Cold War misdeeds
On June 30, 1960, after 75 years of Belgian rule, Congo became an independent country. At the helm as prime minister was Patrice Lumumba, a former postal clerk and beer promoter turned nationalist politician who had won the most votes in elections that May. But within days of his taking office, the country fell apart: The army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened without permission and a separatist province, Katanga, broke loose.
Lumumba turned first to the United Nations, which sent in a massive peacekeeping operation but failed to end the secession of Katanga. After asking the United States for help and threatening to kick out the U.N., he approached the Soviet Union for assistance. In the context of the Cold War, that was too much for Washington.
On Aug. 18, 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first U.S. president known to order the assassination of a sitting foreign leader. During a National Security Council meeting, an official note taker saw the president turn toward Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA. Then, the note taker recalled, President Eisenhower said “something — I can no longer remember his words— that came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba.”
What happened next was revealed by the Church Committee in 1975: the CIA’s top chemist procured a poison to kill Lumumba, flew it to Congo, and instructed the CIA station chief there, Larry Devlin, to put it in the prime minister’s food or toothpaste. But by that time, Lumumba had been removed from office and put under house arrest, so the plot fizzled. In January 1961, Lumumba was flown to the breakaway province of Katanga and shot dead hours after landing by Congolese soldiers commanded by Belgian officers and answering to the separatist government. Given the identity of Lumumba’s ultimate executioners, the Church Committee largely let the CIA off the hook, finding no evidence that the agency was involved in his murder. And so the story has largely remained for nearly 50 years.
In fact, the CIA very much had blood on its hands for the death of Lumumba. It played a role in every event leading to his downfall and death.