Welcome to Blow. I'm Brendan James.

And I'm Noah Colwyn.

And this is Season 6, Episode 9, Something Big and Bloody.

Last episode, the Reagan government won re-election in a landslide. Good news for the forces of

the Angolan nationalist Jonas Savimbi and his friends in apartheid South Africa, both of whom

were making a renewed push to smash the government of Angola. The U.S. leaned toward South Africa's interests, but key diplomats, such as Chester Crocker

at the State Department, pursued a policy that was meant to mellow South Africa's expansionist

impulses while driving Angola's Cuban allies out of the continent altogether.

Through ideas such as constructive engagement and linkage, the plan was to get the apartheid state to allow elections in Namibia, the country

sitting between South Africa and Angola, which the South Africans had been occupying militarily and running for years.

In return, the United States would pressure the Cubans and the Soviets to wind down or

even break off entirely their commitments to the Angolan government. But that balancing act

was harder to achieve than the Americans initially thought.

The South Africans in Savimbi, not to mention their allies in the West, never accepted the

idea that the United States could force them into coexistence with either an independent

Namibia or an independent Angola.

Meanwhile, Jonas Savimbi, already a welcome guest in the White House,

poured millions of dollars into a PR campaign directed at the international,

and particularly American media.

The warlord donned a black Nehru jacket,

and never forgetting to mention his Christian pedigree, preached the gospel of anti-communism. Though there had been reports of his unsavory

treatment of his enemies, not to mention his allies, the Savimbi lobby made up of the PR firm

...