In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

{60) IN S E ARCH OF ENEMIES
the man home, only to learn the hard way that he was a friend
of George Costello. Costello had arranged his contract and was
determined to keep him in Luanda at all costs.
I was getting an idea of what life would be like, running the
Angolan Task Force.
As for the physical space for the task force, the desks, telephones,
typewriters, safes, and the people to man it, Costello told me to see
the chief of support. But as I left Costello's office, he fired a parting
shot-"Don't spend a lot of time worrying about desks and people.
Just keep writing answers to those cables."
I scarcely knew the chief of support 1
who had been brought to the
division by Potts while I was in Vietnam. He was a sallow chap it
turned out-a GS 15 bucking for promotion in a GS 16 job. He had
spent most of his career in the Middle East, where Potts had known
him for many years.
"They're not ready yet," he snapped, when I asked where my
offices were to be. "We're working on it. Don't worry about it.
You're going to have a beautiful vault, but it'll be a few days. These
things take time." His voice became belligerent: "You just got back
from a long leave so don't start bitching at me about your office space
already!" He had a fat man's wheeze, compounded by the large cigar
he was trying to chew while he yelled.
"No problem. But I've got to have a place to sit now." I held up
the cables.
"You go over to Horn and Central. They've got lots of room.
They'll find a place for you." Horn and Central was the branch
which handled Central Africa, including Angola.
But Horn and Central knew how to play the space game. They
tried to send me back to the chief of support and when I balked, I
was waved vaguely toward the outer fringes of the branch. They were
overcrowded, the Hom and Central chief said, but maybe someone
was on leave, or something.
I stood in the middle of the Horn and Central offices with the
cables in my hand and reflected. No one was on leave. Secretaries
shouldn't be displaced because of their typewriters and supplies.
Reports officers tended to be surrounded by their own special
files and also were nearly always overworked. In a corner was an
officer I had once replaced overseas, years ago. He had never
been overworked a day in his life that I knew of, but he was a
section chief. Behind the next partition was a young officer who