I Didn't Do It for You

by Michela Wrong

  The Emperor’s expectations stretched well beyond the military. He wanted Washington to take the lead in transforming feudal Ethiopia into a modern state blessed with schools and universities, hospitals and clinics, its own national airline. Given that he was regularly spending between 25 and 30 per cent of his budget on defence–a staggering percentage given that his foreign friends were already footing most of the military bill–he could not fund these projects himself. Washington must provide, and so it did. Not only was the US Ethiopia’s major economic partner, buying 70 per cent of its coffee, but it funded agricultural colleges and locust control centres, veterinary projects and commodity improvement schemes. It used its clout to ensure the World Bank and other financial institutions lent Ethiopia hundreds of millions of dollars, sent Peace Corps volunteers to teach in Ethiopian schools, and educated thousands of young Ethiopians in its American universities. The ties that bound the two countries together were being wrapped ever tighter. And the extent to which Washington was ready to go to ensure its favourite’s survival was about to demonstrated in concrete form.

  In December 1960, two weeks after the Emperor had left Addis on an extended tour of South America, his Imperial Bodyguard took control of the airport, rounded up the royal family and key ministers in the Imperial Palace, and cut communications with the outside world.

  The coup attempt was, ironically, the by-product of the very US-funded modernization drive Haile Selassie had launched. Returning from military academies and Western universities–where their courses were often generously paid for by the Emperor himself–a generation of young officers and bureaucrats looked at its own hidebound society, the nepotistic royal court, and judged it all stale and corrupt. Watching Africa’s newly-independent states kicking into life, promising their citizens rights and benefits unknown in Ethiopia–supposedly the freest of African nations–these young men felt the status quo had become intolerable. Disappointed and bitter, they blamed their frustration on their former sponsor, the very man who had opened their eyes to Ethiopia’s backwardness.

  When, on the first day of the coup, the Crown Prince Asfa Wossen16 went on the radio to denounce the fact that life for the average Ethiopian had not changed for three millennia–that Queen of Sheba vision of history once again–and promised radical change, it seemed as if Haile Selassie was already history. US diplomats ordered the embassy’s classified files shipped up to Kagnew Station for safekeeping.

  But, by the second day, the situation had grown murky. The main body of the army had not joined the Imperial Bodyguard. At a crisis meeting, US officials agreed that the time had come to meet the obligations spelled out in the Mutual Defence pact signed between the two countries. US advisers were sent to stiffen morale at army headquarters, where a handful of loyal Ethiopian generals, summoning reinforcements to the capital, were in danger of collapsing from exhaustion. Soon American pilots were roaring over the Imperial Palace, trying to frighten the rebels inside by breaking the sound barrier. ‘Up to that point, it could be said that we were neutral,’ commented the US embassy’s army attaché, ‘but afterwards there could be no question but that we were committed.’17

  US help went a lot further than advice. Haile Selassie, in Brazil at the time, only heard his throne was in danger because the Americans allowed loyalist generals to transmit a warning from Kagnew Station. Rushing back to Ethiopia, the Emperor stopped off in Liberia, where he used US Air Force facilities to liaise with those preparing a counterattack. The Americans became so embroiled, shuttling between the two sides in a vain attempt to negotiate a ceasefire, that US ambassador Arthur Richards and two of his aides narrowly escaped being killed when the Imperial Palace was eventually stormed. Soon after, the despairing putschists shot their hostages, killing 15 ministers, secretaries of state and deputy ministers to ensure ‘Ethiopia should never be the same’. Arriving in Asmara, a jittery Haile Selassie used Kagnew Station’s facilities to communicate with his generals and it was only after Richards had personally assured him the situation was under control that he agreed to fly south. When the Lion of Judah landed in Addis, the crowd of dignitaries gathered to greet him included Richards and his military attachés. Given the key role the Americans had played in saving his administration, it was only right they should share this moment of triumph.

  The outcome, as far as Washington was concerned, had been a happy one, but the coup attempt had highlighted both how fragile the Emperor’s hold on power really was and the dangers of being too closely associated with a fading ruler.

  Like so many African autocrats, Haile Selassie always showed more interest in the surface than the substance of change, delighting in prestige projects–the luxury Hilton Hotel, the spanking new university–that drew gasps from foreign visitors while changing nothing for most of Ethiopia’s population. American officials fretted over how little of their aid reached the provinces, swept by regular famines, feeding instead a vast bureaucracy of well-heeled civil servants who rarely strayed outside Addis. Still shockingly backward even by African standards, Ethiopia was crying out for land reform and genuine democracy, instead of the simulacrum of parliamentary decision-making the Emperor had introduced to conceal the fact that all decisions were still being taken by one, very small, man.

  But to the Americans’ dismay, the Emperor did not seem to have got the message. As the coup leaders were hunted down–some committing suicide, others executed and left hanging from gibbets for the crowd’s delectation–Haile Selassie announced that there would not be the ‘slightest deviation’ from his set path. The new government named to fill the gaps left by the executed ministers was recruited from the same batch of aristocratic families that traditionally served the Emperor, while the educated, unhappy bourgeoisie went largely ignored. ‘If the Emperor does nothing…it is not unlikely that a similar recourse to violence will reoccur at some future date, possibly with greater success,’ a worried US ambassador predicted.18 By supporting Haile Selassie so assiduously, the Americans belatedly realized, they risked being identified with all his empire’s ugliest features. ‘Our assistance programs, especially military assistance, have identified us to a disturbing degree as supporters of an archaic regime,’ the US embassy’s economics officer warned.19

  It was business as usual: the putsch attempt presented the Emperor with the perfect excuse to demand–and get–yet more American aid. Three years later, when war broke out on the border with Somalia, he resorted to his usual tactics to win attention, dangling the prospects of defection. ‘The United States must either give us the assistance we require or we might have to deal with the Devil himself to save our country,’ warned General Merid Mengesha, the Defence Minister.20 Terrified of what could fill the vacuum if it pulled out, the US once again upped its spending, also agreeing to send in scores of counterinsurgency experts to help crush the growing Eritrean rebellion.

  Both the Emperor and his US friends had missed the fundamental lesson of the 1960 abortive coup. The fact that one of Haile Selassie’s first actions was to placate the army by raising wages offered a hint as to where power was shifting. Thanks to Kagnew Station, the Emperor had forged a relationship with Washington that had given him exactly what he wanted. Between 1946 and 1972, Ethiopia received over $180m in US military aid.21 Sacrificing economic progress on the altar of military expansion–paid for by an obliging ally–he had built the strongest army in black Africa. But in so doing, he had taken his seat on a very hungry tiger, which promised to devour him the moment his grip began to falter.

  In a society in which political activity had been banned, a tiny intelligentsia regarded entry into government service as its highest ambition, trade unions were rigidly controlled and the Church allotted the head of state semi-divine status, challenges to the system could only come from one direction. ‘By building up the army, the US made Haile Selassie’s overthrow a matter of time,’ says analyst Marina Ottaway, who was working in Addis Ababa and witnessed the eventual fall-out first-hand. ‘In Haile Selassie�
�s Ethiopia the army was the only institution that functioned. It was the only organization that could fill the vacuum the Emperor had deliberately created around him.’22

  CHAPTER 10

  Blow Jobs, Bugging and Beer

  ‘I was 20 years old and damn near indestructible.’

  A Kagnew veteran reminisces

  On May 3, 1967, George Zasadil, a gangly young GI of Czech extraction from Chicago, stepped off the plane in Asmara, Ethiopia, after a long trip from Boston via Athens and Cairo. The raw 20-year-old, ‘a virgin in terms of most experiences, if not sexually’, felt nothing but dismay. Having nearly missed both his flights because he’d been so busy sampling the local nightlife, Zasadil, something of a natural rebel, hadn’t bothered reading the army handbook introducing new arrivals to Ethiopia. Bound for Africa, he had formed a clear mental image of the lush tropicana that awaited him. Gazing around him now, ‘Zazz’–as his army friends would know him in future–brushed away the flies and breathed in the acrid aroma of Asmara: a heady mix of horse manure, eucalyptus, burning charcoal stoves, spices and diesel fumes. He took in the dry, bleak plateau and stark red earth. ‘This was desolation. I’d never seen earth that looked that colour. I was used to soil. My first reaction was “What have I done to deserve this?” “Why has my government done this to me?” and “Boy, have I made a mistake.” It was pure culture shock.’1

  It wasn’t as though Zazz had any interest in Africa per se, or the US army’s operations in Ethiopia. A college drop-out who’d been sent his draft papers the year before, he had confidently assumed he would fail his physical, thanks to major knee surgery. Disconcertingly, he had passed, and suddenly Vietnam loomed on his horizon. ‘I didn’t want to go there, I didn’t want to die. I thought the odds were I wouldn’t be around much longer if I went to Vietnam.’ So when a recruiter suggested sitting tests for the top-secret, elite Army Security Agency (ASA) as a way of bypassing ’Nam, Zazz was all ears. The only downside, it seemed, was that the ASA signed men up for four years’ duty, instead of the usual two. Still, what were two years of a life, when weighed against the threat of premature eternity?

  He didn’t discover he had been suckered–the ASA did send men to Saigon and there were other, three-year alternatives to a Vietnam posting–until it was too late. Perhaps the fact that so many of his colleagues had followed exactly the same path as Zazz, Vietnam-dodgers talked into an unnecessary four-year stint, went some way to explaining the extraordinary atmosphere that reigned in Kagnew Station in the late 1960s. The ‘yellow-clawed chicken fuckers’, as the ASA men were irreverently known to the rest of the military–a reference to the shoulder patches they wore showing a snowy eagle clutching bolts of lightning in its talons–had been bamboozled. In a minor way, admittedly, but one that could definitely be worked into a feeling of grievance over a few Melotti beers at the Bar Fiore. Throughout their special training back in the US, they had been told they were the ‘top 10 per cent’, valued for their superior intelligence, problem-solving capacities and communication skills. Well, the army could go hang, if it expected neat beds, sharp haircuts and sharper salutes in Kagnew. If they were so special, then army rules need barely apply. ‘Kagnew,’ chuckles Zazz, in his gravelly, lived-in voice, ‘resembled a cross between Animal House and MASH.’2

  One of a consignment of ‘Norman New Guys’ on whom the hoary station veterans could amuse themselves with nonsensical errands and macho initiation ceremonies, Zazz was joining a Kagnew in its prime. By the 1960s, $69.5m in investment had already gone into Kagnew–pronounced ‘Kaynew’ by the locals–even if most members of the US Congress remained blissfully ignorant of the base’s very existence.3 It held 4,200 men, not counting family dependants. If the main residential base, with its clubs, sports facilities and trademark clock tower, clustered in the centre of Asmara, the entire station sprawled far across the Eritrean highlands. Nineteen operational sites, or ‘tracts’, held 185 buildings, nearly 700 antennae and embraced 3,400 acres of land. Kagnew’s holy of holies, simply known as ‘Stonehouse’, contained a pair of giant satellite dishes whose constituent parts had been trucked up the road from Massawa, laboriously winched over intervening railway bridges, before being reassembled on the plateau. The biggest dish, 150 ft wide, weighing 6,000 tons and worth $600,000, was estimated at the time to be the largest movable object ever built. It was visible from 30 miles away.

  So many facilities, so many men, to do precisely what? Read the old official brochures and you will learn that ‘Kagnew’, which means ‘to bring order out of chaos’, was the name of an Ethiopian commander’s horse which galloped riderless towards the Italian enemy during the battle of Adua. They will also tell you that the base adopted the head of a horned antelope as its insignia in memory of the deer that once grazed the Eritrean highlands, hunted into near-oblivion by the GIs. Rather less detail is offered as to Kagnew’s function, which, we are told, was to relay communications from US diplomatic missions around Africa and pass messages from Europe and the American mainland on to the Far East and Indian Ocean–a function even the most uncurious of observers might suspect didn’t require over 4,000 men to perform. As for Stonehouse, unveiled in 1964, it made ‘an important contribution to man’s expanding knowledge of the mysteries of outer space’,4 a superbly unenlightening phrase. Time has not loosened officialdom’s tongue. Nearly three decades after Kagnew’s closure, a paltry six pages of information on the project have been released under the US Freedom of Information Act. In them, the censor’s black felt-tip pen scores thickly through every sentence of interest. An inquiry to the press office of the National Security Agency, the ASA’s parent body–described today as ‘America’s most secret agency’–yields a swift, polite brush-off: ‘Unfortunately, Miss Wrong, we have no information to provide at this time,’ I was told by a public affairs officer at Fort Meade, the NSA complex on Washington’s outskirts. ‘It’s been good working with you.’

  The laboured explanations don’t wash now, and they didn’t wash in the 1960s and 1970s either. Locals always sensed there was more to Kagnew than met the eye: Ethiopian students staged protests against what they believed was a secret missile storage site, Eritreans whispered amongst themselves about clandestine gold mining. Both groups were seriously off track. Stonehouse’s job, in fact, was to monitor the Soviet Union’s expanding missile and deep-space programme. Rotating on its pedestal, the main dish could pick up electronic signals from otherwise inaccessible Soviet regions which had hurtled into space, ricocheted off the surface of the moon and bounced back to earth. By analysing telemetry–the data sent by a travelling missile to its launch centre–intelligence experts could work out a missile’s engine type, guidance performance and fuel consumption, establishing a detailed picture of the range and accuracy of the Soviet Union’s network. The same principle applied to the probes Moscow was starting to send to the moon, Mars and Venus. So detailed was the information from deep space picked up at Stonehouse, on virtually the same longitude as the Soviet ground station in Crimea, Washington could gauge the weight of the Mars launch vehicles, for example, or pinpoint whether the Soviet lunar spacecraft was using retrorockets.

  But Stonehouse was only a part of Kagnew and the base’s interests extended far beyond the Eastern bloc. Men sent here had been trained at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, where they had learnt the skills of the technological spy: how to read morse, intercept radio signals and decode encrypted messages. All those talents were put to good use, for Kagnew was eavesdropping on communications from the Mediterranean, Middle East, Near East, Sub-Saharan and Southern Africa. Notional ally or enemy, Kagnew monitored–or ‘strapped on’–regardless. ‘Not everyone we were listening to was a bad guy,’ acknowledges the improbably-named Tom Indelicato, a former morse code interceptor. ‘In the day of the Soviet Bear no one trusted anybody, not even the Brits.’ Donning their headphones, the men would sit at their stations turning knobs, slowly trawling the atmosphere for morse exchanges, telephone conversations or radio sign
als going out on frequencies which had not officially been assigned by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union in Geneva and were therefore considered suspect. When they thought they had found one such ‘illicit communication’ they would ‘dial down’ on the frequency to pick up the detail. If the communication proved to be in a foreign language, a linguist would be called over to decide whether it merited further investigation. If it were in code, hours could be spent transcribing gibberish: the meaningless groups of letters that went to make up an encrypted signal. Then a crypt analyst would set about trying to unscramble the system. ‘The trick was to find the flaws or “spikes”, patterns we could identify which would allow us to break the code,’ says Zazz. ‘We were computer analysts, basically.’ It would then be up to headquarters back in the US to decide which traffic merited closer attention. The monitoring took place around the clock, and when the men struggled to stay awake during the long night shifts, known as ‘tricks’, they would pop some methedrine, bought at the pharmacies in town.

  Much of Kagnew’s work required the kind of abstract, problem-solving abilities possessed by the gifted chess player or obsessive crossword filler. But language skills, whether innate or acquired during intensive courses at the Defence Language Institute in Monterey, were also highly prized. There were 6–8 French linguists, whose job was to listen in on Francophone Africa. In the 1960s, as newly-elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba flirted with Moscow, the former Belgian Congo was a particular concern and 10 Kagnew servicemen were specially assigned to track the communications and movements of the white mercenaries hired to fight in Katanga. There were experts in Italian, German and Russian, Urdu and Swahili: 20 languages represented in all. The Middle East merited 20 Arab linguists, who were placed on standby when it looked like they might be parachuted in to the desert to track the Arab–Israeli war.