In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

Saigon to Washington l37]
a program to support Savimbi and Roberto. This is big, the biggest
thing in Africa Division since the Congo. We have $14 million, and
we've already been sending some arms over by airplane. We are only
sending arms to Kinshasa to replace equipment Mobutu is sending
into Angola from his own stocks. The idea is to balance off the
MPLA, militarily, until elections are held in October."
I listened intently, scarcely able to believe my ears. Costello was
telling me we were launching another covert paramilitary operation.
He went on: "Potts and Carl Bantam are buried under stacks of
IMMEDIATE cables and that's where you come in." My mind was
bouncing around. Carl Bantam? He would be the new deputy division
chief, the second in command. I didn't like the tie-in between
myself and stacks of cables. That sounded like a paper-pushing desk
job.
Costello told me the DDO* had just ordered the formation of a
task force to run this program; my mind leaped ahead. I projected
weeks of frenetic activity, rushing up and down the halls with IMME­
DIATE and FLASH cables, with a packed suitcase behind my desk for
instant travel on special missions to Africa and Europe. Or perhaps
they were going to send me out to run some part of the program in
the field. Over the phone Costello had mentioned travel.
T_~e CIA's headqu~rters_s.t_ructure is geared to adjust to the
world's endless crises .... _Ovemight a sl~pylfiite -desk,' 'perhaps occupied
for years by a succession of interim junior officers from the
career trainee program, becomes a bustling hub of activity for two
dozen people. In 1960, a small, quiet office handling several central
African countries suddenly became the Congo Task Force and then,
as the Congo crisis dragged on for years, the Congo Branch. The
Cuban Task Force eventually became the Cuban Operations Group.
The Libyan Task Force in 1973 faded almost as quickly as it was
assembled. A task force supporting a serious paramilitary program
would normally have a good GS 16 at its head, with a senior GS 15
as its deputy chief, and twenty-five to one hundred people on its staff,
including half a dozen senior case officers to write the cables and
memos, sit in on the endless planning sessions, and undertake the
numerous individual missions that inevitably arose.
•Deputy director of operations, the man in charge of all CIA covert operations; at
this time Bill Nelson, who had previously been chief of East Asia.