Covert action

From Old Files, a New Story Of U.S. Role in Angolan War

Historians and former diplomats who have studied the documents say they show conclusively that the United States intervened in Angola weeks before the arrival of any Cubans, not afterward as Washington claimed. Moreover, though a connection between Washington and South Africa, which was then ruled by a white government under the apartheid policy, was strongly denied at the time, the documents appear to demonstrate their broad collaboration.

''When the United States decided to launch the covert intervention, in June and July, not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the U.S. government and the C.I.A. were not even thinking about any Cuban presence in Angola,'' said Piero Gleijeses, a history professor at Johns Hopkins University, who used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the documents. Similarly, cables of the time have now been published by the National Security Archive, a private research group.