STINGERS FOR SAVIMBI

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504820025-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 7, 2012
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: March 31, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RD
WASHINGTON POST
31 MIarch 1986
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
Stingers for Savimbi
A secret decision to send Stinger
anti-aircraft missiles to Jonas Savim-
bi's anticommunist rebels in Angola is
a breakthrough for the Reagan Doc-
trine.
It marks the first time in the long
history of U.S. clandestine operations
that a president has decided that top-
of-the-line American weapons, not for-
eign-made castoffs, can be used to ad-
vance U.S. interests. The Stinger is at
the very top. The shoulder-tired
weapon can penetrate titanium-pro-
tected cockpits of Soviet MI-24 Hind
helicopters, the gunships that control
the battlefields of Angola as well as
Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
The fact that previously skeptical
Secretary_of State George Shultz now
is as enthusiastic about the Stinger as
Now, Shultz insisted that whatever
covert aid was given, it must guarantee
"sustainabdity" for Savimbi's rebeWon.
That is, it would do no good to give the
rebels weapons that did not prevent
their annihilation by some 30,000
Cubans and their Soviet advisers.
In a scheduled 45-minute session,
which lasted twice that long, the sena-
tors persuaded him that only Stingers
would do that. They correctly argued
that the most valuable part of the MI-
24 gunship is its Soviet-trained pilot,
who would become vulnerable to the
Stinger. Shultz agreed, and Reagan
signed off on it.
But the president expressed special
concern about what has always wor-
ried Shultz: the sub rosa alliance be-
tween South Africa and Savimbi. Rea-
gan sought ways to insulate the U.S.
aid program, particularly if sweetened
with the potent Stinger, from any con-
nection with the apartheid regime. He
wanted South Africa, as one official
told us, to he "hermetically sealed oft"
from any possible connection with the
U.S. program.
That job, administration insiders
ton us, was accomp is e y asey
himself. tAILNULIgn o icia s never
confirm or deny anyt ing eoout t eir
c i s rave sc e u i s Hawn
will have any connection with the new
U.S. program. No U.S. covert aid m :l
flow to Savimbi across the border of
South Africa or Pretoria-controlled
Namibia. which separates South Africa
from Angola. That makes Zaire, a
longtime friend of the United States,
the necessary gateway for new weap-
ons into Savunbi-controlled eastern
Angola.
It is far too soon to know whether
the tasted Stinger will prove effective
in the African bush against the flying
tanks. But if it pays off, the decision to
break a 40-year ban on the use of top-
grade American weapons in covert
competition with the Soviets could be
of historic importance in pumping life
into the Reagan Doctrine.
I'~Nrl. News Anteric..i Syndicate
ecretary of Defense Caspar einber-
ger and Director William Casey
signals an end to prior restraints. That
opens an important new chapter in the
long struggle between the West an
the Soviet Union where the ideological
tide Ion has flowed for . oscow.
.. No other deci points up eagan's
heightened intent to bring to life his
rhetoric t at the West should as
contnutted to widening democracy as
the Krenii is committed to the spread
o communism. Just how seriously this is
taken is shown by the secret dispatch of
the director of Central Intelligence to
Pretoria to make sure the white South
Africa overnmer.t is not connected to
covert _e for .t~ini i.
If the Stinger neutralizes the MI-24
"dying tanks" in Angola, it almost
surely will be sei,.t to ant;-Sandinista
guerrillas in Nicaragua once Congress
finally approves Reagan's contra aid
plan.
This represents a long path traveled
by George Shultz, who started out
skeptical about the whole idea of covert
aid. When the secretary early in March
journeyed up Pennsylvania Avenue for a
crucial closed-door discussion of the aid
program with Senate Majority Leaders
Bob Dole and several other Republican
senators, he had previously agreed to
the principle of anti-aircraft and antitank
weapons for Savimbi.
that Casey in mi -; arc spent several
days in South . trica ma ing ejK in ;
ase.
neither the Pretoria regime nor inv
South African nongovernment body
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0504820025-9