On August 12, after a day of visiting rape victims in lovely, lush Kivu Province, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a town meeting of sorts with Congolese students far, far away in the capital, Kinshasa. When one of the students asked her what Mr. Clinton thought, she blew it. It was understandable; she was tired and he is no longer her hierarchical supervisor. Actually, the exchanges had been friendly enough at the beginning but got a little edgy, according to Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times, “when several students pushed her on why Congo, whose first prime minister was ousted with the help of the CIA, should now trust the United States. She then became a little prickly.”
Mr. Gettleman chose his words wisely. Others have not been so prudent. Prime Minister Lumumba was probably ousted with at least the encouragement of the CIA, but he was not outed.
What would you do in the summer of 1960, as Lumumba was bringing in 1,000 Soviets into the country and acting so weird as to persuade Washington officialdom that he was on drugs? What would you do if you were the CIA Chief in the Congo — the late Larry Devlin, a swashbuckling veteran of World War II in Italy, formerly based in Brussels, where he had taken the measure of Lumumba at a conference the year before? What would you do to advise the rival Binza Group, headed by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, whose life Devlin had saved that summer in warning him of impending attacks. You probably would have encouraged him to oust Lumumba, which the Binza Group did in September 1960.
As I stated above, the CIA had nothing to do with the outing of Lumumba. But attention! It was not from lack of trying, or rather, it was from lack of trying. Let me explain. In August 1960, at a National Security Council meeting, President Dwight Eisenhower said words to the effect that it would be a good idea to get rid of Lumumba. The Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, took this as a marching order. (This was before the days when a covert action operation had to be blessed by what is known as a “Presidential Finding,” in writing).
The wheels were set in motion. Experts arrived in Kinshasa (then known as Leopoldville). Poison arrived in Kinshasa. The idea was to have a “third country national” (i.e. a non-American) enter Lumumba’s bungalow, where he was under United Nations protection, and put the poison in his toothpaste. Of course, no one ever got near the bungalow and Devlin, who had been dragging his feet on the whole idea, tossed the poison into the Congo River.
Lumumba smuggled himself out of the bungalow but was later captured by Mobutu’s troops and eventally taken to a jail in Thysville, farther downriver from Kinshasa, along with two of his aides. In January 1961, Mobutu’s colleague, Intelligence Chief Victor Nendaka, informed Devlin that Lumumba was going to be moved. Apparently the Binza Group feared that the troops holding Lumumba might revolt and free him.
A few days later, and as agreed with the Binza Group’s rival, Moïse Tshombe, Lumumba and his two aides arrived by plane in Lubumbashi (then known as Elisabethville), in Katanga Province. They were promptly taken to a group that included Tshombe’s right-hand man, Interior Minister Godefroid Munongo. There they were shot to death by a Belgian colonel.
Note: the above account is included in a case study written by the author for Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and entitled: “Avoiding the Breakup: the US-UN Intervention in the Congo, 1960-1965.” (File number 1549.0 in the Case Study Program). The author was deputy CIA chief in the Congo between 1963 and 1965.
Charles G. Cogan was chief of the Near-East South-Asia Division in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA from 1979 to 1984. It was this division that directed the covert action operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He is now a historian and an associate of the Belfer Center’s International Security Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.