John R. Stockwell (born 1937) is a former

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

officer who became a critic of

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policies after serving seven

tours of duty For military personnel, a tour of duty is usually a period of time spent in combat or in a hostile environment. In an army, for instance, soldiers on active duty serve 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the length of their service commitment. ...

over thirteen years. Having managed American involvement in the

Angolan Civil War The Angolan Civil War ( pt, Guerra Civil Angolana) was a civil war in Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with interludes, until 2002. The war immediately began after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. The war was ...

as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote ''In Search of Enemies''.

Early years

Born in

Angleton, Texas Angleton is a city in and the county seat of Brazoria County, Texas, United States, within the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area. Angleton lies at the intersection of State Highway 288, State Highway 35, and the Union Pacifi ...

, Stockwell's

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father moved the family to the

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...

when he was posted there to provide engineering assistance. Stockwell attended school in Lubondai before studying in the Plan II Honors program at the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

CIA career

As a Marine, Stockwell was a CIA

paramilitary A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...

case officer in three wars: the

Congo Crisis The Congo Crisis (french: Crise congolaise, link=no) was a period of political upheaval and conflict between 1960 and 1965 in the Republic of the Congo (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The crisis began almost immediately after ...

, the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

, and the

Angolan War of Independence The Angolan War of Independence (; 1961–1974), called in Angola the ("Armed Struggle of National Liberation"), began as an uprising against forced cultivation of cotton, and it became a multi-faction struggle for the control of Portugal ...

. His

military rank Military ranks are a system of hierarchical relationships, within armed forces, police, intelligence agencies or other institutions organized along military lines. The military rank system defines dominance, authority, and responsibility in a ...

Major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

. Beginning his career in 1964, Stockwell spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the

Bob Denard Robert Denard (born Gilbert Bourgeaud; 7 April 1929 – 13 October 2007) was a French soldier of fortune and mercenary. He served as the Military Leader of The Comoros twice with him first serving from 13 May 1978 to 15 December 1989 and again ...

invasion in 1968, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in 1970, before being transferred to

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

to oversee intelligence operations in the

Tay Ninh Tay may refer to: People and languages * Tay (name), including lists of people with the given name, surname and nickname * Tay people, an ethnic group of Vietnam ** Tày language *Atayal language, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan (ISO 639 ...

province and was awarded the CIA

Intelligence Medal of Merit The Intelligence Medal of Merit is awarded by the Central Intelligence Agency for performance of especially meritorious service or for achievement conspicuously above normal duties. Notable recipients *Gust Avrakotos * I. Nathan Briggs * George ...

for keeping his post open until the last days of the fall of

Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...

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 The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...

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 to national security, and that its "secret wars" provided no benefit for the United States. The CIA, he stated, had singled out the

MPLA The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola ( pt, Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, abbr. MPLA), for some years called the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola – Labour Party (), is an Angolan left-wing, social d ...

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 ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...

'', claiming that CIA Director

William Colby William Egan Colby (January 4, 1920 – May 6, 1996) was an American intelligence officer who served as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from September 1973 to January 1976. During World War II Colby served with the Office of Strateg ...

and

National Security Advisor A national security advisor serves as the chief advisor to a national government on matters of security. The advisor is not usually a member of the government's cabinet but is usually a member of various military or security councils. National sec ...

Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger (; ; born Heinz Alfred Kissinger, May 27, 1923) is a German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presid ...

had systematically lied to Congress about the CIA's operations.

Writing career

Stockwell was one of the first professionals to leave the CIA to go public by writing a bestselling book, ''In Search of Enemies''. The CIA retaliated by suing him in the 4th District Court in Washington, D.C.. Part of the suit intended to eliminate the possibility of selling the story for the purpose of making the movie and requested all future publications be submitted to the CIA for review. Unable to afford the travel necessary to contest the case, Stockwell filed for bankruptcy in Austin, Texas. After the litigation was processed through the bankruptcy, the CIA eventually dropped the suit. A brief story in the book is about a CIA officer having

Patrice Lumumba Patrice Émery Lumumba (; 2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as the Republic of the Congo) from June u ...

's body in the trunk of his car one night in then Elizabethville, Congo. Stockwell mentions in a footnote to the story that at the time he did not know that the CIA is documented as having repeatedly tried to arrange for Lumumba's assassination. 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. ''Red Sunset'' was Stockwell's next book and was published in 1982 by William Morrow Publishing Co., Inc. in hardback, then in paperback by Signet a year later. In it he discusses his prediction of a peaceful end to the cold war. Stockwell presented these ideas in fiction form in order to get it published. In 1991, Stockwell published a compilation of transcriptions of many of his lectures called ''The Praetorian Guard''.

Books

* ''The Praetorian Guard: The US Role In The New World Order''. Boston:

South End Press South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, Juliet Schor, among others, in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activi ...

(1991). . * ''Red Sunset''. New York: William Morrow & Co. (1982). * ''In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story''. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (1978). .

Filmography

''The C.I.A. Case Officer: John "Bob" Stockwell''.

Institute for Policy Studies The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is an American progressive think tank started in 1963 that is based in Washington, D.C. It was directed by John Cavanagh from 1998 to 2021. In 2021 Tope Folarin was announced as new Executive Director. ...

(1978). * ''The Secret World of the C.I.A: The "Testimony" of John Stockwell''. Cambridge, Mass.: Insight Video (1988). .

External links

Works by John Stockwell
at

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