Allen Dulles offered a simple explanation for the seesaw events in Congo. “In Lumumba, we were faced with a person who was a Castro or even worse,” he told the National Security Council on July 21. Lumumba, Dulles claimed, was “in the pay of the Soviets.” To Dulles, one Third World nationalist was like another: Lumumba was like Castro, Castro was like Nasser, Nasser was like Sukarno. They were all Soviet-inspired threats to American interests and had to be stopped.13
On August 18 an alarming cable from Larry Devlin, the CIA station chief in Congo, landed at CIA headquarters. It seemed to confirm the worst predictions. With telegraphic brevity, Devlin wrote, “Congo experiencing classic Communist effort takeover government. . . . Whether or not Lumumba actually Commie or just playing Commie game to assist his solidifying power, anti-West forces increasing power Congo and there may be little time left in which take action to avoid another Cuba.” Ike’s advisers gathered at 9:00 that morning to discuss the problem. Undersecretary of State Douglas Dillon said that if the UN was forced to withdraw from Congo, the USSR would intervene at Lumumba’s invitation and the United States would be faced with a “disaster.” Dulles again insisted that Lumumba was “in Soviet pay.” Eisenhower said the “possibility that the UN would be forced out was simply inconceivable.” Ike spoke with real heat: “we were talking of one man forcing us out of the Congo; of Lumumba supported by the Soviets.”14
According to the note-taker at this meeting, Robert H. Johnson, Eisenhower said even more than this. In testimony given in 1975 to a Senate investigation under the chairmanship of Frank Church, Johnson reported that Eisenhower “said something—I can no longer remember his words—that came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba.” Johnson then went on to say that he could not be certain of Eisenhower’s words or his intentions: “I have come to wonder whether what I really heard was only an order for some such political action.” But his testimony implicated Eisenhower in the murder of a foreign leader.15
Other officials who were present at the meeting recalled it differently. Douglas Dillon and Gordon Gray gave testimony to Senator Church’s committee denying that Eisenhower gave any such order, though they admitted that Dulles might have interpreted a strong statement by the president against Lumumba as an order for his assassination. General Goodpaster, in an interview given in 1975, firmly denied that Eisenhower ever discussed the assassination of Lumumba or anyone else. Precisely what Ike said at the August 18 meeting cannot be known with certainty. Yet his subordinates, all very careful and loyal men, acted as if the president had approved their course of action.16
Just a week after the August 18 meeting, Gray chaired a meeting of the 5412 Committee during which he reported on Eisenhower’s state of mind regarding Lumumba. “His associate,” Gray said, using the code-word for the president, “had expressed extremely strong feelings on the necessity for very straightforward action in this situation.” Dulles affirmed that he “had every intention of proceeding as vigorously as the situation permits or requires.” Both men insisted that “planning for the Congo would not necessarily rule out consideration of any particular kind of activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba.” Cloaked in a fog of euphemism, these senior U.S. government officials were planning to oust and possibly murder Patrice Lumumba. This conclusion is supported by Dulles’s own telegram to Devlin on August 26: “We conclude that [Lumumba’s] removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action.”17
In his memoirs Richard Bissell, Dulles’s deputy and the man tasked with overseeing these various plots, explained how such matters worked in the halls of government. In official settings the president did not speak of assassination. Instead his colleagues interpreted certain phrases as approval for their extreme plans. “If you had asked Eisenhower what he was thinking at that moment he probably would have said, ‘I sure as hell would rather get rid of Lumumba without killing him, but if that’s the only way, then it’s got to be that way.’ ” Bissell clearly admired Eisenhower for his cold-bloodedness: “Eisenhower was a tough man behind that smile.”18
Bissell wished to implicate Eisenhower in the Lumumba plot to show that what followed had presidential approval. In late August, aware of the high priority Eisenhower gave to the Congo operation and the elimination of Lumumba, Bissell turned to his special assistant for scientific matters, Joseph Scheider, also known as Sidney Gottlieb. A graduate of Cal Tech with an advanced degree in chemistry, Scheider joined the CIA’s Technical Services Staff in 1951 and had been the leading person behind the CIA’s experimental use of psychotropic drugs in human subjects. Bissell ordered Scheider to deliver toxic biological materials to CIA station chief Devlin in Congo’s capital, Leopoldville. In late September Scheider traveled to Congo with the vials of toxins in his luggage, carefully disguised as innocuous drugs, along with rubber gloves, a syringe, and a gauze mask; these he handed over to Devlin. Scheider told Devlin that the operation had been approved by the president. Just how the poison might be delivered to Lumumba—by food or drink or toothpaste tube—would be up to Devlin and his agents.19
Devlin had the good sense to see the murder-by-poison plot as zany and dangerous. Had the CIA carried it out and been discovered, it might have triggered an outburst of anti-Western sentiment across Africa at a terribly delicate moment. Devlin therefore locked the vials in his office safe and stalled. However, events moved so rapidly that Devlin did not need to carry out the poison operation. On September 14 a coup d’état led by Col. Joseph Mobutu toppled Lumumba from power; the deposed prime minister holed up in his residence under the protection of UN troops, with Mobutu’s police also standing watch. Even under house arrest, though, Lumumba still remained a powerful symbol; Eisenhower quipped that he wished “Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles.” Two days later Dulles expressed esteem for Mobutu, “the only man in the Congo able to act with firmness,” and said that Lumumba “remained a grave danger as long as he was not disposed of.” Indeed Dulles now termed Lumumba “insane,” making his elimination appear urgent.20
In late November, Lumumba fled his home to join his sympathizers in Stanleyville. But he was captured, imprisoned by Mobutu, and slated for trial. However, Mobutu had no desire to offer Lumumba a public platform. Instead Mobutu handed Lumumba over to his political enemies in Katanga province, where Belgian and Katangan soldiers beat and tortured him; on January 17, 1961, they shot him to death and boiled his body in a vat of sulfuric acid.21
In the end, then, Lumumba did not die at the hands of the CIA or its agents. Yet the dismal tale of his fate in no way absolves the CIA or the U.S. government of responsibility. Colonel Mobutu’s coup against Lumumba was undertaken with direct CIA knowledge and support. Lumumba’s arrest by Mobutu’s police served American interests, since both Mobutu and the CIA shared a desire to eliminate the former leader. And the CIA station chief knew that Lumumba was to be delivered to his political foes in Katanga, where he was certain to be murdered. In short, the CIA did everything possible to ensure Lumumba’s death. In the process they formed an alliance with Joseph Mobutu, who became a loyal ally of the United States and one of history’s most repellent dictators. For three decades Mobutu ruthlessly governed his renamed country, Zaire, casually murdering political opponents and amassing a personal fortune in one of the world’s poorest nations. This too is a legacy of the Age of Eisenhower.22
III
Coming in the middle of a high-spirited presidential campaign, the tumult in central Africa did not attract much national attention from the American press. Cuba mattered far more to Americans, and the “loss” of the Caribbean island to communism became one of Kennedy’s most potent themes in the 1960 campaign. Kennedy argued that the loss of Cuba revealed a broader failure of American verve and determination in waging the cold war. The United States, he asserted, had fallen behind, while the communist bloc had surged ahead. “There is no disputing the fact,” he sai
d in Portland, Oregon, brimming with confidence, “that our prestige, our stature and our influence have all declined” during the 1950s. There was “a lack of respect” around the world for America. The country had entered a period of decline and needed to “move with vigor” to restore its flagging influence.23
Cuba offered a painful example of the consequences of inaction. “Communism has expanded to within 90 miles of the coast of the United States, eight minutes by jet from the coast of Florida,” Kennedy charged in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Yet Eisenhower had done nothing. In Raleigh, North Carolina, Kennedy denounced the “drift and complacency” of the administration. “We talked tough when the people of Hungary revolted, but [Khrushchev] crushed the revolt. We talked tough when communism began to grow in Cuba—but Cuba is a communist satellite today.” Kennedy’s muscular anticommunist rhetoric might well have come from the lips of Barry Goldwater.24
Eisenhower greeted these accusations with sardonic reserve. Far from tolerating communism in Cuba, his administration had been preparing since March 1960 a major covert operation to infiltrate guerrilla fighters into Cuba to destabilize Castro’s regime. In the spring the CIA had started training Cuban guerrillas in Guatemala and had set up the Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition of anticommunist factions that would replace Castro. In April the navy began construction of a medium-wave radio station on Swan Island for broadcasting anti-Castro news into Cuba; it went live in May. In July the United States announced a halt to purchases of Cuban sugar, a massive blow to the island’s economy designed to put more pressure on Castro. And in August, Bissell enlisted key leaders of the American Mafia in a plot to assassinate Castro in conjunction with the guerrilla infiltration plan. Far from doing nothing about Castro, the Eisenhower White House devoted immense energy to developing ways of destroying him.25
And Eisenhower pushed the pace. On August 18, the same day that he allegedly called for the murder of Lumumba, Eisenhower met with Dulles, Bissell, Gray, and other top security advisers, and approved a significant increase in the budget for the anti-Castro plan. Initial funds for the operation amounted to $2.5 million; Bissell now asked for an additional $10.75 million. This dramatic increase reveals the growing ambition of the project. Originally designed to place small teams of saboteurs and guerrillas into Cuba, Bissell’s scheme had grown dramatically. It now envisioned a paramilitary strike force, placed on Cuban shores by an amphibious landing, equipped with air power and heavy weapons, that would provide more muscle to the infiltrated guerrilla fighters once their subversion efforts got under way. Gray supported Bissell’s expansive ideas, and Eisenhower approved both the funds and the backup force. The minutes of the meeting show that Eisenhower spoke firmly about his eagerness to move ahead: he said “he would defend this kind of action against all comers and that if we were sure of freeing the Cubans from this incubus, $25 million might be a small price to pay.”26
During the fall of 1960 the Cuba issue came right to Ike’s doorstep. On September 20 the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York City. This gathering possessed special significance, as the UN planned to admit no fewer than 14 new nations, all former colonies of Western empires. The world body was quite literally changing its complexion, and by 1960 it stood ready to become the tribune of the nonwhite world, an amplifier of the grievances of millions of newly independent peoples. Held under the glare of intense media attention, this UN meeting offered a priceless opportunity to the great rivals in the cold war to court the new member states. Soviet premier Khrushchev arrived in New York at the head of a large delegation to make his pitch. In contrast to his visit a year earlier, when he was Eisenhower’s guest, Khrushchev’s arrival on September 19 was met with jeers and insults from thousands of protesters, mostly people of Eastern European heritage who denounced Soviet domination of their homelands. Khrushchev did not seem to mind: still bitter about the U-2 affair in May, he came to New York to turn up the heat in the cold war, inflame the sedate halls of the United Nations, and woo the Third World.27
Khrushchev, though, had to share the spotlight. Thrilled at the chance to grab his own share of world publicity, Fidel Castro arrived in New York on September 18 amid a flurry of demonstrations and counterdemonstrations. A natural propagandist, Castro milked the trip for all it was worth. From the opening hour of his visit he caused commotion. Taken to a bourgeois midtown hotel, he and his entourage refused the demand of hotel management that they post a $10,000 deposit against any damages or expenses that his bearded, fatigue-wearing revolutionaries might incur. Instead he stalked out and moved his delegation to the Hotel Theresa on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, in the heart of Harlem.
This location, a well-known hub of black cultural life in New York, offered Castro a perfect stage from which to denounce the segregation and racism of American society. Holding court at the Theresa, Castro gleefully reached out to Harlem’s African American residents, who, he suggested, shared more with Cubans than they did with white Americans. Malcolm X, a prominent leader of the Nation of Islam, met with him briefly, after which Castro professed solidarity with the black struggle in America and around the world. “We are all brothers,” he declared in accented English. Cuban officials, strolling through the neighborhood, praised Harlem for its “democratic atmosphere” and said, “It’s like Havana.”28
Not to be outdone in the pursuit of press coverage, Khrushchev decided to pay Castro an unannounced visit on September 20, racing his black limousine and large police escort all the way uptown to Castro’s hotel. Thousands of spectators had crowded the hotel’s entrance, which was guarded by a ring of steely blue-clad New York City police. Inside, Khrushchev met Castro in a ninth-floor suite, emerging after 20 minutes with a grin, declaring Castro a “heroic man.” Savvy observers of the Castro-Khrushchev encounter at the Hotel Theresa understood its significance. Jackie Robinson, the former baseball star and civil rights leader, said the meeting of the two communist leaders “shows the concern they both have regarding the new African countries and of segregation and discrimination in the United States.” Robinson called on the U.S. government to send more aid to Africa and to dismantle Jim Crow at home. James L. Hicks, editor of the venerable black newspaper Amsterdam News, phrased the issue more pointedly: “Fidel Castro stuck a knife into the heart of America’s race problem Monday night, and Nikita Khrushchev broke it off at the hilt Tuesday morning.” Later in the day, when both men arrived at the UN headquarters in midtown Manhattan, they embraced in a bear hug in front of dozens of popping flashbulbs. Pictures of this abrazo appeared in all the world’s newspapers the next day. It was a particularly delicious moment for Khrushchev, who believed he had drawn the charismatic revolutionary into his orbit and successfully poked President Eisenhower in the eye.29
Eisenhower meanwhile conducted a rather more sedate and regal charm offensive of his own during this extraordinary week in New York. On September 22 he gave a solemn speech to the General Assembly praising the human yearning for self-determination, stating America’s desire for peaceful relations with all nations, and calling on the Great Powers to commit far more money to the economic development of the newly independent African nations. He invited the heads of 18 Latin American countries for lunch, deliberately leaving Castro out. In the afternoon, in a counterpoint to Castro’s outreach efforts, he welcomed leading figures of the nonaligned movement to his suite at the Waldorf Astoria, then one of the world’s most glamorous hotels and a far cry from Castro’s digs in Harlem. He met with Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Josip Tito of Yugoslavia; later in the week he hosted President Nasser of Egypt, and also met with Prime Minister Nehru. The conversations were not substantial, but the symbolism mattered enormously. Ike understood, no less than Castro and Khrushchev, that the United States needed friends among the emerging nations of the Third World. By appealing to these moderate and influential men of the nonaligned movement, Eisenhower hoped to limit the propaganda value to the communist bloc of the Castro-Khrushchev embrace.
But for all of Ike’s efforts, the week surely belonged to Castro. In his extraordinary three-hour address to the General Assembly on September 26, Castro gave the world a history lesson of the kind that Americans had rarely heard. He spoke about American colonization and exploitation of Cuba. He thundered about the degradation and suffering of the Cuban people at the hands of the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. He pointed an accusing finger at the U.S. government for its radio propaganda station based in Swan Island—an embarrassing revelation—and invoked the fate of Guatemala to remind his listeners of the consequences of agrarian reforms that threaten U.S. business interests. And he held out Cuba as an example to the world of how to throw off the shackles of colonial servitude. To the delegations from Asia and Africa, Castro’s words seemed like lightning bolts in a dark sky.30
IV
The extraordinary events at the United Nations formed the backdrop to the first of the Nixon-Kennedy televised debates. Senator Kennedy understood how to exploit the anxiety that Khrushchev and Castro had provoked. Although the first debate, on the evening of September 26, focused on domestic issues, Kennedy’s opening remarks invoked Khrushchev’s menacing presence in New York and spoke darkly of a communist offensive going on around the world. The great question of the age, Kennedy suggested, was whether America was strong enough to counter that offensive. Nixon did a poor job that evening in rebutting these charges. He had recently been ill, had lost weight, and looked tired; his makeup streaked, and his stubbly chin glistened with sweat. All agreed that Kennedy won the first round going away.
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