In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

Our Little-Known Allies [97]
wasn't a very big war yet, but everyone was underestimating what
we were getting into. Ambriz was seven hundred kilometers from
Kinshasa over bad roads. There wasn't enough fuel, even if they had
trucks. So far, Mobutu's air force was doing most of the hauling, but
he couldn't be expected to risk his C-13os in Angola for long. And
his DC-4 couldn't handle it all. Mobutu expected us to get some
C-13os over there fast.
And some boats. Potts had just given Avery permission to add a
couple of the agency's high performance Swift patrol boats* to the
shipload of arms, to patrol the lower Congo River and attack coastal
shipping between Luanda and Cabinda.
I had been up and down the lower Congo River several times on
ocean freighters before there was regular commercial air traffic between
the United States and Central Africa, and once on a U.S. Navy
ship I steamed two hundred kilometers upriver to Matadi where the
channel was broken by falls. From there you rode electric trains
through the mountains to Kinshasa. All surf ace freight goes in by
this same route today. Near its mouth the river flows along the
Zaire/ Angola border, with the shipping channel actually in the Angolan
half, making this vital link with the outside world, like the
Benguela railroad, subject to Angolan control. Boats and coastal
steamers ply a lazy trade up and down the Atlantic coast, and agents
were reporting that the MPLA was constantly shipping arms from
the Congo (Brazzaville) to Luanda.*•
"And one more thing," Avery said, choosing his words carefully.
"The Kinshasa station has some problems. St. Martin is energetic
and imaginative. But sometimes he gets carried away with enthusiasm.
Headquarters should make its cables to Kinshasa crystal clear
to avoid misunderstandings. If possible, you should keep St. Martin
on a short leash. Jimmy Bartlett, the deputy COS, is steady as a rock.
That will help." Avery went on to suggest we keep the other mem·
hers of the Kinshasa station out of it; run it with temporary officers
*The Swift is a favorite CIA patrol craft of about fifteen meters, which the agency
used on Lake Tanganyika during the Congo operation of the 1960s, and also in
Southeast Asia.
••The French Congo and Belgian Congo both assumed the title, Republic of Congo,
at independence in the early 1960s. In 1971 Mobutu changed the name of the Congo
(Kinshasa) to "Zaire."