In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

[98] IN S E ARCH OF E1'"E MIES
who could be yanked out when it was over. And Kinshasa needed
help right away: air operations officers, ground, maritime, logistics,
and finance officers. They desperately needed infantry training officers
because no one in the area knew how to handle the weapons we
were sending.
"How about you," I said. "Would you be willing to go back?"
He looked morose. "I suppose I would. This is the only war we've
got right now."
Next morning I took my suitcase with me to work, ready to travel.
At 1:00 P.M . a secretary drove me to Dulles in her Nova. On the way
she handed me my worn black diplomatic passport, my tickets, and
fifteen hundred dollars.
"How did you get the money," I asked, counting it.
"I signed your name, over at State."
"Forgery?"
"Just be glad I didn't sign for three thousand and keep the rest."
She also handed me a slender notebook which looked at first like
an ordinary checkbook. Inside was a pad of edible, water-soluble rice
paper which, supposedly, I could gobble down if I were captured. I
asked her what my Angolan hosts were supposed to think when I
consulted my checkbook in the Angolan hinterlands. For her benefit
I tore out a page and masticated laboriously until I could finally
swallow it. Like many OTS (Office of Technical Services) gimmicks,
this was a classroom toy which had little use in the field. A case
officer hardly wants to make irreplaceable notes on paper that dissolves
at the slightest touch of sweat or rain. And I had little confidence
in the ability of this paper to fulfill its intended purpose. I had
once presented an agent in training with a similar pad. By way of
demonstration, I had tom out a page and dropped it in my gin and
tonic. For the rest of the meeting it had floated buoyantly, unaffected
by the liquid.
Attached to the pad was an ordinary looking Bic ballpoint, impregnated
with esoteric writing chemicals. With the point retracted
I could write secret messages which the Kinshasa station could
develop by spraying on certain chemicals. I clipped it in my jacket
-at least it was a functional ballpoint.
I got on the Eastern flight to New York broke- no one had made
arrangements to pay the s 2,300 air freight charges for our sixteen