Kagnew: The US Base Washington Never Mentioned at the UN

February 1975, the White House Situation Room. Ethiopia's military government wants American ammunition for its war in Eritrea, and Henry Kissinger tells the room: "The President asked me this morning what Eritrea is." By then the US Army had been in Asmara for 32 years. Kagnew Station, America's "chief listening post", sat on a hill above the city. This film follows it through the declassified records of the US government: the Joint Chiefs who wanted "a sort of military extra-territoriality" in 1948, the American delegates who never mentioned the base at the UN while Eritrea's future was decided, the 1953 agreement signed "in private", the NSA's secret dishes, the Senate investigators who found the pledges, and the weapons that paid the rent and were turned on Eritrea. Kissinger, 1973: "We used KAGNEW as an excuse." Every document in this film is linked below. Read them yourself. CHAPTERS 0:00 Kagnew Station, 1963 0:28 The question in the Situation Room 1:09 The radio on the hill 2:59 The offer 4:43 What the UN was told 7:38 The quote that isn't there 8:35 The deal 11:11 Little America 12:54 The dishes 14:21 Watching 15:31 November 1962 17:08 Eritreans knock 18:31 The rent 20:46 Bullets for empty rifles 24:11 The end of the base 26:20 The record KEY SOURCES FRUS 1945-1977, Office of the Historian: https://history.state.gov/historicald... JCS and Marshall, 1948: https://history.state.gov/historicald... "Maintenance our facilities Asmara", Oct 1948: https://history.state.gov/historicald... "Military extra-territoriality", Nov 1948: https://history.state.gov/historicald... NSC 19/5, 1949: https://history.state.gov/historicald... UN Ad Hoc Political Committee, 1950: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/... "Best possible terms for ourselves", 1952: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Telegram 610, "in private", 1953: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Base agreement, UNTS vol. 191 No. 2577: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publicati... CIA brief, 1960: https://archive.org/details/cia-readi... NSA, STONEHOUSE: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSA... Telegrams 232 and 237, Nov 1962: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Komer to Kennedy, 1962: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Tedla Bairu and the ELF, 1967: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Rostow to Johnson, 1967: https://history.state.gov/historicald... US Senate subcommittee report, 1970: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/C... US Embassy telegrams, 1970: https://archive.org/details/cia-readi... NSDM 231, 1973: https://history.state.gov/historicald... "We used KAGNEW as an excuse", 1973: https://history.state.gov/historicald... WSAG, 27 Feb 1975: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Scowcroft to Kissinger, 27 Feb 1975: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Kissinger and de Guiringaud, Dec 1976: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Kagnew seized, Apr 1977: https://history.state.gov/historicald... Oral histories (ADST): https://adst.org/Readers/Eritrea.pdf Army Corps of Engineers history: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Abiy Ahmed, Sept 2025: https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/4... Quote cards show the record's exact words. UN debate quotes are from UN summary records. Typeset pages are published transcripts of online-only FRUS volumes. Footage marked "comparison" is not Kagnew. CREDITS Footage (public domain): US Air Force, US Army Signal Corps, USIS/USIA, US Navy and Universal Newsreel films (National Archives); NASA films (archive.org). Photos: Kagnew veterans Daniel Minchen and Allen Smith; John Brantley (CC BY-SA 2.0); US State Department, US Army, Library of Congress, LBJ, Ford and Eisenhower libraries; 1970s EPLF photos via Wikimedia Commons. Map data: Natural Earth. Music: original score. Subscribe:    / @qushet