Kal Raustiala 0:00

I am really happy to welcome you back.

This is our first live book talk of the academic year.

I'm really happy to have Stuart Reid here to talk about his book about Patrice Lumumba, "The Lumumba Plot". Many of you probably know something about Lumumba. You're gonna learn a lot more. I can tell you that this book, first of all, is it's a fascinating read. Stuart is an excellent writer, he gives a vivid account of what went on. I know a little bit about this story. I've learned so much from it. So I'm really happy to have him here. His day job is executive editor at Foreign Affairs, leading foreign policy journal, really in the world. So he's really steeped in that world. But this is very much a work of history as well. So, Stuart, take it away.

Stuart Reid 0:47

All right, thank you so much for having me. And it's good to be in a Bunche Hall which as we'll discuss, Ralph Bunche played a pretty important role and the events we're gonna be talking about. So, this is Patrice Lumumba. He was born in the Belgian Congo in 1925. And he had a really remarkable rise from nothing. He was born in a small village, and he migrated like many African men in the 40s to a big city. In his case, the city was Stanleyville, now known as Kisangani, and he took a job at the post office as a postal clerk working for the Belgian administration. So Belgium colonized Congo beginning in the 1870s 1880s, and was still in charge up until 1960. So the Lumumba takes a job at the post office. He eventually gets caught embezzling money from the post office, thrown in jail. In jail, he sort of starts to become a little more politically aware. He writes a book, he reads and writes furiously. And then when he's released from jail, he switches careers because he's now disgraced with the colonial administration, unwanted in his own city. So he moves to the capital of Congo, which is called Leopoldville at that time, now, Kinshasa, and he takes a job as of all things a beer promoter. So he goes from bar to bar convincing people to drink this beer, not that beer. And it's in this sudsy environment that Lumumba really becomes a political activist, a leading figure agitating for independence, of Congo from Belgium. He co-founds a political party, becomes a politician, because at the same time, this is the late 1950s, Belgium is finally realizing that it has to get rid of its colony, it had wanted to hold on to the Congo for decades to come. To give you one telling example, in that respect, in 1935, a Belgian academic released a plan called a 30 year plan for the Belgian Congo. So the idea was that only by 1985, would the Congo be finally ready to be independent as a country. Things change very quickly. Belgium looked at what was happening happening in Algeria with the war against the French there and decided it needed to offload its colony as soon as possible. So they arranged the details of independence at this conference in Brussels. Lumumba was a leading figure there, and they held elections in May 1960. And this is the Lumumba's government. He won the most votes and was therefore Prime Minister and asked to form a government. And it was the goal of the government was not coherence or unity, but inclusion. So you had 23 different ministers plus 10 at a lower rank. It was really unwieldy. People of all different ethnic groups, different provinces, different political parties, and Lumumba was barely holding it together. So he's on the left there that are middle left the tallest one. And then also, there's a figure who will become very important, right there is Joseph Mobutu, who was Lumumba's friend, his protege has mentee, his errand boy, and Lumumba included him in the government as a minister at a lower rank. This is taken just days before independence after the government is formed. And what I think is interesting about this photo is it sort of it obscures a lot of the problems that they were about to face. These were all politically active people, impressive organizers. Lumumba himself was an autodidact self taught brilliant man, voracious reader, but only two members of the Congolese government had graduated from university. In fact, there were fewer than 20 university graduates, fewer than 20 Congolese university graduates in the entire world at that time because the Belgians had so limited opportunities for Congolese. Their whole strategy was to keep the population uneducated and prevent a political elite from forming. So you had a lot of ambition and hope here, but not a lot of experience. So independence is on June 30. This photo is taken the day before independence. And the man standing in the convertible is King Baudouin of Belgium, who had arrived in Congo to formally handover the colony to the Congolese people as an independent nation. And this became an iconic image of the events. And what happened was a man, Congolese man leapt from the crowd and grabbed the king's sword off of his scabbard and waved it around and was eventually tackled by police. And the message here was unmistakable. It's we are in charge. Now, this is no longer your country. It would also, I think, be an omen of the chaos to come. So a lot of things happen really quickly. Until June 30, Congo becomes independent from Belgium. There's a few days of calm and then suddenly, all hell breaks loose. So first of all, the army mutinies, the army had an all white officer corps of Belgians, this was a holdover from colonialism. As you can imagine, the black rank and file was none too fond of this. They revolted against their officers. Soldiers were roaming around the streets harassing white civilians. And there was a massive white flight of Belgians out of Congo. This is Belgians on a on a ferry going across the river to the other Congo, the French Congo. And so what that meant was you have this immediate brain drain because all the way Belgian colonialism worked was there was this Belgian elite who was actually running the country, air traffic controllers, doctors, teachers, that sort of thing. So immediately, that disappeared. Then, the Belgian military sent in paratroopers across Congo, it intervened without Congolese permission. So essentially, it's an invasion from a foreign country. It's recolonizing its former colony was how it appeared. The Belgians claimed they were protecting their civilians, but it looked like a takeover, just days after independence. And so Lumumba makes a fateful decision, which is he puts Mobutu in charge of the military. Mobutu had served in the military as a as a soldier for six or seven years. So he was sort of the closest person Lumumba could turn to who had military experience. Lumumba puts Mobutu in charge of the military, to Africanize, the the officer corps and get rid of the Belgian officer corps because that was no longer going to work. Very quickly after another devastating event happened, which is that the mineral rich province of Katanga, which is on the bottom right the Southeast there secedes from Congo. It was a Belgian backed secession, but also there were local forces there who were anti-Lumumba and wanted to be independent. So that happens July 11. Again, June 30 is independence. So, just a little over a week after independence, the country is literally falling apart. There's the mutiny, the Belgian military intervention, the secession of Katanga and Lumumba as prime minister is desperate. So he calls on the United Nations. He sends this cable from a remote town doesn't even know if the cable is going to go through. He sends it to New York to Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary General of the UN, and he's asking for help from the UN. He doesn't even know exactly what form that help will take. But only that the UN seems like the logical actor to provide it. And the UN sets up this massive peacekeeping operation incredibly quickly. Within a week there are 5000 UN troops in Congo. They were drawn mostly from fellow African countries, Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana, Guinea. And there's a Ralph Bunche angle here because Ralph Bunche, who, as you probably know, is an American diplomat who was very high up at the UN. He had been sent to Congo for the independence ceremonies. Hammarskjöld sort of had a hunch that, one he was representing the UN at this celebration, and to Hammarskjöld had a hunch that something might happen. It would be good to have Ralph Bunche on hand. So Ralph Bunche becomes the commander of the UN forces essentially, while they're waiting for the military. The actual military commander to arrive and he would have, as we talked about, he would have many frustrating dealings with Lumumba. So the UN has been called on they arrive. The problem however, from the members perspective is that they aren't solving what he sees is the main problem in Congo, which is the secession of Katanga. UN troops are on the ground and all of the other five of Congo six provinces except for the secessionist province of Katanga.

Hammarskjöld fears that they will have to fight their way in and he doesn't want a war. Lumumba acts as if the UN works for him. He was the one who called on the UN so he should be able to tell the UN forces that they need to go in and put his country back together. He himself Lumumba is denied from - he tries to fly to the capital of Katanga isn't able to make it there is denied landing permission. So he's extremely frustrated with the UN and he flies to the United States. He first meets with Dag Hammarskjöld in New York. They have a series of meetings and it's it's deeply frustrating for both. Lumumba sees he can't understand why Hammarskjöld can't just send in the UN troops and Hammarskjöld can't understand why Lumumba is so impatient and is demanding things to happen in 24 hours that will take weeks. There's also a real contrast of styles there. Lumumba was blunt and impatient, demanding. Hammarskjöld was legalistic, reserved, cared a lot about decorum. They didn't connect on a personal level. Then Lumumba goes to Washington DC. He's hoping to speak with President Eisenhower. Eisenhower is out of town. So he meets at the State Department with Christian Herter, the man on the right there was Secretary of State at the time, and Douglas Dillon, the guy standing up who is the number two of the State Department. And yet again, Lumumba has this really frustrating meeting. He's he's frustrated with the UN, they're not providing the help he wants. So we asked the United States for help. Will you provide me a plane, for instance, so that I can travel around Congo and actually land in different cities in my country? No, they say. He asked for aid. They say no, you have to wait for the UN. So he's, he's fundamentally misunderstood. He also appears to have rubbed his hosts the wrong way. And there was again, a sort of personal disconnection. Eisenhower, in 1960, was nearing the end of his presidency. He was 69 years old, he was grumpy and cranky and didn't like the job, as many of his aides would attest to. He played golf a lot. This is him in Newport, Rhode Island. And part of the reason he couldn't meet with Lumumba was because he was in Newport, and then elsewhere. During the time, Lumumba was in DC. And he plays a key role here. So Lumumba flies back from America, frustrated with nothing in hand, his trip has been a failure. Meanwhile, chaos is continuing to spread in Congo. And so he does, he makes a very fateful decision, which is that he calls in the Soviet Union for help. This turned out to be a grave error. He saw it as a practical move, that, you know, my country is falling apart, I need military help to move troops around so that I can retake this secessionist province and put my country back together. But that set off alarm bells in the White House. So on August 18, there was a very fateful meeting at the White House, led by Eisenhower. And we don't know the exact words, but at some point, the subject of Lumumba came up. And Eisenhower said something to the effect of we need to get rid of this guy physically. We know that because the note taker at the meeting would later testify to the Church Committee, the Senate body that was investigating CIA wrongdoing in the 70s. He would later testify that he vividly remembers Eisenhower saying something to the effect that Lumumba had to be killed. And then when he was he went back to his boss to write up the meeting notes, he asked what do I do with that comment? He was told don't put it in the notes. And he also said that Eisenhower when he said this comment looked directly at Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, so it was clear whose job it was to get rid of Lumumba. One of the things I found in my research, it's admittedly inconclusive, but at the Eisenhower library, I found handwritten notes of that meeting, that no one else so far as I know, has looked at and they're written by a State Department official, and there's a line where he has he writes the word Lumumba. And then he has a big bold X next to it. So back could mean a lot of things, but it could also mean one particular thing. So Eisenhower has given this order effectively to Dulles, the director of the CIA, and then that sets in motion one of the crazier plots in Cold War history, which is, Dulles tells his deputy who then tells a CIA chemist to develop a poison to kill Lumumba, the idea being that it'll be put in a Lumumba food or toothpaste. And so, a CIA chemist, a man named Sidney Gottlieb flies to Congo and delivers a vial of poison to this man, Larry Devlin is the CIA station chief in Congo at the time. Devlin is surprised to get this message and to receive these materials and he asks, Where did this order come from? And Gottlieb the man delivering the poison says it came from the top it came from Eisenhower. So Devlin tries to move the plot forward, but events have intervened and made it difficult to do so. So in the meantime, we're now in like, August September 1960. This man Mobutu has stepped in in a military coup and taken over so Lumumba was overthrown, he's fired. Into the void steps Mobutu who announces he says this is not a military coup, but I'm taking charge. It was a military coup, obviously. But he hesitates, he fails to really act against Lumumba for a while. And journalists call him the Hamlet of the Congo because he can't decide what to do with the now former prime minister. And here's a lovely photo of Mobutu. I like where he's a little more confident now and interviewing with a journalist. So Mobutu and Lumumba as I mentioned, were good friends and mentors. And so there was a real personal element to their story and they had been tensions between them had been increasing. Mobutu thought Lumumba was not handling relations with the West correctly and Mobutu sort of became the Western diplomats favorite point of contact within the Congolese government. He could always sort of sort out any misunderstanding with, you know, someone being arrested or that sort of thing. And Lumumba was continuing to be obsessed with this idea of invading Katanga and bringing it back into the country. So there were tensions between Lumumba and Mobutu. And, again, Mobutu took power in a coup, but he quote neutralized Lumumba as well as the president of the Congo, a man named Joseph Kasa-Vubu, so he hadn't really acted against either of them until sometime in October, he throws Lumumba under house arrest, surrounds his the Prime Minister's residence where Lumumba still living with a circle of troops, and there's Lumumba on the left of the balcony up there. This is the day that Mobutu surrounded his house with troops. And Lumumba, according to news reports, at the time was yelling back and forth at Mobutu. They are having this public argument. Lumumba was saying you're betraying your country. And so Lumumba was under house arrest. He's deeply frustrated. He's no longer technically in power, although he continues to call himself the prime minister. And this goes on and we're now in November 1960. And then we'll move on to something very daring, which is he escapes from house arrest. There are rings of UN troops and rings of Congolese troops around the house, one ring of each. And yet he somehow escapes he hides in the back of a car under the legs of his domestic staff who are leaving for the day. There's a massive torrential downpour in Leopoldville that's the capital city at the time, and everyone seems to be distracted and they don't notice this car, with Lumumba in it creep out. And so his goal at that point is to go to his political homebase. Stanleyville on the other side of Congo in the east. His ministers who have been fired as a result of the coup, they're regrouping there. And there's this idea that, you know, Lumumba can recamp back in Stanleyville build up power again. And you know, that will be the legitimate government of Congo as opposed to this military Mobutu led regime back in the capital. So he he drives for few days with some allies and but eventually gets caught with CIA help. But I should mention the CIA has been intimately involved in some of the events that we have discussed so far. So Mobutu's coup that came after days of meetings between the CIA station chief and Mobutu. The station chief handed Mobutu a briefcase of cash $5,000 that Mobutu requested to help make the coup happen. And then, when Lumumba escaped and was captured, Devlin, the CIA station chief helped with the search party helped organize the search party advise Mobutu on how to catch him. And indeed, Lumumba was caught. And so this is him after being flown back to Leopoldville from the interior where he was caught. And here he is at the airport. This would become another the iconic images of this crisis. As with this one, and so Lumumba is manhandled at the airport, he's, you know, hair is ripped out, he's roughed up and tortured, and displayed to Mobutu is like a prized catch. So not far out of the frame of this photo Mobutu standing watching him his former friend, who is now put in captivity. So Lumumba is now put in a military prison. House arrest didn't work, he escaped that. Time to throw him in something more secure. At this time, December 1960, as you know, there's a presidential transition happening. Eisenhower is on the way out. John F. Kennedy has been elected, is going to start in January 1961. And that has a huge bearing on the events that will follow. So there were signs from the Kennedy camp, that JFK would take a less hardline approach to Lumumba that he might be the Eisenhower administration had been very anti Lumumba and had tried to kill him. But JFK there were signs that he was going to be a little more accommodating. Perhaps there would be a deal where Lumumba would come back to power in a coalition government and return as Prime Minister, be freed from jail and walk into the Prime Minister's residence again and resume power. This was widely known among the CIA. There were press reports about it at the time, was also widely known among Mobutu's camp. So there was this sense of a ticking clock that once January 20 inauguration comes, there's gonna be there might be a big shift in policy, and Lumumba might come back and this was terrifying to Larry Devlin. He hated Lumumba. He thought he was a communist stooge, he thought he was gonna turn Congo red. It was also terrifying to Mobutu, who would be out of a job if his now rival came back to power. And so that's when the tragedy begins, really. And there's this sense that develops that Lumumba has to be gotten rid of physically. So the poisoning plot had fizzled out because there was no access to his house. But there was still a sense that Lumumba had to be disposed of physically. And so, Mobutu and his henchmen in the capital didn't want to do the dirty work themselves. This was too risky. You know, there might be too much international opprobrium. So they decided to outsource the job. And they planned on sending Lumumba to a province where they knew he would die. Everyone knew this moment the plane door open Lumumba's fate would be sealed. So here's where there's a really strong US role, which is that Larry Devlin gets word from Mobutu, that this is about to happen. This transfer is in the works. And he does two things. One, he doesn't tell Mobutu please don't kill him. He doesn't put the brakes on the plan, ask him to reconsider. And in the context of his relationship with Mobutu, they were talking daily. He was advising Mobutu and his fellow members of the military government on many, many details. The fact that he didn't tell them to stop could only have been seen as a green light. And the other thing Devlin did was he didn't tell his superiors at the CIA in DC about what was going on. So even as he kept headquarters updated about other twists and turns, he deliberately sat on the most explosive news in the Congo, which was that Lumumba was about to be sent to his death and didn't tell headquarters. Why? Because he knew that if he did tell them they would, he would get the message back saying you need to stop this. This is too big an event to happen during a presidential transition. In fact, just days earlier, he had made a request for more money to pay off Mobutu's soldiers and CIA headquarters told him nope, sorry, no big decisions. The Kennedy administration is about to take office. We can't have things you know big events happening. This is a matter to be decided by the new administration's. So Devlin knew that was what was going to happen, so he didn't. He deliberately kept Washington out of the loop. And the province Lumumba was sent to on January 17 1961 was Katanga. This is the leader of Katanga, Moïse Tshombe and he detested Lumumba, had refused to let him set foot in Katanga. His one of his ministers had made it clear that had issued a threat saying if Lumumba lands in Katangan soil he'll be killed, was very clear what was going to happen. And lo and behold, on January 17, Lumumba was sent to Katanga and is tortured for hours. He was, you know, really hard part of the book to write and hard part to read probably, you know, brutally tortured within an inch of his life and then taken out into a clearing in the woods and put in front of a firing squad, where it was Congolese soldiers from Katanga, answering to Belgian officers who gave the order to shoot because that province still had Belgian officers who and they in turn, were working for Tshombe and his secessionist government. So Lumumba was shot just three days before JFK was inaugurated. Here's the site where Lumumba was murdered in recent years. And that man there is [name] and he witnessed Lumumba's death. He was 20 years old in 1961. And he was hunting antelope with his father when late at night when he saw cars come off the road and turn into this clearing. And so he and his father hid behind an anthill to see what was going on. And he witnessed it, and I was actually fortunate enough to interview him. In 2017, when I visited, I visited the site of Lumumba's death, I had no idea this man existed. But then, as I was there, someone said, you know, there's a man who lives not far away who actually witnessed Lumumba's murder. And so I said, yes, I'd like to meet him. I waited for a few hours and wasn't sure whether he show up and then I saw on the distance, this motorbike coming with the man on it. So Lumumba dies, Mobutu is in charge. And then that begins a period that would last until 1997 of Mobutu in charge, and he had American support until nearly the very end. So here's Mobutu meeting with Kennedy, who, you know, after his death, there was no pro Lumumba policy to enact. And so very quickly, Kennedy got in line and supported Mobutu. And the US would funnel the CIA was funneling cash to Mobutu, eventually that transition to sort of more overt aid. Because in the Cold War, Mobutu was seen as pro American ally. And so he would meet with successive US presidents, and become, you know, the pro American sort of cartoonish Cold War dictator that we all came to know. And I'll close by just summarizing, I think, a bit of the flaw that was going on here. So there was this idea in US policy that it was Mobutu or chaos. We had to back this unsavory dictator, who was a kleptocrat, who was repressive, completely unrepresentative of the Congolese people, because the alternative was chaos. That made sense in some very, very narrow, Cold War terms. But if you broaden it even just a bit, the logic falls apart. First of all, Mobutu did not end up ensuring stability because in 1997, his hollow regime collapsed outright, sparking one of the deadliest civil wars in recent years, the Congolese civil wars that lasted until the early 2000s. And second of all, there wasn't the alternative was not so bad. Lumumba was not a communist, he was not pro Soviet. He in fact, was arguably more pro American than pro Soviet if you look at his words and actions. For instance, when he visited DC, he asked for American troops to intervene, which is hardly the words of someone who's working for Moscow. But America couldn't see that at the time, and they viewed Mobutu as steadfast ally and just days before Mobutu, he had two coups, the one I talked about in 1960, where he remained the power behind the throne and then in 1965, he did away with the presidency and took it himself and became officially leader of Congo even though he was de facto in charge before that. And just days before the coup, there was a memo written by a White House staffer, talking about how this coup is about to happen, we think, what do we do? And he came to the conclusion that there was nothing the US could do, it had to essentially support Mobutu. Because as he wrote, he's already our man. And I think that was the flaw that drove U.S. policy at the time. So thank you.

Kal Raustiala 30:38

All right, so I'm gonna just start things off with a couple of questions, and then open it up to everyone here. So I mean, first of all, this is such an interesting story and such an important story. There's a lot to ask about, but maybe just to kind of run with what you were saying at the end. To give some context as to why the US in particular and the CIA, as you point to, as the agent of, of Washington, wanted to kill Patrice Lumumba. And you pointed to one dimension, which is the Cold War. And the fact that as Congo is, it's going through this very difficult transition to independence and civil war. It's seen as a frontline in the Cold War. The other dimension, which you kind of alluded to, is also Katanga and the idea that there's going there's a struggle going on. 1960 is the year of Africa, there are 17 states that gained their independence in Africa in a single year. And that the Katangese kind of secession or attempted secession was an attempt to maintain white supremacy in Africa. And so there's this question of, is decolonization really sort of surging forward? Or is it going to be ground to halt in some way or the best parts of the country are going to be kept by the Belgians. And then there's this Cold War dimension layered on so I guess, with that in mind, say a little more about why the US felt this was so critical. So you pointed to kind of misapprehensions about Mobutu, which is obvious in retrospect. But you also pointed to the fact that Lumumba himself did not seem to evidence any sign of real association with the Soviet Union. So just say a little more about why Eisenhower in particular got so obsessed with him.

Stuart Reid 32:18

Yeah, so one answer that I thought I would find, but didn't, was that the US viewed Congo as strategically important. And one can spin an argument about that it has a lot of minerals. It's a big country in the middle of Africa. But I don't think that was I don't think Congo was strategically important at the time. And I think the reason that's the case is there weren't the uranium that came from there that was in the one of the bombs that was dropped on Japan, at the end of World War Two, came from Katanga. But by 1960, no uranium was being exported to the United States at all. It was a relatively poor country, it had very few economic links with the United States, all the economic links were with Belgium. So and in fact, an internal Church Committee report asked the question, you know, how did the United States get so entangled in a country in which it had very few strategic interests? And I would agree with that assessment. So why did Eisenhower care so much? I really think it was two things, one, the Cold War domino theory that, you know, there are countries and they either need to be with us or against us. And if Congo goes red, well, then you can just see the map, boom, boom, boom, boom. That was one aspect of it. And then the other thing is what Senator William Fulbright called the arrogance of power, which is the idea that because America could dictate events and guide the politics of other countries, therefore it should. And so it was almost as if US officials sort of talk to them into caring about who was in charge of Congo at the time, when if they had ever sort of step back and say, wait, why exactly does it matter? And the broader context also is there's just an extreme amount of paranoia about the Soviets. They, US officials, sort of saw Soviet ghosts everywhere, and would interpret every move in the least favorable possible light. And you read the cables from the time and you think, wow, these Soviets seem really active reading the American cables. When the Soviet archives opened up after the Cold War, it turned out there was very little on Congo there because they didn't view it as a place. One was very far away in the 1960s, the USSR was less powerful than it would become. And two, they thought that the Congolese population it was very Catholic, they thought it would be naturally more pro American than pro Soviet. So they saw Congo is a place that gets can score some propaganda points at the UN Security Council, but not as a place really worth investing in. But the Americans didn't understand that

Kal Raustiala 34:59

You mentioned or noted the role of Belgium in the assassination. And obviously, in Belgium itself, this has been a huge issue to try to unearth exactly what the role the complicity of Belgium, or Belgian officials in this process. Say more about the collaboration or contacts between the CIA and Belgian authorities in this whole a lot of that didn't come to fruition. But how much collaboration was there? Yeah.

Stuart Reid 35:24

I mean, unfortunately, there's still stuff that is not yet declassified. So there are names blanked out that are clearly Belgians in Katanga in forming, you know, that was, for instance, how the CIA learned that Lumumba had probably been killed the day after he was killed. There was some Belgian source so they were in touch. But you know, Belgium has certainly has a lot of complicity here. To summarize it, you know, like the US was working to oust Lumumba from power. It was also involved intimately in the transfer of Lumumba to Katanga. There were Belgian officers who were who gave the orders to fire and shoot Lumumba. And also it was backing the secession, which was not only the chief cause of the crisis, but also the way that that an important factor in Lumumba's death because that was you know, he was being sent to enemy territory essentially. So it's sort of impossible to tease out like, percentage faults like you would in a car accident or something. But what I try and do is highlight the American role, there's been a lot of very good work on the Belgian role, Ludo De Witte's book from around 2000, for instance. But I focus more on the American role. And it's more pernicious than I think, had previously been revealed.

Kal Raustiala 36:53

Great. So last question from me, and then we'll open it up. So since we're in Bunche Hall, and you do talk a fair bit about Ralph Bunche, in it, you know, at the time or in the aftermath of the assassination. Bunche, Hammarskjöld, others are blamed by many, especially from the Soviet Union, but but many kind of on the left as being somehow also complicit in either the death of Lumumba or just generally the problems that Congo is undergoing, that they were not sufficiently supportive that they were somehow under actively undermining the Lumumba's rule and role. So what's your assessment of what Ralph Bunche either knew or did to, to foster the plot or to undermine it? So how do you kind of assess him?

Stuart Reid 37:42

So he left Congo in, I think, late August the end of a very end of August 60. And so he was there for a key two months, but he was not there for the worst things that happened afterwards. So we should let Ralph Bunche off of the hook, but he has, you should read Kal's book if you haven't, because it talks about this in detail. He and Lumumba were like oil and water. And I mean, the private diary entries, Ralph Bunche says that he calls Lumumba jungle demagogue and Congolese ogre, he really hated him. I think so there's that personal element for sure. But I think there was a broader structural problem, which is that, Lumumba thought the UN troops should answer to him. And Ralph Bunche knew that they answered to the Security Council, and they couldn't just be at Lumumba's whim so there was really no good way of resolving that tension. I think Bunche, I mean, it really struck me how much he hated Lumumba. And there's sort of, you know, Bunche was an African American man, but there was almost a racial aspect to the the words he wrote, you'd expect to be written by a white man in many ways. The real malevolent actor is a man named Andrew Cordier, who was a UN official who was in charge in Congo, right after Ralph Bunche. And right before the next guy, Rajeshwar Dayal. And he was there for this extremely important moment where the president of Congo hadn't really talked about it much. Joseph Kasa-Vubu fires Lumumba. And then that's after that is when Mobutu steps in with his coup, but that coup, the whatever the firing, whatever you want to call it was basically encouraged arranged something like that by this UN official who shared Bunche's dislike of Lumumba. But I mean that's in we now have, you know, the cables and the Telex conversations back with New York where Hammarskjöld is basically saying, you know, you didn't hear from me but like if Kasa-Vubu happens to take over and fire Lumumba that wouldn't be the worst thing and that's exactly what happens. And and Cordier ends up getting a lot a lot of blame and Hammarskjöld sort of disowns him and he dies in the 70s constantly wondering whether he would have made the same decision but the UN also plays a role, not Bunche himself but in, in remember his death because there were moments where the UN could have intervened. Lumumba was captured and then driven past UN post where there were, I think, Ghanian troops there. He cried out for help, and was ignored. So there were many opportunities to save them and protect him but they weren't taken.

Kal Raustiala 40:44

Great. Okay, so floor is open for questions.

Audience Question 40:50

Sure, can you control the PowerPoint?

Stuart Reid 40:58

Where what photos?

Audience Question 41:16

I wanted to say firstly, because obviously, this is a very niche topic. But the legacy of Lumumba trying to get out in history, African people all over the diaspora mourn him constantly. Congo more intense still, to this day, is the ghost of what he wanted to accomplish, clearly reverberates across the continent. So thank you for like writing about this. And I have a question and a comment. The comment was that for a lot of people that might not be obvious looking at the map, but Katanga is on the border of Northern Rhodesia. So like the urgency that Lumumba felt is a real threat of like a settler colonial nation, ready to move and reimpose Belgian control over the Congo and history of the Penal Code. Of course, I'm sure you all have heard of it before but you know, I think that's like an aspect of it that matters a lot in terms of what the secession and second question or the question is, like, knowing this like, blueprint that kind of is replicated all over Africa, Liberia, Burkina Faso, with the US involvement in African affairs and African leaders. Have you, I guess, gone into like, discuss, like the role that race and anti blackness play in this and maybe some similarities to how the US and US intelligence reacts to black movements within the United States as well.

Stuart Reid 42:54

Yeah. So on your first point, you're absolutely right. There's a fear that the white settlers in Katanga would sort of make common cause with the British settlers across the border and create this sort of white run superstate. That was definitely an element that was going on. And there were links between the the settlers in Katanga and those across the border. On your second point, what really stood out in my research was a lot of the racism. It was an undeniable role. I, I can't picture Eisenhower having ordered the assassination of a white leader. It just really I can't see it. The US Ambassador to Congo at the time was a man named Clare Timberlake. He, I found in the his archives, his papers, this letter, he's writing to a State Department friend. And he's in Congo at the time writing about updating him about events. And he makes this joke saying that Lumumba is a cannibal. And, you know, that's tells you everything you need to know. Also, one of the ways this racism manifested itself was there's this sense that the Congolese were children, which was how the Belgians treated them. And so they needed guidance. They couldn't run their own country, they needed constant intervention. And I think it was Andrew Cordier, who I mentioned, called Lumumba, a schoolboy or something like that. Hammarskjöld referred to them at one point as children in some cable or something. So that was another dominant theme. And then the other way, I think it played an effect and sort of related to that is that US officials and some UN officials sort of wrote off Congo as a uncivilized place where bad things happen. So it was violent. Yeah. Niceties like sovereignty and a constitution were no match for the Darwinian law of the jungle. And you know, we can't apply our Western standards. So Clare Timberlake, for instance, the US ambassador, he has this cable where he writes back to headquarters at the State Department saying that we're not dealing with a civilized people here. And that his argument was, you don't get it, we can't. I don't remember what the particular issue of dispute was. And what was interesting is when that cable was presented in 1992, in the State Department volume, they redacted the phrase civilized people. And so obviously, there's no national security reason to redact tha. It was because it was embarrassing, and it showed Timberlake's views. Ironically, that phrase had actually been released elsewhere, which just shows how illogical the declassification process is. But yeah, this was a constant theme of research that I did.

Kal Raustiala 45:37

I would just add that Congo in particular, one of the stories that I tell in my book about Ralph Bunche is a Bunche and Julius Nyerere go on Eleanor Roosevelt's television show in 1960. She briefly had this talk show, and Eleanor Roosevelt was, of course, we view her as the person who we're about to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She had a huge hand viewed as a human rights icon. But on live television, the issue of Congo's independence, which is impending, comes up, and she sort of laughs at the idea. they literally the title of the show, is Africa: Revolution and Haste. And so the idea is, this is happening too fast. And Congo in particular, is unimaginable. So just going back to a point that Stuart made, in the very beginning, no one really thought that Congo of all places could possibly stand on its own two feet. So I think as much as racism was imbued in all of the Africa policy in the United States, Congo, in particular, was viewed as the most backward place the place that could never possibly. So even liberals had trouble with this idea. And then when the events unfold that summer, it's sort of taken as an indication like, oh, of course, we told you so. So it's a very pernicious kind of mindset. That's and even Ralph Bunche, he pushes back on that. But even he was subjected to some of those prejudices.

Stuart Reid 46:55

And just to add one more data point of that there was a White House meeting before Congolese independence in I think, like May 1960. And Eisenhower's getting a briefing involved in things going around in the world and someone says, okay, now turning to Congo, there are 80 political parties running. And Eisenhower says, Oh, I didn't realize that many that many Congolese could read. So that was written down in the notes. At another meeting, or maybe the same meeting, Maurice Stans who was the head of the budget office in the White House. Again, the subject of Congolese independence comes up, he says, quote, many the Congolese are still living in the trees, it was how we put it. This is stuff said in the open and official meeting, which was pretty telling.

Audience Question 2 47:42

Thank you so much for the for the talk. It was really fascinating. So I was thinking about how there's two very small things that you said. One was the figure of the Hamlet for Mobutu. And you use the word tragedy, sort of casually, I think. And I guess I was just thinking that this relates to the previous question as well, that in part to combat the kind of torture that Lumumba, that the images that you showed, and so on, there has been such a massive body of work in the life of Black Atlantic literature, to commemorate the combine different kinds of ways to tell this story through the genre of tragedy, right? So of course, they are seen in the Congo is the most famous example. But there's so much work that's been in place, market fiction, poetry, that has really tried to tell a kind of alternate history of everything that happened, and what's fascinating and reading some of that work from the 60s, right. So when this evidence that you have accumulated and others have accumulated a Belgian and US control and kind of forensic mode, a lot of that literature makes these links already. Right? So I'm just curious, as you were researching this book, was there a place for that kind of body of work, you know, as a kind of source, which would be very different from the materials that you were looking at? But at this project are really trying to think of what happened in the in the mode of the sublime to restore a kind of grandeur and meaning and world historical leading to the acts that were outside of control.

Stuart Reid 49:17

I considered whether or not to sort of open that door. And I ultimately decided that I wanted to focus on the verifiable facts of the time, because so much mythology has sprung up around the moment that I wanted to sort of be a little purist and say, okay, forget all that, because let's look at what the man said, what he did what actually happened, what various officials were saying about him in doing. So that would have been a very different book. But it wasn't it wasn't my approach. But you're absolutely right. This he really took on this whole life. And I think some of those authors you mentioned, sort of be vindicated by facts that would only come out later on.

Audience Question 3 50:04

This is very interesting. Could you talk a bit more about the CIA station chief, you mentioned and also described the African division of the CIA, who was running, what kind of people were involved? And also what happened to the machine afterwards?

Stuart Reid 50:19

Yeah. So Larry Devlin, was the station chief in Congo at the time he was 38 years old, which is telling because that shows how the CIA did not think anything exciting was going to happen in the Belgian Congo. It was this sleepy colony. So they sent this untested, 38 year old there. All of a sudden, it becomes the biggest Cold War crisis that year. He he was a fascinating character, very much a man of action. He, as you may remember, from my talk earlier, like he, he acted without permission and made decisions on his own, confidently, and turned out to be very consequential. He was a bon vivant, he was a great conversationalist, the life of the party, sort of politician type figure. And the Congo made his career. He was promoted afterwards to Laos, that another shining example of US foreign policy at the time. And what was interesting is he kept getting pulled back into Congo because he had the best relationship with Mobutu. No other US officials had the kind of access and understanding that he did. So he goes to Laos, and then he comes back to Congo station chief, which is an unusual way of dealing with Mobutu. Then he gets promoted to be the head of the East Africa branch in the CIA, but even then he's getting pulled back into Congo and constantly flying in to sort out differences and that sort of thing. And to answer your other question, they, the Africa division at the time was led by a man named Bronson Tweedy, who has just the most amazing name. And he was, my sense is that to work in the Africa division of the CIA at the time was not the prestigious place to be. It was not where the best employees were. And Tweedy himself sort of reading the cables, he comes off as like a paper pusher type, sort of an intermediary between the higher ups and definitely the field. And then just to close out the Devlin story, so he retired from the CIA, at the age of 52, I think, testifies before the church committee. But his post CIA career is back in Congo, which by then was renamed Zaire, where he's the American representative for a diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman who would later become Jackie Kennedy's boyfriend. And why is Devlin hired into this role to be a diamond merchants representative in Zaire because he has this great relationship with Mobutu, still, they were on first name terms with each other. And American diplomats actually complained, like the US Ambassador to Zaire year, had worse access to Mobutu than Devlin, a retired CIA officer working for a diamond merchant.

Audience Question 4 53:11

In the heads of the CIA at the time, a lot more Catholic, and, you know, came out of missionary family. So was there any element there he will see for a missionary. But why did you get interested in Africa? Was that kind of?

Stuart Reid 53:27

I don't know. Devlin was interested in he was posted to Belgium. So that was his route into Congo. He was stationed in Europe and then Brussels specifically. And so that was why he was sent to Congo

Audience Question 4 53:38

I was by the African division? That wasn't the kind of religious overcome?

Stuart Reid 53:42

I don't know that. Most of the missionaries in Congo were Belgian, there were American ones. So I don't think that is a significant factor to my knowledge there and then.

Audience Question 5 53:52

How did it come out that Devlin didn't report the the his intelligence about what would happen to move up to his superiors? Did he self report that to the Church Committee, and were there any consequences or policy changes made as a result that as station chief was not informing policymakers in Washington about things that he didn't answer?

Stuart Reid 54:18

So this first sort of became known with the church committee because they had the cable he wrote a cable on January 17th, saying three days ago on the 14th, I learned that Lumumba was about to be transferred. Who he learned it from is unfortunately still redacted. And so we have that cable from the church committee, but no one really made much of it at the time. Only in 2013 was the entire correspondence of cables back and forth released and then it became clear that Devlin was talking to the CIA headquarters about lots of different things, but didn't tell them this one important thing until the 17th where he sort of says it by the way, I learned three days ago that Lumumba was going to be transferred in. And then he wrote that cable late in the day after the Lumumba, in fact, been transferred when it was too late to do anything. And no, there were no consequences for him again, the Congo operation within the CIA was seen as a success. He was promoted, he earned a medal for his work in Congo, it made his career. It was not something he was punished for.

Audience Question 6 55:23

Yeah, thank you so much for this. Um, I study Portuguese colonialism. So I'm gonna take this a bit of a detour. But I was wondering if you've seen in your documents, references to exactly to Portuguese colonialism and to assuring Angola which is the other big border with Congo. And thinking about the chronology 61 is when the armed resistance Well, the Portuguese regime declares war to the army systems in Angola. So I was wondering if you've seen in your research, any references to the need to preserve the Portuguese in Angola because the other point to this being resistance, the Portuguese regime was notoriously famously trained by the Soviet Union?

Stuart Reid 56:12

Yeah, I my understanding and you tell me is that sort of happened a little bit after the events. My book discusses Lumumba's death in January 61. My story's basically over. I know there was I think the CIA was pre positioning arms, outside of Congo. And I think what I knew they were doing that I think one of the places they were doing this was Portuguese, Angola and maybe Cabinda specifically. So there could have been common cause there. And then the other thing I know is that Roberto Holden. I believe he grew up or came of age in Congo, and he became a Angolan. What do you want to call freedom fighter? So there was a lot of movement between the Congo Yeah, for Africans. And I mean, I think later, as you know, well, the CIA's involvement in the Angolan Civil War was another huge black mark on US foreign policy, but it was driven by that same fear that you know, there were good guys and bad guys, and we had to be on or there weren't good guys and bad guys. There were pro American, pro Western people and pro Soviet. And you needed to be with the pro Americans, even if they're bad guys. Yeah.

Kal Raustiala 57:30

So unfortunately, we're out of time, but great questions. Great book. Again, I want to urge you, it's a very gripping story, and obviously an incredibly consequential one. So there are copies in the back and I bet Stuart will sign if anyone wants to buy one. So thank you so much, Stuart. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai