it became clear to the teachers and pastors that this just wasn't going to be a visit. They weren't going to be able to go home. And later on, their wives and families were then sent for to join, to join Unita in the bush. In the case that children,

you know, it was quite obvious that they had been kidnapped. You know, people who I spoke to as adults would say, you know, well, when I was 10 years old, I became separated from my family, and I ended up with Unita. Throughout 1976 and into 1977, Angola's Civil War escalated. Specifically, the insurgency against the MPLA ramped up in Angola's south near the Namibian border, inflamed by South Africa. A May 76 dispatch in the Washington Post from the city of Huambo in the Unita Ovenbundu Heartlands captured the scene, reporting that, quote, Unita guerrillas still harass Cuban and MPLA troops. Ambushes are frequent. Some say almost daily, end quote. According to a Unita officer, speaking later to a journalist, we aimed to damage the economy,

blowing up bridges, laying ambushes to make roads unsafe for travel, and stopping transport along the Bengela Railway. Taking a page out of his one-time idol Chairman Mao's book, Savimbi led the Anita leadership on a long march. 1976 was a year of recovery, a strategic retreat beginning in February that lasted until the end of the summer. At that point, Unita and South Africa once again began joint attacks. Certainly the idea of Mao's Long March is very much there in the mythology of Unita. I actually spoke to one person who'd been part of the Long March and, you know, talking to me about it 25 years late, she says, oh, it was really just a question of marketing. So, you know, Savimbi liked to see himself as this Mao-like figure. In December 76, with Kissinger in his lame duck period and the Carter administration on its way in,

Savimbi penned an op-ed for the New York Times, making an unsubtle plea for U.S. support against African communism and for Unita. So long as Angola remains under Soviet influence, it is very unlikely that the rest of Southern Africa will not follow. with all the ghastly consequences that will bring disaster to genuinely African independent states. Again and again, the so-called friends of Unita are very busy stabbing it in the back, while the Unita fighters are very busy in the trenches. Who is ready to join us in our trenches? At least we have the satisfaction that our plight opened the eyes of the subcontinent. Though Savimbi's op-ed fell on deaf ears, circumstances would soon shift in his favor,

though for reasons out of his control and to do with a different front in the war against Angola. Big signals for improved relations between the United States and Cuba have been coming from several directions in the last few days. But today, President Carter stated a readiness to move in that direction, but only after some tough conditions are met. Rob Schiefer reports. The president has been visiting various federal departments around Washington in recent weeks on the remark about Cuba came during a brief question and answer session at the Agriculture Department. He began by referring to Cuban troops stationed in Angola. As we saw in our fourth season about Afghanistan, in our fifth season about Indochina,

the victorious Carter campaign was less than prepared for just how difficult it would be to normalize relations with long time and contemporary rivals and enemies. Arguably, the very first challenge came from Cuba's presence in Africa, within the first months of the Carter administration. We've received information from indirect sources that Castro and Cuba has promised to remove those troops, and that would be a step toward full normalization of relationships with Angola. The same thing applies ultimately to the restoration of normal relationships with Cuba. There was an initial consensus on Angola in the Carter White House.

Secretary of State Vance and UN Ambassador Andrew Young had got the president on the track to recognizing the MPLA as the government of Angola. And there were even plans to improve U.S. relations with Cuba after almost two decades of deep freeze. But this consensus was shallow, to use Glehessus' word, as it was swept away by the U. the events of March 8, 1977, or the military operation known as Shaba One. On that day, writes Glehessus, 1,500 Zairean separatists living in Angola, exiles from the Katanga region of their home country, invaded the southern Zairean province of Shaba.

Zaire says it has recaptured some of the towns taken earlier this week by invading troops from Angola, United Press reports, however, that the invading troops are moving rapidly through the area and capturing more towns. The troops said to number in the thousands seem to be rebels from the former Zaire province of Katanga, now called Shaba. They were assisted by the Angolan government, which was retaliating against Mobutu's support for insurgents launching raids into Angola. The MPLA had initially restrained these Katangans, as a close aid of Netto told Yugoslava, officials. But, quote, the raids from Zaire did not stop, and Netto decided to unleash the Katangans. Mobutu, the corrupt friend of the West now in charge of Zaire, which shared the largest border with Angola, wanted the MPLA gone, and he had kept sending in fighters. This response from Netto,

however, was too much blowback. Mobutu turned to the Americans, from whom he received $2 million in new aid in less than a week, and an additional $13 million of aid a couple weeks after that. France, writes historian Elizabeth Schmidt, helped Mobutu ward off the first wave of attacks by transporting Moroccan troops and military vehicles to the embattled region. This shattered the potential for normalizing relations, not only with Angola, but Cuba as well. There was no evidence that the Cubans had helped with the Katangan invasion. Indeed, the record shows that Cuba was totally surprised by the move and critical of it on strategic grounds. Carter himself publicly admitted that there was no evidence tying Cuban troops to Zaire,

but all the same, the Shaba operation had poisoned the well. Cuba, meanwhile, despite not agreeing with Nettos' decision, affirmed his request to shake up the plan for a phased withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola. Glahesus writes, the Cubans agreed with the Angolan's that more troops would be needed because, Castro explained, we saw that a new threat had arisen. But Angola was no longer the only country in Africa asking for Cuban troops. But first, in May of 1977, there was an attempted coup against the government and person of Augustino Netto. The ringleader was one of his many rivals in the MPLA, Nido Alves.

Although plans had been stirring in different parts of the country, it was only in Luanda that the coup plotters acted. One brigade of the army took part and many demonstrators swarmed to the presidential palace. Here, the Cubans once again saved Netto's bacon, retaking control of occupied government buildings and broadcasting that the coup had been put down. wave of repression that followed the coup is considered one of the most violent and disgraceful moments of Angola's revolution, in which thousands were imprisoned and killed as real or imagined collaborators of Nido Alvesz. For his part, Augustinio Neto was convinced that the Soviets had sponsored Alves in his coup. Curiously, Glehes writes that Alves had once been a dogmatic follower of

China. But after a single visit to Moscow in 1976, Alvesz returned as a diehard partisan of the Soviet Union. In a report following his own visit in Angola, Raul Castro wrote, while nuances may vary, the common assessment was that Nido Alves and other plotters are friends of the Soviet Union, end quote. But Glehesus notes that the Soviet role in fact remains murky and writes, until more evidence surfaces, this is the most persuasive explanation of the Soviet role. Several Soviet officials probably knew of the plot and welcomed it. They were encouraged by Moscow's distrust of Augustino Netto, a distrust that fed on many years of strained relations that approached paranoia. Netto himself was convinced the entire thing was set up by Moscow,

and while he never broke relations with the Soviet Union, things were never quite the same. They certainly weren't the same for the people who ended up in the prisons and the gallows during the crackdown that followed the attempted coup d'etat. In the past few days, Ethiopian forces and Somali guerrillas claimed to have destroyed more than 50 of each other's tanks. The claims, non-verified, are typical of fighting for control of the Ogden Desert region on the Ethiopian side of the border. Peter Jennings files of this before tomorrow London Bureau. The year the left-wing military hunter overthrew Portugal's empire,

the same thing happened in Ethiopia. The leadership of the left-wing militants, known as the Derg, declared a standard socialist program to abolish feudalism, spread literacy, and end foreign exploitation. Within a decade, the Derg would be synonymous with terror and famine in the horn of Africa. But not yet. At the moment, it was similar to other one-party post-colonial states, inspiring in some aspects brutal in others.

And it was Ethiopia who was the victim in summer of 1977, victim of an invasion by Somalia. Somalia's attack was meant to absorb the Ogaden, eastern Ethiopian territory, with a majority ethnic Somali population. The invasion, like South Africa's invasion of Angola, received a nod from Washington. The recently voted first among equals in the derg, Mingistu Haile Mariam, requested help from Havana, which Glehessus notes had already sent doctors and military

advisors prior to the invasion. But witnessing the astounding military turnaround in Angola, Mingistu wanted his own detachment of Cuban soldiers. Initially declining, Fidel Castro, this time in close partner, with his comrades in Moscow, decided to send around 12,000 Cuban troops to defend Ethiopia against the Somali invasion. It became known as the War of the Agadén. The Carter administration, only months earlier, eager to cruise to normalization with Cuba, now faced not just one, but two cases of militant third-world internationalism, stemming from Havana all the way into Africa.

When they first confirmed Castro's troops in the horn, the Americans issued a series of condemnations, of Cuban aggression. As Carter's Cold War Vizier, Spignew Brzynski put it, the latest arms treaty with the Soviets he'd been working on, quote, lies buried in the sands of the Ogaden. The problem, as Glehessus notes, was that the Cubans were acting in accordance with international law, answering a nation's call to help repel an invasion. Quote, the Cubans helped the Ethiopians repel the Somali invaders. They refused to fight against the insurgencies that beset Ethiopia, several of which were also Marxist. The Cubans were instrumental in preventing the country's dismemberment at Somalia's hands,

Glehest says. What died in the sands of the Ogaden was the delusion of a one-sided detente, in which the enemies of the United States did not have the... right to send troops anywhere, whatever the provocation, whatever the violation of international law, whereas the friends of the United States did. None other than Carter's vice president, Walter Mondale, put it simply, although he phrased it as if the situation were complicated. Quote, the conundrum in the Ethiopia-Somali problem is that the Cubans and Soviets are

fighting an aggressor. The number two men on the President's National Security Council says the Carter administration is considering taking some economic action against Cuba in retaliation for its role in the recent invasion of Zaire. Zabegnev Brzeinski, who's the head of the National Security Council, showed just how concerned the administration is in his appearance today on NBC's Meet the Press. We believe that the evidence we have sustains the proposition. More than that, sustains the conclusion. the Cuban government, and in some measure the Soviet government, bear the responsibility for this transgression. If Cuba was recommitting to Africa in general, Washington, following the Shaba One campaign, was recommitting to the dictator of Zaire, in particular. The U.S. had stood firm with Mobutu's rule

after Shaba One by sending him aid and declining to put any new real pressure on their friend to clean up his act. In fact, the invasion of Zaire's Shaba province by Katangun separatists from Angola, and its repulsion, with the help of French and Moroccan forces, these events uncorked a bloodlust in Mobutu. Following Shaba 1, Mobutu unleashed a wave of terror, writes Glehesis. He cites a journalist who writes, The behavior of the Zairean army in Shaba was even more hateful than usual. tens of thousands of Zaireans sought refuge in Angola, and all their testimonies agree. The army has looted, robbed, and raped. They have burned our villages and perpetrated wholesale massacres, and quote. The consciences of the U.S. and rich nations in Europe were untroubled by this slaughter, because Mobutu had spent the last year opening up swathes of his country to foreign control, such that in the United States.

the spring of 1978, a group of dozens of banks arranged a $200 million loan package for Zayir. But while the West might avert its eyes as Mobutu massacred his own people, Glehest says. Luanda could not ignore his continued backing of the insurgents attacking Angola. Netto prepared to retaliate. The reason last year's Katangin adventure is called Shaba One, is because eventually there was a Shaba too. This time, the Cubans caught wind of what was going on. The head of Cuba's civilian mission in Angola, Jorge Risket, met with Augustino Netto for an hour and a half on the subject,

presenting a 14-page memo with the Cuban position on a potential second invasion of Shaba. Courteously but firmly, writes Glehessus, drawing directly from Cuban archives, quote, Risket relayed Castro's opposition to such an operation. However, even though Havana was providing vital aid to the Angolan's, the memorandum contained no threat of retaliation if Angola failed to restrain the Katangans. Nor was there even a hint of condescension. It did contain lucid warnings, however, about the likely consequences of a second invasion of Shaba. The Cuban memo said, the imperialists will in all likelihood intervene, as they did on the previous occasion. Indeed, they will probably intervene more forcefully, even directly, not just with Moroccan,

but with imperialist forces from France, for example. According to the Cuban archives, Risket reported back to Fidel. Neto had fully agreed with the Cuban position, but the Angolan leader had apparently deceived his Cuban friends. Only 14 months after Shaba 1, on May 13, 1978, Katangan exiles launched Shaba 2. A second invasion, a secret infiltration of the strategically vital mining city, Kowesi. Shaba 2 was even more threatening to Mobutu's rule than Shaba 1. The Katangans were better organized, Kowuzi fell at once. and Mobutu's army collapsed, writes Glehessus.

Using C-141 transport planes supplied by the Carter administration, French and Belgian forces, just as Castro had predicted, retook Covese. The Katangans retreated. Shaba 2 was over in a couple of weeks. Now, why might Netto have approved Shabatou? It did prove to be successful in discouraging Mobutu from further attacks on Angola.

After the Shaba operations, the Zairean dictator never again mounted his own attacks against the MPLA. But there were consequences. When asked by the Cubans this time about the discrepancy between his earlier denials of his second Katangan invasion, Augustino Neto gave a vague answer. The Cubans, in turn, arranged a meeting with a senior American diplomat to insist, as had been the case before, that they had had no prior knowledge of Shaba 2, let alone any involvement. Within a few days, Secretary of State Vance cabled Havana, affirming the American's acceptance of Cuba's version of events.

Quote, we trust this is the case. But just as the Angolans had played fast and loose with the Cubans, Washington deceived them as well. Only a few hours after Vance delivered this message, the State Department spokesperson, person acting on orders from the White House, writes Glehesus, announced that Cuba had trained the Katangans and equipped them with Soviet weapons. A bitter war of words soon followed. Castro and Cuban leaders denied the accusations in the media and in-person meetings with Vance.

President Carter, meanwhile, claimed that it was the Cubans who were lying. While on Meet the Press, National Security Advisor Brzezinski, claimed to be that. that the Cubans were indispensable to the Shaba operation. But, quote, behind the scenes, many administration officials disagreed with the National Security Advisor, end quote. One outcome of the Shaba saga was to further damage detente, the policy of relaxation between the U.S. and the USSR, which was looking surprisingly shaky in this peace-minded White House. Carter was braying about Soviet and Cuban imperialism in the third world, first in Angola and now in Zaire. The change in tune was a change in the balance of power between

bleaters and dealers. On Capitol Hill today, much talk about Cubans in Africa as the administration discussed its evidence that Cuban troops in Angola had responsibility, at least in part for the invasion of neighboring Zaire. The administration says it has evidence. to back that assertion up, although there was some confusion about the nature of the evidence. Chris Wallace reports. Donald McHenry, deputy to Andrew Young, later said Carter's instinct was of a politician watching his flank. His instinct was also one of anti-communist, anti-Cuban beliefs.

Carter had held this instinct in check during the first Shaba crisis, adds historian Nancy Mitchell. But now, bruised and frustrated by Castro's intervention in his own. Ethiopia, and continuing presence in Angola, Carter saw the situation differently. He kicked the dog, end quote. O'Neill said the president and CIA director Stansfield Turner revealed at last week's White House meeting they have hard evidence. The Cubans accompanied Katanga rebels on their raid. They have some pictures of Cuban troop leaders with the rebels in Zaire, O'Neal said today. The speaker acknowledged he had not seen the pictures himself. The problem is other congressional

leaders remember the meeting differently. House Minority Leader John Rhodes said that any reference to Cubans in Zaire was very iffy. Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd said, I don't recall that being mentioned. This afternoon, CIA Director Turner briefed members of the House Intelligence Committee about the raid. Afterwards, he denied ever telling anyone Cuban soldiers went into Zaire. We are not saying they did not go. We are not taking a position that they did. In short, the evidence is not that hard in one direction or the other.

Even before Shaba 2, Carter had been leaning in this direction with Bleeder Brzynski beating out dealer Vance. Although the press and poll numbers loved Hawkish Jimmy, however, it wasn't immediately clear what the White House could do. Unable to find ways to punish Cubans in the horn, writes Glehessas, Brzinski turned to Angola. Glehessus continues, quote, At a National Security Council meeting attended by a small group of officials, including Carter, Bergensky suggested squeezing Netto. Quote, suppose we start helping Savimbi, and he takes back a few more towns. Are the Cubans not

going to send more people in then? Brezhinsky considered this the wrong question, writes Glehesis. The issue, he said, is not whether we get more Cubans in Angola, but whether covert aid increases their casualties and the cost of their involvement. Why not make them increase their involvement in Angola. Let them be pinched by it. In our fourth season about America and the wars in Afghanistan, we described how Brzynski engineered an Afghan trap, supporting an Islamist insurgency to bleed the big, bad Russian menace. Perhaps Angola was the pilot program, as Donald McKenry later told Glehessus. Even though we had a law and a policy that precluded us from covert

operations in Angola, we did it. I came to believe, I still do, that the U.S. government got around that in two ways, but I have no proof. One way I know, but I cannot prove, we were supplying Unita with communications equipment, and claiming that by doing so, we weren't giving aid to Savimbi, but allowing us to spy on him. The second is more deadly. It is like what happened under Reagan, with the Nicaraguan Contras. We would tell selected governments, we are precluded from giving aid, but you Saudis or Moroccans would be doing us a great favor if you did what we cannot do. Just as Brzezinski would, years after the fact, come clean about having supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. He was also later honest with Glehesas. Quote, there was some aid

going to Savimbi, he said. I cannot remember what exactly our aid was, probably telling third countries to help Savimbi. The Shaba II invasion of Zaire from Angola in 78 had helped solidify Brzynski's trap. Vance and the dealers were losing pull in Carter World. But a final effect of Shaba 2 was to blot out another military operation, one that had taken place about a week before the Katangan invasion, about 800 miles. to the south, near Angola's border with Namibia. On May 4, 1978, South Africa bombed a refugee camp inside of Angola in the southern town of Kasinga.

South Africa claimed the refugee camp was secretly a major base of operations for anti-South African militants, specifically the Namibian nationalist group Swapo. A South African general called the airstrikes, quote, a finely coordinated movement delivering an awesome total of 1,200 anti-personnel bombs, 20,000 pounds of high explosive bombs, and a devastating two aircraft strafing run. It's so death, destruction, and terror amongst the occupants of Kasinga, end quote. South Africa supplemented the airstrikes on the refugee camp with paratroopers, who landed to pick off further targets.

Cuban fighters arrived on the scene and, without air defense, pushed through toward the South African troopers despite bombs from the sky landing all around them. At least 16 of the Cuban soldiers were killed with nearly 100 further casualties. Soon the reinforcements arrived as more Cubans got there, in armored vehicles, driving the disorganized South African forces into a full retreat. The bomber planes that had saturated Kasinga were long gone. The airstrikes and paratrooper raids killed over 600 Namibians in Kasinga. Over the next few days, the South Africans attempted to prove

that they had chosen a legitimate target, a militant base, and that their enemies had disguised it as a refugee camp. The New York Times reported, Lieutenant General John R. Dutton, chief of staff for operations in South Africa, declined to estimate guerrilla casualties beyond saying that five South African deaths were not comparable with the large losses incurred by the terrorists. The general showed reporters documents he said were captured at the guerrilla headquarters in an attempt to prove that Kasinga was a military base and not a refugee camp. and active mining center, as stated by Angola. The documents included letters signed by known leaders of the guerrilla organization on stationary with the heading Kasinga H.Q.

Within a few weeks, the UN High Commission for Refugees and the WHO verified that, according to available evidence, the site at Kasinga was indeed a refugee camp. The London Times reported on a mass grave filled with hundreds of dead bodies. They noted that reporters could, quote, make out the brightly colored dresses of a large number of women among the dead. In response to what is now known as the May 4th massacre, Jimmy Carter remarked, the South Africans claim it was just a retaliatory raid against the Swapo forces.

We hope it's just a transient. strike in retaliation, and we hope it's all over. Cuba's top man in Africa, Jorge Risket, had a different takeaway. If the South Africans were ever going to be held accountable for their aggression, well, they would have been made to pay for Kasinga. They weren't. This means they are free to repeat this again and again.