High Commissioner Coutinho, one of the seven leaders of the National Salvation Junta, openly distributed ex-Portuguese arms and military equipment to MPLA forces.[1][8][3] Edward Mulcahy, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the United States State Department, told Tom Killoran, the US Consul General in Angola, to congratulate the PMC, rather than the FNLA and the UNITA on their own and Coutinho, for Portugal's "untiring and protracted efforts" at a peace agreement.[3][9] US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger considered any government involving the pro-Soviet, communist MPLA, to be unacceptable, but US President Gerald Ford oversaw heightened aid to the FNLA.[10]