The USSR "intervened" well more than twice, my friend. Angola,
That was a colonial war on independence. Estado Novo deserved to be overthrown. If the USA was on the right side of history, it would not have opposed the dismantling of Salazar's Fascist empire.
The history of the US's involvement with that regime is a very nice example of how international politics has little or nothing to do with ideology. And how the US governments always cared first and foremost for US strategic interests. Though they very often had severe disagreements about what those were!
First the background: in 1957 Salazar made sure that the Cabinda oil prospection concession was granted to Gulf Oil: it was a way of buying american support (though oil would only start to be explored in 1967). The cotton farming had long been controlled by belgian and british interests to which the west germans had joined in the 50s, the diamonds were shared with DeBeers, and the iron ore of Cassinga was granted to Krupp and Bethlem Steel. But while other european colonial powers moved on to neocolonialism his government tried to hold on to the colonies, depended on the myth of "colonial greatness" to continue to exist. Then in 1960 began the Congo Crisis: the belgians decided to cut and run, with the condition of preserving their mining interests there... though things eventually became much messier....
Anyway, by 1961 the americans had figured that if faced with serious unrest Portugal would probably do the same as the belgians and so the US had better put forward its own man to head the new state. Holden Roberto, the leader of a tribal movement (later known as UPA, and later as FNLA) which originally aimed at reconstructing the old kingdom of Congo (with him as king-to-be in the course of time) had been an asset of the "American Committee on Africa" (CIA front for Africa; the "Fellowship of Reconciliation" with its african missionaires was another organization useful to the CIA at the time, despite its "pacifist" claims) since the mid 50s, and had been pestering the State Department since (at least) December 1960 for support. The US placed Roberto on the CIA's (Leopoldville branch) pay sheet and offered his organization money and some weapons (the US was most likely also behind Israel's offer of military training to members of Roberto's group, who were in Israel in early 1962).
At the same time on March 6th 1961 ambassador Elbrick conspired with the portuguese defense minister, general Botelho Moniz, asking him to lead a coup to remove Salazar and grant independence to Angola under a mutually agreed (Portugal and US) government. The US would offer to Portugal a "development package" of $70 million in exchange. The next day the american embassy officially informed the portuguese defense ministry that the US expected events "similar to or worse that those of Congo" to happen in the north of Angola very soon. That indeed happened on March 15th, when UPA carried out a series of massacres targeting white settlers and their black migrant employees, causing some 8000 dead in a couple of days. There is little doubt that the US expected this little
terrorist campaign against its own NATO ally to lead to a quick retreat of the colonial administration and independence of Angola with power falling into the lap of Washington's man, Holden Roberto. The "angolan crisis" offered the perfect excuse for Botelho Moniz to get rid of Salazar. The problem was... Moniz was too confident to act in time. He spent nearly one month conspiring with other generals and trying to arrange a constitutional replacement of Salazar (thus maintaining the dictatorial regime in Portugal as it was). Salazar in the meanwhile used the images of the massacres to whip up nationalist feelings, declared that Angola's future was not negotiable, and finally dismissed Moniz and the other conspiring generals and had some loyal military units detain the whole lot as they finally attempted a failed coup.
American concern with getting Angola to become independent under a friendly government continued until 1964, predicated on the analysis that Portugal could not beat the guerrillas and the longer the war dragged on the more radical and
pro-communist those would become. Basically the position of the US was always to position itself in alliance with, and favor, the predicted winner, since it was politically impossible for the US itself to exercise power directly on (invade) Africa. There was nothing ideological on the Kennedy Administration's anti-colonial stances, it was cold realistic strategy, as set out in Paul Sakwa's 1962 report on US policy toward Portugal. (see "Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963" by Thomas Paterson, or "The destruction of a nation" by Geroge Wright). The same reasoning was behind the initial US support to FRELIMO in Mozambique, where Eduardo Mondlane was, in 1963, also financed by the CIA as he consolidated his control over the guerrilla against Portugal.
Then... the US got involved in Vietnam. And predicting defeat by guerrillas became
something you don't do inside the american bureaucracy. The US realigned its polity towards giving discrete support to the portuguese military efforts in its colonial wars, while at the same time pretending to remain anti-colonialist. In 1965 the US government was already violating its own weapons embargo on the portuguese colonial war by setting up a scheme to sell Douglas A-26 planes to Portugal through a CIA company, Intermountain Aviation. And providing training to hundreds of portuguese military in Panamá. But the US kept playing on both sides of the board: support to Roberto's FNLA was maintained, and a J. Makoon, aka John Marcum (Lincoln University, and certainly with other jobs inside the US services) tried (and failed) to set up a channel with MPLA in 1967. He remained a regular contact of FRELIMO. Also in FRELIMO there was among its leaders a Leo Millas, aka Leo Clinton Aldridge Jr, an american whom portuguese intelligence eventually identified as a CIA asset attached to the Dar-es-Salaam US embassy, who passed himself off as Mozambican during 1963-64 until Mondlane was forced to drop him after his cover was blown...
I really could go on about american duplicity in Angola and Mozambique, before and after its independence, but this is getting too long already.
