John R. Stockwell (born 1937) is an American former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving seven tours of duty over thirteen years.
Having managed American involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote In Search of Enemies.
Born in Angleton, Texas, Stockwell's Presbyterian father moved the family to the Belgian Congo when he was posted there to provide engineering assistance.
[citation needed] Stockwell spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in 1968, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in 1970, before being transferred to Vietnam to oversee intelligence operations in the Tay Ninh province and was awarded the CIA Intelligence Medal of Merit for keeping his post open until the last days of the fall of Saigon in 1975.
[2] 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.