Noah Colwin

Hey, thank you for having me.

Really appreciate it and all the kind words.

With a map.

Well, it was actually – so this was CIA Director William Colby who is addressing the NSC.

And the account of this meeting comes from an ex-CIA officer named John Stockwell.

And Colby is explaining what's going down in 1975 in southern Africa by telling the National Security Council at that time the most important –

national security policymaking body.

And he says, this is a map of Africa and this is Angola.

And these are the good guys.

These are the bad guys.

And then these guys, we don't know too much about.

But that is how the highest levels of Washington initially were apprised of what Angola was and what it meant at the beginning of what became a secret CIA covert action, or at least near the start, if not the very beginning.

One particular irony of the scandal was that when Eugene Hasenfus had been shot down over Nicaragua, he had been flying a plane for a CIA front company called Southern Air Transport.

As it turned out, the MPLA government in Luanda, which was fighting the CIA, was also contracting with Southern Air Transport, having very few options for air cargo in Angolan skies.

Luanda, after learning more about Southern Air, promptly canceled its dealings with the airline.

But while Angola's business with Southern Air was done, one of the CIA's most notorious proprietaries, or front companies, lived on.

There was none.

Which is wild.

I mean, in a longer sense,

There was because Cuban Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership had for many years outlined a policy by which they understood that part of the goal of, you know, supporting revolutionaries and guerrillas in other foreign and foreign countries.