John R. Stockwell is a former CIA officer
who became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the
Agency for thirteen years serving seven tours of duty. After managing U.S.
involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during
its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote In Search of
Enemies, a book which remains the only detailed, insider's account of a
major CIA "covert action."
As a Marine, Stockwell was a CIA paramilitary
intelligence case officer in three wars: the Congo Crisis, the Vietnam War, and
the Angolan War of Independence. His military rank is Major. Beginning his
career in 1964, Stockwell spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the
Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in 1968, then Chief of Station in
Bujumbura, Burundi in 1970, before being transferred to Vietnam to oversee
intelligence operations in the Tay Ninh province and was awarded the CIA Medal
of Merit for keeping his post open until the last days of the fall of Saigon in
1975.
In December 1976 he resigned from the CIA, citing deep concerns
for the methods and results of CIA paramilitary operations in third world
countries and testified before Congressional committees. Two years later, he
wrote the exposé In Search of Enemies, about that
experience and its broader implications.
He claimed that the CIA was
counterproductive [how about immoral, evil,
illegal...?] to national security, and that its "secret wars"
provided no benefit for the United States. The CIA, he stated, had singled out
the MPLA to be an enemy in Angola despite the fact that the MPLA wanted
relations with the United States and had not committed a single act of
aggression against the United States. In 1978 he appeared on the popular
American television program 60 Minutes, claiming that CIA Director William Colby
and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had systematically lied to
Congress about the CIA's operations.
No comments:
Post a Comment