In 1961 as part of the "White Paper" documentary series, NBC aired "Angola: Journey to a War." Its crew were heralded for their bravery, trekking 300 miles through war-torn Angola after illicitly slipping in from the Congo. It was also almost certainly cover for CIA operations.
The film featured the head of UPA, Holden Roberto, by then already a prized CIA asset, who arranged the crew's infiltration into Angola. The director, Robert Young, says they crossed the border with "7 Angolan rebels" and were embedded in UPA units for the entire journey.
An annual report from the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) indicates that ACOA made the "initial arrangements" for the NBC crew to enter Angola. George Houser, ACOA's director, was a major Roberto benefactor and later also toured Angola with Roberto and CIA agent John Marcum
According to Soviet analyst Oleg Ignatyev, Roberto held meetings with his CIA recruiters and handlers in the offices of ACOA
archive.org/details/secret…
As for NBC's director/cameraman crew, Robert Young and Charles Dorkins: Young, while he denies (wittingly) working for the CIA during the filming in Angola, makes some extraordinary admissions about debriefing the CIA and other intel agencies upon return.
Dorkins, Young's camerman, soon returned to Angola. Soviet authors would later identify Dorkins by name as an American intelligence agent assisting Roberto.
At least some of Dorkins' subsequent CIA work in Angola seems to have also been coordinated through ACOA.
Zooming out for a second, it's no accident that the network that was the "undisputed leader in foreign markets" with RCA's "unparalleled" interests abroad, would also emerge as the leader of the documentary and news programming boom of the 60s
Recall that Walter Sheridan's infamous CIA hatchet job on Jim Garrison was also a part of the NBC "White Paper" documentary series.
Bet going through the White Paper documentaries one by one would dredge up all kinds of intelligence operations near and far
The US embassy in Lisbon reports to Dean Rusk the Portuguese prime minister's anger over Houser and Marcum's activities as "state department consultants", supporting Holden Roberto in Angola
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.