In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

(82] IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
They're sitting out in McLean with nothing to do. Also, there's
Bryan Cassidy up in New York; he was outstanding when we were
working on the Kurds in Iraq. And we'll have to get Ray Chiles from
Rome ... at least for a couple of months. He is beautiful at this sort
of thing." Rodriguez, Manus, and Cassidy were writers who supple·
mented their incomes by doing part·time contract work for the CIA.
Ray Chiles was a GS 14 staffer with experience in covert action
projects.
"All for the fourth force?"
"No, no! We've got to get the FNLA talking to the press in
Kinshasa, and UNIT A working with the newspaper in Lusaka.
We've got reporters in our pockets in both these places and Mobutu
and Kaunda aren't likely to complain when we plant articles in their
newspapers. Then, we can take articles from those newspapers and
have our agents in Europe pick them up and put them in the world
press. We'll need officers in Kinshasa, Lusaka, London, Portugal,
New York . .. "
He leaned back and smiled. "This is one PSYCH operation I'm
going to enjoy! We'll call it IA PHOENIX. You know, the bird that
keeps burning itself and rising up from the ashes-like the FNLA
coming back from its defeats ... IAPHOENIX, I like that!"
I stared at him in disbelief. PHOENIX had been the cryptonym for
the agency's terrorist program in Vietnam. Even the agency claimed
PHOENIX had killed over twenty thousand people; the Vietnamese
government claimed twice as many. Colby himself had designed and
managed this program, before he became director. During the spring
of 1975 he had tried to explain it to Congress, and the press had
worked it over.
Bubba seemed not to have heard of the PHOENIX program. He
looked momentarily confused, then brightened. "Well, we'll call it
IACADENCE," he said as I left.
On Saturday afternoon, August 2 , Carl Bantam called to say they
had gotten someone else for the task force. He seemed pleased. "It's
Paul Foster,'' he said. "Foster is really outstanding! A GS 13 and
thirty-four years old, but outstanding! He was on the Laos Task
Force with me and spent five years upcountry in Laos. He can really
get things done. We tried to get him to run this task force originally
but East Asia Division wouldn't let him go. Nelson backed down,