Much media coverage portrayed the event as a unique use of Congress’s war powers, but it has acted to limit presidential power before. In 1976, both houses voted to end covert assistance to anti-communists in Angola. As with the Yemen vote, Congress sought to halt an armed conflict in a remote country, waged in association with a uniquely unpopular ally and supported by an administration distrusted by much of the American public. Understanding Angola explains why the Senate acted now, three years after fighting in Yemen began, and provides vital clues as to whether we can expect Congress to continue to assert itself.

Like Yemen, Angola was a complex conflict in an area few Americans knew well. In 1975, the African country acquired independence after 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule and over a decade of revolution. But no single government existed to take control of the new state. Three political parties vied for power: the Soviet-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and two nominally anti-communist parties, including Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

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As the three parties turned to armed conflict, they looked abroad for aid. By the end of the year, the MPLA fought with Soviet arms alongside imported Cuban troops, and the anti-communists were using American weapons channeled through neighboring states such as Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger supported the operation as a way of checking perceived Soviet aggression in the waning years of detente.

American intervention was covert, but first-term Sen. Dick Clark of Iowa, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Africa, got wind of it from activists and academics with contacts in the country. Though the administration was required by law to submit the action for review by Congress, it had been rubber-stamped by the aging Cold Warriors who controlled the foreign affairs committees in each House.

Clark, by contrast, used his position to conduct an independent investigation, holding hearings and traveling to southern Africa. What he found disturbed him: a poorly managed covert operation without public oversight. It had few clearly defined goals besides preventing the MPLA from taking full control of Angola. It was also open-ended and could potentially require greater commitments.

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If the recently concluded Vietnam War offered any lesson, it was that U.S. troops could well become involved if events spiraled. When Clark returned, he began advocating for Congress to act, though he could not speak publicly about the classified operation. He found the process slow and arduous, as few congressmen knew or cared about Angola.

Yet Clark could take advantage of the broader political climate. In 1975, the United States was still reeling from the tumultuous years of the Vietnam era. The Pentagon Papers had revealed the political calculations that led to a decade of lost lives, and Watergate had shaken confidence in the office of the president. At the same time, the Church Committee was conducting hearings into past covert operations and the abuses of the CIA.

This gave Clark a wedge. His fellow young senators and congressmen elected amid antiwar protests chafed at the way the Angolan intervention had moved quietly through the committees and warned this could be a backdoor into a new Vietnam. Older politicians took issue with the Ford administration’s mishandling of congressional inquiries into the matter and the perceived arrogance of Kissinger. With the public harboring a deep suspicion of executive intentions and the direction of foreign policy, action on Angola also had the potential to be politically popular.

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Clark pounced, introducing an amendment to a foreign aid bill that would disallow actions in Angola without direct congressional approval. Another young senator, John Tunney of California, added his own amendment to the military appropriations bill that would bar funds for future operations and reduce the next year’s budget by $33 million, roughly what had already been spent in Angola. Congressional opinion began to coalesce behind both amendments at the end of 1975, though a handful of liberal Cold Warriors like Hubert Humphrey hesitated to openly back these efforts because of concerns about the Soviet and Cuban presence in Angola.

Pushing the ball across the goal line required one last element: a problematic ally. South Africa, unwittingly provided this piece of the puzzle when it intervened on behalf of the anti-communists to prevent the rise of an unfriendly MPLA regime on its northern border. While the nascent anti-apartheid movement lacked the political power it would acquire in the 1980s, South Africa was already an international pariah. UNITA’s willingness to work with the white minority state further soured Americans on their cause. As the Clark and Tunny amendments advanced, one representative wryly noted that anyone voting in favor of the Angolan debacle “should get ready to draw retirement.”

By January of the new year, both houses had approved the amendments before conservative advocates of the Cold War and presidential prerogative were able to mobilize a response. Without American funds, the conflict fizzled. South Africa withdrew and Savimbi retreated into a regional guerrilla war, allowing the MPLA to claim limited control of the country. Pundits predicted a new, more active foreign policy role for the Congress.

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Yet rather than heralding a new era, legislative activism against covert operations quickly receded. Public interest faded along with news coverage. More importantly, conservatives, including presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan, claimed that Angola showed the United States had grown weak.

Three years after legislative action on Angola, the United States chose to support the mujahideen’s fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with congressional support. This push benefited from the absence of some of the most progressive senators on foreign policy — including Tunney and Clark, who lost reelection bids in 1976 and 1978. Even the Clark Amendment barely lasted a decade, repealed in 1985 — the same year, oddly, that the last of the Boland Amendments passed, restricting presidential aid to the Nicaragua contras. Members of both parties had worried the Clark Amendment unfairly limited the power of the president. The United States ended up pouring weapons into Angola’s decades-long civil war until the end of the Cold War.