In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

[112) IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
come back. While I was in Kinshasa, I was in a difficult position,
having no control over my schedule, my transportation, and my
lodging. On the ground here, St. Martin was god. While it would
never do for me to return to headquarters with only a superficial
understanding of the FNLA, it was equally important to maintain
the amenities. In any contest St.· Martin would win. Colby, Nelson,
and Potts were sure to support their station chief.
The FNLA headquarters occupied a block-sized compound not
far from the embassy. It was surrounded by a high, bare brick wall.
In front of a sheet-iron gate stood a solitary guard in a shapeless
uniform. He held an old-looking FAL automatic rifle. Only after
considerable name-dropping were we permitted inside.
The inner compound was crowded with small brick buildings,
their screenless wooden doors and windows unpainted and in many
cases splintered and broken. Between the buildings ran narrow dirt
drives and walkways. The compound, I guessed had once been used
by a small trucking company or perhaps a produce wholesaler. Dozens
of people bustled from building to building, some wearing the
grey green uniforms of war, others in civvies and barefoot. For every
soldier there seemed to be several women and children. The sultry
air carried the smell of cassava root and open sewage. A truck laden
with people growled slowly through the gate, followed by a jeep filled
with soldiers.
The FNLA was rooted in the Kongo tribe. Once the greatest tribe
of the west African flank, when the Congo was splintered in the
nineteenth-century partitioning of Africa, the Kongo gave its name
to the Belgian Congo, the French Congo, and the mighty Congo
River. Portuguese slave traders conquered the tribe, and hundreds
of thousands of its sons and daughters were part of the flow of slaves
to Europe, Brazil, and North America. Despite subjugation by the
Portuguese, the Bakongo migrated freely across the superimposed
colonial borders, following economic opportunities and fleeing oppression.
In 1878 the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) of London was
received in Sao Salvadore, the historic capital of the Kongo nation,
by the Kongo king, Dom Pedro V. Thirty years later a BMS interpreter,
Miguel Neca9a, became the father of the modern Kongo
liberation movement. He was followed by other mission-educated
Kongo activists, who struggled to gain control of the Kongo chieftainship,
only to be thwarted as the Portuguese succeeded in main-