Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who died on Thursday at the age of 100, was not “so against” a right-wing coup in Portugal during the 1975 revolutionary process and admitted that he had supplied weapons to the “group of the Nine”.
These and other revelations are made forty years after April 25, 1974, in State Department documents previously considered “secret” and published in the State Department’s Historical Division’s issue of American Foreign Policy , referring to the years 1969-1977 (Foreign Affairs). Relations of the United States – Part E-15, Part II).
The meeting took place on August 12, 1975, between Kissinger, US Ambassador to Lisbon Frank Carlucci, and several members of the State Department in Washington, including William Hyland, director of the State Department’s Department of Information and Research .
More than a year had passed since the coup that toppled the dictatorship on April 25, and the Lisbon government was led by Vasco Gonçalves, the US’s ‘enemy number one’. Carlucci and Hyland concluded that the greatest risk to US objectives was António de Spínola, the first post-April 25 president to preside over March 11, and the far right.
Henry Kissinger, head of diplomacy for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said something at the time that, he admitted, might shock his “colleagues.”
‘I’m not really against this kind of scam [de direita]however shocking it may be for my colleagues…”, read the minutes of the August 1975 meeting, which discussed the chances of a successful coup by the right in Portugal.
Carlucci opposed it, just as he had already opposed the vaccine thesis: Kissinger would accept that Portugal would be ‘lost’ to the communists, backed by the Soviet Union, and this would act as a ‘vaccine’ for Spain or Italy. The diplomat defended US support for the ‘moderates’, including Mário Soares’ PS.
‘No, I’m not against a coup either, as long as it works. But if Spinola tries, it won’t work. [Melo] Antunes [do Grupo dos Nove] can be a leader at the next moment, Spinola cannot. He is, in my opinion, a very dangerous man,” Carlucci said.
Spínola founded the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal (MDLP) during his exile following the failed coup attempt of March 11, 1975, seeking support in France and Brazil for a military and popular movement that would overthrow the government led by Vasco Gonçalves . and supported by the PCP.
Kissinger said the US had no relationship with Spinola at the time. Carlucci doubted this, as he had read a CIA report on Latin America that indicated “some kind of contact” with the general.
It is also during the August 12 meeting at the State Department in Washington that Kissinger and Carlucci openly discuss a civil war in Portugal and the possibility of supplying weapons to personalities linked to Mário Soares or the Group of Nine.
In this political and military environment, Carlucci got the green light for the United States to investigate “the request” for arms deliveries, as long as they were legitimate.
“What if, in your opinion, the requests were made by responsible elements,” Henry Kissinger explained. And Carlucci revealed that he had been contacted by people with no ties to Soares, nor to the PS, nor to the “moderate” army.
In these declassified documents, there is no information about whether weapons were supplied by the United States and to whom.
Kissinger thought the communists would kill Mário Soares
Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, predicted and was wrong that in 1975 “the communists” would assassinate Mário Soares, the historic leader of the PS and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
“The communists will drag Soares to the left until he loses support and then they will kill him. The armed forces will stage a coup led by the communists,” Kissinger declared at a meeting on February 4, 1975. , of the Committee of 40, an organization that oversaw clandestine operations and to which the secret services, the CIA, also belonged.
Henry Kissinger was a critic of Mário Soares and considered him weak, and in October 1974 even told him that he would be the “Portuguese Kerensky”, the Russian socialist leader defeated by Lenin in the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Years later, after the end of the revolutionary period, at the end of 1975, he also admitted the mistake at a meeting in Washington regarding Mário Soares, who in the Portuguese democracy was Prime Minister of several governments and President of the Republic. 1986-1996).
The CIA aborted the plan to support Spinola during the hot summer
The United States had a plan to support António de Spínola, of the anti-communist movement MDLP, during the revolutionary period of 1975, but this was “failed” by the CIA, which maintained “a kind of contact” with the general.
The US ambassador to Lisbon, Frank Carlucci, was against any North American support for the monocled general, who fled Portugal after the failed coup on March 11, 1975, and that is exactly what he tells Henry Kissinger at a meeting in Lisbon. Washington on August 12, 1975 at the State Department.
However, the North American secret agent would not be innocent in the contacts with Spínola, as Carlucci recalls during that meeting that he saw a CIA report that “pointed to some kind of contact”, which caused him “some concern”.
Judging from the documents now released by the State Department, the proposal to support Spinola circulated after almost forty years of classification among various members of the Committee of 40, a body led by Kissinger that oversaw clandestine operations and to which also the secret services, the CIA, but made no progress, according to a secret document dated July 30, 1975.
The document was opposed by the State Department and the CIA, but only received a positive vote from the Joint Head of State of the US Armed Forces, General George Brown. Before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Spínola was “discredited and [com ele] there is no prospect of success for US objectives.
During his exile following the failed coup attempt on March 11, 1975, António de Spínola founded the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal (MDLP), seeking support in France and Brazil for a military and popular movement to overthrow the Vasco-led government to throw. Gonçalves and supported by PCP.
Text originally published on August 23, 2014 and now republished due to the death of Henry Kissinger.
Source: DN
