Cuba’s direct, critical and extensive role in the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa is little known in the West. November 5th marks the 39th anniversary of Cuba’s decision to deploy combat-troops, at the request of the Angolan government, to repulse a major South African invasion of October 1975. Now a new book confirms previously secret plans to defend racist and fascist South Africa by “clobbering” the island Republic of Cuba itself. “I think we are going to have to smash Castro,” Kissinger told President Ford.

The first page of the memorandum of conversation of the historic July 9, 1975, U.S.-Cuba meeting at the Pierre Hotel (see Document 9). (Click to enlarge)
(Oct. 1) – U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered a series of secret contingency plans that included airstrikes and mining of Cuban harbors in the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s decision to send Cuban forces into Angola in late 1975, according to declassified documents made public today for the first time. “If we decide to use military power it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures,” Kissinger instructed General George Brown of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a high-level meeting of national security officials on March 24, 1976, that included then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “I think we are going to have to smash Castro,” Kissinger told President Ford. “We probably can’t do it before the [1976 presidential] elections.”
“I agree,” the president responded. Continue reading →