Everyone wanted to kill Patrice
Lumumba. He was a 'mad dog,' they said.
The Belgians wanted to divide the
Congo and hold on to the resource-rich Katanga region, Lumumba lay in their way.
When he refused their offer to let Belgian troops help out with security, they
got bitter and unilaterally flew in troops and took control of the key points of
the country.
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| Lumumba - All wanted him dead |
In Katanga they installed Moise
Tshombe and they disarmed Congolese troops, Lumumba then did the fatal mistake,
he threatened the UN that he would ask the USSR for help if they didn't. Bad move.
The US said Congo, a source of
much coveted minerals, could not become another Cuba.
‘At a meeting of the US National
Security Council in Washington on 22 July, presided over by President
Eisenhower, the Central Intelligence Agency chief, Allen Dulles, described
Lumumba as ‘a Castro or worse’, adding: ‘It is safe to go on the assumption
that Lumumba has been bought by the Communists.’ (Meredith, 2011)
President Eisenhower, when told
by his advisers that Lumumba might succeed in forcing the UN to leave the
Congo, authorised the CIA to ‘eliminate’ Lumumba.
The head of the CIA, Allen
Dulles, sent a telegram to Lawrence Devlin, the CIA station chief in
Léopoldville, saying: ‘In high quarters here it is the clear-cut conclusion
that if [Lumumba] continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will be
at best chaos and at worst pave the way to Communist takeover of the Congo with
disastrous consequences for the prestige of the UN and for the interests of the
free world generally. Consequently, we concluded that his removal must be an
urgent and prime objective.’
Even when Mobutu, with the connivance of the CIA and UN officials, staged a coup, the US was still not over
the idea of killing Lumumba.
‘The CIA, meanwhile, fearing that
Lumumba might return to power, continued with its assassination schemes. At a
meeting of the National Security Council on 21 September, chaired by President
Eisenhower, CIA chief Allen Dulles stressed that ‘Lumumba . . . remained a
grave danger as long as he was not disposed of ’.
'A senior CIA scientist, Dr
Sidney Gottlieb, put together an assassination kit that included a poison
designed ‘to produce a disease indigenous to that area of Africa and that could
be fatal’. Gottlieb sent the kit by diplomatic pouch to Léopoldville, then
traveled there himself on 27 September to instruct Larry Devlin on how to use
it.
'Gottlieb explained to Devlin that the poison
had to be put in Lumumba’s food or on his toothbrush. But the poison reached
its expiry date before Devlin had worked out a scheme to infiltrate Lumumba’s
residence. According to Devlin, he dumped the poison kit into the Congo River.
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| Suffered a death worse than Kashoggi - Lumumba |
‘The Belgians were also working
on assassination schemes. In a telegram to Belgian officials in Elisabethville on
6 October, the Minister of African Affairs, Count Harold d’Aspremont Lynden,
the chief architect of Katanga’s secession, summed up Belgian intentions: ‘The
main aim to pursue in the interests of the Congo, Katanga and Belgium, is
clearly Lumumba’s élimination definitive.’ (Meredith 2011)
Lumumba was later to be tortured,
beaten up, shot, buried, exhumed, cut up into pieces and his teeth and bones ground to powder and then thrown into a river.
That is a story for another day,
but yes, there are scientists at the CIA capable of making poisons that can
mimic local diseases, and can one be forgiven if they said they can also create diseases that can mimic diseases or poisons?
If I were Alex Jones, I would also wonder why
HIV mysteriously appeared in Congo a region where Leopold killed 10 million,
and 10 million more have died there since 1998…everyone wants the Congo to be emptied.
I wonder why.
But am no Alex Jones.
Quotes from the book: The
State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence by Martin
Meredith (Originally published 2005)
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