PECULIAR PLAYMATES IN ANGOLA'S OILFIELDS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201100002-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: July 29, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201100002-9
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAG' I =
WASHINGTON TIMES
~_
G
ANLA
Pll
ecuiar paymates
in Angola's oilfields
W W.LNf P. CHESHIRE
This is the story of how a nice
little oil company, Gulf.
bought itself a nice little
Marxist country, Angola,
and exerted its substantial skill and
influence to mooch off the American
taxpayers, who have become unwit-
ting partners in the enterprise.
Even before the old Portuguese
government top-
pled, Gulf was a
major supporter
of the Communist
revolution,
reportedly feed-
ing the Popular
Movement for the
Liberation of
Angola (MPLA) a
million dollars a
month to keep the
war away from the company's
Cabinda oil fields.
Little has changed, except that
Gulf's contribution has grown. The
Cabinda Gulf Oil Company, jointly
owned by Gulf and the Luanda gov-
ernment, earns the Communists
$800 million yearly in taxes and roy-
alties and another $1.5 billion in
exports.
Sixty percent of this revenue goes
for military purposes, which include
paying for the Soviet and East Ger-
man advisers and the 25,000 Cuban
troops that, along with Gulf, keep the
regime afloat.
"Were it not for the burgeoning oil
industry, which registered an
increase in production from 140,000
barrels a day in 1982 to 220,000 in
1984;' wrote Margaret A. Noviki in a
slavishly pro-regime article for
Africa Report, "the Angolan econ-
omy would have likely collapsed..
Among those helping the Angolan
oil industry to burgeon is the U.S.
Export-Import Bank, which has
extended more than $100 million in
development loans to the Angola'
regime - this despite prohibitions
written into the Export-import Bank
Act.
That law forbids loans to "a com-
munist country" unless the U.S.
president, in a separate determina-
tion for each transaction, deter-
mines that such loans "would be in
the national inter-
est."
President Rea-
gan has not made
such a finding
with respect to
Angola because,
oddly enough,
Angola is not
listed as a com-
munist nation in
the Foreign Assis-
tance Act, as amended in 1981, even
though Angola has had a communist
government since 1975.
Not only has Washington supplied
Angola's Marxists with low-interest
loans; until this year it also prohib-
ited, by means of the Clark
amendment, any U.S. support of the
Jonas Savimbi, whose anti-
Communist Unita forces are seeking
to overthrow the Marxist regime.
Gulf officials, meanwhile, have
been at great pains to obscure the
undeniable. In congressional testi-
mony four years ago, Gulf's pres-
ident of exploration and production
used such far-fetched terms as
"businesslike and non-ideological"
to describe the Soviet-dominated
Angolan regime.
"For some time now;" he said,
"Angola has been anxious to develop
an opening to the West."
If so, the courtship certainly has
proceeded in a perplexing fashion.
In the United Nations, Angola
opposes the U.S. position nearly 100
percent of the time - a record of
anti-Americanism matched only by
Marxist Mozambique.
It harbors, in addition, a substan-
tial army of Cubans, Soviets, and
East Germans, and while it talks
about having them leave, it contin-
ues to make them welcome.
It has allowed the Cubans, in the
furtherance of Soviet interests, to
use Angola as a staging area for
expeditions throughout southern
Africa.
The only opening to the West that
Angola seems to desire is the one
through which gush Ex-Im Bank
loans.
David Rockefeller and the Chase
Manhattan Bank also have been shil-
ling for the Angolan regime. Mr.
Rockefeller has intervened person-
ally with the White House, urging a
new look at the administration's
policy toward Angola - no had idea,
though not in the way Mr.
Rockefeller means.
And Chase Manhattan has distrih-
uted a newsletter to its customers
and affiliated banks, praising "the
liberal investment code and sound
economic management of the
lAngolanl government" and sug-
gesting that Angola's economy
"could be poised for a takeoff"
In fact, Angola's economy is flat
broke, despite help from Gulf and
the U.S. taxpayer.
Under the Portuguese, Angola
was a food exporter; today food is the
country's second-largest import.
"In Luanda city," according to a
report in the Windhoek Advertiser,
"about 60 percent of all stores are
closed. Those that are open have lit-
tle to sell."
The Advertiser added this inter-
esting footnote to the history of the
Clark amendment:
"In 1975 with interests lock
into MPLA, it was Gulf financing
that helped Rush through the Clark
amendment denying cvert CIA sup-
por to avimbi, thus virtually
delivering Angola to the Soviet bloc
ona plate."
multiple choice question:
When the communists are hang-
ing the last capitalists, who, accord-
ing to Lenin, will be found at the foot
of the gallows, haggling with the
hangman on the price of the rope?
(a) David Rockefeller.
(b) The president of Gulf Oil.
(c) Deng Xiaoping
For the correct answer, keep
watching this space.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201100002-9