Book contents
4 - Conflicts and confusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
Summary
The silent majority of the Portuguese people must wake up and actively defend itself from the totalitarian extremisms growing in the shadows.
General Spínola, provisional president of Portugal (September 10, 1974)No one should be in any doubt, and much less the Armed Forces Movement, that the true and only enemy of democracy and the spirit of the 25th of April is reaction and its agents.
Communiqué of the Fifth Division of the general staff of the Armed Forces Movement (September 25, 1974)Under the false flag of liberty, there are being prepared new forms of slavery.
General Spínola on his resignation (September 30, 1974)Popular vigilance and the vigilance of the Armed Forces Movement must always be present to unmask all those that do not wish to see democracy consolidated in Portugal.
Colonel Vasco Gonçalves, prime minister (October 5, 1974)As Cord Meyer, the CIA station chief in London at the time put it: “When the revolution occurred in Portugal the US was out to lunch; we were completely surprised.” The US ambassador in Lisbon was an elderly and amiable lawyer, Stuart Nash Scott, from the east coast establishment without diplomatic experience. He was in the Azores visiting the US base there when the coup occurred. Since Lisbon airport was closed he decided to go on to Boston to attend a class reunion at Harvard Law School.
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- Information
- The Making of Portuguese Democracy , pp. 66 - 95Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995