In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

IN SEARC H OF ENEMIES
tinued to lift twenty-five-ton loads of obsolete U.S. or untraceable
foreign weapons from Charleston, South Carolina, to Kinshasa,
where smaller planes took them into Angola. The USN American
Champiun saiktl frum Charles tun on August 30 with a cargo of arms
and equipment. Any "snags" were handled by a phone call from the
CIA to the White House, Pentagon, or State Department, and the
problem magically disappeared.
CIA officers, eventually eighty-three altogether, were dispatched
to the field, where they beefed up the Kinshasa, Luanda, Lusaka, and
Pretoria stations, and managed the air, ground, maritime, and propaganda
branches of the little war. An additional $10.7 million, authorized
by the president on August 20, 1975, for the purchase of more
arms, ammunition, and advisors for Angola, had brought our total
budget to s 24. 7 million.
The deadline was November n, 1975, when the Portuguese would
relinquish proprietorship of the colony to whichever movement controlled
the capital at that time.
The war was a seesaw of escalation. Momentum moved from side
to side, as the United States and Soviet Union delivered obsolete
weapons, then foreign troops, and eventually sophisticated systems
such as wire-guided rockets and late-model jet fighter bombers.
In early September the MPLA committed a devastating, ageless
weapon, the Russian 122 mm. rocket, and set the FNLA troops
running, until the MPLA swept back through Caxito where I had
been, and very nearly to Ambriz. Supplied by the Soviet Union, the
122 mm. rocket, as much as any one thing, eventually decided the
outcome of the civil war in Angola.
The working group puzzled over this rocket, unable to grasp its
effectiveness against the FNLA in Angola. On paper it appeared to
be an inaccurate, pre-World War II rocket, only slightly larger than
the 120 mm. and 4.2-inch mortars we had given the FNLA. Originally
designed as a siege weapon of only general accuracy, it had been
used by the Viet Cong to harass GVN-held cities in South Vietnam.
Two men could carry it through the jungle, fire it from a tripod of
crossed sticks, and flee empty-handed. In Angola its accuracy and
volume of fire were increased by the use of truck-mounted launchers,
called Stalin organs.
I interrupted the working group discussion to tell them about this
weapon, remembering the months in Tay Ninh when we were shelled
almost daily with 122 mm. rockets. "Think of the loudest clap of