The Lumumba Plot

Stuart A. Reid's history traces a covert American effort to remove Patrice Lumumba, the democratically elected leader of Congo, and it moves with the pace of a Cold War espionage novel. The story begins in 1960, when Congo gained independence from Belgium, one of seventeen countries that broke free from ruling European powers that year. Within days, the newly formed Congolese army rebelled, Belgian troops moved in, and Lumumba asked the United Nations for help in holding his young nation together. The press was already calling the unfolding emergency the "Congo Crisis." Dag Hammarskjold, the Swedish secretary-general of the UN, responded by organizing the largest peacekeeping operation the organization had ever attempted. Meanwhile, the disorder kept growing. Lumumba, growing impatient with the UN, turned to the Soviet Union, a move that alarmed the CIA. Washington, determined to stop communism from taking hold in Africa, instructed Larry Devlin, the CIA station chief in Leopoldville, that Lumumba had to be removed.

The disaster that followed unfolded quickly. The CIA's plan to kill Lumumba fell apart, but he was ousted in a coup the agency backed, and Congolese assassins shot him dead. Hammarskjold also died, in a plane crash that remains unexplained, while flying to negotiate a cease-fire with rebels in the country's southeast. Joseph Mobutu, an ambitious young army officer who had once pledged loyalty to Lumumba, took power with American support and governed Congo badly for more than thirty years. For the Congolese, the events of 1960 and 1961 marked the start of a long nightmare. For the American government, they served as a model for later interventions.