MOSCOW, October 2 (RIA Novosti) – According to recently declassified documents from the US National Security Archive, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was enraged by Cuban military operations in Angola in 1975 and wanted to “smash Castro” in retaliation, the BBC reports.
Despite the fact that Kissinger initially sought to normalize relations with Cuba, he couldn’t stomach the fact that Fidel Castro had pursued an independent foreign policy in Africa. "Kissinger, the global chessboard player, was insulted that a small country would ruin his plans for Africa and was essentially prepared to bring the imperial force of the United States on Fidel Castro's head," Peter Kornbluh, Director of the National Security Archive’s Cuba Documentation Program, told The New York Times.
He also pointed out how Kissinger flatly told then-US President Gerald Ford that “I think we are going to have to smash Castro”. Ford concurred.
The newspaper notes that Henry Kissinger has refused to comment on the story.
The BBC notes that the US leadership was acutely aware of the fact that any military intervention in Cuba would likely result in a direct confrontation with the USSR.
Fifteen years after the CIA fiasco in the Bay of Pigs, Kissinger was ready to recommend an attack on Cuba, William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University, told The New York Times. That plan, however, was never implemented, as Jimmy Carter was elected president later that year.
Kissinger’s critics point out that while he’s widely acclaimed as a peacemaker, he also orchestrated the carpet bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and condoned the repressions committed in Greece, Pakistan, Indonesia and Chile.
“For Kissinger to be talking the way they were talking, you would think Cuba had invaded the whole continent,” Frank O. Mora, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who now directs the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, told The New York Times.
