The present article purports to analyse the reaction of the United States government to the events that occurred in Portugal on 25 April 1974, as well as in the days that followed. The focus, therefore, will not fall on the entire process of the Portuguese political transition but rather on one specific day and its immediate consequences. There was consensus regarding two aspects of the day’s events. The first was its nature as a popular and nonviolent celebration, without casualties. Undoubtedly contributing to this generalized view were pictures of soldiers mingling with the population and red carnations in the barrels of rifles. The image is so powerful that the revolt will forever be known as the Carnation Revolution.

The second point of agreement revolved around the surprise and prior ignorance of the United States concerning the revolt. According to Cord Meyer, head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station in London at the time: ‘When the revolution occurred in Portugal, the US was out to lunch; we were completely surprised’.² In two interviews for the Columbia University Oral History Collection, on 22 February and 29 March 1975, Stuart Nash Scott, the United States ambassador to Lisbon in 1974, reiterated the idea of surprise, and not just for the United States. Scott stated that the atmosphere in the previous weeks suggested that something might happen, but no one was able to predict the events of 25 April.³ Certainly, the reasons for the surprise and unawareness can be found in the words of Henry Kissinger, the United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor during the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford: ‘We knew next to nothing about any of the personalities involved’.⁴ There are nuances to this second consensus which shall be scrutinized later, but this much is certain: one of the problems Washington faced with events of this type was that the United States typically established relationships almost exclusively between governments, which provided them with contacts at the highest level among governmental circles, but hardly ever allowed for equivalent relationships outside those same circles. And the Carnation Revolution was generated outside government circles.⁵

Relations between the United States and Portugal since Second World War were essentially based on the importance of the Lajes military base in the Azores. A crucial base during and after the conflict for refuelling planes flying from the other side of the Atlantic, its use by the Allies was essential for Lisbon to be on the right side of history in 1945, allowing it to be a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. Portugal was never an important member of the organization or considered a first-rate ally by the United States, but during the Cold War, the dictatorial governments of António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano ensured the country’s stability and its firm connection to the western side of the conflict between Americans and Soviets.⁶ In other words, Portugal was part of the group of countries for which a dictator was considered preferable to a democratic system with unreliable results.⁷ However, one issue was a point of tension between Lisbon and Washington: the colonial question. Since 1945, the United States had opposed the preservation of colonial empires. As a country fully convinced of the virtues of free trade and the convenience of extending its benefits in the global order, it could not support the maintenance of structures that worked in the opposite direction. Despite this, Portugal entered the 1970s with a colonial empire in Africa - mainly composed of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau - which, far from being a source of resources and power, kept the metropolis mired in colonial wars that drained the country’s material and human resources, and also elicited rejection from European states, in addition to the nature of its political system. Using the old argument that Portugal was not involved in colonial wars but rather protecting the territories in question from communism, represented by various insurgencies, Lisbon sought to secure American support, mainly through armament. And the United States refused to sell arms to Portugal for use in the colonies. Regarding this issue, there was a moment of great tension between the two countries in the context of the so-called Yom Kippur War between Israel and an alliance of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria, which took place from 6 to 25 October 1973. The United States faced a refusal from European allies to allow the use of their territories for American air missions supporting Israel, and initially, Portugal also refused to allow the use of the Lajes Base unless it received armaments to use in the colonies in return. This position led to a harsh threat message from Richard Nixon to Marcelo Caetano:

‘I must tell you in all frankness, Mr. Prime Minister, that your failure to help at this critical time will force us to adopt measures which cannot but hurt our relationship. If we have to look to alternative routes, this will be a factor which will be recalled should the eventualities to which your foreign minister refers actually take place’.⁸

The eventualities referred to by the American president were an oil boycott and terrorist activities. All things considered, the threat had the expected effects, and on the same day, 13 October, the Portuguese Foreign Minister informed the United States Embassy in Lisbon that Marcelo Caetano had greenlighted the use of the Lajes Base for support flights to Israel in the ongoing war in the Middle East.⁹

Washington was not willing to tolerate Portugal’s internal affairs affecting the resolution of issues deemed priority, and Portugal occupied a very secondary place in the concerns of the White House and the State Department in 1973-74.

In this context, Stuart Nash Scott presented his credentials in Lisbon on 23 January 1974. A Harvard Law School graduate and a lawyer in New York, he had no connection with the diplomatic career until he was offered a position in the State Department. This offer coincided with Henry Kissinger’s arrival at the helm of the Department on 22 September 1973. As Scott himself explained, Kissinger decided that someone he trusted should occupy the position that had been offered to him, and as an alternative, he was presented with the embassy in Lisbon. Accepting this offer involved a true immersion in Portuguese affairs, which Scott knew nothing about. Among these matters, two in particular stood out: the renewal of the agreement for the use of the Lajes Base, which would expire in February 1974, and the colonial question. In his first meeting with Rui Patrício, then Portugal’s Foreign Minister, the latter conveyed all his complaints about the lack of American support in the conflicts in Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau. Business as usual, therefore, in Luso-American relations. To the extent that Scott himself stated, ‘at that time no one was contemplating the April 25 rebellion’.¹⁰ A month after presenting his credentials, the new ambassador became aware of the publication of the bookPortugal and the Futureby General António de Spínola, then Vice-Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, headed by General Francisco da Costa Gomes. Apart from his position, Spínola might be considered the most prestigious figure in the country. In his book, he championed an idea that could only be viewed in a favourable light by the United States: that the wars in Africa could not be won on the battlefield and that the solution ought to be political, proposing the establishment of a federation that recognised the right to self-determination of African territories. This solution may seem only logical but it went against the government policy defended by the Prime Minister, Marcelo Caetano, and the President of the Republic, Admiral Américo Tomás. In his telegrams, Scott described the book’s rift in government circles and among the military. In the latter case, mid-ranking officers unequivocally sided with Spínola, while the higher ranks, more conservative, vehemently opposed it. Thus, a situation arose in which Caetano’s government began to rely on the more conservative military while initiating a policy of repression against all those deemed of doubtful loyalty. As Scott acknowledged in his 5 March telegram, this crisis was inexistent as far as all those depending on the media for information were concerned, alluding to the severe information censorship imposed by the government. Nevertheless, the crisis continued, and António de Spínola and Francisco da Costa Gomes were removed and replaced by personalities loyal to the government. On March 16, the military garrison of Caldas da Rainha, located 100 kilometres from Lisbon, mutinied and began a march on the capital. The march was aborted by security forces and the military, superior in number due to the lack of support for the mutineers.¹¹ A month before 25 April, it seemed evident that the United States Embassy and the American government were well aware of the state of crisis in Portugal. This is undoubtedly what Scott refers to when he states:

‘From that point on […] the middle of March 1974 - although nobody predicted precisely what was going to happen, and a lot of people thought that this problem, like a lot of prior problems, would be papered over, our Embassy at least clearly believed that things could not go on as they were’.¹²

A country closely following the events was Spain, not in the least the United States ambassador in Madrid, Admiral Horacio Rivero Jr. Rivero, who saw fit to inform Washington that three Spanish newspapers,Informaciones,La Vanguardia, andArriba, had published different interviews with Spínola. The content of these is highly interesting. The General had sent Caetano a copy of his book, with a dedication, eight days before its publication, so the Prime Minister was perfectly aware of the book and its contents and did not disallow its release. Spínola admitted that he had spent two and a half years writing it and that it had nothing to do with the Caldas da Rainha uprising, an event that, according to theInformacionescorrespondent, resulted in the death of two soldiers and the wounding of fifteen others. The Portuguese press had not been authorized to report on the uprising. The same correspondent also wrote about two issues that caught Rivero’s attention. The first was that the United States government had authorized the revolutionary government of Guinea-Bissau to open an office in New York to participate in United Nations debates, which went against Lisbon’s African policy. The second, more interesting considering the forthcoming 25 April, was that a thousand young officers of the Portuguese army had signed a draft declaration, not yet in circulation, demanding President Américo Tomás democratize the country’s institutions as a pre-requisite for solving the problems posed by the wars in Africa. In addition to the information conveyed by the three Spanish newspapers, Rivero relayed in his telegram that a member of the embassy had met with Novais, a correspondent for the French newspaperLe Mondein Spain and Portugal, who the Portuguese embassy had advised not to travel to Lisbon as requested byLe Mondeheadquarters in Paris. Novais had no doubt that the pressure from young officers on the Portuguese government would persevere, especially when, according to the French journalist, they had Spínola as a role model.¹³ On the same day that Rivero sent his telegram, Scott sent his own assessment from Lisbon. For the first time, there is a reference to clandestine meetings of mid-ranking officers, which the embassy had not been able to verify, and which would have been the origin of a document signed by the movement, advocating a very similar approach to Spínola’s book. Scott noted that the text did not contain revolutionary or threatening language. Along with this first document, a second one was circulating, referring to the repression among the military: ‘Some of our comrades have been arrested… for belonging to the officer’s movement […] we shall not permit, evidently, such a situation to continue… we are waiting for the Government to reconsider…’. According to Scott, a substantial, though not majority, number of mid-ranking officers were part of the movement. The ambassador’s conclusion was that, although the political situation was tense, ‘Portugal is outwardly calm’.¹⁴

Given all this information, it is Henry Kissinger who finally decides to send instructions to Lisbon, and they are unequivocal:

‘An approach by the USG to the GOP in support of the Spinola thesis would not in our view, contribute to a more flexible Portuguese policy in Africa. However, we shall bear in mind the possibility of some such approach at a later date.

We believe that in the meantime the embassy would do well not to pursue this theme, even on a personal basis, with Portuguese officials. We should be careful not to appear to be involved in any way in the political sorting-out process now underway in Portugal’.¹⁵

This aloofness is surprising coming from the man who, just seven months earlier, had demonstrated extreme aggressiveness towards Chile. It seems fair to infer that the perception of a communist threat, which had led him to intervene in Chile, was absent regarding Portugal. Washington had not received any information suggesting that the tension in Portugal was related to communism. Instead, it seemed to be an internal matter about how to resolve Portugal’s colonial problems in Africa, something that, due to Washington’s position on this issue, made the United States more aligned with Spínola and the young officers’ movement than with Tomás and Caetano. Hence Kissinger’s tolerance towards the matter, undoubtedly concerned with more substantial matters related to the Cold War and with no inclination to be distracted by an issue he likely considered minor.

The one who responded forcefully to Kissinger was Scott, who pointed out to his superior that the recommended stance was a blatant contradiction to the policy the United States had defended regarding Portugal in previous years:

‘If one accepts the official GOP fiction that Portuguese Africa is an integral part of Portugal, we have in fact been intervening in Portuguese domestic affairs for at least the last thirteen years by our public and private advocacy of self-determination for Portuguese Africa.

For years we have been telling Africa, our allies and interested Americans (especially in Congress) that our position on self-determination has been reiterated to the GOP on appropriate occasions […] Now appears the Spinola book, in effect advocating self-determination, written not by a Mario Soares or a Soapy Williams but by a top Portuguese military leader and hero from within the establishment with a solidly rightist, even fascist past. Even if Spinola could be at least partially faulted for ambition and flamboyance, his ideas could not be discounted or ignored once there were given powerful support by the country’s top military leader, Costa Gomes, whose integrity is not open to question.

For the US to withhold at least partial and private endorsement of Spinola’s ideas would be to deny ourselves the use of argumentation having impeccable Portuguese credentials which supports our long-held policy. With the foregoing considerations in mind, we urge the Department to reconsider the position outlined in para 2 reftel’.¹⁶

The last sentence of the telegram refers to the second paragraph of Kissinger’s previously cited telegram. This disagreement between the ambassador and the Secretary of State would be the first of many and would eventually lead to Scott being replaced by Frank Carlucci on 9 December 1974, although he remained in his post until 12 January 1975. Apart from the divergence regarding the policy to be followed, two details stand out regarding the lack of attunement between the American embassy in Lisbon and the events that were about to unfold. The first is the fact that Scott praised Spínola not only for being a military hero but also for being a man of the ‘system’, right-wing, and with a fascist past. The second is his dismissal of Mário Soares as a nobody, even though the latter was the leader of Portuguese socialism and would be a key figure in Portugal’s transition.

When the events of 25 April occurred, the American documents from that day, now declassified, reveal the embassy’s ignorance about who was behind them. They show no direct knowledge and simply repeat the information provided by news agencies and the rebels through their communication channels. Some rebels called themselves the ‘Armed Forces Movement’, the same movement Scott referred to in his telegram of 22 March, which stated its intention to establish a National Salvation Junta to govern the country, free it from the rule of Caetano and Tomás, and reassess colonial policy in Africa.¹⁷ These documents also show that there was no concern or urgency in Washington. Henry Kissinger himself, in a meeting on the morning of the 25th with top State Department officials and Arthur Hartman, head of European affairs, allowed himself to address the issue lightly: ‘I hope you won’t deny me the opportunity to speak about a coup d’état in Europe. It’s not every day I get that chance (laughter)’.¹⁸

The most striking attitude is that of Scott. The American ambassador was in the Azores on an official visit, on his way to the annual meeting of the Harvard Law Association, of which he was president, scheduled for 26 and 27 April. In his words:

‘[O]n Thursday morning the 25th, I was awakened by a call from my deputy chief of mission in Lisbon, saying that there had been a successful coup; that Caetano and President Tomas had been put on an airplane for Madeira, and that the Lisbon Airport was closed to all incoming and outgoing traffic, including military and that I couldn’t even get back by flying to Spain and driving across the border, because the Spanish border was closed […] so I decided there was no point in sitting around the Azores, and I arranged through the commanding general of the American air base, General William Comstock, for my wife and myself to fly to the United States in an Air Force cargo plane […] So, I had my meetings in Cambridge on a Friday and Saturday, the 26th and 27th’.¹⁹

Scott did not return until the 28th. The main source of American diplomatic documents, Foreign Relations of the United States, considered there were no relevant documents for publication until 29 April.²⁰ However, there was indeed noteworthy documentation between 25 and 28 April. In Scott’s absence, it was Richard St. F. Post, the deputy chief of mission, who took charge of the legation and therefore responsible for informing Washington of the events. Post adds an important nuance to the argument about the lack of contact between the embassy and the Armed Forces Movement, as he later indicated: ‘In the five-man Junta, two were close of friends of mine, one was Costa Gomes […] he gave me a lot of information about the military situation which was quite accurate’.²¹ They had met in Angola, where Post was consul general and Costa Gomes commanded the Portuguese forces stationed there. Post acknowledges the importance of his role due to the ambassador’s absence: the United States policy towards Portugal would be determined by the information he provided to Washington.

Interestingly, when comparing what Post mentions in the interview with the telegrams he sent to the State Department, contact with Costa Gomes is not mentioned, and at the same time, Post states that no one from the Junta had contacted the embassy. From this, it can be gathered that there was never an official contact, only confidential communication between two old friends. The three messages Post sent to Kissinger on 26 April could not have been more optimistic: the Junta members are competent and respected professionals, they have effective control over the territory, the solution to colonial problems in Africa should be political, not military, and ‘present regime seems likely to be more favourable to US interests than its predecessor’.²² Kissinger’s response was to order the embassy to act according to the second paragraph of his telegram of 10 April, cited earlier.²³

In parallel with the information he received from the embassy, Kissinger also received analysis from intelligence agencies, which aligned with Post’s stance. The CIA memorandum that the Secretary of State received on the 26th and communicated to Nixon on the 29th described the coup of the 25th as ‘superbly organized and well-led’ and, even more relevant, that

‘At present, the coup would seem not to have put US interests in danger, and it could possibly provide some near-term benefits for the United States - for example, a possible lessening or end to Portuguese pressure for US weapons for use in the African territories’.²⁴

Thus, it can be concluded that the events of 25 April 1974 in Portugal were not an immediate source of concern to the United States. On the contrary, these events promised to solve the main point of contention between Washington and Lisbon: Portugal’s colonial presence in Africa, the ensuing wars, the requests for American arms intended for these wars, and the connection between all this and the United States presence at the Lajes military base in the Azores.

In light of this, the writer of these lines fully agrees with Jussi Hanhimäki in that the development of the Carnation Revolution became a concern for Henry Kissinger only when the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) began to integrate the provisional governments.²⁵ Portugal had six provisional governments between 16 May 1974, and 22 July 1976, and the PCP was already part of the first one. This was completely in line with the specific circumstances of the country and its political forces, but clashed with the fundamental idea of thedétenteas understood within the Western bloc of the Cold War. Thedétente, as shrewdly analyzed by Mario del Pero, was an essentially conservative project aimed at consolidating the map of Europe resulting from Second World War. In no way whatsoever did it include the rehabilitation of communism as a governing ideology in the West. This excluded the participation of communist parties in Western governments, as seen in the case of Portugal and as might also happen in Italy if the so-calledcompromesso storicobecame a reality. It was the communist participation in the government, and the fear that the PCP might carry out a coup similar to the one that took place in Prague in 1948, that put Portugal under the focus of American attention and concern.²⁶

The United States Secretary of State was a man incapable of considering the internal conditions of states and understanding, in light of those, the decisions made. Everything was analysed through the global prism of the Cold War and its mental, practical, and theoretical standards. This led to confrontations with his two ambassadors in Lisbon, first with Scott and then with Frank Carlucci, precisely because they analysed the internal factors of the Portuguese situation and recommended, as the best antidote against the PCP, assistance programs to Portugal that would help strengthen non-communist elements.²⁷ Carlucci clearly explains the situation: ‘He [Kissinger] had a worldwide perspective; I had a particular problem to deal with’.²⁸ Kissinger’s analysis was simple: ‘I did not see how moderates could be strengthened by aid for radicals’.²⁹ The outlook of the American ambassadors was shared by most Western European states and especially by the socialist parties, who understood that the most effective way to ensure security against the communism represented by the PCP was to strengthen the Portuguese socialists led by Mário Soares.³⁰

If we follow Richard Post’s explanations, Kissinger did not relent in his positions until 11 December 1974, when he sent a telegram to Lisbon informing them that he accepted providing assistance to the new Portuguese government. It was Post’s birthday, and that evening he attended a dinner at the French ambassador’s residence, where Soares was the guest of honor. At the cocktail before dinner, Post approached Soares, the Foreign Minister, to give him the news: ‘Today is my birthday and I just got the best present I could possibly have gotten and that is a telegram from the State Department agreeing to provide an aid program for Portugal’. At the end of the dinner, during the toasts, Soares raised his glass and, after toasting the French President, added: ‘And while we are all standing, I’d like you to join me in a toast to Mr. Post whose birthday it is today’.³¹