In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

CIA People Policies [77]
SOG sent us two men to plan the IAFEA TURE arms flights; one,
a Marine Corps major, who was doing a rotational tour of duty with
CIA, helped us greatly until he was sent on another priority mission
to Southeast Asia. The other, an old colleague of mine, Amie Hall,
had primary expertise as a lecturer about guerrilla patroling. He had
served one tour upcountry in Laos and a few months in Vietnam,
where he had helped with the final evacuation. None of which qualified
him for the job of planning our arms shipments.
Arnie Hall was popular in SOG, the image of a paramilitary
expert. Six inches shorter than I, his shoulders sloped three inches
on either side of mine and dropped straight down to a barrel girth
that bespoke of enormous physical power. A small round head sat
neckless on square shoulders, cropped with hair that was never more
than a quarter-inch long and mounted with a tiny, expressionless
face. I first met him in 1972 in the mid-career course at the "Farm,"*
when he often came to class playing his paramilitary role to the hilt,
wearing combat boots and an eighteen-inch jungle knife which he
would whet on a handstone during the lectures. We car-pooled together
and I soon learned it was all a splendid put-on; he had in fact
grown up in Philadelphia and had never even served in the infantry.
He had a humorously strange mind and spontaneously flipped out
in-character one-liners: "Gimme some C-4 and I'll get that truck Ol!t
of the way"; or " Next time that long-winded bastard lectures us I'm
going to slip some copper sulphate in his drawers." At other times
he would come out with something like "Nimium ne crede colorithere's
pimples under that mascara," and walk away, leaving you
wondering just what intellectual interests might be hiding behind the
knuckle-dragger facade.
After the marine major left on his mission, Amie worked as a
team with an African Division logistics officer-Price and Pride,
we called them- to plan the arms flights. Neither had ever been
to Africa. Even so, Price and Pride eventually became quite good
at tailoring loads of ammunition to fit the stream of C-141s we
kept launching.
There is something about an upcoming weekend that excites the
decision maker. Inevitably it was late Friday before we made the
decision to send another flight. Price and Pride paid the price, grous-
*Camp Perry, Virginia, the CIA training base.