PONDERING COVERT AID IN AFRICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R002000100037-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 37
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2010/06/22 CIA-RDP81 M00980R002000100037-9
17
WASHINGTON POST
Pondering Covert c~
Ethiopia.
By Murrey Marder
Washington Post Staff Writer
White House strategists for at
least two months have attempted to
develop a plan to permit the United
States to funnel sophisticated arms
and funds clandestinely to African
sources, behind the frustration ex-
pressed by President Carter to con-
gressional leaders on Tuesday. Car-
ter complained about restrictions
on White House ability to help be-
44 uered friendly. governments re-
"That was just the tip of the ice-
berg," one knowledgeable source
said yesterday in referring to the
accounts that reached the public.
Visible now is the new Western
aid and air-rescue mission to Zaire
in the wake of the border-crossing
from guerrillas into Zaire's rich
copper belt.
That double operation has been
launched with unpublicized appre-
hension by some officials. inside the
Carter administration that it is,
as one put it, "a first step into the
quicksand-on the Vietnam model"
Others strongly disagree, insisting
that in Zaire the Carter administra-
tion is involved only in "aid and
humanitarian" objectives.
is determined to do anytl g he can
to thwart the Russians' Cuban "mer-
cenaries" or surrogates in Africa.
In Peking, Brzezinski evidently will
encounter similar attitudes. China has
its own anti-Soviet involvement and
stake in Africa. The New China News
Agency reported from Peking yester-
day that in a meeting between Chi-
nese Foreign Minister Huang Hua and
Zaire's ambassador to Peking, "The
ambassador informed him of the
grave situation of the renewed inva-
sion of the Shaba region engineered
by the Soviet Union and executed by
Cuban mercenaries," and that Huang
replied that China will "firmly sup-
port" Zaire in its "just struggle to re-
pulse the Soviet-Cuban mercenaries .
Where - Brzezinski and Huang will
go from. there is an open question.
According to sources in Washing-
ton, Brzezinski wants the United
States to shake free from the Vietnam
war-inspired curbs on presidential
power enough to permit U.S. aid for
clandestine operations in Africa "to
pin down the Cubans" and limit their
ability to stretch into other adven-
tures-notably in Rhodesia.
One concept is to furnish sophisti-
cated U.S. weapons, and money, to the
supporters of the major guerrilla war
that has been continued in Angola
since 1976 by Jonas Savimbi's United
Front for the Total Independence of
Angola. Savimbi's UNITA covertly re-
ceives support from a consortium of
nations, as well as South Africa.
The nations involved all deny this,
when they publicly address the sub-
ject at all. The size of "tilg ,consori
um's" investment is reported by some
n Africa
But apart from what is happen-
ing around Kolwezi there is a web
of strategic concern especially pre-
occupying Carter and his national
Brzezinski.
yesterday for China, is described by
informed sources as at least as "ob.
sessed" with the Soviet-Cuban pro-
jection of military power into
Africa as was former secretary of
state Henry A. Kissinger over
Angola in 1975-76.
To Brzezinski, what is at stake
is a fundamental test of the validity
of American-Soviet detente, and he
See STRATEGY, A24, Col. 1
sources to be in the "$30 million to
$40 million range." One Washington
source said yesterday "that figure is
too high," and other sources put the
investment in guerrilla warfare at
closer to $20 million.
Another concept that has been
pushed behind the scenes is to encour-
age greater covert assistance by Saudi
Arabia and other wealthy anti-Marxist
nations to the various liberation
fronts fighting in Ethiopia's Eritrean
Province. Ethiopia this week launched
a major offensive to crush that seces-
sionist movement, claiming it has sup-
port from the Soviet Union, Cuba,
East Germany and other communist
nations.
The extent to which President Car-
ter completely shares these percep-
tions attributed to Brzezinski about
what must be done to resist the So-
viet-Cuban thrust in Africa is not
clear-even to some of the most sen-
ior administration officials.
There is burgeoning concern at the
top of the administration, (as in
Congress) about the scope of Soviet-
Cuban adventurism in Africa, among
Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance,
Defense Secretary Harold Brown and
others, even including many of the
pro-Africanists who were dismayed by
Kissinger's fixation on the super-
power struggle in Africa.
But what is in profound dispute be-
hind the scenes inside the administra-
tion is what the United States should,
or can, do about it. One large fear is
that the Carter administration,
through preoccupation with Soviet Af-
rican ventures, may end up jeopardiz-
ing the strategic nuclear arms limita-
tion egotiations just as Soviet For-
eign Minister Andrei Gromyko is due
in the United States for near-climac-
tic negotiations.
In many respects, the internal
struggle of 1975 over clandestine
American support to anti-Marxist fac-
tions in Angola's civil war is being re-
peated-but this time more in the
open, forced there by the limitations
imposed on Angola by Sen. Dick
Clark (D-Iow, chairman of the Sen-
ate Foreign Relations subcommittee
on Africa, and others.
"Let the Cubans have their Vietnam
in Africa," one senior administration
official pungently said yesterday.
"There is no reason for us to get pan-
icked and plunge into the quicksand
with them."
This is a predominant view across
the State Department, and it is re-
ported to be shared as well by many
officials in the Pentagon, and in the
Central .Intelligence Agency which
ran the U.S. venture in Angola that
was lopped off by Congress.
Beyond the Carter administration's
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vernal differences over how to
thwart the Russians and Cubans in
Africa, there is an overriding global
issue-the conduct of American-So-
vie' detente.
In an assessment that could have
been uttered by Henry Kissinger -
and it was in 1975-76-Brzezirski is
quoted in a revealing profile by Eliz-
abeth Drew in the May 1 issue of The
New Yorker as saying:
"There is a tendency in America to
be traumatized by international dif-
ficulties. The generation of the 1950s
was always thinking about the failure
of the League of Nations ... The lead-
ership of the '60s was always think-
ing about Munich. Now there is a
generation worried by Vietnam, with
consequences of self-imposed paraly-
sis which is likely to be costlier in the
long run."
Brzezinski's determination to show the
Carter administration is not "paralyzed"
by Soviet-Cuban ventures in Africa led,
over the past two months, to probing
attg tsthe seek a
way around what he and the _president
regard as unnecessarily restrictive con-
gressional limitations oa..jpvprt action
abroad, especially in Africa.
Private talks, it was learned, have
been held with Sen. Clark, House Speak-
er Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr. (D-
Mass.), Senate Majority Leader Robert
C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and others on pos-
sible routes around the legislative inhi-
bitions.
Last Tuesday, after House Minority
Leader John J. Rhodes (R-Ariz.) came
out of a White House breakfast report-
ing Carter's "frustration at having his
hands tied" in supporting "friendly"
nations, Vance pursued the subject with
O'Neill in person, and with Byrd by
telephone.
According to reputable sources, Vance,
presumably at Carter's direction, spe-
cifically concentrated in the O'Neill and
Byrd discussions on what might be done
about the Clark, amendment. of 1976.
This amendment imposes extraordinary
STRATEGY, From A24
Clark and the Senate`s deputy major-
ity leader Alan Cranston (D-Calif.)
met with Vance at the State Depart-
ment just before the White House
state dinner for Zambian President
Kenneth Kaunda. None of the par-
ticipants will discuss that conversa-
tion and both Clark and Cranston
were in California yesterday on a speak-
ing trip.
Zambia's Kaunda, in the meantime,
went on the record Wednesday, soon
after he began his talks with Carter,
with the comments, undercutting ad-
ministration alarm about the Cuban
presence in Africa.
Xaunda, whose nation provides
bases for some of the guerrillas seek-
ing to topple white minority rule in
Rhodesia, told reporters, "I am not
sure there is a single Cuban on the
African continent who has not been
invited by some member of the con-
tinent." The Cubans in Africa, Ka-
unda said, are "the effect," rather than
"the cause" of the turmoil which Ka-
unda says, and other black African
leaders agree, is the prolonged de-
nial of black majority rights notably
in Rhodesia and in Namibia (South-
west Africa).
Kaunda is threatening, in desper-
ation, to join in inviting Cuban troops
into the Rhodesian struggle if the
West fails to respond adequately to
black Africa's aspirations. There is no
indication that Kaunda has deflected
the administration from its goals.
State Department spokesman Tom
Reston said yesterday that the depart-
ment's legal office is studying stat-
utes that limit presidential authority
abroad. He said this would "undoubt-
edly include" the Clark amendment
on Angola, and requirements for re-
porting co^,'ert operations that are
contained in 1974 legislation known
limits on U.S. aid, "directly or indi-
rectly," to "any nation, group, orga-
nization, movement or individual to con-
duct military or paramilitary operations
in Angola unless and until the Con-
gress expressly authorizes such assist-
ance by law...."
Initially, according to several
sources, it was Brzezinski's hope that
despite the Clark amendment, Con-
gress would agree to turn "a blind
eye" to covert U.S. support passed to
third countries to help to "tie down"
the Cubans in Africa.
Clark is reported to have told
Brzezinski, Vance and CIA Director
Stansfield Turner and others that as
much as he shared the administra-
tion's concern about the Soviet-Cuban
danger in Africa, they were asking the
impossible. As a third party put it
"The law is the law and there is not
a damn thing Clark or anyone else
can do about it."
Wednesday night it was learned
See STRATEGY, A25, Col. 5
publican demands on the Carter ad-
ministration to "stiffen its backbone"
against Soviet-Cuban penetration of
Africa, has attacked the Clark amend-
ment as "a short-sighted, partisan
effort to handcuff f-a Republican presi-
dent"-meaning President Ford in
1976-which much be overhauled.
Dole has introduced legislation to
make it "absolutely clear" that the
1976 Clark amendment "in no way
restricts United States military, para-
military or nonmilitary assistance to
any African country, such as Zaire,
for the purpose of defending its terri-
tory against internal or external at-
tack."
Clark, reached in California yester-
day, said, "I can't believe we want
to get involved agair in the Angolan
civil war." Nothing in his amendment,
he said, precludes bonafide U.S. aid
to Zaire or any other "friendly na-
tion." To Clark supporters, Dole's -
proposal and others in the wind are
flank attacks that obscure an attempt
by the executive branch to roll back.
congressional restrictions born of the
Vietnam experience, which should be
faced openly.
At the same time, Carter adminis-
tration officials last night insisted that
there is no connection whatever be-
tween their long-term strategy in Af-
rica and the "international rescue
mission" for the beleaguered Euro-
p e a n s and remaining Americans
caught in Zaire'.s.Shaba province. But ..
that disclaimer left untold numbers
of skeptics in Washington.
There is an unusual grouping of .
people and attitudes inside the admin-
istration with pained memories of the
failed 1975-76 attempt to checkmate
the Russians and Cubans in Africa.
They include the director of the
State Department's Policy Planning
Staff, IV. Anthony Lake, a onetime
member of the Kissinger staff at the
White House; Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs Richard M.
T
...h.. - . -
Moo
r
se
==~rcu L ~ urttiL one Clara amendment
(R-Kan.) apparently scenting oppor- as a Senate Foreign Relations staff
tunity to capitalize on widening Re- member, and Secretary V i n
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