What do you think?
Rate this book
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the US-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo
It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. Just days after the handover, however, Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and its leader Patrice Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo Crisis.� Dag Hammarskjold, the tidy Swede who was serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission to date. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of communism in Africa, the US sent word to the CIA station chief in Leopoldville, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.
Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjold, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash, en route to negotiate a ceasefire with Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power in Congo with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960�61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.
It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. Just days after the handover, however, Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and its leader Patrice Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo Crisis.� Dag Hammarskjold, the tidy Swede who was serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission to date. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of communism in Africa, the US sent word to the CIA station chief in Leopoldville, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.
Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjold, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash, en route to negotiate a ceasefire with Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power in Congo with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960�61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.
640 pages, Hardcover
First published October 3, 2023
315 people are currently reading
8,601 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 219 reviews
September 2, 2024
A Well-written, insightful and thorough piece. Highly intriguing lengthy read with profound investigative journalism about the belgian colonialism on the soil of Democratic republic of congo and covers DRC's movement for independence. Patrice Émery Lumumba's endeavor, his bravery, struggle and fate to birth the modern day Congo is depicted adequately encompassing all the parties involved, plots and conspiracies that transpired concurrently behind the curtain such as coup, resistance, peace keeping operations, chaos and turmoil with the involvement of United Nations, the C.I.A. , rebels that reside in and the soviets - all suitably portrayed.
Finally it all lead to a tragic denouement of the first democratically elected - prime minister of D.R.C., a charismatic leader, an african nationalist and a martyr for the pan-African movement like the immortal revolutionist Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara, However he played a very significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic. I enjoyed the book overall as i admire the man for his ideologies and pan african movement. The book got me thinking: What might have happened and also let me wonder - what might have been for the beautiful people of D.R.C. and for Pan-African ideologies to Africa as a whole ? I highly recommend this work specially for history enthusiasts. Cudos to Stuart A. Reid 🙏
Finally it all lead to a tragic denouement of the first democratically elected - prime minister of D.R.C., a charismatic leader, an african nationalist and a martyr for the pan-African movement like the immortal revolutionist Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara, However he played a very significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic. I enjoyed the book overall as i admire the man for his ideologies and pan african movement. The book got me thinking: What might have happened and also let me wonder - what might have been for the beautiful people of D.R.C. and for Pan-African ideologies to Africa as a whole ? I highly recommend this work specially for history enthusiasts. Cudos to Stuart A. Reid 🙏
December 11, 2024
Well this one was one heck of an harrowing read.
Although it is very much in the "burn your idols" vein if you've absorbed the idea that Lumumba was some kind of leftist heroic figure, I thought it came across as very honest and that Reid tried his best to be fair to all involved.
With the catchline you would be excused for expecting some grandiose epic plots but what we get is far more banal (or maybe I'm just blasée) which makes it all the more sad and bleak.
There is a lot of ground covered in this book including the lead up to Lumumba's rise to power so if you have little to no knowledge of Congolese history you won't struggle with it. That being said it also goes into enough detail that if you have general knowledge of that part of history you might still learn so interesting bit.
Although it is very much in the "burn your idols" vein if you've absorbed the idea that Lumumba was some kind of leftist heroic figure, I thought it came across as very honest and that Reid tried his best to be fair to all involved.
With the catchline you would be excused for expecting some grandiose epic plots but what we get is far more banal (or maybe I'm just blasée) which makes it all the more sad and bleak.
There is a lot of ground covered in this book including the lead up to Lumumba's rise to power so if you have little to no knowledge of Congolese history you won't struggle with it. That being said it also goes into enough detail that if you have general knowledge of that part of history you might still learn so interesting bit.
January 4, 2024
This exhaustive piece of investigative journalism, predicated around the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s movement for independence in 1959-1960, read more like a page turning spy thriller, rather than a well-researched book covering the history of one country’s tumultuous break from colonial rule.
In The Lumumba Plot, Stuart Reid takes on an ambitious goal in trying to definitively answer a nearly 65-year-old question: who exactly was responsible for the murder of the country’s first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, how did it happen, what was done or not done by different powers (the Belgians, the UN, the US, and the Congolese themselves) to cause or prevent this reprehensible assassination?
It’s a story of a charismatic young black man, who, from a very young age, embarked on a journey to live a better life than the one he was born into. Along the way and through his studies, this young man - Patrice Lumumba - came to want the same good things and equality for all of his fellow countrymen and African nations as a whole.
His impassioned and gifted oratorical skills helped him to become one of his city’s éDZé - a privileged position among native Congolese whom were the “poster children of colonialism’s civilizing mission� - men infused with European mannerisms, and thus afforded special legal status and privileges unknown to their uneducated families back home.
It is simultaneously fascinating and utterly horrifying to read the chaotic events that played out following Lumumba’s run and victory for the first prime ministership of the free Congo.
Lumumba may have been able to draw large crowds and massive support with his fiery words and larger-than-life presence, but he soon found out just how difficult the job would be that he so desperately wanted. He had little formal education outside of a high school diploma, being mostly self-taught in languages, politics and history by reading copious amounts of books.
What was worse, however, was his inability to understand just how difficult it would be to govern such a large and divided country (thanks largely to arbitrary African lines drawn by European powers who had no knowledge of the people they were grouping together, nor of tribal/ethnic conflict).
Given the whole “Red Scare� going on at the time, and the United States’s desire to implement its own policies abroad (out of sheer hubris and little regard for the different needs of different cultures) they fabricated many falsehoods about Lumumba. Believing he was a potential Soviet puppet (or could become one), the US and CIA started in the Congo what would become their playbook for many other nations throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s - assassinate or overthrow a democratically elected leader of a newly independent country.
They would then replace this dismissed leader with a despotic ruler that would take American bribes and answer to the United States in exchange for mostly unlimited power and rule over their subjects - in the Congo’s case, Lumumba’s onetime childhood friend and political ally, Joseph Mobutu.
Mobutu wavered in the beginning over betraying his friend, but seeing how overwhelmed and frustrated Lumumba was - very often to the degree of downright disrespectful and unprofessional, in Mobutu’s opinion - decided to use his sway over the Congolese army to grab the presidency from Lumumba in a CIA-backed coup, disposing of his old friend in a torturous and unceremonious death to rule the country for 32 bloody and terrifying years.
It really makes you furious with the so-called “civilized� nations and their interference with foreign countries, whose business they had no right to intervene in. It also makes you wonder if the Congo might be very different place from the country it is today, were Lumumba kept in charge to keep foreign influence out.
Would the Congolese people live better lives than the ones they live now - as mostly subjugated and exploited peoples to wealthier foreign interests and corrupt government officials - dirt poor, starving, illiterate, prone to illness without adequate medical care? It’s hard to say. It’s also hard to argue that it could be much worse for them. All that’s left is to wonder what might have been.
An excellent read� recommend to all history fans or those wanting to learn how certain governments came together to rule in the way they do today. I can’t believe how quickly I sped through it. It’s truly that fascinating.
In The Lumumba Plot, Stuart Reid takes on an ambitious goal in trying to definitively answer a nearly 65-year-old question: who exactly was responsible for the murder of the country’s first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, how did it happen, what was done or not done by different powers (the Belgians, the UN, the US, and the Congolese themselves) to cause or prevent this reprehensible assassination?
It’s a story of a charismatic young black man, who, from a very young age, embarked on a journey to live a better life than the one he was born into. Along the way and through his studies, this young man - Patrice Lumumba - came to want the same good things and equality for all of his fellow countrymen and African nations as a whole.
His impassioned and gifted oratorical skills helped him to become one of his city’s éDZé - a privileged position among native Congolese whom were the “poster children of colonialism’s civilizing mission� - men infused with European mannerisms, and thus afforded special legal status and privileges unknown to their uneducated families back home.
It is simultaneously fascinating and utterly horrifying to read the chaotic events that played out following Lumumba’s run and victory for the first prime ministership of the free Congo.
Lumumba may have been able to draw large crowds and massive support with his fiery words and larger-than-life presence, but he soon found out just how difficult the job would be that he so desperately wanted. He had little formal education outside of a high school diploma, being mostly self-taught in languages, politics and history by reading copious amounts of books.
What was worse, however, was his inability to understand just how difficult it would be to govern such a large and divided country (thanks largely to arbitrary African lines drawn by European powers who had no knowledge of the people they were grouping together, nor of tribal/ethnic conflict).
Given the whole “Red Scare� going on at the time, and the United States’s desire to implement its own policies abroad (out of sheer hubris and little regard for the different needs of different cultures) they fabricated many falsehoods about Lumumba. Believing he was a potential Soviet puppet (or could become one), the US and CIA started in the Congo what would become their playbook for many other nations throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s - assassinate or overthrow a democratically elected leader of a newly independent country.
They would then replace this dismissed leader with a despotic ruler that would take American bribes and answer to the United States in exchange for mostly unlimited power and rule over their subjects - in the Congo’s case, Lumumba’s onetime childhood friend and political ally, Joseph Mobutu.
Mobutu wavered in the beginning over betraying his friend, but seeing how overwhelmed and frustrated Lumumba was - very often to the degree of downright disrespectful and unprofessional, in Mobutu’s opinion - decided to use his sway over the Congolese army to grab the presidency from Lumumba in a CIA-backed coup, disposing of his old friend in a torturous and unceremonious death to rule the country for 32 bloody and terrifying years.
It really makes you furious with the so-called “civilized� nations and their interference with foreign countries, whose business they had no right to intervene in. It also makes you wonder if the Congo might be very different place from the country it is today, were Lumumba kept in charge to keep foreign influence out.
Would the Congolese people live better lives than the ones they live now - as mostly subjugated and exploited peoples to wealthier foreign interests and corrupt government officials - dirt poor, starving, illiterate, prone to illness without adequate medical care? It’s hard to say. It’s also hard to argue that it could be much worse for them. All that’s left is to wonder what might have been.
An excellent read� recommend to all history fans or those wanting to learn how certain governments came together to rule in the way they do today. I can’t believe how quickly I sped through it. It’s truly that fascinating.
January 5, 2024
Amazing read. Was so detailed, full of information, but still so easy to read. It never got borning. I guess it helps that the topic is just so interesting.
For anyone wanting to learn about the history of modern Congo (DRC), its first PM Patrice Lumumba and his tragic fate, Dag Hammerssköld (UN General secretary and his tragic fate), Mobutu, the CIA, etc.
Important read for anyone wanting to understand modern Congo. Highly recommended
For anyone wanting to learn about the history of modern Congo (DRC), its first PM Patrice Lumumba and his tragic fate, Dag Hammerssköld (UN General secretary and his tragic fate), Mobutu, the CIA, etc.
Important read for anyone wanting to understand modern Congo. Highly recommended
August 22, 2023
I loved this book. It details the end of Belgian colonialism in the Congo, the subsequent rise to power of Patrice Lumumba, his swift and tragic decline, lots of behind the scenes dealings and movements of government agencies and how the Congo was caught in the middle of a cold war struggle leading to disastrous consequences. The story of Patrice Lumumba is an event that I’ve only heard of briefly mentioned in other books and when I saw that this was coming out, it instantly became one of my most anticipated books of the year. I’ve got pretty limited knowledge of African history and politics but this book was easily accessible and would be enjoyable for anyone with an interest in the subject whether you’re well versed or not. Coming in at over 600 pages, it’s a hefty book but held my intrigue throughout. If you’re interested in the behind the scenes workings/meddlings of the CIA, UN this book whets the appetite. A compelling piece of investigative reporting, it reads like a John LeCarre spy novel and I can’t recommend it enough. 5 stars. Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for an advanced digital copy of the book.
January 5, 2024
very well written and researched, i felt it was missing the Congolese perspective. Like the CIA think Lumumba is a demagogue, uneducated, APE!!, but what do the Congolese think, why was he so popular? what were his ideas and not just he was a persuasive speaker because he sold beers. I left disappointed with the colonial perspective that this ironically portrayed because then the Congolese are painted as an uneducated mass following whoever when that can't be true?! where is their autonomy? what is driving the secession, what's happening in the military?! maybe the point was for the audience to see Lumumba through a colonizers eyes? i felt like Lumumba was so minimized and one-dimensional. Same with Kasavubu, Mobutu was better. Overall, I think I was not the intended audience for this book. But I did learn a lot and it was easy to read too. Just some things tickled my pet peeves. The next time I see "Congo a country of vast wealth- their natural resources" I may puke!
April 3, 2024
Read as a jury for the Booktube prize
My Ranking - 1st out of the 6 books (Best book out of the list!)
Rating - 5 stars
NPS - 10 (promoter)
American ignorance often went hand in hand with racist attitudes toward the Congolese people and their leaders. U.S. and UN cable traffic during the Congo crisis is rife with paternalism and exasperation with the “children� running the newly independent country, including the “little boy� Lumumba. What the Congolese needed, they seemed to suggest, was supervision and control.
This is one of my best political non-fiction that I have read in a long time. This page-turner of a read is a step-by-step elaboration of the disaster Congo had to face with the announcement of their Independence from Belgium.
The book explores the racism, the Cold War and the history of the Congo from pre-1960 to 1961 and the decolonization of a depraved country at the hands of white colonisers.
A brilliant read, well-written and researched, and I must say, this should be on your list of reads this year.
My Ranking - 1st out of the 6 books (Best book out of the list!)
Rating - 5 stars
NPS - 10 (promoter)
American ignorance often went hand in hand with racist attitudes toward the Congolese people and their leaders. U.S. and UN cable traffic during the Congo crisis is rife with paternalism and exasperation with the “children� running the newly independent country, including the “little boy� Lumumba. What the Congolese needed, they seemed to suggest, was supervision and control.
This is one of my best political non-fiction that I have read in a long time. This page-turner of a read is a step-by-step elaboration of the disaster Congo had to face with the announcement of their Independence from Belgium.
The book explores the racism, the Cold War and the history of the Congo from pre-1960 to 1961 and the decolonization of a depraved country at the hands of white colonisers.
A brilliant read, well-written and researched, and I must say, this should be on your list of reads this year.
March 25, 2024
The Lumumba Plot
Kudos to Stuart A. Reid for an excellent and well balanced history. This is a long book both because the author develops a lot of the historical backstories for many of the main characters and because it is impeccably researched.
This new history covers the brief Patrice Lumumba era of Congo's independence movement around 1960. This revolutionary period followed nearly one hundred years of Belgian Colonialism and the horror that was brought by King Leopold II.
Eisenhower, Dulles and the CIA all played a role in Lumumba's demise. The tragedy of Dag Hammarskjold the UN secretary and his questionable role in arming UN forces in the Congo are also covered deftly. Of course there are many more characters including Mobutu who was Lumumba's protege and betrayer. Joseph Mobutu went on to rule as a dictator for 35 years with the U.S. blessing. Or at least he had the CIA's backing in the critical early years.
The CIA's complicity in the revolution is disturbing to be sure and I don't want to minimize it. But in the midst of the Cold War era, there was no plausible communist threat to U.S. The CIA had no prior trade or relationship with the Belgian Congo but they were spooked when Lumumba went to the Russians for weapons. Anyway the parts of this book outside the CIA and Larry Devin the station chief are more interesting in my opinion.
So I can highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the story of 20th century Congo. If you enjoyed Leopold's Ghost and are okay with some very heavy topics, I think you'll like this one too.
5 stars
Kudos to Stuart A. Reid for an excellent and well balanced history. This is a long book both because the author develops a lot of the historical backstories for many of the main characters and because it is impeccably researched.
This new history covers the brief Patrice Lumumba era of Congo's independence movement around 1960. This revolutionary period followed nearly one hundred years of Belgian Colonialism and the horror that was brought by King Leopold II.
Eisenhower, Dulles and the CIA all played a role in Lumumba's demise. The tragedy of Dag Hammarskjold the UN secretary and his questionable role in arming UN forces in the Congo are also covered deftly. Of course there are many more characters including Mobutu who was Lumumba's protege and betrayer. Joseph Mobutu went on to rule as a dictator for 35 years with the U.S. blessing. Or at least he had the CIA's backing in the critical early years.
The CIA's complicity in the revolution is disturbing to be sure and I don't want to minimize it. But in the midst of the Cold War era, there was no plausible communist threat to U.S. The CIA had no prior trade or relationship with the Belgian Congo but they were spooked when Lumumba went to the Russians for weapons. Anyway the parts of this book outside the CIA and Larry Devin the station chief are more interesting in my opinion.
So I can highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the story of 20th century Congo. If you enjoyed Leopold's Ghost and are okay with some very heavy topics, I think you'll like this one too.
5 stars
August 19, 2024
To get this out of the way: The CIA angle implied by the cover is bait.
The main text generally acknowledges this, though CIA station chief Larry Devlin gets a disproportionate amount of text compared to the very real movers and shakers amongst the Belgians (who often just get described as “the Belgians�).
It is correct the CIA was involved in that it contributed materially to Mobutu’s rise post Lumumba, but its actual contribution to Lumumba’s downfall was limited and mainly related to implied permissions for others to act. A US president (Eisenhower) does appear to have ordered an assassination of a foreign leader but I suspect that Reid included certain elements with an eye to an American audience.
I can understand that (books do have to be sold and the US is a major market) so I am not too tetchy about it. The mechanics around Lumumba’s fall and the centrifugal forces dividing the Congo are well described � the details around the original army rebellion are limited but we get enough of a feel. Lumumba was in over his head, ran into overblown fears of Communist sympathies, and was eventually cast aside for a “reliable� replacement.
I also want to credit The Lumumba Plot for how many things I learnt that I was previously unaware of:
- The problems of Belgium’s rule and subsequent interventions stretch fair beyond King Leopold’s sins.
- Lumumba’s rule was very short (he spent more time as a former Prime Minister than as an actual one) and he made choices (such as international trips) that suggest a lack of a firm hand of governance, falling back on pointless repression very late in the piece.
- The UN really had potential to be a major power in global politics but its activities in the Congo (and Katanga) was a critical missed opportunity.
So, with the caveat about what is implied on the cover versus what is in the book, this is an excellent introduction to the rocky road of decolonisation in Africa with many fantastic details. The writing is strong and easy to work through.
The main text generally acknowledges this, though CIA station chief Larry Devlin gets a disproportionate amount of text compared to the very real movers and shakers amongst the Belgians (who often just get described as “the Belgians�).
It is correct the CIA was involved in that it contributed materially to Mobutu’s rise post Lumumba, but its actual contribution to Lumumba’s downfall was limited and mainly related to implied permissions for others to act. A US president (Eisenhower) does appear to have ordered an assassination of a foreign leader but I suspect that Reid included certain elements with an eye to an American audience.
I can understand that (books do have to be sold and the US is a major market) so I am not too tetchy about it. The mechanics around Lumumba’s fall and the centrifugal forces dividing the Congo are well described � the details around the original army rebellion are limited but we get enough of a feel. Lumumba was in over his head, ran into overblown fears of Communist sympathies, and was eventually cast aside for a “reliable� replacement.
I also want to credit The Lumumba Plot for how many things I learnt that I was previously unaware of:
- The problems of Belgium’s rule and subsequent interventions stretch fair beyond King Leopold’s sins.
- Lumumba’s rule was very short (he spent more time as a former Prime Minister than as an actual one) and he made choices (such as international trips) that suggest a lack of a firm hand of governance, falling back on pointless repression very late in the piece.
- The UN really had potential to be a major power in global politics but its activities in the Congo (and Katanga) was a critical missed opportunity.
So, with the caveat about what is implied on the cover versus what is in the book, this is an excellent introduction to the rocky road of decolonisation in Africa with many fantastic details. The writing is strong and easy to work through.
January 5, 2024
Reid covers it all in this thrilling (and chilling) tale of a notorious political assassination. The author walks the reader through seemingly every detail behind the assassination of Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the early years of the Cold War. Of particular note is his exhumation of the United Nations presence during this time -- including background on Dag Hammarskjöld -- as an analysis of the organization's early days (and early failures). Despite being lengthy, it was no difficulty to keep reading; each page beckoned like the one before.
I read an advanced reader's copy of this book given to me by the publisher through a ŷ giveaway.
I read an advanced reader's copy of this book given to me by the publisher through a ŷ giveaway.
December 23, 2024
There are few countries with a more tragic history than Congo. 'The Lumumba Plot' zooms in on one deeply sad chapter: the chilling murder in 1961 of the newly independent country's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, for which - the books convincingly demonstrates - the US, the Belgians and to some extent even the UN are responsible (even if it were Katanga rebels who ultimately pulled the trigger).
I believe the book tries to paint a fair and balanced picture of the now legendary Lumumba, who was impulsive, erratic and naive but also supremely talented, an outstanding communicator and superior to any of the other powerful men in Congolese politics at the time (Tshombe, Kasavubu, Mobutu). He was almost always right, but in international politics sometimes it is better not to tell the truth.
It was American arrogance combined with surprising amateurism and an irrational fear of anything that even smelled like communism that caused the US (in particular the CIA led by Dulles, but also Eisenhower himself) to lose faith in Lumumba and ultimately give him up. The book gives a detailed yet fast-paced account of the events leading up to the crime, from the struggle for independence from Belgium to the UN-intervention led by Dag Hammarskjold.
David van Reybrouck's "Congo" is probably my favourite non-fiction book of all time, but this one is an excellent companion zooming in on a crucial point that plunged the country into an ever deepening crisis.
It is tempting to speculate what would have happened had Lumumba been given a fair chance...
I believe the book tries to paint a fair and balanced picture of the now legendary Lumumba, who was impulsive, erratic and naive but also supremely talented, an outstanding communicator and superior to any of the other powerful men in Congolese politics at the time (Tshombe, Kasavubu, Mobutu). He was almost always right, but in international politics sometimes it is better not to tell the truth.
It was American arrogance combined with surprising amateurism and an irrational fear of anything that even smelled like communism that caused the US (in particular the CIA led by Dulles, but also Eisenhower himself) to lose faith in Lumumba and ultimately give him up. The book gives a detailed yet fast-paced account of the events leading up to the crime, from the struggle for independence from Belgium to the UN-intervention led by Dag Hammarskjold.
David van Reybrouck's "Congo" is probably my favourite non-fiction book of all time, but this one is an excellent companion zooming in on a crucial point that plunged the country into an ever deepening crisis.
It is tempting to speculate what would have happened had Lumumba been given a fair chance...
September 21, 2024
(Audiobook) (4.5 stars) If you live in America, you probably don’t think much about the Congo, or particularly, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You might think just when or why would the US ever get involved with the affairs of the Congo. Yet, in the late 1950s/early 1960s, a key focus area for US foreign policy was the Congo. As it transitioned from Belgian colony to independent nation, the actions of its charismatic leader Lumumba, along with consternation of its former Belgian colonists plus Cold War politics, saw the US get into the political life of the Congo. Ultimately, the US backed Mobutu, a military figure that initially helped out Lumumba in trying to stabilize the country in its drive for independence.
This is a very informative read, especially for those who have little understanding or insight into the Congo and US actions in the early 1960s. The Western view of the Congo is as maddening to read now as it must have been for any Congolese in the mid-20th century. Europe and America had no understanding of life for the country, the people or the culture. Thus, so many decisions were made that ultimately set the Congo back in any attempt to move forward post-colonialism. Also, Belgium comes off looking really, really, really bad here, as they subjugated the country, long after the country took the colony away from King Leopold II. They wrecked the infrastructure and handicaped the country so much that they (DROC) are still paying for it.
This book does not put a lot of players in a good light, from the West to those in power in the Congo/Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a sad tale, and it doesn’t look like the future is all that much better. Still, this work offers insight into many of the actions that did much to hinder the nation.
This is a very informative read, especially for those who have little understanding or insight into the Congo and US actions in the early 1960s. The Western view of the Congo is as maddening to read now as it must have been for any Congolese in the mid-20th century. Europe and America had no understanding of life for the country, the people or the culture. Thus, so many decisions were made that ultimately set the Congo back in any attempt to move forward post-colonialism. Also, Belgium comes off looking really, really, really bad here, as they subjugated the country, long after the country took the colony away from King Leopold II. They wrecked the infrastructure and handicaped the country so much that they (DROC) are still paying for it.
This book does not put a lot of players in a good light, from the West to those in power in the Congo/Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a sad tale, and it doesn’t look like the future is all that much better. Still, this work offers insight into many of the actions that did much to hinder the nation.
February 4, 2024
I've known the bones of the Lumumba Plot a while..it is difficult to not run into such a salacious story at some point. poison! toothpaste! the CIA being nefarious!
I didn't feel like I needed to subject myself to a book outlining how destructive American blundering can be. All I have to do for that is turn on the news. BUT I heard an interview with the author on a podcast. He was calm and level headed and made a point that his book didn't just focus on the Americans. He wanted to take Lumumba out of the realm of myth and give context to his life and his country and how the world reacted, especially The U.N.
I am so glad I read this book. It made me feel comfortable in an unfamiliar setting and gave me confidence making connections with our larger history. For example: why the U.N needed a new President ,how the situation was different from the Suez Crisis, why the Belgian Congo was even more stratified than other colonized places, why Eisenhower was tired and uninterested in Africa and how Kennedy took advantage of that. And why a unified Congo was such a difficult thing to organize.
If you have the slightest interest in learning about the past to understand where we are today this book is a must read.
I didn't feel like I needed to subject myself to a book outlining how destructive American blundering can be. All I have to do for that is turn on the news. BUT I heard an interview with the author on a podcast. He was calm and level headed and made a point that his book didn't just focus on the Americans. He wanted to take Lumumba out of the realm of myth and give context to his life and his country and how the world reacted, especially The U.N.
I am so glad I read this book. It made me feel comfortable in an unfamiliar setting and gave me confidence making connections with our larger history. For example: why the U.N needed a new President ,how the situation was different from the Suez Crisis, why the Belgian Congo was even more stratified than other colonized places, why Eisenhower was tired and uninterested in Africa and how Kennedy took advantage of that. And why a unified Congo was such a difficult thing to organize.
If you have the slightest interest in learning about the past to understand where we are today this book is a must read.
July 2, 2024
Very informative look at Patrice Lumumba and his struggle to make Congo an independent state. Well written and easy to read.
May 10, 2024
This is definitely a good introduction to the topic, especially if you come in with very little understanding of African colonial history. It was very interesting to learn about the tumultuous and short-lived leadership of Lumumba, but I feel like this book was lacking in a couple of areas.
Firstly, it relied very heavily on estimations and characterizations of the politicians( Lumumba, Mobutu, Kasavubu, Tshombe) by the people who dealt with them in the crisis. Not only did this lead to an incomplete picture for many of them; it also gave the book a bit of a bias. I found it a little strange that most descriptions of Lumumba came from Hammarskjold, Bunch, and various other UN officials' impressions of him. This isn't true all of the time, but it did feel weighted towards the UN's and U.S.'s perspective. To his credit, Reid admits that Congolese accounts are much fewer than the accounts of the high-ranking officials in the novel, but it still feels a little lackluster.
Secondly, Lumumba's own political ideology and opinions seem to be shown by the author as very ambiguous, due largely to his opportunistic attitude towards aid in the Congo crisis.While he may very well have been shifty in his alignments during the crisis, it seems like a more complete picture of his actual ideologies could have been gleaned from other areas( particularly his Pan-Africanist colleagues, especially Nkrumah). At certain points in the book, even though Reid makes it clear that Lumumba's alignments aren't what they're being characterized as by the UN or the US, they were the only reference points I was getting, other than admittance of vague nationalist leanings.
Lastly, the upheavals in the Congo are given very little description and little to no comprehensive analysis of the underlying pressures and motivations.
Still, I feel like I'm being a bit nitpicky, it was a good read.
6.5/10
P.S. All my homies hate Mobutu, but all my homies also hate Dulles and Eisenhower🥰🥰
Firstly, it relied very heavily on estimations and characterizations of the politicians( Lumumba, Mobutu, Kasavubu, Tshombe) by the people who dealt with them in the crisis. Not only did this lead to an incomplete picture for many of them; it also gave the book a bit of a bias. I found it a little strange that most descriptions of Lumumba came from Hammarskjold, Bunch, and various other UN officials' impressions of him. This isn't true all of the time, but it did feel weighted towards the UN's and U.S.'s perspective. To his credit, Reid admits that Congolese accounts are much fewer than the accounts of the high-ranking officials in the novel, but it still feels a little lackluster.
Secondly, Lumumba's own political ideology and opinions seem to be shown by the author as very ambiguous, due largely to his opportunistic attitude towards aid in the Congo crisis.While he may very well have been shifty in his alignments during the crisis, it seems like a more complete picture of his actual ideologies could have been gleaned from other areas( particularly his Pan-Africanist colleagues, especially Nkrumah). At certain points in the book, even though Reid makes it clear that Lumumba's alignments aren't what they're being characterized as by the UN or the US, they were the only reference points I was getting, other than admittance of vague nationalist leanings.
Lastly, the upheavals in the Congo are given very little description and little to no comprehensive analysis of the underlying pressures and motivations.
Still, I feel like I'm being a bit nitpicky, it was a good read.
6.5/10
P.S. All my homies hate Mobutu, but all my homies also hate Dulles and Eisenhower🥰🥰
January 1, 2024
1960 was called ‘the Year of Africa� because it was a tumultuous and dramatic year in modern Africa’s history. Seventeen African colonies became independent nations that year, freeing themselves from France, Britain and Belgium. Ghana, which was independent already, abolished its monarchy and became a republic. The brutal Sharpeville massacre happened in South Africa, giving impetus to the anti-apartheid movement. Congo achieved independence from Belgium and its charismatic and temperamental leader, Patrice Lumumba, became the prime minister on June 30, 1960. Just seven months later, in January 1961, his Congolese political opponents murdered him. But many players hatched and aided the plot to murder him. They included his onetime friend and ally, Joseph Mobutu, and Joseph Kasavubu, the president of Congo. Many Belgian advisors of the rebel Katanga province, the CIA and the Eisenhower administration, and a passive United Nations also played their part. Congo descended further into crisis, and Mobutu's dictatorship lasted for decades, as did his allegiance to the West. This book by Stuart Reid is a spellbinding account of the seven months� rule of Lumumba and Congo’s divisive politics in 1960-61. It covers Belgium’s perfidy and sabotage of Congo’s unity, and the role of the CIA and the Eisenhower administration in conspiring to assassinate a democratically elected leader of Africa.
Three mercurial figures, Patrice Lumumba, Moise Tshombe, and Joseph Mobutu, led Congo’s fight for independence. Patrice Lumumba was born in 1925 in the Kasai province of Belgian Congo, but grew up in Stanleyville (aka Kisangani). He didn’t go to university but was an auto-didact, studying French philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire, and spoke French and at least four African languages. In the 1950s, Lumumba admired European civilization and nudged the Belgian rulers to educate the Congolese. He promised loyalty and collaboration in return, preferring limited freedom, in a federation with Belgium and the Belgian king as the head. After authorities arrested him for embezzling $2500 in his post office job and sentenced him to prison, his views changed. In prison, he experienced how badly the Belgian rulers treated the black people. On release, he moved to Leopoldville and spoke out against colonial rule and freeing Africans from the chains of European paternalism. With his charisma and oratory skills, Lumumba traveled the Congo and spoke about overcoming tribal division and forging a Congolese identity. The spirit of freedom was blowing across colonial Africa, with independence movements in many countries.
The province of Katanga in the south was mineral rich, and the Belgians coveted it. Katanga’s most popular leader was Moise Tshombe, who was wealthy, well-connected, and favored by Belgium. Tshombe exploited the Katangese prejudices against the Congolese who came to work their mines. He pushed for autonomy for his province and stood against a Congo ruled remotely from Leopoldville because he feared the other provinces might appropriate the wealth of Katanga. The Belgians backed him with finance and military.
Joseph Mobutu was Lumumba’s friend and colleague in the independence movement. But he was also a secret agent for the Belgians, passing information about Lumumba and others to the colonial authorities. Mobutu was influential in the army, and the soldiers respected him. After Congo achieved independence on June 30, 1960, Lumumba, as prime minister, made him his military chief.
Congo descended into crisis soon after independence. Belgians fled the country, leaving the remaining Belgians more insecure. Katangese also revolted and soon Tshombe declared Katanga’s independence with Belgian support. A month after Congo’s independence, Belgian soldiers marched into the capital, capturing all the airfields in the country. They advanced the need to protect remaining Belgians in the country as the excuse. Lumumba appealed to the UN to send UN soldiers to support his government as the legitimate power in the country. Dag Hammerskjoeld, the UN secretary general, was liberal in outlook, but he shared many of the prejudices of the era that prevailed in the West about Africa. To them, peace in Africa meant protecting the white population in the newly independent nations. The Western powers did not want to weaken Belgium in Congo and Hammerskjoeld followed the line by visiting Tshombe first on arrival in Congo. Protocol demanded that he meet with the prime minister Lumumba first. Hammerskjoeld viewed Lumumba as ignorant, inept, and unreliable. The United States was watching with interest, but President Eisenhower had a dim view of African politics and a prejudice against Lumumba as a communist sympathizer. When Lumumba visited Washington, DC, Eisenhower did not care to meet him.
Meanwhile, the mineral-rich Kasai province too revolted, seeking secession. Lumumba’s army unleashed violence on the revolt, killing thousands of people. It made ethnic minorities even more suspicious of Lumumba’s central government. Finding himself beleaguered by ethnic revolts, Belgian aggression and UN passivity, Lumumba appealed to the US for help. But the CIA and the administration preferred the removal of Lumumba from power. In desperation, Lumumba appealed to the Soviet Union, but they too were lukewarm in support. Khrushchev felt Kasavubu was a better bet than Lumumba. However, his appeal to the Soviets made the Americans edgy into believing he was a communist. In a crucial meeting in the White House on August 18, 1960, Robert Johnson was the official note taker for the meeting. He recalled that president Eisenhower told the CIA director Allen Dulles something that came across to him as an order to assassinate Lumumba.
Galvanized by this ‘order�, the CIA station in Congo set about making plans to ‘remove� Lumumba by asking Kasavubu to fire him, which he can do as a president. In addition, they came up with other plans to poison Lumumba. On September 5, 1960, Kasavubu used his presidential powers and Lumumba’s tenure as PM for sixty-seven days ended. Lumumba was popular in some parts of the Congo. But the UN, the US, the Belgians, president Kasavubu, defence chief Mobutu and rebel leader, Tshombe breathed a sigh of relief at his departure.
Tragedy unfolded over the next months. Soon, Mobutu emerged as the supreme arbiter and power-broker and arrested Lumumba and kept him under house arrest. Lumumba escaped and headed to his home base of Stanleyville, but Mobutu’s forces captured him and housed him in Thysville, near the capital. Late on January 17, 1961, his Congolese enemies took him away on the pretext of transporting him to Katanga. On the way, they murdered Lumumba and his compatriots, Maurice Mpolo, and Joseph Okito. Author Reid says Lumumba had remained dignified till the end, despite torture and persecution. The authorities in Leopoldville hired Gerard Soete, a Belgian police commissioner, to make Lumumba’s remains ‘disappear�. Soete buried Lumumba’s body multiple times in different places, but found it unsatisfactory. Then, he used sulphuric acid to turn Lumumba’s body into a mass of mucus. After the acid ran out, Soete doused the remaining body parts with gasoline and set them aflame. The bones and teeth survived. Soete collected one of Lumumba’s fingers and a pair of his gold-capped molars as souvenirs, according to his daughter. Months later, Dag Hammerskjoeld died in a plane crash and Congo fell into a decades-long dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu.
By 1975, America acknowledged its regrettable conduct on the world stage during the 1960s. The Church committee in that year, chaired by the senator of Idaho, Frank Church, investigated many illegal overreaches by the US government. It covered FBI’s surveillance of left-wing groups, CIA’s mail-interception program, mind-control experiments, and alleged assassination plots against foreign leaders. Despite the committee's exoneration of the CIA on the ultimate death of Lumumba, author Reid highlights the US's accountability in it. The CIA played a role in every event leading up to Lumumba’s downfall and death. Five weeks after Lumumba became PM, the CIA urged Kasavubu to remove him from power and funded protests and propaganda, which made it easier for Kasavubu to do it. It encouraged Mobutu to assume power the same month by financing him. The CIA also recommended to Mobutu to organize for Lumumba’s ‘permanent disposal� and prevented any compromise to let Lumumba return to power. When Lumumba escaped from his house arrest, the CIA helped Mobutu capture him and did nothing to stop their inhuman treatment of Lumumba. Last, when Lumumba was facing death, the CIA offered no dissent to its Congolese power brokers in going ahead. It kept Washington uninformed to prevent them from saving Lumumba.
The Congo had natural resources, but its most valuable resources were also present in greater quantities in North America. In 1960, it held no economic or political importance, was geographically isolated from the US and the USSR, and seen as a backwater. It represented no strategic threat to the US, housed no significant US commercial interests and few US citizens lived there. Nor was it contiguous to US territory. What made Congo so significant for US involvement at this level? Author Reid suggests the following reasons. One reason is the arrogance of power in the 1950s and 60s. America’s might gave it the right to remake foreign societies and governments in its own image. A second reason is the ‘domino theory�, which held that if one country fell to the communists, its neighbours would follow one by one. Though this theory lacked evidence in reality, it became an article of faith among US policy wonks. Once the US decided Congo was important, they assumed that the Soviets also considered it vital. Soviet archives after 1991 show that Moscow considered the Congo only of peripheral concern and Lumumba a doubtful ally. The obsession with communism made the US misjudge Lumumba. As leader of a poor third-world nation, he was just playing both sides of the cold war for his survival. Thomas Kanza, Congo’s ambassador to the UN, clarified it when he said, “The Americans believed Lumumba was a communist because the Belgians said so. They had little idea who Lumumba was�.
This is one of the best books I have read in recent times. With his pulsating narrative, Stuart Reid brings a real-life African national tragedy to life, sixty years after the event. It is gripping and narrated in the thrilling style of a Ben Macintyre work. Lumumba was a complex personality and Reid brings him to life in all his avatars, but we end up feeling for his death, despite his flaws. A deeper reflection on this book urges us to apply its lessons to many similar events in the contemporary world.
Three mercurial figures, Patrice Lumumba, Moise Tshombe, and Joseph Mobutu, led Congo’s fight for independence. Patrice Lumumba was born in 1925 in the Kasai province of Belgian Congo, but grew up in Stanleyville (aka Kisangani). He didn’t go to university but was an auto-didact, studying French philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire, and spoke French and at least four African languages. In the 1950s, Lumumba admired European civilization and nudged the Belgian rulers to educate the Congolese. He promised loyalty and collaboration in return, preferring limited freedom, in a federation with Belgium and the Belgian king as the head. After authorities arrested him for embezzling $2500 in his post office job and sentenced him to prison, his views changed. In prison, he experienced how badly the Belgian rulers treated the black people. On release, he moved to Leopoldville and spoke out against colonial rule and freeing Africans from the chains of European paternalism. With his charisma and oratory skills, Lumumba traveled the Congo and spoke about overcoming tribal division and forging a Congolese identity. The spirit of freedom was blowing across colonial Africa, with independence movements in many countries.
The province of Katanga in the south was mineral rich, and the Belgians coveted it. Katanga’s most popular leader was Moise Tshombe, who was wealthy, well-connected, and favored by Belgium. Tshombe exploited the Katangese prejudices against the Congolese who came to work their mines. He pushed for autonomy for his province and stood against a Congo ruled remotely from Leopoldville because he feared the other provinces might appropriate the wealth of Katanga. The Belgians backed him with finance and military.
Joseph Mobutu was Lumumba’s friend and colleague in the independence movement. But he was also a secret agent for the Belgians, passing information about Lumumba and others to the colonial authorities. Mobutu was influential in the army, and the soldiers respected him. After Congo achieved independence on June 30, 1960, Lumumba, as prime minister, made him his military chief.
Congo descended into crisis soon after independence. Belgians fled the country, leaving the remaining Belgians more insecure. Katangese also revolted and soon Tshombe declared Katanga’s independence with Belgian support. A month after Congo’s independence, Belgian soldiers marched into the capital, capturing all the airfields in the country. They advanced the need to protect remaining Belgians in the country as the excuse. Lumumba appealed to the UN to send UN soldiers to support his government as the legitimate power in the country. Dag Hammerskjoeld, the UN secretary general, was liberal in outlook, but he shared many of the prejudices of the era that prevailed in the West about Africa. To them, peace in Africa meant protecting the white population in the newly independent nations. The Western powers did not want to weaken Belgium in Congo and Hammerskjoeld followed the line by visiting Tshombe first on arrival in Congo. Protocol demanded that he meet with the prime minister Lumumba first. Hammerskjoeld viewed Lumumba as ignorant, inept, and unreliable. The United States was watching with interest, but President Eisenhower had a dim view of African politics and a prejudice against Lumumba as a communist sympathizer. When Lumumba visited Washington, DC, Eisenhower did not care to meet him.
Meanwhile, the mineral-rich Kasai province too revolted, seeking secession. Lumumba’s army unleashed violence on the revolt, killing thousands of people. It made ethnic minorities even more suspicious of Lumumba’s central government. Finding himself beleaguered by ethnic revolts, Belgian aggression and UN passivity, Lumumba appealed to the US for help. But the CIA and the administration preferred the removal of Lumumba from power. In desperation, Lumumba appealed to the Soviet Union, but they too were lukewarm in support. Khrushchev felt Kasavubu was a better bet than Lumumba. However, his appeal to the Soviets made the Americans edgy into believing he was a communist. In a crucial meeting in the White House on August 18, 1960, Robert Johnson was the official note taker for the meeting. He recalled that president Eisenhower told the CIA director Allen Dulles something that came across to him as an order to assassinate Lumumba.
Galvanized by this ‘order�, the CIA station in Congo set about making plans to ‘remove� Lumumba by asking Kasavubu to fire him, which he can do as a president. In addition, they came up with other plans to poison Lumumba. On September 5, 1960, Kasavubu used his presidential powers and Lumumba’s tenure as PM for sixty-seven days ended. Lumumba was popular in some parts of the Congo. But the UN, the US, the Belgians, president Kasavubu, defence chief Mobutu and rebel leader, Tshombe breathed a sigh of relief at his departure.
Tragedy unfolded over the next months. Soon, Mobutu emerged as the supreme arbiter and power-broker and arrested Lumumba and kept him under house arrest. Lumumba escaped and headed to his home base of Stanleyville, but Mobutu’s forces captured him and housed him in Thysville, near the capital. Late on January 17, 1961, his Congolese enemies took him away on the pretext of transporting him to Katanga. On the way, they murdered Lumumba and his compatriots, Maurice Mpolo, and Joseph Okito. Author Reid says Lumumba had remained dignified till the end, despite torture and persecution. The authorities in Leopoldville hired Gerard Soete, a Belgian police commissioner, to make Lumumba’s remains ‘disappear�. Soete buried Lumumba’s body multiple times in different places, but found it unsatisfactory. Then, he used sulphuric acid to turn Lumumba’s body into a mass of mucus. After the acid ran out, Soete doused the remaining body parts with gasoline and set them aflame. The bones and teeth survived. Soete collected one of Lumumba’s fingers and a pair of his gold-capped molars as souvenirs, according to his daughter. Months later, Dag Hammerskjoeld died in a plane crash and Congo fell into a decades-long dictatorship of Joseph Mobutu.
By 1975, America acknowledged its regrettable conduct on the world stage during the 1960s. The Church committee in that year, chaired by the senator of Idaho, Frank Church, investigated many illegal overreaches by the US government. It covered FBI’s surveillance of left-wing groups, CIA’s mail-interception program, mind-control experiments, and alleged assassination plots against foreign leaders. Despite the committee's exoneration of the CIA on the ultimate death of Lumumba, author Reid highlights the US's accountability in it. The CIA played a role in every event leading up to Lumumba’s downfall and death. Five weeks after Lumumba became PM, the CIA urged Kasavubu to remove him from power and funded protests and propaganda, which made it easier for Kasavubu to do it. It encouraged Mobutu to assume power the same month by financing him. The CIA also recommended to Mobutu to organize for Lumumba’s ‘permanent disposal� and prevented any compromise to let Lumumba return to power. When Lumumba escaped from his house arrest, the CIA helped Mobutu capture him and did nothing to stop their inhuman treatment of Lumumba. Last, when Lumumba was facing death, the CIA offered no dissent to its Congolese power brokers in going ahead. It kept Washington uninformed to prevent them from saving Lumumba.
The Congo had natural resources, but its most valuable resources were also present in greater quantities in North America. In 1960, it held no economic or political importance, was geographically isolated from the US and the USSR, and seen as a backwater. It represented no strategic threat to the US, housed no significant US commercial interests and few US citizens lived there. Nor was it contiguous to US territory. What made Congo so significant for US involvement at this level? Author Reid suggests the following reasons. One reason is the arrogance of power in the 1950s and 60s. America’s might gave it the right to remake foreign societies and governments in its own image. A second reason is the ‘domino theory�, which held that if one country fell to the communists, its neighbours would follow one by one. Though this theory lacked evidence in reality, it became an article of faith among US policy wonks. Once the US decided Congo was important, they assumed that the Soviets also considered it vital. Soviet archives after 1991 show that Moscow considered the Congo only of peripheral concern and Lumumba a doubtful ally. The obsession with communism made the US misjudge Lumumba. As leader of a poor third-world nation, he was just playing both sides of the cold war for his survival. Thomas Kanza, Congo’s ambassador to the UN, clarified it when he said, “The Americans believed Lumumba was a communist because the Belgians said so. They had little idea who Lumumba was�.
This is one of the best books I have read in recent times. With his pulsating narrative, Stuart Reid brings a real-life African national tragedy to life, sixty years after the event. It is gripping and narrated in the thrilling style of a Ben Macintyre work. Lumumba was a complex personality and Reid brings him to life in all his avatars, but we end up feeling for his death, despite his flaws. A deeper reflection on this book urges us to apply its lessons to many similar events in the contemporary world.
November 3, 2024
It's quite confusing how such a well researched book can completely gloss over the actual Why of the whole event - the congo is considered one of the richest countries in the world in natural resources, with literal gold mines, mineral mines and oil deposits. It doesn't take much thought to put two and two together and come to the conclusion that the United States didn't want the congo to be independently rich and working with the soviets.
What has happened to the congo was by design - their inhabitants, including children, are nearly slaves and paid far below poverty wages, while trillions worth of natural resources has been hollowed out and turned into profit for the global capitalist North.
Don't read this book. Read cobalt red instead.
What has happened to the congo was by design - their inhabitants, including children, are nearly slaves and paid far below poverty wages, while trillions worth of natural resources has been hollowed out and turned into profit for the global capitalist North.
Don't read this book. Read cobalt red instead.
May 6, 2024
This was a fascinating look at the Congo crisis, taking place in the backdrop of the Cold War, amongst the paranoia and interference from the global powers.
This was a riveting account of the inner workings of the UN's costliest and deadliest peacekeeping operation and examines the CIA, the US government, the UN, the Belgians and of course the Congolese factions themselves.
This book felt like the spiritual successor to King Leopold's Ghost (a brilliant and necessary read in its own right). Highly recommend
This was a riveting account of the inner workings of the UN's costliest and deadliest peacekeeping operation and examines the CIA, the US government, the UN, the Belgians and of course the Congolese factions themselves.
This book felt like the spiritual successor to King Leopold's Ghost (a brilliant and necessary read in its own right). Highly recommend
April 6, 2024
I think this is a necessary work for all of us to understand more about the rise of the CIA, the UN, and the transfer from colonial rule to self rule in The Republic of the Congo. It's extremely detailed, but it's very dry reading. Literally no one comes out of this history looking good. A clown car all around.
Want to read
November 12, 2023I haven't read this book yet, it doesn't have a UK publisher yet, but I reproduce below a review by Isaac Chotiner from the New Yorker which is well worth reading:
'“It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that we were right to trust you.� So King Baudouin, of Belgium, declared in the Congolese capital of Léopoldville (present-day Kinshasa) on June 30, 1960. It was a handover ceremony: the Belgian Congo would henceforth belong to the Congolese people. Decades later, Baudouin’s condescension remains startling. His great-great-uncle Leopold II had overseen what was then called the Congo Free State as his personal fiefdom—and established a system of exploitation that was monstrous even by colonial standards. But by 1960 the Belgian government could no longer ignore the wave of anti-imperialist movements that had swept much of the continent. Now the twenty-nine-year-old monarch told the crowd—made up of new Congolese citizens, Belgian officials, and dignitaries from around the world—that independence would be “achieved not through the immediate satisfaction of simple pleasures but through work.�
'Baudouin was followed in the speaking order by Joseph Kasavubu—independent Congo’s President, a relatively ceremonial role—though nobody really remembers what he said. It was Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s Prime Minister, who left an impression when he rose to speak next. A slim, enigmatic man, Lumumba was the most important politician in the country, and the one whom the Belgians were most concerned about. Lumumba’s remarks were clearly a direct reply to Baudouin’s. He ticked through the daily humiliations of life for Black Africans in the Belgian Congo, and recalled the violence visited upon his people. And then, his voice rising, he told his countrymen, “We who suffered in our bodies and hearts from colonialist oppression, we say to you out loud: from now on, all that is over.�
'Seven months later, Lumumba was murdered, brought down by a combination of Congolese politicians and Belgian “advisers,� with the tacit support of the United States and the malign neglect of the United Nations. The crisis that then engulfed Congo—impossibly complex, increasingly brutal—ended with the three-decade rule of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, a onetime Lumumba ally who went on to govern as a ruthless Western client. Mobutu’s bloody final months, in the nineteen-nineties, were followed by an even more brutal war between Congo and its neighbors, which left millions dead. The death of Lumumba was a signal moment of both the Cold War and decolonization, two defining events of the post-1945 world. His story is the story of how they became inseparable.
'The Congo catastrophe may have seemed inevitable, but the geopolitics of the era were by no means straightforward. In the fall of 1956, an Anglo-French-Israeli military operation against Egypt and its President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, prompted by his decision to nationalize (sic) the Suez Canal, ended in humiliating failure after the Eisenhower Administration made clear that it would not support such a venture. The larger subtext was that the days of colonialism—at least European colonialism—were over. Eisenhower was angry about the Suez operation. The attack on Egypt would make the Western side in the Cold War look hypocritical, and help the Soviets gain ground in the Arab world. More pressing, it was a distraction from the concurrent Soviet invasion of Hungary. (Meanwhile, the United States was engaging in subversion in countries as far afield as Iran and Guatemala.)
'After the Suez debacle hastened the end of Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s government in Britain, his successor, Harold Macmillan, travelled to Cape Town, in February, 1960, and invoked “the wind of change� blowing across the continent, in effect accepting decolonization (sic). By then, France had suffered an embarrassing military defeat in Indochina, which was followed by the decisions to grant independence to Morocco and Tunisia. Charles de Gaulle had used the ongoing war in Algeria, whose conclusion he later helped negotiate, to leverage his way into power. Europe was grudgingly making strides toward discarding its empires, while still attempting to maintain some influence. Washington was eager to have a presence in these new markets.
'One of the virtues of Stuart A. Reid’s “The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination� (Knopf) is that it shows how Congolese independence was never given a chance. Reid is interested not only in how external forces arrayed themselves to bring about a calamity but also in how the personalities of Lumumba, Mobutu, and the separatist leader Moïse Tshombe made finding a solution more difficult.
'Lumumba, Reid’s central figure, had left his home province of Kasai, where he was born in 1925, and settled in Stanleyville (now Kisangani) in the mid-nineteen-forties. Intent on becoming a part of the Belgian Congo’s Black middle class, Lumumba, a fanatical reader of French classics and political philosophy, immersed himself in Stanleyville’s civic life. By the early fifties, according to Reid, Lumumba had held leadership positions in seven different civic groups in the city. During much of this period, he sounded like someone of whom Baudouin would have approved. Lumumba viewed himself as an évolué. He urged the Belgians to provide wider access to education in Congo and to promote racial equality, but did so in the gentlest possible terms. In 1952, he wrote, “We promise docility, loyal and sincere collaboration to all those who want to help us achieve, in union with them, the element that is beyond us: civilization.�
'This reverential tone garnered him the attention of Belgian colonial officials, and even an audience with Baudouin, when the King visited Congo in 1955. But when Lumumba was found to have embezzled money at a postal-service job he held, he was sent to the Stanleyville Central Prison for fourteen months. Comments he made about the conditions there—including food that, he wrote, “a European would never serve to his dog”—suggest a sharpening political consciousness. (Even so, while in prison he wrote that political rights were not meant for “people who were unfit to use them,� such as “dull-witted illiterates.�) After his release, he moved to Léopoldville and began to speak out more aggressively against imperial rule, calling for Congo to “free itself from the chains of paternalism.�
'It wasn’t just the conditions in his country that changed his thinking; much of Africa was forging a route to independence. It was Congo’s time. Owing in part to his magnetic speaking skills, and to his following in Léopoldville—and even to the gusto with which he took up a new job as a beer salesman—he became the dominant figure in the political party that secured the most parliamentary seats in elections determining Congo’s first democratic government. Lumumba, still in his early thirties, had now travelled across the whole country, and he believed that an independent state should unite Congolese divided by ethnic and regional loyalties.
'Regional conflicts in Congo were particularly combustible because the Belgians were determined to shape the new state to their liking and, in particular, to keep control of the mineral-rich southern province of Katanga. (Congo currently has nearly half the world’s reserves of cobalt, which is essential for cell phones and a variety of batteries and alloys.) The province had held a special protected status since Leopold II ran Congo as a personal possession, from 1885 to 1908; before independence, it was effectively governed by mining interests, which maintained their own army. On the eve of independence, a single mining company provided half the colony’s tax revenue.
'Tshombe, the most important politician in Katanga, came from a wealthy family in the province, and was close to the Belgian settlers there. Long before Malcolm X referred to him as “the worst African ever born,� Tshombe became known for his foreign suits and foreign bank account, courtesy of his Belgian allies. He also projected some of the resentment that native Katangese felt toward other Congolese, which often stemmed from a dislike of the laborers who had come to work the mines. (Lumumba’s party scored zero victories in Katanga during the 1960 election.) But Tshombe’s biggest concern about the new state—one shared by his Belgian allies—was pecuniary: he feared that the new government in Léopoldville would take control of the mining profits.
'And so, where once the Belgians had favored centralization, they now favored federalism. Reid, an editor at Foreign Affairs, quotes a U.S. Embassy memorandum summarizing Belgian attitudes. Émile Janssens, the notorious Belgian leader of the Force Publique, the Congolese army, “would presumably take his orders from the President of the new Congolese republic,� it reads. “But if these orders were of a destructive nature, the Belgian government would hope that he would use his common sense and not follow them.�
'The third crucial figure of Reid’s book is Mobutu, who was a soldier before transitioning to journalism in the mid-nineteen-fifties; Lumumba befriended him after coming to know his byline. Cagey about his opinions, Mobutu—like many people in the Congolese political class—was almost surely passing intelligence to the Belgians before independence. Lumumba eventually began to distrust him, but by then he had already made him a top military aide, in part because of the support Mobutu had among soldiers.
'With the stage set, Reid turns to detailing how quickly the country collapsed. On July 5th, the African rank and file of the Force Publique were growing restless; for one thing, despite independence, no Congolese soldier had been promoted above the level of first sergeant major. Janssens, in response, gathered soldiers under his command, took out a piece of chalk, and wrote on a blackboard, “Before independence = after independence.� This assertion of authority backfired, and large-scale rioting and attacks on white officers followed. In a calculated response, Belgian troops, welcomed by Tshombe, landed in Katanga, ostensibly to protect their countrymen. In short order, Tshombe and his Belgian minders declared Katanga an independent state. Within a month of Congo’s independence, Belgian soldiers advanced on the capital; they controlled airfields across the country, and gave Lumumba orders about where he was allowed to travel. One night, in an incident that could have been straight out of Evelyn Waugh, a Belgian soldier shot at a correspondent for Time, and then apologized, saying, “In the dark I thought you were an African.�
'Lumumba requested U.N. assistance in the form of international troops to support the Congolese government and keep the peace, thus paving the way for the Belgians to leave. The U.N. was led by the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, and today, when few people can name the organization’s head, it is hard to comprehend how large a figure he was. The son of a Swedish Prime Minister, he was cool and cerebral and difficult to read, and he commanded international respect. Largely liberal in outlook, he was clearly upset by the Belgian intervention, and saw the importance of newly independent states developing into truly sovereign countries. “I must do this,� Hammarskjöld said upon hearing of Lumumba’s request. “God knows where it will lead this organization and where it will lead me.�
'But Hammarskjöld, who held many of the prejudices typical of his background and his era, took an immediate dislike to Lumumba. Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish diplomat and writer who led later U.N. operations in Congo—Hammarskjöld picked him for the job after reading a book of his essays on Catholic writers—once wrote that Hammarskjöld shared the “sometimes unconscious European assumptions that order in Africa is primarily a matter of safeguarding European lives and property.�
'The U.N. ended up limiting Lumumba’s options. Its forces dithered about entering Katanga, causing Tshombe’s breakaway regime to further establish itself with Belgian help. Hammarskjöld wrote that it was critical to insure that U.N. troops would not be used by Lumumba to subdue Katanga, Reid explains. When Hammarskjöld visited Congo, he passed through the capital without meeting Lumumba, and went directly to see Tshombe. Lumumba was stunned and enraged. We’re accustomed to stories about an ineffectual U.N., of course, but Reid attributes its conduct to the preferences of major Western powers—they didn’t want an aggressive U.N. deployment that would appear directed against Belgium—and of Hammarskjöld himself.
'Even before independence, Eisenhower regarded Congo’s prospects as dim, and a trip that Lumumba made to America, in July, 1960, had been a disaster: he was not afforded a high-level reception, and failed to garner the military assistance he sought. Lumumba could mobilize crowds with his radio speeches, but, Reid notes, his efforts at face-to-face diplomacy tended to alienate the people he was negotiating with. In the meantime, the American Ambassador to Congo was known to make jokes about Lumumba being a cannibal, while the C.I.A. on the ground was raising concerns about “Commie influence.� As Reid and many others have established, Lumumba was not a Communist; Hammarskjöld, for his part, considered Lumumba an “ignorant pawn� but too “erratic and inept� for the Soviets to find useful.
'Around this time, Lumumba gave the go-ahead to Mobutu’s plan to put down a second secession, in South Kasai, another mineral-heavy province. Congolese troops went on a rampage and murdered many South Kasai civilians, further entrenching the idea that the central government could not be trusted. Feeling abandoned by both the United States and the U.N., Lumumba appealed to the Soviets for military aid. They eventually agreed, but what they offered was meagre.
By August of 1960, the White House, galvanized by Lumumba’s turn to the Soviets, had authorized a secret C.I.A. scheme to “replace the Lumumba Government by constitutional means,� whatever that meant. The same month, at a Cabinet meeting, Eisenhower made comments that some interpreted as a call for assassination. (Lumumba, Reid notes, “offended his sense of decorum.�) C.I.A.-sponsored protests started disrupting Lumumba’s speeches, and then the agency began scheming to kill him.
'As the situation worsened, leaders within Congo and in the West found Lumumba recalcitrant and increasingly erratic, and formed a plan, backed by President Kasavubu, to remove him. Reid presents cables from Hammarskjöld indicating that the U.N. had no objections to Lumumba’s ouster; its officials on the ground prevented Lumumba from going on the radio.
'The next several months played out as a tragedy. Lumumba’s wife was denied access to medical care and gave birth prematurely to a daughter, who died. Lumumba was arrested twice by Mobutu, who sided with Kasavubu before asserting himself—with C.I.A. backing—as the country’s preëminent power broker. Lumumba escaped, but was caught, with U.N. soldiers looking on while he was beaten. As O’Brien later wrote, “The United Nations displayed a concern for legal punctilio when it was a question of rescuing Lumumba which was quite absent from their very uninhibited phase of activity when it was a question of bringing about Lumumba’s political destruction.�
'The final days were gruesome: on January 17, 1961, Mobutu flew a captive Lumumba to Katanga, where Tshombe and his associates—with Belgian officials and mercenaries in attendance—beat him for hours. Tshombe was covered in Lumumba’s blood by the time they were done. Lumumba was then driven to a remote area and murdered, along with two members of his political party. Reid describes this in vivid detail. “You’re going to kill us?� Lumumba asked; Frans Verscheure, a local police commissioner, simply answered, “Yes.� After the men were dead, the killers poured sulfuric acid on the bodies. One of the Belgians present, Gerard Soete, brought home Lumumba’s molars and a finger as trophies.
'The fighting among different factions over the next four years became increasingly vicious, but for a brief moment it appeared that the U.N. could force a solution. Reid coolly notes, “For all the recriminations against the UN and the West, in a strange way Lumumba’s death made international agreement on the Congo easier.� After his murder, the U.N.—in operations led by O’Brien—did try to end the Katanga secession. The attempts initially failed, and Hammarskjöld, under pressure, flew to meet with Tshombe in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), but his plane went down, killing everyone on board, in circumstances that remain murky. (Reid seems skeptical of the conspiracy theories.)
'Reid’s narrative doesn’t extend much beyond the assassination; its particular focus is the role of the United States, and especially the Eisenhower Administration, in this period of chaos. (Reid may underplay the degree to which an independent Katanga was always a Belgian project, even as the U.S. and Great Britain coveted the region’s minerals.) The eventual assassination plot was different from the one the Americans had planned, but Washington’s desires were clear to people on the ground. When Larry Devlin, who was running C.I.A. operations in Congo, heard that Lumumba was being flown to Katanga, he chose not to alert his superiors, or to intercede with Mobutu, with whom he had
developed a close relationship. Still, even if Devlin could have persuaded Mobutu to spare Lumumba’s life, the situation had reached a breaking point. This was the result of months of Western policy choices characterized by shortsightedness, carelessness, and, as Reid makes plain, a fear of the Soviet Union, which, in reality, had little interest in Congo beyond the public-relations wound the West had inflicted upon itself.
'Tshombe fled Congo in 1963, after the secession was finally ended by the U.N. He was enticed back to become Prime Minister, in part because Mobutu and Kasavubu knew that he had Belgian support, and, indeed, soon afterward, Belgian and American intervention helped put down another quixotic rebellion, which had, famously, been joined by Che Guevara. Tshombe went into exile again after Mobutu seized power in 1965; he died in 1969 in Algerian custody, despite the attempts of various American anti-Communists, including William F. Buckley, Jr., to get him released. (Buckley lauded Tshombe, upon his death, for understanding that progress would come for Congo only with “the aid of white expertise and capital.�)...'
I can reproduce no more - it's almost all the entire review, the rest can be found in the New Yorker of October 30, 2023.
'“It is now up to you, gentlemen, to show that we were right to trust you.� So King Baudouin, of Belgium, declared in the Congolese capital of Léopoldville (present-day Kinshasa) on June 30, 1960. It was a handover ceremony: the Belgian Congo would henceforth belong to the Congolese people. Decades later, Baudouin’s condescension remains startling. His great-great-uncle Leopold II had overseen what was then called the Congo Free State as his personal fiefdom—and established a system of exploitation that was monstrous even by colonial standards. But by 1960 the Belgian government could no longer ignore the wave of anti-imperialist movements that had swept much of the continent. Now the twenty-nine-year-old monarch told the crowd—made up of new Congolese citizens, Belgian officials, and dignitaries from around the world—that independence would be “achieved not through the immediate satisfaction of simple pleasures but through work.�
'Baudouin was followed in the speaking order by Joseph Kasavubu—independent Congo’s President, a relatively ceremonial role—though nobody really remembers what he said. It was Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s Prime Minister, who left an impression when he rose to speak next. A slim, enigmatic man, Lumumba was the most important politician in the country, and the one whom the Belgians were most concerned about. Lumumba’s remarks were clearly a direct reply to Baudouin’s. He ticked through the daily humiliations of life for Black Africans in the Belgian Congo, and recalled the violence visited upon his people. And then, his voice rising, he told his countrymen, “We who suffered in our bodies and hearts from colonialist oppression, we say to you out loud: from now on, all that is over.�
'Seven months later, Lumumba was murdered, brought down by a combination of Congolese politicians and Belgian “advisers,� with the tacit support of the United States and the malign neglect of the United Nations. The crisis that then engulfed Congo—impossibly complex, increasingly brutal—ended with the three-decade rule of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, a onetime Lumumba ally who went on to govern as a ruthless Western client. Mobutu’s bloody final months, in the nineteen-nineties, were followed by an even more brutal war between Congo and its neighbors, which left millions dead. The death of Lumumba was a signal moment of both the Cold War and decolonization, two defining events of the post-1945 world. His story is the story of how they became inseparable.
'The Congo catastrophe may have seemed inevitable, but the geopolitics of the era were by no means straightforward. In the fall of 1956, an Anglo-French-Israeli military operation against Egypt and its President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, prompted by his decision to nationalize (sic) the Suez Canal, ended in humiliating failure after the Eisenhower Administration made clear that it would not support such a venture. The larger subtext was that the days of colonialism—at least European colonialism—were over. Eisenhower was angry about the Suez operation. The attack on Egypt would make the Western side in the Cold War look hypocritical, and help the Soviets gain ground in the Arab world. More pressing, it was a distraction from the concurrent Soviet invasion of Hungary. (Meanwhile, the United States was engaging in subversion in countries as far afield as Iran and Guatemala.)
'After the Suez debacle hastened the end of Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s government in Britain, his successor, Harold Macmillan, travelled to Cape Town, in February, 1960, and invoked “the wind of change� blowing across the continent, in effect accepting decolonization (sic). By then, France had suffered an embarrassing military defeat in Indochina, which was followed by the decisions to grant independence to Morocco and Tunisia. Charles de Gaulle had used the ongoing war in Algeria, whose conclusion he later helped negotiate, to leverage his way into power. Europe was grudgingly making strides toward discarding its empires, while still attempting to maintain some influence. Washington was eager to have a presence in these new markets.
'One of the virtues of Stuart A. Reid’s “The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination� (Knopf) is that it shows how Congolese independence was never given a chance. Reid is interested not only in how external forces arrayed themselves to bring about a calamity but also in how the personalities of Lumumba, Mobutu, and the separatist leader Moïse Tshombe made finding a solution more difficult.
'Lumumba, Reid’s central figure, had left his home province of Kasai, where he was born in 1925, and settled in Stanleyville (now Kisangani) in the mid-nineteen-forties. Intent on becoming a part of the Belgian Congo’s Black middle class, Lumumba, a fanatical reader of French classics and political philosophy, immersed himself in Stanleyville’s civic life. By the early fifties, according to Reid, Lumumba had held leadership positions in seven different civic groups in the city. During much of this period, he sounded like someone of whom Baudouin would have approved. Lumumba viewed himself as an évolué. He urged the Belgians to provide wider access to education in Congo and to promote racial equality, but did so in the gentlest possible terms. In 1952, he wrote, “We promise docility, loyal and sincere collaboration to all those who want to help us achieve, in union with them, the element that is beyond us: civilization.�
'This reverential tone garnered him the attention of Belgian colonial officials, and even an audience with Baudouin, when the King visited Congo in 1955. But when Lumumba was found to have embezzled money at a postal-service job he held, he was sent to the Stanleyville Central Prison for fourteen months. Comments he made about the conditions there—including food that, he wrote, “a European would never serve to his dog”—suggest a sharpening political consciousness. (Even so, while in prison he wrote that political rights were not meant for “people who were unfit to use them,� such as “dull-witted illiterates.�) After his release, he moved to Léopoldville and began to speak out more aggressively against imperial rule, calling for Congo to “free itself from the chains of paternalism.�
'It wasn’t just the conditions in his country that changed his thinking; much of Africa was forging a route to independence. It was Congo’s time. Owing in part to his magnetic speaking skills, and to his following in Léopoldville—and even to the gusto with which he took up a new job as a beer salesman—he became the dominant figure in the political party that secured the most parliamentary seats in elections determining Congo’s first democratic government. Lumumba, still in his early thirties, had now travelled across the whole country, and he believed that an independent state should unite Congolese divided by ethnic and regional loyalties.
'Regional conflicts in Congo were particularly combustible because the Belgians were determined to shape the new state to their liking and, in particular, to keep control of the mineral-rich southern province of Katanga. (Congo currently has nearly half the world’s reserves of cobalt, which is essential for cell phones and a variety of batteries and alloys.) The province had held a special protected status since Leopold II ran Congo as a personal possession, from 1885 to 1908; before independence, it was effectively governed by mining interests, which maintained their own army. On the eve of independence, a single mining company provided half the colony’s tax revenue.
'Tshombe, the most important politician in Katanga, came from a wealthy family in the province, and was close to the Belgian settlers there. Long before Malcolm X referred to him as “the worst African ever born,� Tshombe became known for his foreign suits and foreign bank account, courtesy of his Belgian allies. He also projected some of the resentment that native Katangese felt toward other Congolese, which often stemmed from a dislike of the laborers who had come to work the mines. (Lumumba’s party scored zero victories in Katanga during the 1960 election.) But Tshombe’s biggest concern about the new state—one shared by his Belgian allies—was pecuniary: he feared that the new government in Léopoldville would take control of the mining profits.
'And so, where once the Belgians had favored centralization, they now favored federalism. Reid, an editor at Foreign Affairs, quotes a U.S. Embassy memorandum summarizing Belgian attitudes. Émile Janssens, the notorious Belgian leader of the Force Publique, the Congolese army, “would presumably take his orders from the President of the new Congolese republic,� it reads. “But if these orders were of a destructive nature, the Belgian government would hope that he would use his common sense and not follow them.�
'The third crucial figure of Reid’s book is Mobutu, who was a soldier before transitioning to journalism in the mid-nineteen-fifties; Lumumba befriended him after coming to know his byline. Cagey about his opinions, Mobutu—like many people in the Congolese political class—was almost surely passing intelligence to the Belgians before independence. Lumumba eventually began to distrust him, but by then he had already made him a top military aide, in part because of the support Mobutu had among soldiers.
'With the stage set, Reid turns to detailing how quickly the country collapsed. On July 5th, the African rank and file of the Force Publique were growing restless; for one thing, despite independence, no Congolese soldier had been promoted above the level of first sergeant major. Janssens, in response, gathered soldiers under his command, took out a piece of chalk, and wrote on a blackboard, “Before independence = after independence.� This assertion of authority backfired, and large-scale rioting and attacks on white officers followed. In a calculated response, Belgian troops, welcomed by Tshombe, landed in Katanga, ostensibly to protect their countrymen. In short order, Tshombe and his Belgian minders declared Katanga an independent state. Within a month of Congo’s independence, Belgian soldiers advanced on the capital; they controlled airfields across the country, and gave Lumumba orders about where he was allowed to travel. One night, in an incident that could have been straight out of Evelyn Waugh, a Belgian soldier shot at a correspondent for Time, and then apologized, saying, “In the dark I thought you were an African.�
'Lumumba requested U.N. assistance in the form of international troops to support the Congolese government and keep the peace, thus paving the way for the Belgians to leave. The U.N. was led by the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, and today, when few people can name the organization’s head, it is hard to comprehend how large a figure he was. The son of a Swedish Prime Minister, he was cool and cerebral and difficult to read, and he commanded international respect. Largely liberal in outlook, he was clearly upset by the Belgian intervention, and saw the importance of newly independent states developing into truly sovereign countries. “I must do this,� Hammarskjöld said upon hearing of Lumumba’s request. “God knows where it will lead this organization and where it will lead me.�
'But Hammarskjöld, who held many of the prejudices typical of his background and his era, took an immediate dislike to Lumumba. Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish diplomat and writer who led later U.N. operations in Congo—Hammarskjöld picked him for the job after reading a book of his essays on Catholic writers—once wrote that Hammarskjöld shared the “sometimes unconscious European assumptions that order in Africa is primarily a matter of safeguarding European lives and property.�
'The U.N. ended up limiting Lumumba’s options. Its forces dithered about entering Katanga, causing Tshombe’s breakaway regime to further establish itself with Belgian help. Hammarskjöld wrote that it was critical to insure that U.N. troops would not be used by Lumumba to subdue Katanga, Reid explains. When Hammarskjöld visited Congo, he passed through the capital without meeting Lumumba, and went directly to see Tshombe. Lumumba was stunned and enraged. We’re accustomed to stories about an ineffectual U.N., of course, but Reid attributes its conduct to the preferences of major Western powers—they didn’t want an aggressive U.N. deployment that would appear directed against Belgium—and of Hammarskjöld himself.
'Even before independence, Eisenhower regarded Congo’s prospects as dim, and a trip that Lumumba made to America, in July, 1960, had been a disaster: he was not afforded a high-level reception, and failed to garner the military assistance he sought. Lumumba could mobilize crowds with his radio speeches, but, Reid notes, his efforts at face-to-face diplomacy tended to alienate the people he was negotiating with. In the meantime, the American Ambassador to Congo was known to make jokes about Lumumba being a cannibal, while the C.I.A. on the ground was raising concerns about “Commie influence.� As Reid and many others have established, Lumumba was not a Communist; Hammarskjöld, for his part, considered Lumumba an “ignorant pawn� but too “erratic and inept� for the Soviets to find useful.
'Around this time, Lumumba gave the go-ahead to Mobutu’s plan to put down a second secession, in South Kasai, another mineral-heavy province. Congolese troops went on a rampage and murdered many South Kasai civilians, further entrenching the idea that the central government could not be trusted. Feeling abandoned by both the United States and the U.N., Lumumba appealed to the Soviets for military aid. They eventually agreed, but what they offered was meagre.
By August of 1960, the White House, galvanized by Lumumba’s turn to the Soviets, had authorized a secret C.I.A. scheme to “replace the Lumumba Government by constitutional means,� whatever that meant. The same month, at a Cabinet meeting, Eisenhower made comments that some interpreted as a call for assassination. (Lumumba, Reid notes, “offended his sense of decorum.�) C.I.A.-sponsored protests started disrupting Lumumba’s speeches, and then the agency began scheming to kill him.
'As the situation worsened, leaders within Congo and in the West found Lumumba recalcitrant and increasingly erratic, and formed a plan, backed by President Kasavubu, to remove him. Reid presents cables from Hammarskjöld indicating that the U.N. had no objections to Lumumba’s ouster; its officials on the ground prevented Lumumba from going on the radio.
'The next several months played out as a tragedy. Lumumba’s wife was denied access to medical care and gave birth prematurely to a daughter, who died. Lumumba was arrested twice by Mobutu, who sided with Kasavubu before asserting himself—with C.I.A. backing—as the country’s preëminent power broker. Lumumba escaped, but was caught, with U.N. soldiers looking on while he was beaten. As O’Brien later wrote, “The United Nations displayed a concern for legal punctilio when it was a question of rescuing Lumumba which was quite absent from their very uninhibited phase of activity when it was a question of bringing about Lumumba’s political destruction.�
'The final days were gruesome: on January 17, 1961, Mobutu flew a captive Lumumba to Katanga, where Tshombe and his associates—with Belgian officials and mercenaries in attendance—beat him for hours. Tshombe was covered in Lumumba’s blood by the time they were done. Lumumba was then driven to a remote area and murdered, along with two members of his political party. Reid describes this in vivid detail. “You’re going to kill us?� Lumumba asked; Frans Verscheure, a local police commissioner, simply answered, “Yes.� After the men were dead, the killers poured sulfuric acid on the bodies. One of the Belgians present, Gerard Soete, brought home Lumumba’s molars and a finger as trophies.
'The fighting among different factions over the next four years became increasingly vicious, but for a brief moment it appeared that the U.N. could force a solution. Reid coolly notes, “For all the recriminations against the UN and the West, in a strange way Lumumba’s death made international agreement on the Congo easier.� After his murder, the U.N.—in operations led by O’Brien—did try to end the Katanga secession. The attempts initially failed, and Hammarskjöld, under pressure, flew to meet with Tshombe in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), but his plane went down, killing everyone on board, in circumstances that remain murky. (Reid seems skeptical of the conspiracy theories.)
'Reid’s narrative doesn’t extend much beyond the assassination; its particular focus is the role of the United States, and especially the Eisenhower Administration, in this period of chaos. (Reid may underplay the degree to which an independent Katanga was always a Belgian project, even as the U.S. and Great Britain coveted the region’s minerals.) The eventual assassination plot was different from the one the Americans had planned, but Washington’s desires were clear to people on the ground. When Larry Devlin, who was running C.I.A. operations in Congo, heard that Lumumba was being flown to Katanga, he chose not to alert his superiors, or to intercede with Mobutu, with whom he had
developed a close relationship. Still, even if Devlin could have persuaded Mobutu to spare Lumumba’s life, the situation had reached a breaking point. This was the result of months of Western policy choices characterized by shortsightedness, carelessness, and, as Reid makes plain, a fear of the Soviet Union, which, in reality, had little interest in Congo beyond the public-relations wound the West had inflicted upon itself.
'Tshombe fled Congo in 1963, after the secession was finally ended by the U.N. He was enticed back to become Prime Minister, in part because Mobutu and Kasavubu knew that he had Belgian support, and, indeed, soon afterward, Belgian and American intervention helped put down another quixotic rebellion, which had, famously, been joined by Che Guevara. Tshombe went into exile again after Mobutu seized power in 1965; he died in 1969 in Algerian custody, despite the attempts of various American anti-Communists, including William F. Buckley, Jr., to get him released. (Buckley lauded Tshombe, upon his death, for understanding that progress would come for Congo only with “the aid of white expertise and capital.�)...'
I can reproduce no more - it's almost all the entire review, the rest can be found in the New Yorker of October 30, 2023.
April 12, 2024
Reid’s book is a riveting exploration of one of the most controversial and mysterious chapters in Cold War history. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, has long been shrouded in secrecy and intrigue. Reid’s meticulous research and compelling storytelling bring to light the hidden machinations of the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies in orchestrating Lumumba’s downfall. From the outset, Reid sets the stage for the reader by providing a detailed background on Lumumba’s rise to power and his vision for a united and independent Africa. As a charismatic and dynamic leader, Lumumba posed a threat to Western interests in the region, particularly in the context of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Reid delves into the complex web of political alliances and rivalries that ultimately led to Lumumba’s assassination, shedding light on the role of Western powers in destabilizing the newly independent Congo. One of the most compelling aspects of Reid’s book is his exploration of the clandestine operations of the CIA and its involvement in the assassination plot. Drawing on declassified documents and interviews with key players, Reid uncovers the extent to which the United States and its allies were willing to go to eliminate Lumumba as a threat to their interests. The book reveals the lengths to which the CIA went to undermine Lumumba’s government, from covert operations to propaganda campaigns aimed at discrediting him in the eyes of the Congolese people. Through his meticulous research and engaging prose, Reid brings to life the key players in the Lumumba plot, from CIA operatives to Congolese politicians and Belgian colonial officials. The book reads like a spy thriller, with twists and turns that keep the reader on the edge of their seat. Reid’s ability to weave together multiple narratives and perspectives creates a rich and nuanced portrait of the events leading up to Lumumba’s assassination. Reid’s compelling narrative and thorough research make this book a valuable contribution to our understanding of a pivotal moment in 20th-century history. Whether you are a history buff or simply looking for a gripping read, “The Lumumba Plot� is sure to captivate and intrigue.
November 9, 2023
I’m not a huge history buff. I suppose I’ve always had a passing interest in how leaders of a nation come to and lose power, but even with that, the information I consume is largely relegated to the film lanes (Barbet Schroders Idi Amin documentary always looms large). And my introduction to the figures of Lumumba and Mobutu are frankly as fresh as Barbara Kingsolver‘s poisonwood Bible.
With all of those admissions out of the way, I will say this is a startlingly informative piece of research. I am, not surprisingly, if you read the first paragraph, not a regular reader of foreign affairs, but I would not have expected a book from the executive editor of that periodical to have such an engaging flow. Reid packs an insane amount of detail into every page. It can be both soulcrushingly dense and hairraisingly thrilling� Massive world-stage dilemmas are exhaustively rendered with gem-like intricacy; leaders like Eisenhower and Kennedy alternately furrow brows and widen eyes as geopolitical hopes crest and dash. Cameo appearances from the likes of John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou and Che Guavara waltz in and out like no big deal. And if your brain is big enough to hold it all, you walk away with an understanding of not only who is in every relevant room, at every relevant hour of every relevant day, you also know that they were jogging their leg next to a briefcase containing a roadmap of southern New England. Maoist guerillas think they can fly. Vertebrae audibly cracks at executions. The authenticity of an African hat is efficiently dispatched as the Parisian background of its couturier is revealed. The word “bingo!� is scribbled on a yellow legal pad. Really, the level of detail is just�. Whoomph. And that’s the primary text alone. In addition, there are 139 pages of notes and attributions.
I think I have suggested often enough here that this can be a tiring, demanding read, but again, I overall, it’s a wildly, impressive effort that manages clever writerly tricks along the way to lighten the load as much as possible, and keep everything generally aloft. The menace and sorrow, lurking and loitering in every corner of this very large story, is not lost on Reid, and he should be applauded for maintaining a tone that simultaneously acknowledges the lecarre/greene thrill of it all alongside the bitter taste of yet another story in which the United States yet again, cannot keep its freaking hands out of everything. Reid tempers a frustration with the US with a clear headed guess at what the alternative would’ve been: � but absent U.S. meddling, it could well have followed the trajectory of many postcolonial states in the region: poor and politically chaotic, but at least functional and free of mass violence.�
I liked this a lot. The epilogue alone, entitled the arrogance of power, may by itself be worth the price of admission here. My next book if not my next five books, need to be far lighter than this, but I liked it a lot.
With all of those admissions out of the way, I will say this is a startlingly informative piece of research. I am, not surprisingly, if you read the first paragraph, not a regular reader of foreign affairs, but I would not have expected a book from the executive editor of that periodical to have such an engaging flow. Reid packs an insane amount of detail into every page. It can be both soulcrushingly dense and hairraisingly thrilling� Massive world-stage dilemmas are exhaustively rendered with gem-like intricacy; leaders like Eisenhower and Kennedy alternately furrow brows and widen eyes as geopolitical hopes crest and dash. Cameo appearances from the likes of John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou and Che Guavara waltz in and out like no big deal. And if your brain is big enough to hold it all, you walk away with an understanding of not only who is in every relevant room, at every relevant hour of every relevant day, you also know that they were jogging their leg next to a briefcase containing a roadmap of southern New England. Maoist guerillas think they can fly. Vertebrae audibly cracks at executions. The authenticity of an African hat is efficiently dispatched as the Parisian background of its couturier is revealed. The word “bingo!� is scribbled on a yellow legal pad. Really, the level of detail is just�. Whoomph. And that’s the primary text alone. In addition, there are 139 pages of notes and attributions.
I think I have suggested often enough here that this can be a tiring, demanding read, but again, I overall, it’s a wildly, impressive effort that manages clever writerly tricks along the way to lighten the load as much as possible, and keep everything generally aloft. The menace and sorrow, lurking and loitering in every corner of this very large story, is not lost on Reid, and he should be applauded for maintaining a tone that simultaneously acknowledges the lecarre/greene thrill of it all alongside the bitter taste of yet another story in which the United States yet again, cannot keep its freaking hands out of everything. Reid tempers a frustration with the US with a clear headed guess at what the alternative would’ve been: � but absent U.S. meddling, it could well have followed the trajectory of many postcolonial states in the region: poor and politically chaotic, but at least functional and free of mass violence.�
I liked this a lot. The epilogue alone, entitled the arrogance of power, may by itself be worth the price of admission here. My next book if not my next five books, need to be far lighter than this, but I liked it a lot.
May 20, 2024
so much i did not know about the CIA and the UN, not to mention the Congo! very interesting book, very engaging. wanna reread heart of darkness and poisonwood bible now.
December 11, 2023
It’s a saga, but I learned so much about a country that I know woefully little about. Really would recommend reading this with Cobalt Red � interesting to see some of the same throughlines!
June 21, 2024
The subtitle of this book is very deceptive. This is not really a history of the CIA nor is it focused on Lumumba's assassination. Instead, this is a fast-paced, well-researched history of Congo's independence from Belgium, the complex politics (and foreign interference) of the new state, and the United Nations first attempt at nation building in a newly independent state. Reid does a nice job ignoring the mythology around Lumumba to portray an idealistic, but flawed person whose dreams of a post-Belgian Congo were ultimately dashed in large part due to his disorganization and focus on style over substance. Dag Hammerskjold is the other major figure in the book. As with Lumumba, Dag is a flawed figure thrust into a difficult situation that he was unprepared to face. His aspirations for an influential, yet neutral, UN was dashed by nationalist hopes in the Congo and Cold War pressures outside of it.
One of the best recent histories of African decolonization that I have read and a good starting point for someone interested in learning more about Congo, decolonization, or the United Nations.
One of the best recent histories of African decolonization that I have read and a good starting point for someone interested in learning more about Congo, decolonization, or the United Nations.
January 21, 2025
The early 1960s was a period of decolonization in Africa. European countries had come to the realization that the burden of empire no longer warranted the cost and commitment to maintain them, except in the case where it was suspected that the Soviet Union was building a communist base. One of the countries which was trying to throw off the colonial yoke was the Congo and separate itself from its Belgian overlords. In 1960 it finally achieved independence and was led by a controversial figure, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, a man who was ideologically an African nationalist and Pan-Africanist. However, soon after the Congo gained its freedom its army mutinied. The result was chaos and a movement by its Katanga province which was rich in mineral resources and led by Moise Tshombe to secede. What made the situation complex was that Lumumba was the country’s Prime Minister, and his president Joseph Kasavubu were often at loggerheads politically. Further, an army Colonel, Joseph Mobutu was placed in charge of the new Congolese army, the ANC who at times was loyal to Lumumba, and at times was in the pay of the CIA. The United Nations under the leadership of Dag Hammarskjold sought to try and end the chaos and bring a semblance of a parliamentary system to the Congo which in the end was beyond his reach.
The early 1960s witnessed the height of the Cold War, Moscow would aid the new government and sought to spread its influence throughout Central Africa and gain a share of its mineral wealth. Washington’s response was predictable as it worked overtly and covertly to block the spread of Soviet influence and its communist ideology. The background that led up to Congolese independence and subsequent events is expertly told by Stuart A. Reid’s new book, THE LUMUMBA PLOT: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA AND A COLD WAR ASSASSINATION. The title of the book is a little misleading as the book does not focus much on the CIA in the Congo as it concentrates more on the concern of diplomats in the UN and a series of plots in Leopoldville. The international panic over the havoc in the Congo, Reid writes, helped to transform the Cold War “into a truly global struggle.� The monograph recounts numerous personalities and movements which exhibited shifting positions throughout the narrative. With Lumumba’s continuous machinations President Eisenhower’s inherent racism and anti-communism emerged along with his perceptions of Soviet actions which in the end led to the Congolese Prime Minister’s assassination by the CIA.
If one examines the American approach to emerging nations and the Soviet Union during this period it is clear that if a leader labeled himself a nationalist or a neutralist, Washington labeled him a communist. The American foreign policy establishment was convinced for decades that nationalism and communism were one and the same and presented similar threats to American interests. A nationalist is someone who believes that their country should be ruled by their countrymen, not a government imposed from the outside. Historian, Blanche Wiesen Cook’s THE DECLASSIFIED EISENHOWER outlines the Eisenhower administration’s approach to nationalist leaders in the 1950s exploring the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh In Iran, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, a coup in Syria called off because of the Suez Crisis, attempts to remove Fidel Castro in Cuba, and of course events in the Congo. This approach continued under the Kennedy administration leading to errors resulting in disastrous approaches toward Vietnam, Cuba, and the Congo as these leaders of these countries believed they had a target on their backs. As a result, they would turn to the Soviet Union for aid which of course Premier Nikita Khrushchev was more than happy to provide.
In 1974 in the US Senate, the Church Committee learned about CIA coups, assassinations and other methods employed to influence foreign governments all in the name of American strategic interests as it did in dealing with Lumumba. The most important question that the author raises is who killed Lumumba? The choices are varied; Belgium which had run their colony with cruelty since the late 19th century; United Nations officials drawn into the Congo on a peacekeeping mission; the CIA fearing Lumumba was moving too close to the Communist bloc; or a young army officer, Joseph Mobutu who installed himself as leader. Reid’s interpretation of events relies on a multitude of sources, drawing from forgotten testimonies, interviews with participants, diaries, private letters, scholarly histories, official investigations, government archives, diplomatic cables, and recently declassified CIA files.
The book pays careful attention to the role of the United States, its motivations, unscrupulous methods, the damage that was inflicted on the Congo, and how US officials displayed racist contempt for the Congolese, particularly members of the Eisenhower administration. According to Reid, “the CIA and its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin, had a hand in nearly every major development leading up to Lumumba’s murder, from his fall from power to his forceful transfer into rebel-held territory on the day of his death.� Events in the region would reverberate far beyond the Congo as its short-lived failure of democracy resulted in poverty, dictatorship, and war for decades. Further it would claim the life of Dag Hammarskjold who was killed under mysterious circumstances during a peacemaking visit to the Congo months after Lumumba’s murder. The mission to the Congo was seen as a dangerous misadventure, and the UN never fully recovered from the damage to its reputation because of what occurred.
Reid details a brief history of Belgian colonization in the Congo. Ivory and rubber were a source of wealth, and their occupation was extremely cruel as depicted in Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS. For a more modern view of this period and Brussel’s heartlessness see Adam Hochschild’s KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST. Despite allowing the Congo’s independence, in large part due to outside pressure, Belgium would work behind the scenes to undermine Lumumba and his government until his death and after. The question is what did Lumumba believe? The governments sitting in Brussels and Washington were convinced that Lumumba was pro-communism and particularly vulnerable to Soviet influence. In fact, Reid argues that all the available evidence suggests he favored the United States over the Soviet Union. The problem was the prejudice against Africa which dismissed any possibility that an African man could successfully lead an African country. Ultimately, Lumumba’s fate is part of a larger story of unprecedented hope giving way to an unrelenting tragedy.
Mr. Reid tells an engrossing storyteller who guides us from events in Leopoldville and Stanleyville to negotiations in New York at the UN, Washington at the National Security Council, and the halls of the Belgian government in Brussels. The tragedy that unfolds is expertly told by the author as he introduces the most important characters in this historical episode. In the Congo, the most important obviously is Lumumba whose background did not lend itself to national leadership. He was a beer salesman, postal clerk who embezzled funds, and a bookworm who was self-educated. He would be elected Prime Minister and formed his only government on June 24, 1960, with formal independence arriving on June 30th. Other important characters include Joseph Kasavubu, Moise Tshombe, and Joseph Mobutu who all play major roles as Congolese political and ethnic particularism, in addition to Lumumba’s impulsive decision making and messianic belief in himself created even more problems.
For the United States, the American Ambassador to the Congo, Clare Timberlake convinced the UN to send troops to the Congo had a very low opinion of Lumumba as did CIA Station Chief Joseph Devlin who would be in charge of his assassination. President Eisenhower’s racial proclivities and looking at the post-colonial period through a European lens interfered with decision making as he ordered Lumumba’s death. He believed that Lumumba was “ignorant, very suspicious, shrewd, but immature in his ideas � the smallest scope of any of the African leaders.� CIA head, Allen W. Dulles called Lumumba “anti-western.� The UN plays a significant role led by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold who tried to manipulate the situation that would support the United States, and he too thought that Lumumba was shrewd, but bordered on “craziness.� Ralph Bunche who made his reputation in 1948 negotiating with Arabs and Israelis did his best to bring the Congolese to some sort of agreement, but in the end failed. For Russia, Nikita Khruschev at first did not trust Lumumba, but soon realized there was an opportunity to spread Soviet influence and agreed to supply military aid to the Congolese army. Reid integrates many other characters as he tries to present conversations, decisions, and orders that greatly influenced the political situation.
The strength of the book lies in the author’s treatment of President Eisenhower’s and the CIA’s responsibility in the coup d’etat. The CIA persuaded Colonel Mobutu to orchestrate a coup on September 14. When the coup went nowhere the CIA turned to assassins who failed to carry out their mission. A scheme to inject poison in Lumumba’s toothpaste also went nowhere. In the end Patrice Lumumba at age thirty-five was murdered by Congolese rivals with Belgian assistance in early 1961, three days before John F. Kennedy who espoused anti-colonial rhetoric during his presidential campaign took office. Two years later Kennedy would welcome Mobutu Sese Seko who would rule the Congo, later called Zaire with an iron fist for thirty-two years to the White House.
Reid delves deeply into the personal relationships of the characters mentioned above. Attempts to get Tshombe to reverse his decision to secede from the Congo is of the utmost importance. Trying to get Lumumba and Kasavubu to cooperate with each other was difficult. Reid does an admirable job going behind the scenes as decisions are reached. The maneuvering among all parties is presented. Apart from internal Congolese intrigue the presentation of the US National Security Council as Eisenhower, Gordon Gray, the National Security advisor, Allen W. Dulles, and Secretary of State Christian Herter concluded before the end of Eisenhower’s presidential term that Lumumba was a threat to newly independent African states in addition to his own. In fact, at an August 8, 1960, National Security Council meeting , Eisenhower seemed to give an order to eliminate the Congolese Prime Minister.
The role of Belgium is important particularly the June-August 1960 period as an intransigent Lumumba and an equally stubborn Belgium could not agree on the withdrawal of Belgian troops even after independence was announced. Belgium’s Foreign Minister, Pierre Wigney felt Lumumba was incompetent so how could Belgium reach a deal that could be trusted. Belgian obfuscation, misinformation, and cruelty stand out as it sought to leave the Congo on its own terms.
Another major player for the US was Sidney Gottlieb, who headlines a chapter entitled “Sid from Paris,� a scientist and the CIA’s master chemist who made his reputation experimenting with LSD as an expert in developing and deploying poison. He would meet with Devlin on September 19, 1960, and pass along the botulinum toxin which was designed to kill Lumumba but was never used.
Nicholas Niachos� review in the New York Times, entitled “Did the C.I.A. Kill Patrice Lumumba?� on October 17, 2023 zeroes in on the role of the Eisenhower administration in the conflict arguing that Reid presented “new evidence found at the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Reid tracked down the only written record of an order at an August 1960 National Security Council meeting with the president, during which a State Department official wrote a “bold X� next to Lumumba’s name. “Having just become the first-ever U.S. president to order the assassination of a foreign leader,� Reid writes of Eisenhower, “he headed to the whites-only Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Md., to play 18 holes of golf.�
Lumumba is re-elevated by the end of Reid’s book, mainly through the sea of indignities he suffered as a captive. Particularly disturbing is an episode from late 1960. His wife gave birth prematurely and his daughter’s coffin was lost when neither of her parents was allowed to accompany it to its burial.
In 1961, Eisenhower’s fantasies of the Congolese leader’s death � he once said he hoped that “Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles� � were fulfilled. Lumumba was captured after an escape attempt and shipped to Katanga, where a secessionists� firing squad, supported by ex-colonial Belgians, executed him. Reid shows how the C.I.A. station chief in Katanga rejoiced when he learned of Lumumba’s arrival (“If we had known he was coming we would have baked a snake�) but doesn’t ultimately prove that the C.I.A. killed him.
The C.I.A. has long denied blame for the murder of Lumumba, but I still wondered why Reid doesn’t explore a curious story that surfaced in 1978, in a book called “In Search of Enemies,� by John Stockwell. Stockwell, a C.I.A. officer turned whistle-blower, reported that an agency officer in Katanga had told him about “driving about town after curfew with Patrice Lumumba’s body in the trunk of his car, trying to decide what to do with it,� and that, in the lead-up to his death, Lumumba was beaten, “apparently by men who were loyal to men who had agency cryptonyms and received agency salaries.�
Still, Reid argues convincingly that by ordering the assassination of Lumumba, the Eisenhower administration crossed a moral line that set a new low in the Cold War. Sid’s poison was never used � Reid says Devlin buried it beside the Congo River after Lumumba was imprisoned � but it might as well have been. Devlin paid protesters to undermine the prime minister; made the first of a long series of bribes to Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the coup leader and colonel who would become Congo’s strongman; and delayed reporting Lumumba’s final abduction to the C.I.A. On this last point, Reid is definitive: Devlin’s “lack of protest could only have been interpreted as a green light. This silence sealed Lumumba’s fate.�
The early 1960s witnessed the height of the Cold War, Moscow would aid the new government and sought to spread its influence throughout Central Africa and gain a share of its mineral wealth. Washington’s response was predictable as it worked overtly and covertly to block the spread of Soviet influence and its communist ideology. The background that led up to Congolese independence and subsequent events is expertly told by Stuart A. Reid’s new book, THE LUMUMBA PLOT: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA AND A COLD WAR ASSASSINATION. The title of the book is a little misleading as the book does not focus much on the CIA in the Congo as it concentrates more on the concern of diplomats in the UN and a series of plots in Leopoldville. The international panic over the havoc in the Congo, Reid writes, helped to transform the Cold War “into a truly global struggle.� The monograph recounts numerous personalities and movements which exhibited shifting positions throughout the narrative. With Lumumba’s continuous machinations President Eisenhower’s inherent racism and anti-communism emerged along with his perceptions of Soviet actions which in the end led to the Congolese Prime Minister’s assassination by the CIA.
If one examines the American approach to emerging nations and the Soviet Union during this period it is clear that if a leader labeled himself a nationalist or a neutralist, Washington labeled him a communist. The American foreign policy establishment was convinced for decades that nationalism and communism were one and the same and presented similar threats to American interests. A nationalist is someone who believes that their country should be ruled by their countrymen, not a government imposed from the outside. Historian, Blanche Wiesen Cook’s THE DECLASSIFIED EISENHOWER outlines the Eisenhower administration’s approach to nationalist leaders in the 1950s exploring the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh In Iran, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, a coup in Syria called off because of the Suez Crisis, attempts to remove Fidel Castro in Cuba, and of course events in the Congo. This approach continued under the Kennedy administration leading to errors resulting in disastrous approaches toward Vietnam, Cuba, and the Congo as these leaders of these countries believed they had a target on their backs. As a result, they would turn to the Soviet Union for aid which of course Premier Nikita Khrushchev was more than happy to provide.
In 1974 in the US Senate, the Church Committee learned about CIA coups, assassinations and other methods employed to influence foreign governments all in the name of American strategic interests as it did in dealing with Lumumba. The most important question that the author raises is who killed Lumumba? The choices are varied; Belgium which had run their colony with cruelty since the late 19th century; United Nations officials drawn into the Congo on a peacekeeping mission; the CIA fearing Lumumba was moving too close to the Communist bloc; or a young army officer, Joseph Mobutu who installed himself as leader. Reid’s interpretation of events relies on a multitude of sources, drawing from forgotten testimonies, interviews with participants, diaries, private letters, scholarly histories, official investigations, government archives, diplomatic cables, and recently declassified CIA files.
The book pays careful attention to the role of the United States, its motivations, unscrupulous methods, the damage that was inflicted on the Congo, and how US officials displayed racist contempt for the Congolese, particularly members of the Eisenhower administration. According to Reid, “the CIA and its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin, had a hand in nearly every major development leading up to Lumumba’s murder, from his fall from power to his forceful transfer into rebel-held territory on the day of his death.� Events in the region would reverberate far beyond the Congo as its short-lived failure of democracy resulted in poverty, dictatorship, and war for decades. Further it would claim the life of Dag Hammarskjold who was killed under mysterious circumstances during a peacemaking visit to the Congo months after Lumumba’s murder. The mission to the Congo was seen as a dangerous misadventure, and the UN never fully recovered from the damage to its reputation because of what occurred.
Reid details a brief history of Belgian colonization in the Congo. Ivory and rubber were a source of wealth, and their occupation was extremely cruel as depicted in Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS. For a more modern view of this period and Brussel’s heartlessness see Adam Hochschild’s KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST. Despite allowing the Congo’s independence, in large part due to outside pressure, Belgium would work behind the scenes to undermine Lumumba and his government until his death and after. The question is what did Lumumba believe? The governments sitting in Brussels and Washington were convinced that Lumumba was pro-communism and particularly vulnerable to Soviet influence. In fact, Reid argues that all the available evidence suggests he favored the United States over the Soviet Union. The problem was the prejudice against Africa which dismissed any possibility that an African man could successfully lead an African country. Ultimately, Lumumba’s fate is part of a larger story of unprecedented hope giving way to an unrelenting tragedy.
Mr. Reid tells an engrossing storyteller who guides us from events in Leopoldville and Stanleyville to negotiations in New York at the UN, Washington at the National Security Council, and the halls of the Belgian government in Brussels. The tragedy that unfolds is expertly told by the author as he introduces the most important characters in this historical episode. In the Congo, the most important obviously is Lumumba whose background did not lend itself to national leadership. He was a beer salesman, postal clerk who embezzled funds, and a bookworm who was self-educated. He would be elected Prime Minister and formed his only government on June 24, 1960, with formal independence arriving on June 30th. Other important characters include Joseph Kasavubu, Moise Tshombe, and Joseph Mobutu who all play major roles as Congolese political and ethnic particularism, in addition to Lumumba’s impulsive decision making and messianic belief in himself created even more problems.
For the United States, the American Ambassador to the Congo, Clare Timberlake convinced the UN to send troops to the Congo had a very low opinion of Lumumba as did CIA Station Chief Joseph Devlin who would be in charge of his assassination. President Eisenhower’s racial proclivities and looking at the post-colonial period through a European lens interfered with decision making as he ordered Lumumba’s death. He believed that Lumumba was “ignorant, very suspicious, shrewd, but immature in his ideas � the smallest scope of any of the African leaders.� CIA head, Allen W. Dulles called Lumumba “anti-western.� The UN plays a significant role led by Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold who tried to manipulate the situation that would support the United States, and he too thought that Lumumba was shrewd, but bordered on “craziness.� Ralph Bunche who made his reputation in 1948 negotiating with Arabs and Israelis did his best to bring the Congolese to some sort of agreement, but in the end failed. For Russia, Nikita Khruschev at first did not trust Lumumba, but soon realized there was an opportunity to spread Soviet influence and agreed to supply military aid to the Congolese army. Reid integrates many other characters as he tries to present conversations, decisions, and orders that greatly influenced the political situation.
The strength of the book lies in the author’s treatment of President Eisenhower’s and the CIA’s responsibility in the coup d’etat. The CIA persuaded Colonel Mobutu to orchestrate a coup on September 14. When the coup went nowhere the CIA turned to assassins who failed to carry out their mission. A scheme to inject poison in Lumumba’s toothpaste also went nowhere. In the end Patrice Lumumba at age thirty-five was murdered by Congolese rivals with Belgian assistance in early 1961, three days before John F. Kennedy who espoused anti-colonial rhetoric during his presidential campaign took office. Two years later Kennedy would welcome Mobutu Sese Seko who would rule the Congo, later called Zaire with an iron fist for thirty-two years to the White House.
Reid delves deeply into the personal relationships of the characters mentioned above. Attempts to get Tshombe to reverse his decision to secede from the Congo is of the utmost importance. Trying to get Lumumba and Kasavubu to cooperate with each other was difficult. Reid does an admirable job going behind the scenes as decisions are reached. The maneuvering among all parties is presented. Apart from internal Congolese intrigue the presentation of the US National Security Council as Eisenhower, Gordon Gray, the National Security advisor, Allen W. Dulles, and Secretary of State Christian Herter concluded before the end of Eisenhower’s presidential term that Lumumba was a threat to newly independent African states in addition to his own. In fact, at an August 8, 1960, National Security Council meeting , Eisenhower seemed to give an order to eliminate the Congolese Prime Minister.
The role of Belgium is important particularly the June-August 1960 period as an intransigent Lumumba and an equally stubborn Belgium could not agree on the withdrawal of Belgian troops even after independence was announced. Belgium’s Foreign Minister, Pierre Wigney felt Lumumba was incompetent so how could Belgium reach a deal that could be trusted. Belgian obfuscation, misinformation, and cruelty stand out as it sought to leave the Congo on its own terms.
Another major player for the US was Sidney Gottlieb, who headlines a chapter entitled “Sid from Paris,� a scientist and the CIA’s master chemist who made his reputation experimenting with LSD as an expert in developing and deploying poison. He would meet with Devlin on September 19, 1960, and pass along the botulinum toxin which was designed to kill Lumumba but was never used.
Nicholas Niachos� review in the New York Times, entitled “Did the C.I.A. Kill Patrice Lumumba?� on October 17, 2023 zeroes in on the role of the Eisenhower administration in the conflict arguing that Reid presented “new evidence found at the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Reid tracked down the only written record of an order at an August 1960 National Security Council meeting with the president, during which a State Department official wrote a “bold X� next to Lumumba’s name. “Having just become the first-ever U.S. president to order the assassination of a foreign leader,� Reid writes of Eisenhower, “he headed to the whites-only Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Md., to play 18 holes of golf.�
Lumumba is re-elevated by the end of Reid’s book, mainly through the sea of indignities he suffered as a captive. Particularly disturbing is an episode from late 1960. His wife gave birth prematurely and his daughter’s coffin was lost when neither of her parents was allowed to accompany it to its burial.
In 1961, Eisenhower’s fantasies of the Congolese leader’s death � he once said he hoped that “Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles� � were fulfilled. Lumumba was captured after an escape attempt and shipped to Katanga, where a secessionists� firing squad, supported by ex-colonial Belgians, executed him. Reid shows how the C.I.A. station chief in Katanga rejoiced when he learned of Lumumba’s arrival (“If we had known he was coming we would have baked a snake�) but doesn’t ultimately prove that the C.I.A. killed him.
The C.I.A. has long denied blame for the murder of Lumumba, but I still wondered why Reid doesn’t explore a curious story that surfaced in 1978, in a book called “In Search of Enemies,� by John Stockwell. Stockwell, a C.I.A. officer turned whistle-blower, reported that an agency officer in Katanga had told him about “driving about town after curfew with Patrice Lumumba’s body in the trunk of his car, trying to decide what to do with it,� and that, in the lead-up to his death, Lumumba was beaten, “apparently by men who were loyal to men who had agency cryptonyms and received agency salaries.�
Still, Reid argues convincingly that by ordering the assassination of Lumumba, the Eisenhower administration crossed a moral line that set a new low in the Cold War. Sid’s poison was never used � Reid says Devlin buried it beside the Congo River after Lumumba was imprisoned � but it might as well have been. Devlin paid protesters to undermine the prime minister; made the first of a long series of bribes to Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the coup leader and colonel who would become Congo’s strongman; and delayed reporting Lumumba’s final abduction to the C.I.A. On this last point, Reid is definitive: Devlin’s “lack of protest could only have been interpreted as a green light. This silence sealed Lumumba’s fate.�
July 13, 2024
A plot I knew nothing of; history I really enjoyed reading. Well constructed. Well written. Pulled in and captivated from start to finish.
April 14, 2024
Just brutal. Presents all the historical actors down to the minutiae with detailed and well placed sourcing. Perfectly straddles the line between rote history and historiographic narrative- these real people are characters taking part in and falling victim to a historical atrocity unfolded with the pace and scope of great fiction. Every new page is a gut punch. Meticulously shows how the Congo and Lumumba never had a chance, how inexperience and underdevelopment that could’ve been transitional became entrenched degeneration. Breaks Lumumba free from idle veneration to become a complete person- erratic and unprincipled but also inspiring, intellectual, and genuinely committed to a noble mission, yet lacking the tools to get there within himself and his government. Reveals how racism, paternalism, and the Cold War mindset poisoned the American response to his rise from the start. References to jungles, crocodiles, natives, and all sorts of racist stereotyping litter the Americans own official cables. Completely ignoring Lumumba himself making explicit requests to and comparisons with America, the US supported the former colonial power Belgium- often in opposition to the UN it itself established, dominated, and provided headquarters for.
This is a story of anti-democratic force in action. Lumumba and the Congo were, of course, denied democracy for the entirety of their time as a colonial possession. They were denied the developed transition that much of the rest of the colonized world got. They had independence and one nationwide election ceded to them without democratic control of that nation’s army or economy ever on the table. Their elected president and his parliament was immediately subject to Western funded separatism and roadblocks. The mutiny of the army against their (unaccountable to the government) white officers was blamed on the government, then, after a desperate plea for aid to the UN, transformed into a reason to carve off territory, to overthrow the elected head of state, and to limit sovereignty. Coup plotters were funded and directed through the American CIA. Lumumba remains the only democratically elected world leader for the American president to on the record order assassinated. His request to the Soviet Union for assistance was not treated as a duly elected head of governments right to perform diplomacy. After he was removed, nothing resembling a democracy came close to following him. And Lumumba was killed 3 days before Kennedy’s inauguration- almost certainly because all parties, especially the unaccountable and unelected American CIA, thought the new administration would reverse the policy of marginalizing him.
More on the painful end to Lumumba’s career and life. Overthrown by his former right hand man Mobutu, perp walked in front of white settlers who attacked him, placed under double house arrest by the Congolese army (which would’ve liked to do him worse) and the UN (who was protecting him), with the Americans still procuring sniper rifles and rare poisons to finish him off, Lumumba made a fateful, predictable final mistake. Following a change in personnel and therefore heart at the UN (from a black American who disliked Lumumba to an Indian diplomat who supported decolonization), it seemed any coming UN mediated political settlement would free him. Instead, untrusting and unaware, he made a run for it, and was caught. I had seen the famous video of Lumumba being displayed captured and defeated, but reading what followed was worse. He was repeatedly beaten, tortured, blinded, kept in a cramped cell, and then, as a final act of cowardice from his former confidant Mobutu (who he relied entirely too much on and very much pushed to the point of breaking), flown to a Belgian overseen breakaway province, where Belgian officers and their pet Congolese politicians personally tortured him further then shot him in the bush. After a month of pretending he was alive in captivity, they claimed he died trying to escape again. No hell is too hot for all involved. My face was scrunched into a permanent scowl reading this section on the train. The pure hate that was unleashed on the colonial side by the anti-colonial fervor of the post war period is under-discussed and still misunderstood. I felt much as I do when I read about the Israeli assault on Gaza now. There should have been (and should still be) hundreds of Nurembergs all over the world. The blood of that one man is on the hands of Eisenhower, the CIA, the Belgian military and government, the breakaway state of Katanga, and more indirectly the UN- but beyond that, so is the blood of the millions who have died in a permanently crippled Congo since, in a country never given a chance.
This is a story of anti-democratic force in action. Lumumba and the Congo were, of course, denied democracy for the entirety of their time as a colonial possession. They were denied the developed transition that much of the rest of the colonized world got. They had independence and one nationwide election ceded to them without democratic control of that nation’s army or economy ever on the table. Their elected president and his parliament was immediately subject to Western funded separatism and roadblocks. The mutiny of the army against their (unaccountable to the government) white officers was blamed on the government, then, after a desperate plea for aid to the UN, transformed into a reason to carve off territory, to overthrow the elected head of state, and to limit sovereignty. Coup plotters were funded and directed through the American CIA. Lumumba remains the only democratically elected world leader for the American president to on the record order assassinated. His request to the Soviet Union for assistance was not treated as a duly elected head of governments right to perform diplomacy. After he was removed, nothing resembling a democracy came close to following him. And Lumumba was killed 3 days before Kennedy’s inauguration- almost certainly because all parties, especially the unaccountable and unelected American CIA, thought the new administration would reverse the policy of marginalizing him.
More on the painful end to Lumumba’s career and life. Overthrown by his former right hand man Mobutu, perp walked in front of white settlers who attacked him, placed under double house arrest by the Congolese army (which would’ve liked to do him worse) and the UN (who was protecting him), with the Americans still procuring sniper rifles and rare poisons to finish him off, Lumumba made a fateful, predictable final mistake. Following a change in personnel and therefore heart at the UN (from a black American who disliked Lumumba to an Indian diplomat who supported decolonization), it seemed any coming UN mediated political settlement would free him. Instead, untrusting and unaware, he made a run for it, and was caught. I had seen the famous video of Lumumba being displayed captured and defeated, but reading what followed was worse. He was repeatedly beaten, tortured, blinded, kept in a cramped cell, and then, as a final act of cowardice from his former confidant Mobutu (who he relied entirely too much on and very much pushed to the point of breaking), flown to a Belgian overseen breakaway province, where Belgian officers and their pet Congolese politicians personally tortured him further then shot him in the bush. After a month of pretending he was alive in captivity, they claimed he died trying to escape again. No hell is too hot for all involved. My face was scrunched into a permanent scowl reading this section on the train. The pure hate that was unleashed on the colonial side by the anti-colonial fervor of the post war period is under-discussed and still misunderstood. I felt much as I do when I read about the Israeli assault on Gaza now. There should have been (and should still be) hundreds of Nurembergs all over the world. The blood of that one man is on the hands of Eisenhower, the CIA, the Belgian military and government, the breakaway state of Katanga, and more indirectly the UN- but beyond that, so is the blood of the millions who have died in a permanently crippled Congo since, in a country never given a chance.
January 23, 2025
I approached The Lumumba Plot as someone with limited knowledge of African history and the United States� interventions there, and I found it to be both informative and deeply unsettling. The book delves into the CIA’s involvement in the Congo during the Cold War, specifically the ousting and assassination of Patrice Lumumba. It paints a chilling portrait of the paranoia, racism, and ideological fervor that shaped U.S. foreign policy during this era.
The narrative is distinctly written from a Western perspective, which feels limiting at times, but this is a reflection of the historical records available. The author acknowledges that many Congolese records have been lost or never existed, and that they made a commendable effort to fill in these gaps through thorough research. The result is a book that demonstrates diligence in uncovering the historical threads but still inevitably reflects the biases of the sources available.
The book also captures the stark reality of how the United States misunderstood and overestimated the Soviet Union’s intentions in Africa, resulting in policy decisions driven by paranoia rather than facts. Even more troubling is how deeply ingrained racism influenced these decisions, viewing African leaders and nations as pawns in a Cold War chess game rather than sovereign entities with their own agency and aspirations.
Reading this book against the backdrop of the ongoing war in the Congo is sobering. Since 1994, the Congo has been embroiled in a conflict that has led to the deaths of an estimated 6 million people, the displacement of millions more, and acts of genocide that remain underreported in global media. The shadow of the Cold War and the interventionist policies of that era loom large over this devastation, and the book serves as a grim reminder of how external powers have destabilized the region for decades, leaving lasting scars.
The Lumumba Plot is a necessary read for anyone seeking to understand the deep and often overlooked connections between Cold War geopolitics and the ongoing tragedies in the Congo. While it may not present a perfectly balanced account, it sheds light on critical historical moments and invites readers to reflect on the consequences of interventionist policies and the narratives that shape our understanding of history.
The narrative is distinctly written from a Western perspective, which feels limiting at times, but this is a reflection of the historical records available. The author acknowledges that many Congolese records have been lost or never existed, and that they made a commendable effort to fill in these gaps through thorough research. The result is a book that demonstrates diligence in uncovering the historical threads but still inevitably reflects the biases of the sources available.
The book also captures the stark reality of how the United States misunderstood and overestimated the Soviet Union’s intentions in Africa, resulting in policy decisions driven by paranoia rather than facts. Even more troubling is how deeply ingrained racism influenced these decisions, viewing African leaders and nations as pawns in a Cold War chess game rather than sovereign entities with their own agency and aspirations.
Reading this book against the backdrop of the ongoing war in the Congo is sobering. Since 1994, the Congo has been embroiled in a conflict that has led to the deaths of an estimated 6 million people, the displacement of millions more, and acts of genocide that remain underreported in global media. The shadow of the Cold War and the interventionist policies of that era loom large over this devastation, and the book serves as a grim reminder of how external powers have destabilized the region for decades, leaving lasting scars.
The Lumumba Plot is a necessary read for anyone seeking to understand the deep and often overlooked connections between Cold War geopolitics and the ongoing tragedies in the Congo. While it may not present a perfectly balanced account, it sheds light on critical historical moments and invites readers to reflect on the consequences of interventionist policies and the narratives that shape our understanding of history.
January 15, 2025
A brilliantly narrated book which, true to the reviews, reads like a spy-thriller novel. As much as the narrative sounds like a James Bond-esque fiction, that very fact, makes it even more harder to swallow its content.
Is there any country that the CIA hasn't been fucking involved in? Congo just won its hard-fought independence from the Belgians after a gruesome and bloody colonial history, and America cannot just sit tight on its own. It *had* to put its nose where it didn't belong. Obviously. And, the UN. Oh, the ever-neutral, but only in theory, UN. And the entrenched derision towards coloured people in general, the not at all subtle mockery that the Congolese cannot govern their own land, much less form a stable government.
Now that I have ranted my heart out... The central character of the book is, of course, Patrice Lumumba, a handsome young guy, with big thoughts and ideas for his newly minted nation. He wanted to rule a land free of slavery and poverty. That is all that he dreamed of. But, of course, the US did not like that. Coz, freedom, as you know, only extends to its own citizens - of a particular race and gender. So, they plot to take him out of the picture. And the book takes us through the very nuanced and minute details of the same.
Besides rage and anger, I also grew to appreciate my country's independence a lot more, not just because of the colonial struggles, but also because of the huge amount of work the post-colonial phase warranted. As described in this book, it must not have been easy to establish entire systems and laws in place when the British finally announced their departure. The sudden departure of the Belgians, in Congo's case, weakened the Congolese further. In addition, the Belgians' explicit goal was to leave nothing back, just to let Congo descend into chaos.
This is not a coherant review, but one born out of seething rage and fury, just minutes after I finished the book. But, if a book can bring out such justifiable rage, then, by all means, it did a damn good job at being a book.
Is there any country that the CIA hasn't been fucking involved in? Congo just won its hard-fought independence from the Belgians after a gruesome and bloody colonial history, and America cannot just sit tight on its own. It *had* to put its nose where it didn't belong. Obviously. And, the UN. Oh, the ever-neutral, but only in theory, UN. And the entrenched derision towards coloured people in general, the not at all subtle mockery that the Congolese cannot govern their own land, much less form a stable government.
Now that I have ranted my heart out... The central character of the book is, of course, Patrice Lumumba, a handsome young guy, with big thoughts and ideas for his newly minted nation. He wanted to rule a land free of slavery and poverty. That is all that he dreamed of. But, of course, the US did not like that. Coz, freedom, as you know, only extends to its own citizens - of a particular race and gender. So, they plot to take him out of the picture. And the book takes us through the very nuanced and minute details of the same.
Besides rage and anger, I also grew to appreciate my country's independence a lot more, not just because of the colonial struggles, but also because of the huge amount of work the post-colonial phase warranted. As described in this book, it must not have been easy to establish entire systems and laws in place when the British finally announced their departure. The sudden departure of the Belgians, in Congo's case, weakened the Congolese further. In addition, the Belgians' explicit goal was to leave nothing back, just to let Congo descend into chaos.
This is not a coherant review, but one born out of seething rage and fury, just minutes after I finished the book. But, if a book can bring out such justifiable rage, then, by all means, it did a damn good job at being a book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 219 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.