In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

[58) IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
He didn't look any friendlier than he had sounded. "Why weren't
you in staff meeting?" he snarled .
.. Didn't Carl .. . "
"No Carl didn't anything. "
Costello calmed himself with a visib1e effort and waved some
cables at me. Things were happening, a lot of things. Potts was tied
up for the morning assisting the director in briefing the Office of
Management and Budget to get the s14 million released. People were
traveling, air transports were in flight.
Costello handed me the cables and I took hasty notes, writing
across their tops as he explained them. The first C-141 flight of arms
had gone out two days before. Two more C-141 flights were being put
together on a high-priority basis, the arms coming from agency
warehouses in Texas and the loads assembled in South Carolina. One
plane would leave Sunday, August 3. The agency's Office of Logistics
would handle most of the stateside coordination. Africa Divisionwith
the help of SOG, air force liaison, and the Office of Logistics
- had to plan the operation, hammer out the composition of the
load, and send a formal memorandum to the Pentagon requesting the
airplane. Cables had to be exchanged with Monrovia station in Liberia,
where the aircraft would refuel at Robertsfield, and with Kinshasa
where the cargo would be offloaded at nieltt. The Kinshasa
CIA station had its own problems: getting clearances for the flight,
while keeping it secret, procuring 30,000 pounds of fuel for the
plane's return, and arranging for Zairian army trucks to meet the
plane precisely on time.
The CIA maintains prepackaged stocks of foreign weapons for
instant shipment anywhere in the world. The transportation is normally
provided by the U.S. Air Force, or by private charter if the
American presence must be masked. Even tighter security can be
obtained by contracting with international dealers who will purchase
arms in Europe and subcontract independently to have them flown
into the target area. Often, the CIA will deliver obsolete American
weapons, arguing that World War II left so many scattered around
the world they are no longer attributable to the U.S. In the Angola
program, we obtained such obsolete weapons from the National
Guard and U.S. Army Reserve stores. Initially, U.S. Air Force C-130
transports picked up weapons from the CIA warehouse in San Antonio,
Texas, and delivered them to Charleston, South Carolina. U.S.