An Extraordinary Rendition
Stephen R. Weissman
Intelligence and National Security
Vol. 25, No. 2, 198-222, April 2010
Abstract
Controversy over alleged CIA responsibility for the 1961
assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba continues to
swirl despite a negative finding by the US Senate Church Committee
in 1975. A new analysis of declassified and other Church Committee,
CIA and State Department documents, memoirs of US and Belgian
covert operators, and author interviews with former executive
branch and Church Committee officials shows that the CIA Congo
Station Chief was an influential participant in the Congo
Government's decision to "render" Lumumba to his bitter enemies.
Moreover evidence strongly suggests the Station Chief withheld his
advance knowledge of Lumumba's fatal transfer from Washington
policymakers, who might have blocked it. Flaws in the Church
Committee's verdict are traced to CIA delays in providing key
cables, staff overreliance on lawyers' methodology, and political
pressure to water down original draft conclusions. What happened in
Lumumba's case provides insight into the contemporary problem of
establishing accountability in US anti-terrorist programs. Current
rendition policies are also characterized by ambiguous performance
standards for covert operators on the ground and difficulty in
pinpointing US responsibility within the intimate relationship
between the CIA and foreign government clients. The Church
Committee's experience clarifies the conditions for meaningful
outside regulation of anti-terrorism operations today.
Excerpts
[in film footage taken after Lumumba's capture, available on
] "a tall dark man in his
30s with a small beard and mustache and open collared white shirt
sits in the back of an army truck, his hands bound behind him. One
of the numerous non-American soldiers around him brutally pulls his
hair to raise his face to the cameras; another gratuitously
tightens his bonds, causing him to grimace in pain. ... The young
Commander watches his men abusing the prisoner, smiling
occasionally. The CIA - a strong backer of the Commander - had been
trying to kill or capture the 'target' for months. Recently, the
CIA Station Chief had met with security officials to make sure the
right roads were blocked and troops alerted. According to the CIA
Director, the prisoner's background was 'harrowing' and 'his
actions indicate that he is insane'. Within weeks of this incident,
the authorities decided to transfer the prisoner to another
government - one that had threatened to kill him. They immediately
informed the local CIA Station Chief of their plan. Three days
later, the prisoner and two colleagues were hustled onto a plane
bound for enemy territory. Savagely beaten throughout the flight,
the prisoners were taken away after landing and never seen again."
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U.S.-Africa 'reset' requires honesty about America's wrongs
Providence Journal August 1, 2010
http://www.projo.com
By William Minter
Washington
To celebrate 50 years of African independence, President Barack
Obama will hold a town hall meeting this week with 120 African
youth leaders. The president will probably revisit themes from his
visit to Ghana last year: that Africa's future is up to Africans,
and that neither colonial exploitation nor Cold War interventions
are valid excuses to evade African responsibilities.
He's undoubtedly correct about that, as African activists agree.
But there are also lessons from the past that should not be
ignored. Over the last five decades, decisions made in Washington
and other global capitals have profoundly influenced what happens
in Africa. Fresh evidence confirms U.S. responsibility in one of
the most notorious cases of Cold War intrigue: the assassination of
Patrice Lumumba.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of 17 African countries
celebrating a half century of independence this year. Today, it is
the most fragile of Africa's large regional powers and it remains
the one most exposed to external influences that fuel conflict.
In July 1960, newly elected Congolese prime minister Patrice
Lumumba visited Washington. His quest: to ask the United States to
urge Belgium, the Congo's former colonial ruler and a U.S. ally, to
withdraw its troops from the Congo, where it had intervened only a
month after independence. Instead of helping, U.S. policymakers
quickly decided that Lumumba "threatens our vital interests in
Congo and Africa generally," in the words of the U.S. ambassador to
Belgium.
U.S. policy, the ambassador continued in an internal cable, "must
be to destroy Lumumba government as now constituted."
As documented by the Senate's Church Committee in 1975, the
National Security Council then decided to authorize "any particular
activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba." The CIA
instigated a coup by Col. Joseph Mobutu, who would rule over the
Congo with an iron fist until his death in 1997. Mobutu's troops
captured Lumumba and handed him over to a Belgian-backed
secessionist regime in Congo's Katanga province. Lumumba was
executed on Jan. 17, 1961, only days before President John F.
Kennedy took office.
The Church Committee concluded that there was insufficient evidence
to confirm U.S. involvement in the murder plot. But new evidence
published in July in the scholarly journal Intelligence and
National Security tells another story. It confirms that CIA Station
Chief Larry Devlin gave the nod to Mobutu to hand over Lumumba to
secessionists who had vowed to kill him. Using newly declassified
Church Committee files, CIA cables, and interviews with Belgian and
U.S. intelligence officials, political scientist Stephen R.
Weissman, a former staff director of the House Africa Subcommittee,
concludes that there can no longer be any doubt: The U.S.
government shared responsibility with the Belgian and Congolese
governments for killing the elected Congolese leader.
It would be a refreshing sign of honesty if President Obama were to
acknowledge this shared U.S. responsibility when he meets with
African youth, as well as the need for critical scrutiny of U.S.
influence today. The flawed Cold War assumptions that painted
Lumumba as a threat have been discarded. But a rapid expansion of
U.S. military involvement in Africa, which began under the George
W. Bush administration, continues under Obama. This raises the risk
of new flawed judgments of complex African realities. The record
already shows some dubious consequences.
Whether under the umbrella of humanitarian action, as in the Congo,
or of counterterrorism, as in Somalia, U.S. involvement can fuel
conflict rather than promote African or U.S. security.
One danger is that African security forces can themselves threaten
their own people, as illustrated by today's Congo. Despite a peace
agreement in 2002 and elections in 2006, conflict has continued,
particularly in eastern Congo. Horrific abuses of civilians,
especially rape, have been the hallmark of this war. The United
States and other countries are training Congolese government
troops, but this has not stopped them from committing as many
atrocities as rebel soldiers. Simply strengthening security forces,
without curbing human-rights abuses, is a recipe for disaster.
Calls for more military intervention in Somalia, following the
recent terrorist bombing in Kampala, should also be examined
skeptically. The threat from the extremist group Al-Shabaab is
real. But a U.S.-backed Ethiopian intervention in Somalia in
December 2006 escalated the conflict and aided the rise of
Al-Shabaab. The United States, with two failed wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, should be wary of falling into a similar trap in
Africa. Nor should it encourage its African allies to adopt
America's flawed security paradigms.
President Obama has inspired hope in Africa and around the world.
Africans who heed his call to build the future, however, must still
reckon with the stubborn fact that the United States can be an
obstacle as well as a partner.
also some of this
King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa
by William Minter.
New York: Basic Books, 1986
http://www.noeasyvictories.org/books/ksmr05.php