In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

Business and Money [209]
commercial C-130, without success. Such planes are expensive--one
million dollars rent for three months without pilots-and of course
impossible to insure commercially for use in an Angolan bush war.
They also require specially trained crews, which we were unable to
locate for "mercenary" service.
But from August on, the airspace between Kinshasa and the
FNLA/UNIT A bases was busy with smaller planes flown by Portuguese
Angolan pilots. These planes, belonging to businesses which
had operated in Angola (DeBeers among others), were simply comandeered
by the CIA in the FNLA's name, and put into service
flying arms into Angola. This unorthodox source of air cargo was so
economical the CIA encouraged its extension. Word went out to
Portuguese still in Luanda that the beneficent Americans would pay
s30,ooo to any pilot who managed to skyjack a planeload of MPLA
arms and bring it to Kinshasa. Eventually the CIA's little air force
controlled nine stolen aircraft, including one Aztec, one Cessna 172,
one Cessna 180, one Cessna 310, a Rockwell Turbocommander, one
Mooney, two Fokker F-27s, and one Allouette III helicopter. Another
F-27 was leased from Mobutu's commercial air wing, and the
Lusaka station managed to hire a Viscount for s106,ooo plus operating
costs. These eight planes hauled much of the 1,500 tons of material
from Kinshasa into Angola, with a periodic assist from Mobutu's
C-13os and South African C-13os.
In Kinshasa, efforts to assemble a navy capable of interdicting
shipping between Luanda and Cabinda and supporting coastal infantry
action were equally ingenjous but much less effective. The two
high-performance Swifts were offloaded from the American Champion
directly onto the Congo River at Matadi and CIA maritime
experts turned them over to Zairians who, it was thought, had had
experience with similar craft on Lake Tanganyika. The CIA maritime
team included on1y one French-speaker, an officer who had
graduated from the agency's French language school in July 1975
with an elementary rating. The turnover was effected, at least in the
sense that the agency officers returned to Kinshasa and the Zairians
headed the Swifts downriver at full throttle. Six weeks later both
boats were inoperative from abuse and sloppy maintenance, and the
maritime officers returned to Matadi in a vain attempt to get them
back in shape.
Bypassing CIA bureaucracy, the Kinshasa station managed to