In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

[168] IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
frightened MPLA force were preparing their defense and stockpiling
the 122 mm. rockets, which had served them so well in September.
In Washington the CIA advised the working group that the highwater
mark had been reached. Without a substantial escalation of
commitment, including large amounts of money for arms, tactical
aircraft, antitank weapons, antiaircraft rockets, and larger numbers
of advisors, the outcome would favor the MPLA. Working group
members could not understand this assessment and suggested that
it was a CIA ploy to get more money.
After my return from Angola in late August, the headquarters
Angola Task Force quickly reached full strength, with a paramilitary
section, an intelligence-gathering section, a propaganda section, a
reports section, and a supporting staff of secretaries and assistants.
By working extra hours we were able to avoid going to twenty-fourhour
shifts, but the workload was staggering and the pace frantic.
For example, on September 4 alone, my notes refer to sixty-three
activities of importance, things like: write a paper on Kissinger's
meeting with the Zairian foreign minister; analyze a David Ottaway
article in the Washington Post about American involvement in Angola;
discuss UNIT A representatives in New York (funded by the
CIA) who were meeting with American journalists; attend a working
group meeting; attend a personnel management committee meeting;
and prepare instructions for a task force officer to hand-carry to
Kinshasa, things too sensitive to be put in writing in the cable
traffic.*
*Much CIA business is communicated to and from the field by the "back channel"
-hand-carried notes, pouched single copy, official-informal letters, and verbal messages.
This is consciously done to minimize the number of people inside the CIA
who know of a given operation or situationt and to communicate ultrasensitive
messages without leaving a written record.
One example: in 1972 the CIA station in Nairobi included a black communicator
who would routinely see all of the station cable traffic. That traffic included highly
sensitive messages about a Nairobi/Dar-es-Salaam operation in which black Americans
traveling in East Africa were surveilled by outside agents and through the
Kenyan security service. It was felt by the Nairobi chief of station that the black
CIA communicator could not be trusted with knowledge of this operation and his
urgent replacement by a white was necessary. The COS was not about to put that
in writing, however, not even in an official-informal letter. Instead, he returned to
headquarters on consultations and quietly arranged for the young man's transfer.