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When IAFEATURE was launched, Stockwell insists, the civil war was so low-key that two C-47 gunships crammed with Gatling guns—Viet Nam's "Puff the Magic Dragon"—could have turned the tide for the moderates. But they would also have exposed the U.S. involvement, so instead it was decided to arm the guerrillas clandestinely. Says Stockwell: "We had tons of weapons shipped in, some of it 'sanitized' stuff [unmarked as to origin], and lots of World War II arms which the agency figured anybody could acquire anywhere in the world." The equipment was flown to Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, aboard C-141s belonging to the U.S. Air Force (which billed the CIA for $80,000 for each 25-ton delivery). The supplies were then reshipped to Angolan bases aboard C-130s belonging to Zaire and South Africa. The guerrillas were so careless with the unfamiliar equipment that the CIA decided to dispatch paramilitary experts—officially described as intelligence gatherers—to help them out.
Before long, says Stockwell, Moscow decided to counter by supplying Neto's MPLA with sophisticated Soviet equipment, including 122-mm rockets and MiG fighters. Cuban troop movements into Angola increased sharply at the same time. To deal with the MiGs, in a "sanitized" way, the CIA traded 50 U.S. Redeye ground-to-air missiles to Israel for 50 captured Soviet missiles, but the Angolans did not use them effectively.
Stockwell argues that the agency should have stayed out of Angola altogether or moved in much more forcefully in the beginning. Eventually, he says, a "dualism" about the operation developed: "The people in the field were going all out. But back home, people gradually got timid." When the agency finally decided to pull out, it sent a final payment of $1,376,700 in conscience money to Roberto and Savimbi through Kinshasa. The cash, Stockwell claims, was pocketed by Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko.
Stockwell was born in Texas but grew up in Africa after his engineer-father took a job in the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) following World War II. Stockwell says he wrestled with a nagging conscience about his agency work for much of his CIA career, but did not decide to quit until after the Angolan venture.
Knocking unsuccessful operations is always perilously easy (those that work are rarely heard about), and Stockwell's broadside is overdrawn in important respects. For instance, others who are familiar with the Angolan drama maintain it was not U.S. activity that provoked the heavy Soviet-Cuban response but South Africa's early move to send troops to support Savimbi. The South African forces moved in so swiftly that they almost captured Angola's capital, Luanda, before independence came. As for the CIA itself, Stockwell ridicules it as a bungling old-boy outfit fraught with favoritism and burdened with middle-grade mediocrities. He calls William Colby, who was CIA director in Stockwell's time, "a disciplined, amoral bureaucrat, who fawned over the politicians and game-players on [Capitol] Hill."