Hon. Shirley Chisholm 42329

December 19, 1975 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 42329 U.S. INTERVENES IN ANGOLA IPresident Kennedy selected FNLA leader In July Vance and Deputy Assistant Sec- STRIFE Holden Roberto as a man to back for the retary for Africa Edward Mulcahy discussed future, since Portugal could not be expected t he package with several Senators and Con- to retain Angola indefinitely. Support waned g;ressmen, hoping that a low-key approach HON. SHIRLEY CHISHOLM in 1969 but the CIA reactivated its Roberto vould gain their acquiescence while avoid- connections last spring, in light of the up- i OF NEW YORK ng publicity. Reaction on the Hill to State's surge in liberation activities following the sapproach was decidedly negative. Although IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Portuguese coup. tthe Ex-Im Bank and Food for Peace portions Thursday, December 18, 1975 The CIA interest in UNITA is much more r require no specific Congressional approval, recent. Gelb's report on this connection fol- Senators Clark and Humphrey insisted that Mrs. CHISHOLM. Mr. Speaker, cer- lowed a few days after an announcement by t;he Security Supporting Assistance be fully tainly all of us are apprised of the cur- UNITA President Savimbi that he is receiv- scrutinized. Closed hearings on this part of rent crisis in Angola, the involvement of ing armaments from "anti-Communist West- the package are to be held in the near future. the U.S. Government in that conflict, ern nations and their allies" (according to In short, the Administration is seeking to and the potential for more unilateral Africa News). Jonas Savimbi, who heads underwrite the finances of the Mobutu gov- UNITA, is avowedly anti-communist conflict that situation poses because of and ernment with a quantum leap in its level of anti-MPLA-two reasons for the CIA's inter- aid. Since Mobutu is actively involved in the the forces bearing down in that small est in him. He may also be emerging as a Angolan civil war and is the conduit for U.S. African country. more realistic possibility than Roberto as a involvement, this move seems to have con- The Black Caucus has uniformly de- future contender for leadership of Angola. siderable implications for the Angolan scen- plored all intervention in the war in Savimbi is a magnetic figure with consider- ario. Angola not only because of the covert able popular support from the rural peasan- More evidence of increasing Administra- manner of U.S. involvement, but also be- try of central and southern Angola, and is tion interference in Angola has emerged in cause the CIA has defied the mandate of personally attractive to some progressive the revelation that Nathaniel Davis-accord- the Organization of African Unity op- African leaders in other countries. ing to news reports of September 1-plans U.S. aid to the two movements is being to resign shortly from his post as Assistant posing all foreign intervention. disbursed largely through President Mobutu Secretary for African Affairs. The ostensible Like the War in Indochina, U.S. in- Sese Seko of Zaire. Indeed, it is impossible reason is his inability to establish good rela- volvement in the initial stages has relied to approach the subject of Angola and U.S. tions with African states and their leaders, on an information "black out". We are intervention there without examining Zaire's as his problem with Mobutu demonstrates. only learning now of money already relationship with both Angola and the United A high-ranking source in the State Depart- spent and of actions already taken be- States. Zaire shares a long border with An- ment, however, contends that the immediate cause of State Department decisions to gola; the BaKongo people, who comprise the reason for Davis' departure is his disagree- interfere to counter actions taken by the bulk of FNLA's supporters, straddle this bor- ment with Henry Kissinger over Angola- der. Holden Roberto of FNLA i.e., Davis balked at Kissinger's proposals for Soviet Union. is Mobutu's brother-in-law. It is not surprising, then, stepped-up intervention there. Davis may I would like to submit for review of my that Mobutu's Zaire government has long have resisted because he feared yet another colleagues an in depth analysis of the been an open supporter of FNLA. Mobutu's CIA blot on his record, which would confirm situation in Angola and the role of the support for UNITA is much less solid, and what was predicted by his opponents at the United States in it. The history of our seems primarily based on UNITA's shared time of his nomination. Many observers ex- covert activity is important in under- opposition to FNLA's main enemy, MPLA. pect Davis' successor to be Sheldon Vance. standing why it is essential that no more An instance of U.S.-Zaire connection with Whether or not Davis objected to Angolan aid be approved for any actions in An- UNITA was reported by an expert eye-witness intervention, he surely could not implement gola. The following was prepared by the recently. He saw a Hercules transport plane it effectively if he could not work with the offloading arms at Silva Porto, UNITA's head- other major actors in the Angolan arena. Washington Office on Africa, an invalu- quarters. The French-speaking crew was On another front, when Senators Clark able source for information on the topic: smoking Zairean cigarettes; the U.S. sold the and Brooke proposed an amendment to this U.S. INTERVENES IN ANGOLAN STRIFE Hercules aircraft to Zaire last year. year's foreign economic aid bill which would Since the Portuguese coup of April, 1974, Establishing and maintaining the stabil- specify $30 million for assisting the former the process of decolonization In Angola has ity of Mobutu's staunchly pro-western rule Portuguese territories, the Agency for In- proven far more tortuous and complex than in Zaire has, of course, been a cornerstone ternational Development suggested that $25 in the former sister territories of Mozam- of U.S. policy in Africa since the General million of this be earmarked for resettle- bique and Guinea-Bissau. In the latter two seized power in 1965. The CIA has long had ment of black Angolan refugees. Most such colonies, power was transferred to single, re- a principal Africa station in Zaire. U.S.-Zaire refugees are Bakongo returning to Angola latively unified liberation movements which relations received a jolt in June of this year from Zaire. But the Senators caught the acceded to independence and sovereignty in when Mobutu expelled U.S. Ambassador political implications of the language and orderly fashion. In Angola, the presence of Deane Hinton, accusing him and the CIA of specified in the report accompanying the bill three movements divided on political, ideo- complicity in a coup plot. Nathaniel Davis, that no aid should go toward "refugee or logical and geographic and ethnic lines has the Assistant Secretary of State for African economic assistance that would constitute prevented a simple transition from colony Affairs who was travelling in Africa at the political support for any one of the liberation to independence. These divisions, together time, tried to go to Zaire to repair relations, movements in Angola." with strategic considerations and Angola's but was refused entry. (Mobutu had earlier A further complication in the Angolan tur- wealth in natural resources, have invited in- in the year opposed Davis' nomination to his moil revolves around Cabinda, the tiny ex- tervention in the decolonization process by post, precisely because of Davis' implication clave of Angola separated from the rest of external powers. The United States has been in CIA activities in Chile.) the country by a strip of Zairean territory. prominent among these outside forces, and The task of patching up things with Mobu- Cabinda is where Gulf Oil produces 100,000 recent evidence has provided a clearer, tu fell to Sheldon Vance, a former ambas- barrels of oil a day. MPLA currently controls though still very incomplete, picture of the sador to Zaire, now a senior aide to Kissinger. the area, and all the Angolan liberation nature of U.S. intervention. Vance made two trips to Zaire, and then be- movements favor keeping Cabinda part of In a front page New York Times article of gan to put together a new package of U.S. Angela. But a Cabindan separatist organiza- September 25, Leslie Gelb revealed that the aid for Mobutu. The package totals $60 mil- tion, FLEC, has recently emerged into the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has been lion--4 times the 1975 level, 7 times the 1974 limelight. FLEC is presently located in and buying arms for two liberation movements, level, and $20 million higher than the an- is heavily backed by Zaire, which is known FNLA and UNITA, in an effort to offset the nual average of U.S. aid during the peak to have an interest in the oil; some experts military success of the third movement, years of U.S. assistance in the crisis period predict Zairean attempts to dominate or even MPLA, which has received significant arms of the 1960's. It is divided into $20 million annex Cabinda in the future. Clearly Cabinda support from the Soviet Union. The Times in Export-Import Bank loans; $20 million in is also a focus of external interests, both story states that the CIA operations have private and governmental. Food for Peace credit, and $20 million for been approved by President Ford and are The United States is not, of course, the "Security Supporting Assistance"-which ex- being carried out, as prescribed by law, with only external power involved in Angola.

Load more