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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. As Station Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he is the highest-ranking CIA officer ever to leave the agency and go public.
Early years
Born to a Presbyterian engineer in the Belgian Congo, Stockwell attended school in Lubondai before studying in the Plan II Honors program at The University of Texas. As a Marine, Stockwell served a tour helping to quell Lumumba's uprising in the Congo.
CIA career
Beginning his career in 1964, Stockwell spent six years in Africa 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 Agency, citing deep concerns for the methods employed by the CIA in targeting the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). He testified before Congress and 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. 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 to national security, and that its "secret wars" provided no benefit. The CIA, he stated, had singled out the MPLA to be an enemy despite the fact that the MPLA had not committed a single act of aggression against the United States.
Writing career
Stockwell was one of the first professionals to leave the CIA to go public by writing a bestselling book. Because he did not submit the book to CIA pre-publication censorship, the CIA sued him and won. As a result, to this very day Stockwell receives no royalties from his exposé.
His concerns were that, although many of his colleagues in the CIA were men and women of the highest integrity, the organization was counterproductive of United States national security and harming a lot of people in its "secret wars" overseas.
In 1980, Stockwell said that "if the Soviet Union were to disappear off the face of the map, the United States would quickly seek out new enemies to justify its own military-industrial complex."
Stockwell was a founding member of the short-lived Association for Responsible Dissent, an organization of former CIA and Government officials who were critical of the CIA's Cold War activities. The group began to fall apart as members presented different points of views, and the members began to distrust one another, wondering if there was a CIA spy amongst them.
During the 1980s, Stockwell visited college campuses to speak out against CIA support for Central American death squads.
Quotes
- "It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms."
- "Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn."
- "Short, successful military adventures are as effective as the Super Bowl in diverting people's attention from unpleasant truths."
See Also
John Stockwell on WikiQuotes
External links
Further reading
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