The “friendly” government was hardly any better than the Houthi. After all, Hadi was the end result of the same Arab Spring uprising that brought Morsi to power in Egypt. They may have been friendly to Obama but were not friendly to America.
There are lots of indications that they were playing both sides of the fence. Sucking up American dollars as they were looking the other way as Al Qeada attacked the Houthi.