DIA ALONE IN OPTIMISM FOR SAVIMBI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870034-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2011
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: February 7, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870034-0
ti
DIA Alone
In Optimism
For Savimbi
CIA, State Dept.
Fear UNITA Failure
By David B. ttawa S
Two of the three U.S. intelli-
gence agencies have concluded that
the pro-Western guerrilla move-
ment led by Jonas Savimbi has no
chance of winning on the battlefield
against the Marxist Angolan gov-
ernment and little prospect of join-
ing a coalition, according to con-
gressional and intelligence sources.
Nevertheless, the sole agency
that predicts a possible military and
political victory by Savimbi--the
Pentagon's Defense Intelligence
Agency-has for several months
shared intelligence information with
him and provided communications
support to his guerrillas, according
to Pentagon and other sources.
One source said the intelligence-
sharing and other nonlethal aid,
which reportedly began in Decem-
ber, was the first part of a two-
stage covert assistance program
approved by President Reagan and
his national security advisers last
November. Savimbi, who has been
lobbying for U.S. military aid here
since early last week, has met with
Secretary of Defense Caspar W.
Weinberger and held three ses-
sions-two of them hastily
squeezed into-his hectic lobbying
schedule this week-with DIA of-
ficials to receive fresh intelligence
reports and discuss his specific mil-
itary needs, these sources say.
Contrary to the DIA's optimistic
assessment of Savimbi's prospects,
the Central Intelligence Agency and
the State Department Bureau of
Intelligence and Research have con-
cluded that he "can't win and can't
force a coalition government" on
the Marxist leaders in Luanda, ac-
cording to two sources familiar with
the evaluations of all three intelli-
gence agencies.
an atrick Tvler_ ~j
WASHINGTON POST
7 February 1986
The DIA holds the view that
Savimbi could prevail if he holds on
long enough to provoke dissension
within the Luanda government and
triggers a military coup that would
favor his cause, one source said.
The conflicting assessments of
Savimbi's prospects by analysts of
the CIA, DIA and Bureau of Intel-
ligence have come in the midst of
an intense debate within the admin-
istration and Congress over wheth-
'er the United States should resume
its involvement, after a decade of
abstinence, in the Angolan civil war.
One intelligence source said the
three agencies were not only divid-
ed among themselves in their as-
sessments but in some cases "the
lower level was not agreeing with
the top" within individual agencies.
Some judgments at the top on these
issues appeared to reflect "political
wishful thinking" rather than "hard-
nosed, on-the-ground assessments,"
the source said.
CIA Director William J. Casey.
was previously reported
those in the administration most
supportive of proposals to provide
Savimbi with assistance in his
struggle. Savimbi lunched with
Casey last week and also met with
CIA officials who are involved in
planning U.S. covert support for his
guerrilla forces, according to one
informed source.
CIA analysts, however, believe
the proposed level of U.S. military
aid for Savimbi's struggle is insuf-
ficient to make a difference in the
military equation on the ground or
force any change in the Marxist
government's refusal to discuss a
coalition with the rebels.
The Reagan administration has
approved an initial $10 million to
$15 million covert military aid pro-
gram, but congressional conserva-
tives want a much larger U.S. com-
mitment of either covert or overt
aid. A major administration objec-
tive in helping Savimbi is to urge
the Angolan government to accept
reconciliation with Savimbi and give
his National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA) a
place in the government.
Savimbi was one of two pro-
Western leaders aided by the Unit-
ed States at the start of the An-
golan civil war in 1975, when the
CIA spent $32 million trying to pre-
vent the Marxist faction from seiz-
ing power. However, in January
1976, Congress passed legislation
ending CIA involvement in the war.
As in the mid-1970s, the admin-
istration, Congress and the intelli-
gence community are again deeply
divided over the wisdom of entan-
glement in the Angolan conflict.
Conservatives have cast the
Savimbi aid issue in terms of an ul-
timate test of the so-called "Reagan
Doctrine," the administration's de-
clared objective of aiding anticom-
munist "freedom fighters" in their
struggles against Soviet- and
Cuban-backed governments.
"The Reagan Doctrine pretty
much hinges on Angola," remarked
a House conservative staffer in-
volved in the campaign to help
Savimbi.
"It will also set a precedent for
the contras," he added, referring to
the administration's recently an-
nounced plan to ask Congress for up
to $100 million in military and other
aid for the U.S.-backed anticommu-
nist forces fighting the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua.
Opponents of U.S. involvement in
Angola, who include 500 academic
specialists on Africa who have pe-
titioned Congress to block aid to
Savimbi, are warning that the Unit-
ed States is heading for an entan-
gling, and inevitably damaging, al-
liance with South Africa that will
have repercussions for American
foreign policy in black Africa.
The debate within the intelli-
gence community has centered on a
number of interrelated issues, in-
cluding Soviet intentions in Angola,
Savimbi's military and political
prospects, and his strategy in seek-
ing to battle the military pressure
on his forces.
Savimbi and his conservative
backers here have made much of
the growing Soviet and Cuban in-
volvement in the war on behalf of
the Angolan government. The pro-
UNITA voices point to the arrival
of $2 billion in Soviet arms, the in-
crease in the number of Cuban
troops to 35,000 and the peril of
annihilation that UNITA forces face
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870034-0
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870034-0
from an expected large government
offensive this spring.
CIA Director Casey reportedly
believes Soviet leader Mikhail Gor-
bachev was personally responsible
for upping the Soviet-bloc ante in
Angola, according to intelligence
sources. U.S. analysts say, howev-
er, that the Soviet arms buildup and
increase in Cuban troops began in
early 1984 and was mostly coin-
pleted by the time Gorbachev came
to power last March.
Savimbi and his backers here also
argue that the Soviets and Angola's
Marxist rulers are responsible for
the recent escalation. But U.S. in-
telligence sources say there is
strong evidence that the Angolan
government has been responding to
an initial UNITA escalation that
began in 1983. That UNITA esca-
lation was supported by consider-
able South African military and lo-
gistical aid, and was launched with
the publicly declared intent of mass-
ing 20,000 guerrillas in Luanda
Province by the end of 1984 for a
major attack on the capital.
Savimbi made such good prog-
ress in spreading his guerrilla war
from his stronghold in southeast
Angola to the northeast and north-
ern parts of the country that South
Africa's military intelligence had
concluded that his forces stood a
good chance of achieving a military
victory, according to one U.S. in-
telligence source.
One well-informed source said
that the recent DIA support for
Savimbi has included upgraded
communications equipment as part
of the nonlethal phase of covert as-
sistance. Details of that equipment
were unavailable, although
Savimbi's geographically dispersed
forces are believed to need radio
equipment to link them together.
The DIA, which reportedly has
tics to South African military intel-
ligence, adopted this view, the
source said. The Pentagon agency
still holds that UNITA has the po-
tential, if sufficiently aided by the
United States and others, to fight
government forces to a stalemate.
The argument being made by
some DIA and other intelligence
analysts is that there is "a very
strong likelihood" of such a stale-
mate and a "fairly strong" prospect
for a coalition government including
UNITA, the source added.
Other CIA analysts have con-
cluded, however, that UNITA does
not have the military strength to
create such a stalemate, particular-
ly with the Soviets and Cubans in-
creasingly committed to the Marx-
ist central Angolan government.
They believe Savimbi is being
drawn intoa conventional-style war
of defending fixed positions, espe-
cially his headquarters in Jamba,
and that such battle tactics may be
catastrophic to his forces.
These analysts say Savimbi
should give up this strategy and
return to a more mobile style of
warfare in which U.S. antiaircraft
missiles and antitank guns-the
main two items he is seeking from
the United States-would not be so
crucial to UNITA's survival.
UNRED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Vice President Bush talking with UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi last week.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870034-0