In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

IN SEARCH OF ENEVIIES
em United States alone, sending sample messages back to headquarters.
But the cryptic, reserved recommendation stirred my curiosity.
I took five minutes to glance at her file and read the last two fitness
reports, and then I asked friends about her professional development.
After our collaboration in 1972, Laura had been assigned overseas.
Her chief of station was a rising young officer with a reputation for
preferring operations that included available women. Before going to
the post he had persuaded the front office to give him the cover slot
for a young woman officer and he had scurried about interviewing
the various candidates, settling on Laura Holiday. He miscalculated.
For Laura, liberation meant the freedom to say "no" as well as "yes."
The COS was peevish, their working relationship was affected and
he gave her a critical evaluation in her fitness report. There was
nothing more to it. I accepted Laura on the task force, happy to have
her.
Another agency minority has it made. Second-generation officers,
generally with the sponsorship of their high-ranking fathers, have
been coming into the agency in increasing numbers. Eileen Ranklin
was such a person. She was twenty-four and had already been onboard
for three years, although the normal age for hiring case officers
is about twenty-five. An exception had been made for her because she
spoke good French, and also because her father was a GS 18 division
chief. Another former division chiefs daughter of the same age was
already serving in West Africa as a case officer, under cover as a State
Department stenographer. Eileen Ranklin and four other secondgeneration
officers were considered for the task force. Ranklin turned
us down but three joined us. A fourth person, the young widow of
an agency paramilitary officer, was also hired, as the agency family
took care of its own.
While the task force was shaping up, arms and supplies were of
course flowing steadily to Angola. Early on in these logistical doings,
I had a nasty surprise-the CIA did not have a competent office to
plan and arrange arms shipments. The office existed on paper in the
Special Operations Group, but it was not staffed with people truly
qualified for the work. Its staff of retired army, air force, and navy
personnel, plus a sprinkling of younger one-tour military officers,
who were originally hired on contract by the agency for paramilitary
assignments in Southeast Asia, was surpisingly inept at the hard,
detailed planning required for a war effort.