Foreign agent registration confirms CIA contractor was secretly acting on behalf of Angolan government
Dale Bendler, the CIA's former Paris chief of station, registered as a foreign agent for the controversial Angolan politician Gen. Francisco Higino Lopes Carneiro.
Updated on September 19, 2025
“Critical mineral cooperation between Angola and the U.S. is good for the U.S. in many ways, and our elected leaders and Agency heads should know this,” snarked a newly public foreign agent registration document from Dale Britt Bendler, an embattled former chief of the CIA’s Paris station. On April 23, Bendler pled guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent and to mishandling classified information, with the identities of the foreign governments withheld from public filings.
U.S. prosecutors are currently seeking a 24-month sentence for Bendler in the Eastern District of Virginia, with sentencing set to take place next week, on September 24. (Bendler on Wednesday requested a two-week delay.)
According to a 15-page filing on Wednesday signed by Adam P. Barry, acting deputy chief of the national security division of the U.S. Department of Justice, “between July 2017 and September 2020, Defendant earned approximately $360,000 in private client fees while also working as a full-time CIA contractor with daily access to highly classified material that he searched like it was his own personal Google.”
Recent foreign agent registrations from Bendler and his brother-in-law, Nilton Fernandes Rosa, effectively confirm Angola as the country of “Foreign Principal 1” in the public court filings. The country was first deduced in mid-May by the national security journalists Jack Murphy and Sean Naylor, drawing heavily from a nearly three-hour livestreamed video interview which Mr. Murphy conducted with Bendler on his popular podcast ‘The Team House’ in March of last year.
The U.S. Justice Department has alleged that Bendler “was paid $20,000 per month to help Foreign Principal 1 mount a public relations campaign to rebut the embezzlement allegations and lobby U.S. government and foreign officials.” Drawing from Bendler’s disclosures that he married his Angolan wife, Sandra Rosa Bendler, around the time of his final year as CIA chief of station (circa 1994) in a country in “southern Africa,” the two journalists deduced that the embezzlement case was that of “Fundo Soberano De Angola, the sovereign wealth fund of Angola.”'
“2017’s Paradise Papers leak revealed [Swiss-Angolan businessman Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais] to have invested millions of the FSDEA’s dollars in at least four enterprises in which he held a personal stake,” the journalists noted, after introducing Bastos as the close friend of the son of Angolan president Eduardo dos Santos.
Bendler and Rosa’s new foreign agent registrations further name the Angolan principal as Francisco Higino Lopes Carneiro, a former governor of the province of Luanda, with financial payments being directed through DAT LLC, of which Bendler’s wife Sandra serves as president. “Dale Britt Bendler, a board member of DAT LLC, will provide advice on all things Angolan to the LLC's president, Sandra Rosa Bendler, and to potential U.S. investors,” read Bendler’s August 23 filing.
According to one of the submitted foreign agent registration documents, Gen. Carneiro is expected to pay the Bendlers $24,750 per month; an email from Ms. Bendler to GreenMet CEO Drew Horn regarding his recent prominent interview with Bloomberg on Greenland’s strategic mineral repositories further clarified a focus on the rare earth minerals “Neodymium, Praseodymium, Samarium, Dyprosium, Yitrium, and Terbium.” Ms. Bendler’s email also disclosed the new company’s website: datlobitocorridoradvisory.com.
Carneiro first came under scrutiny for his alleged relationship to the FSDEA money laundering scandal in 2019. A note published by the Angolan Ministry of Finance on November 15, 2019 stated that, “in February 2019, the former governor of Luanda, and current MPLA lawmaker, Higino Carneiro, was placed under investigation in connection with money laundering offences as there have been allegations of impropriety relating to the auction of Angola’s fourth telecommunications license in April 2019.” “The licence was awarded to Telstar-Telecomunicações, Lda, an Angolan company incorporated in 2019 with a limited record and controlled by persons with links to the Angolan armed forces,” the statement continued.
The former CIA station chief’s brother-in-law, Mr. Rosa, further hinted at support for a possible presidential run from Carneiro, stating in his foreign agent registration form that, “If it is true our Foreign Principal [Mr. Carneiro] does in fact run for the Presidency in Angola, we can expect Mr. Rosa to assist in the campaign.” “Not financially, but probably through some for [sic] of activism,” continued the disclosure.
The identity of “Foreign Principal 2” was reported last week by the French news outlet Intelligence Online to be the Lebanese businessman Ibrahim Issaoui, head of the Democratic Republic of Congo-based import-export company Socimex Group. “Bendler met with Issaoui once in Paris and once in London in early 2018,” reported the outlet, citing documents Bendler filed with the U.S. Justice Department, adding that, “Issaoui has been suspected of having financial ties to Hezbollah.”
According to Intelligence Online, Bendler had performed work for both Issaoui and the Venezuelan businessman Armando Capriles as a subcontractor for the international lobbying firm BGR Group.
“Defendant [Bendler] never told the CIA that Foreign Principal 2 had hired him to resolve the terrorism financing allegations and to obtain him a U.S. visa,” stated Wednesday’s filing by the U.S. Department of Justice, adding that, “Nor did he tell the CIA that Foreign Principal 2 had paid him approximately $10,000 for his work.”
