President Johnson would hold more of these discussions, but the question of bringing the Cuban actions to a halt had been squarely posed. In May LBJ adopted his basic stance of cutting back the Cuba project. About the same time Artime’s group conducted its first significant raid—on a sugar mill—and Ray tried a highly publicized infiltration. Ray never made it. Mechanical breakdowns on boats and a variety of other excuses were advanced to explain why. As for the Artime group, in two years it attempted fourteen operations and completed four. None of this impressed the White House. Gordon Chase fed Mac Bundy a stream of new objections on both diplomatic and political grounds. On June 18 the Special Group decided against immediate changes, but shortly afterward came charges of corruption among the Artime group, on which the CIA had already spent $5 million. Langley decided the charges were groundless, but the episode did nothing to increase confidence. The Johnson White House steadily backed away from the exiles.

  Secret warriors like Ted Shackley never gave up. The Miami station chief deplored the “on-again, off-again orders we began getting from Washington.” Kept on the leash, his commandos began drifting away. Shackley still felt he had units that “could have waged an effective guerrilla campaign in Cuba” if only “the strategy from Washington had been more resolute and sustained.” In an account preoccupied with strikes, raids, and condemnations of those he worked for, Shackley never pauses to explain how his Cuba operations, any more than the many, many previous failures, would bring down Castro, who had now consolidated his leadership and built a strong, well-equipped military.

  Official support only encouraged the Cubans. In the new atmosphere the CIA on June 10, 1964, reported that the exiles had their own plan to assassinate Castro—Artime’s links to Rolando Cubela. The Special Group pondered this a week later. In the face of McCone’s comment that it must all be Miami cocktail party talk, the wizards of the secret war decided to alert the FBI and the Justice Department: Washington could not permit any such plot to be carried out. The ground had shifted that much.

  Periodic NSC discussions and autonomous exile strikes continued through late 1965, but Cuba was increasingly left behind. Scattered data indicates at least one CIA infiltration operation that year but not much else. A flurry of Special Group deliberations on Cuba took place during the summer, and Mac Bundy forwarded a CIA paper to President Johnson. This framed an LBJ decision to cut back still more. Support to the “brigade” in Nicaragua ended. CIA bases in the Florida Keys closed one by one. The Cuba task force stayed alive—Dave Phillips succeeded FitzGerald and eventually Jim Flannery followed him—but the project accomplished little. As long as the exiles continued plotting and the agency needed to know, plus hold the hands of Cubans who wanted it, Miami station stayed active.

  As Cuba operations wound down, agency logistics wizard Jim Garrison* took Jake Esterline with him on a visit to a secret CIA supply dump in the Midwest. Esterline thought he had better things to do, but Garrison dragooned him into the trip. The stockpiles were vast—cases of rifles, heavy weapons, assorted equipment, row upon row.

  “See all of that?” rasped Garrison, “You made me buy that, you bugger!”

  Esterline ended his career in Miami, running JM/Wave years after Shackley had left, primarily as a social services provider.

  Through their Cuban project the secret warriors created a cadre with military skills, one that far outlasted the CIA operations themselves. As the Johnson administration changed gears, pursuing Castro in Africa and South America, those Cubans became a fresh legion at Washington’s command. The secret war against Castro spilled over onto new fronts.

  Africa became the next theater in the secret war, or, more precisely, it returned to the forefront of Langley’s concerns. Barely had the Congo been reunified when, in the summer of 1963, a new rebellion commenced in that country, led by another former minister, Pierre Mulele. The CIA learned that Mulele had been in China for an extended period, presumably for instruction, thus believing him to be a Communist agent. That fall his troops began attacking Mobutu in Mulele’s home province. This could not have been worse for Leopoldville—the UN was withdrawing even as Mobutu’s army remained far from effective. The rebellion known for Mulele, or as the Simba Rebellion for the word “lion” in Swahili, rapidly grew. Representing LBJ, diplomat Averell Harriman visited the Congo in March 1964, promising more U.S. aid.

  Secret warriors faced a new problem. The CIA’s best chance—and Mobutu’s—lay in a new undercover air effort. This had been built gradually, starting with the import of some T-6 trainer planes from Italy. The addition of weapons pods converted the aircraft to the ground-support role. The first mission was flown from a strip in Kwilu province in February. After Harriman’s visit the air project accelerated. Better T-28 aircraft came, along with pilots the CIA had sent to Intermountain Aviation to check out in the planes. John Merriman, Intermountain trainer on this project, became the chief of operations for the Congo air effort. Joining him were Air America pilots Ed Dearborn and Don Coney and many Cubans, among them Gus Ponzoa, leading fifteen Cuban pilots in the T-28 unit. After that came a formation of B-26 bombers led by Joaquin (“Jack”) Varela, a top flier with CIA B-26s. The U.S. Air Force transferred the bombers to a classified project on June 26, the last aircraft of this type it gave to the CIA.

  Exactly a month later Merriman became the first casualty of the CIA air campaign when he broke rules prohibiting combat missions by Americans to take up a T-28 against a reported Simba truck convoy. His wingmen were Ponzoa and Varela, both Bay of Pigs veterans. His plane hit, Merriman nursed it to a crash landing but was injured so badly he died a few weeks later.

  In June Mobutu installed a new cabinet under Moishe Tshombe, summoned from exile. The CIA saw few favorable signs, though it reported Katanga stable. Two months later, however, a Special National Intelligence Estimate frankly admitted that “regional dissidence and violence have assumed serious proportions, even by Congolese standards, and produced the threat of a total breakdown in governmental authority.” Tshombe’s prospects were put at no better than fifty-fifty, and if he fell there was no telling where it might end. Days later rebels seized Stanleyville and made hostage all whites, including the American consul, his assistant, CIA base chief David Grinwis and his two radiomen, fifteen other Americans, and hundreds of Europeans, including missionaries, nuns, and mining engineers.

  The need for a force to defeat the rebellion had become acute. The best Congolese army elements were now white soldiers of fortune, principally of English and Belgian extraction, proud to call themselves mercenaries. A few hundred of them made up a small battalion called Five Commando under the South African Col. Mike Hoare. It remains unclear what role the CIA had in financing Five Commando—available documents, principally an INR review of CIA African activities in 1964, have had their guts excised (though indicating political payoffs as large as ever)—and at that stage the Belgian mining companies still reigned. Still, Five Commando and the CIA air force spearheaded a Stanleyville relief effort. While the American and British embassies kept their distance, U.S. military attaché Col. Knut Raudstein happily talked to Hoare and went on the mission. Varela’s CIA aircraft were crucial in breaking up ambushes and supporting the commandos, with the first B-26 combat mission on August 21. As Hoare neared Stanleyville it seemed he might be too late. The Great Powers took a hand. In Operation Dragon Rouge (Red Dragon) late in November, Belgian paratroops flown in by the U.S. Air Force captured Stanleyville to free the hostages. Use of Special Forces had been considered but rejected. More than two thousand foreign nationals were evacuated to Leopoldville. Stanleyville now became the main base for air operations in the northeast Congo.

  Through all this the agency had been deathly afraid for its people in Stanleyville and needed to replace the staff. Richard L. Holm, just returned from Laos where he had watched the Ho Chi Minh Trail, transferred to the Africa Division and was preparing for assignment to North Africa when suddenly diverted. Holm had been taking French lessons from Colette, Larry Devlin’s wife, and often spoke of the Congo with the former station chief, who now told division baron Glen Fields that Holm would be a good fellow for Stanleyville. The neophyte Africanist arrived in December, but his would be a short tour—on February 17 Holm flew with a T-28 attack mission. Two planes were trapped by a weather front. Holm’s aircraft crashed. He survived horrible burns, rescued and cared for by villagers using native medicine. Case officer Charles Cogan saw Holm on his return and marveled at his survival. Several years of rehabilitation were necessary before he could return to duty. Cuban pilot Juan Tunon of the second plane was never seen again. Later missionary reports established that Tunon had been captured by the Simba, killed, and eaten.

  The Congo became a bloody project for the agency. Several months after Holm’s serious injury a CIA contract officer, Bill Wyrozemski, working out of Albertville, died in a head-on collision with a Congolese army truck.

  Meanwhile Che Guevara turned up. According to Piero Gleijeses, the foremost historian of Cuba in Africa, Fidel Castro convinced Che to make Africa a waystation on his quest to carry the revolution to Latin America, where the ground had yet to become fertile for uprising. Fidel promised that he would continue preparations while Che fought. The commandante traveled through Eastern Europe and Algeria to Tanzania, where he connected with the Simbas. The Congolese were embarrassed, fearing international reaction to news of Che in Africa. Meanwhile Castro combed his forces for blacks whom he sent as a special unit. Victor Dreke, perhaps the most senior black, became Che’s second and led the unit to Africa. They infiltrated from Tanzania across Lake Tanganyika. From April to November 1965 the Cuban column worked in Orientale province. Their first battle occurred in late June.

  The CIA learned of the Cubans in September. Even then no one really believed Che was there. Special Forces now sent advisers and teams. At one point station chief Benjamin H. Cushing volunteered CIA funding for Mobutu’s entire mercenary effort. He rejected the offer. Although the Simba enclave where Che fought became stronger for a time, Mobutu forces began an offensive at the end of September. Meanwhile the Cubans’ base in Algeria disappeared with the overthrow of the Ben Bella government, and in October the Organization of African Unity, which contributed money and arms to the Simbas, halted its support. Che could read the tea leaves as well as anyone. Dreke recalls, “At a certain point we realized the thing was lost, that the Congolese themselves had made a decision to end the fighting.” The Cubans withdrew into Tanzania.

  In 1965 the impatient Mobutu launched a new coup and installed himself as national leader. He renamed Leopoldville as Kinshasa. The Congo he renamed Zaire in 1971. Hoare’s Five Commando continued to fight for Mobutu for another five years, but the rebellion had peaked. More mercenary units were added. Moishe Tshombe went into exile again. Lured from Madrid in 1967 to meet ostensible backers on a Mediterranean island, his airplane was hijacked to Algiers and Tshombe imprisoned. (Tshombe died two years later. He may have been poisoned.) That July the mercenaries revolted. The United States quickly deployed a Joint Task Force Congo with several C-130 aircraft and 150 men that flew Congolese troops to fight the mercenaries. Inept Congolese army efforts allowed the mercenaries to hold out for a few months, but the issue was never in doubt, and eventually they were driven across the border.

  In both the Stanleyville airdrop and the 1967 episode, the Johnson administration avoided notifying Congress of the use of force and U.S. participation. Dean Rusk spoke to a few senior members privately, a measure increasingly common with all manner of covert operations.

  Through all of this the CIA air unit remained absolutely vital. Agency officers determined the missions. The unit would have been familiar to any Bay of Pigs veteran, or, for that matter, any American airman from “Jungle Jim.” It included ten C-47 transports, eight or nine B-26 bombers, and eight of the light T-28 fighter-bombers. The Cuban pilots were hired by one of those ubiquitous Miami corporations, Caribbean Aero Marine (Caramar). If employed under conditions similar to Five Commando, the pilots would have been on six-month contracts. They called themselves the “Cuban Volunteer Group” led by Réné Garcia. Often gathering at a favorite restaurant, the Pizzeria, humorists joked that a couple of hand grenades of an evening could wipe out the Zairian air force.

  Mobutu had no pilots of his own until the CIA deployed its more advanced aircraft and handed the T-6s back to the Zairian government. In October 1964 a new unit of mercenaries became active under a South African, Jerry Purren, known as Twenty-one Squadron. The CIA air force became Twenty-two Squadron.

  Belgian pilots and maintenance crews worked the transport planes; the combat aircraft were repaired by the Western International Ground Maintenance Organization (WIGMO), a Lichtenstein corporation employing fifty to a hundred European mechanics. When more mercenaries were hired later to run patrol boats on Lake Tanganyika, WIGMO maintained the warships. The CIA flew the vessels in pieces into Albertville, where they were reconstructed and put on the lake. An American SEAL officer from Vietnam, Lt. James Hawes, supervised the activity. WIGMO continued to work with the Mobutu government through 1969.

  In mid-1966 there were only a dozen Cuban pilots, but they accounted for the vast majority of the air support in Zaire. Public interest grew after the New York Times ran a major series on the CIA in which it discussed the agency putting an “instant air force” in the Congo. Washington decided to begin phasing out the Congo project about that time, according to Cyrus Vance, and the first of the B-26s left the Congo in February 1966. As late as August 1967 the Special Group approved recruitment of additional Cuban pilots for the Congo. This would be the final contingent. After the air operations ended, Réné Garcia stayed to become Mobutu’s personal pilot, flying the Zairian dictator wherever he wanted for another sixteen years. Mobutu died in 1997. In classic Congolese style, Laurent Kabila, a Simba leader of the 1960s, would rule the Republic of the Congo (the name has been revived) for several years at the end of the century.

  The agency continued to face off with Fidel Castro, who did not give up on Africa after his misfortune in the Congo. Simultaneously with Che’s expedition, Castro sent another column under Commandante Jorge Risquet to Congo-Brazzaville, the nation on the opposite bank of the Congo River from Mobutu’s Zaire, and a former French colony. The 250 Cubans in Risquet’s force had multiple purposes. They served as a potential reserve for Guevara until his operation evaporated. In 1966 Risquet’s doctors organized the first vaccination campaign ever carried out in the country. Another aim, continuing in revolutionary solidarity, was to train fighters for leftist groups in Angola, where an independence movement fought Portugal to liberate that African colony. The fighters returned to the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, or by boat to Angola proper. In June 1966 the Cuban unit broke up a military coup against the Brazzaville government. About six months later the Risquet column returned to Cuba aboard a Russian vessel. A smaller Cuban training mission remained behind, still working with the Angolan independence movement known as the MPLA.

  A few Cubans went undercover and entered Cabinda to work directly with the rebel movement. When leaders planned an attack on a Portuguese fort, a larger Cuban force participated, and the Cubans even contributed four artillery guns to the Angolan revolution.

  Suddenly B-26 bombers and Cuban exile pilots showed on the Portuguese side in Angola. That these were private adventures is cast into doubt by the indictment of the CIA proprietary Intermountain Aviation for illegally exporting B-26 bombers to Portuguese Africa. This affair began in April 1965 when executives of a Tucson, Arizona, firm called Aero Associates approached a British pilot about ferrying ten B-26 aircraft to Portugal.

  The first transfer went smoothly, but on a second flight the pilot John R. Hawke, forced by bad weather to land at Washington, D.C., suddenly suffered engine trouble on his approach. He flew over the White House, prohibited air space. Questioned by federal officials, Hawke used a code word (“Sparrow”) he had been given for an emergency and was released. He completed the flight, as well as five more. In Miami in September 1965, however, federal officers arrested Hawke, who went to trial in the fall of 1966 along with Gregory Board of Aero and middleman Henri Mari de Marin de Montmarin. The men were accused of violating U.S. arms export laws. The trial took place in Rochester, New York, where Hawke had stopped on U.S. soil during his first ferry mission.

  Defense lawyers subpoenaed CIA general counsel Lawrence Houston, requiring his testimony. Although Houston denied any CIA connection with the arms shipments, he affirmed that the agency had known of each B-26 transfer days in advance. A CIA document admitted in evidence, dated May 25, 1965—that is, very early in the project—specified that Portugal had acquired twenty of the B-26 bombers, which were to be modified in Canada with long-range fuel tanks. Former agency officials identified the source of the planes as Intermountain Aviation and Evergreen International, the CIA proprietaries. The defendants were acquitted.

  Many covert action proposals emanate from CIA headquarters. But many others come from the State Department or agency people in the field. In Africa in the mid-1960s, according to a survey by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the larger number came from the field, the smallest from Langley. Of all the continents where it engaged, the CIA stretched the most in Africa. Despite its expansion on this continent from 1959, the combination of many former colonies attaining independence and the lack of area specialists left the agency playing catch-up. The Africa Division handled some nations remotely by sending officers from other posts—undercover operatives covering an itinerary like traveling salesmen. This was not only Langley’s problem. The INR survey makes clear that increases in CIA capabilities corresponded roughly to State’s own drive to cope with the blossoming of Africa.