Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Angolan Civil War" in English language version.
In 1975 Israel followed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's advice and helped South Africa with its invasion of Angola. Even after the passage the following year of the Clark Amendment forbidding U.S. covert involvement in Angola, Israel apparently considered Kissinger's nod a continuing mandate.
Former Director of Central Intelligence writes that between 1975 and 1976, training was conducted outside of Angola "as no CIA officers were permitted to engage in combat or train there." Stockwell concurs that the CIA was prohibited from deploying advisors inside Angola, though he claims "we did it anyway." However, he does not dispute the that advisors avoided combat, "no CIA staffers were killed or suffered any discomfort worse than malaria." The CIA, he explains, let "others run the serious risks." Likewise, following the repeal of the Clark Amendment in July 1985, US military advisors instructed their clients far from the front, basing in southeastern Angola at the UNITA headquarters in Jamba. Daniel Fenton, a former security analyst at the CIA, recalls that advisors "talked only to Savimbi and a chosen few. They lived in a compound, and had no real movement of freedom.
With the Cubans and South Africans both so actively engaged, one Western intelligence source argued that "the war is increasingly out of the hands of the locals." UNITA commanders at Cela reported that "there are virtually no African faces in the enemy ranks." Soviet arms, including shipments of 122-mm. multiple rocket launchers, T-34 assault tanks and helicopter gunships, were largely responsible for the Cuban-led M.P.L.A.'s advances.
