September 28: Journal entry #6

JOURNAL ENTRY #6

Is the CIA actually operating in Africa? That is the very question I will be hoping to answer in this journal post. My first source is an article by NPR.org, the article gives a brief overview of a recently published novel 'White malice' by Susan Williams, a novel which I hope to read in the coming weeks. In the novel Susan Williams gives a full chronology of the CIA's operations in central Africa spanning from when the CIA created a division dedicated to Africa in 1959, to the date the book was published. The mere existence of such a novel can begin to give me some answers to my question, but even the brief overview that the article gave me of the novel can already provide a strong amount of evidence for the case that the CIA really is operating in Africa. My second source is a document titled 'Cabinda and the company: Chevron-Gulf, The CIA, and the Angolan civil war by Austin Angel. In the document Mr. Angel details how the CIA meddled in the Angolan civil war by providing military equipment and aid to the UNITA, one of the fighting factions during the war. This document clearly shows the CIA's involvement in African affairs, much like how my first source also points to such a conclusion. And after studying both of these sources, and taking the information that I learned from them into great consideration, I can now definitively say that the CIA has indeed operated in Africa since as far back as 1959.