Word: roberto
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Three years ago, Neto's Moscow-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.) appeared to have won control of the former Portuguese territory in a bloody civil war against two Western-supported independence groups: Holden Roberto's National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.) and Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). In fact, the civil war never really ended, and Neto's Popular Movement government, even with Cuban assistance, has not been able to establish jurisdiction over a country that is larger than Britain, France, Portugal and West Germany combined...
...into three factions; moreover, according to Western intelligence estimates, several battalions of Cubans have been deployed in Cabinda to protect the offshore oil wells that currently provide most of Angola's revenues. Farther south, surviving units of the F.N.L.A. also harass government forces in occasional skirmishes, even though Holden Roberto, 55, now stays mainly in Zaïre. President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre provided much of the F.N.L.A.'s support during the civil war. The Luanda regime may have encouraged the Katangese invasion of Shaba region partly out of vengeance...
...Movimento Popular de Liberacion d'Angola (MPLA), which had established itself as the best-organized and most popular nationalist movement. In this "Second War of Independence," (the first was against Portugal), Zairean troops invaded Angola in support of the FNLA, headed by Mobutu's brother-in-law Holden Roberto--obviously Mobutu's hope for extending his influence into Angola. South African troops invaded from the south in support of UNITA, the group they trusted to set up a safe buffer state to keep the heat off the racist Vorster regime in South Africa...
...beginning. Eventually, he says, a "dualism" about the operation developed: "The people in the field were going all out. But back home, people gradually got timid." When the agency finally decided to pull out, it sent a final payment of $1,376,700 in conscience money to Roberto and Savimbi through Kinshasa. The cash, Stockwell claims, was pocketed by Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko...
...great power diplomacy, and there was no room there for the Third World. Even if the policy-makers had been watching, though, the result wouldn't have been much different. The CIA was paying attention, just enough to take care of its clients, President Mobutu of Zaire and Holden Roberto of the FNLA. The CIA's involvement was the determining factor in U.S. policy in southern Africa, and the CIA fiasco in Angola was yet another in a long string of CIA faulty evaluations, illicit propping-up of clients, violent undercover operations, and massive deception of the American people, Congress...