In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

Kinshasa
St. Martin's living room was a busy place. Station personnel
dropped by to confer with him and chat with me. Africans and
Europeans, obviously agents and developmental contacts, came and
went, passing each other in the foyer or sitting at different points in
the living room while St. Martin hopped back and forth.
Most who entered St. Martin's villa would be aware that he was
CIA. This flagrant exposure of agents to each other and to other CIA
station personnel scarcely shocked me-it was normal for most CIA
stations. I was a little surprised to find, in the middle of the crowded
living room, an untended, wide-open briefcase-I wasn't sure which
CIA officer had left it there-with sensitive IAFEATURE cables right
on top.
Separate offices, housing, social habits, and the custom of inheriting
the house, car, and "friends" of one's predecessor make it rare
that any CIA officer is known in the official community of the host
country as anything other than "Mr. CIA" or "one of them. "
Most case officers accept this notoriety with a perverse pleasure.
Many operate as though they wore invisible badges, proclaiming,
"rm CIA, talk to me." This cavalier approach to cover became the
vogue under Allen Dulles, the gentleman agent of Vv orld War II,
whose superficial operations in neutral Switzerland inclined him
permanently to underestimate the realities and consequences of intelligence
operations. Nothing pleased Dulles more than to be known
to the world as the CIA director. And he was fond of holding
regional meetings overseas, rather like sales conferences, with his
station chiefs. While abroad, in insecure areas, he made a great show
of turning up the volume on radios or even taking conversations into
the bathroom where a running shower could provide security against
"bugs."* From these histrionics it was logical to conclude that while
Dulles was completely indifferent to his field officers' covers, he did
not fancy being quoted in police or opposition reporting.
Senior officers competed to emulate the style of the gentleman spy,
and younger officers could not be expected to keep a separate discipline.
In Kinshasa in the late 1960s the chief of station would hold
large cocktail parties for Zairian liaison officials and members of the
diplomatic community. He required every member of his CIA sta-
*Modem technology now easily penetrates the sound of a running shower, to record
voices.