In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

[224) IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
went out approving it. Since it overlapped extensively with our other
activities, however, we became increasingly concerned at headquarters.
IAFEATURE airplanes were carrying these fighters into Angola.
They were being armed with IAFEATURE weapons. Their leaders met
with CIA officers at IAFEA TURE safehouses in Kinshasa to discuss
strategy and receive aerial photographs and briefings. It seemed
likely Roberto was using CIA funds to hire them. Two Englishmen,
Nick Hall and a Doctor Bedford, had been recruiting for Roberto
in England as early as October 1975. By late December their mercenaries
were trickling into Kinshasa and Angola. In January, over one
hundred Englishmen were fighting for the FNLA in northern Angola.
Their quality was exceptionally low, some had no previous
military training. In two cases London street sweepers were recruited
directly from their jobs and dispatched to Angola.
In New York, Florida, and California adventurers and publicity
seekers began grandstanding. One American named Bufkin appeared
on American television claiming to be a CIA agent and to
have fought in Korea and Vietnam. He contacted Roberto and then
flew to Kinshasa, where he paraded about the Continental Hotel in
a paracommando uniform with empty holsters on each hip. A halfdozen
Americans joined the British merceparies in Angola. Among
them were some serious, though misguided, individuals. A young
father of four, Daniel F. Gearhart, from Kensington, Maryland,
answered the call. A highly respected former CIA paramilitary
officer, George Bacon III, joined him. Neither would return alive.
Our nervousness about the publicity and exposure these mercenaries
were getting led to requests that Kinshasa station provide an
accounting of how IAFEA TURE funds were being used by Roberto.
Were the mercenaries on the CIA payroll? Kinshasa replied that it
was difficult to get an accounting from Roberto. In fact, we had
written the IAFEATURE project so accountings would not be required.
However, it was confirmed that the Englishmen were being
paid new hundred-dollar bills, just like those we were using to fund
Roberto.
Beginning in December 1976, headquarters began to get, we
thought, a better feeling for these mercenaries through operational
cables from Kinshasa. Agency officers flying in and out of northern
Angola took note of an Englishman named George Cullen, also
known as Costa Georgiu, who had somehow become Roberto's field