War of Numbers

by Sam Adams

  “What you’ve got to try to do,” said Dana, “is think like Kasavubu. The one thing that hasn’t changed since independence is that wily old bastard’s still president. He’s a smart man, and remember, his neck’s the one on the block, not Godley’s.”

  Once again, I followed Dana’s advice. I tried to look at the Congo from Kasavubu’s vantage point instead of Godley’s. The more I thought, the closer I came to a disturbing conclusion. I tried it out on Dana the next morning.

  “If I were Kasavubu,” I said, “I’d appoint Tshombe premier. Maybe black Africa can’t stand him, and neither can Godley, but Tshombe has more to offer Kasavubu than anyone else.” I listed Tshombe’s assets: best of all, his solid tribal base in Katanga, but also access to money, and even a small army he’d marched to nearby Angola after the Kantangan secession failed. “Finally,” I said, “he’s more dangerous as an out than an in.”

  “Probably so,” said Dana. “Why don’t you write it up for the Bulletin? Before you commit yourself to paper, however, you better check it out with the other side of the house. For all I know, the DDP’s trying to keep Tshombe out of Leopoldville. We’d look like damn fools if we said he’d become premier, and the spooks had him tied to a chair in Madrid.”

  DDP stood for the Deputy Directorate of Plans, then the official euphemism for the CIA’s clandestine services.5 DDI analysts normally referred to it as “the other side of the house” because the DDP occupied the CIA building’s other main wing. From it the DDP ran the agency’s secret operations via its “stations,” such as the one in Leopoldville. Besides recruiting spies, the stations’ job was to conduct “covert operations,” which in this instance could mean preventing Tshombe from becoming prime minister. I hurried down the sixth floor’s long office-lined corridor between the two wings to see what plans, if any, the DDP had regarding the Katangan.

  “Tshombe?” asked the DDP Congo desk chief, arching his brows. He turned to his deputy. “Number two, what was the word that State Department gentleman used to describe Tshombe at the Congo meeting this morning?”

  “Anathema,” said the deputy.

  “Exactly. Anathema. You know what that means. Can’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. We don’t mess with anathemas in this office, son,” he told me. I thought he might be evading my questions so I kept at him for twenty minutes. Finally he said flat out that they had nothing going on Tshombe one way or another. I hustled back to Southern Africa to write my Bulletin piece.

  It was short. It said that pressures from the growing rebellion would soon convince President Kasavubu to name Moise Tshombe—loathed in Africa, but strong in Katanga—as the Congo’s next premier.

  “Now the fun begins,” said Dana. “Remember we’ve got to coordinate this item with State.” I read the article to the State analyst over the phone.

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” he groaned. I did, and told him why. We argued back and forth for more than an hour, the department analyst saying that Kasavubu had enough problems without taking on a hot potato like Tshombe. Finally Dana waved at me to stop. “To hell with it,” he said. “Let State take a footnote.”

  “Dana Ball says for you to take a footnote,” I told the analyst.

  “You mean it’s come to that?” he answered unhappily.

  “I’m afraid it has,” I said. He read out a short statement disputing my article. I copied it down and stapled it to the bottom of the draft.

  “Let’s go,” said Dana rising from his seat. “We’ve got to clear it with the front office.” Footnotes to the Bulletin were extremely rare. They came only when two agencies of the so-called intelligence community fundamentally disagreed over what they felt was an important issue. The State man and I both thought the issue was important. If Tshombe became premier, we agreed, black Africa would explode with anger, and the United States would be over a barrel on whether to support him or not.

  Dana and I went up to the the seventh floor to tell the top three men of the Office of Current Intelligence—the shop that ran the Bulletin—about State’s footnote. The trio were R. Jack Smith, the chief of OCI, and his two main deputies, Richard Lehman and James Graham. One of them, I forget which, telephoned the head of the DDI, Ray Cline. Fine, they all said. If we felt strongly about our prediction and were sure of the facts, they’d back us to the hilt. Go ahead with the article. Screw State.

  The piece appeared in the Bulletin the next morning roughly as I’d drafted it. The State Department footnote was underneath. “We’ve stuck our necks out this time,” Dana said. I was worried too.

  Over the first half of June the pressures on Kasavubu increased. Simbas grabbed villages all over the eastern Congo, Stanleyville reported that the city’s garrison had begun to drift away, and for the first time a cable mentioned Antoine Mandungu. It said that Mandungu was the chief Congolese expediter and bagman for the Soviet KGB, a fact I underlined on his three-by-five. An embassy cable said Kasavubu was near the end of his rope.

  Then it happened. On 26 June Moise Tshombe flew from Spain to the Congo, brandishing an invitation from Kasavubu. Two weeks later, to drumrolls and flourishes, the Congolese president swore in the exsecessionist from Katanga as the Congo’s new prime minister.

  “Kasavubu’s a smart cookie,” I beamed at the AP ticker that announced the appointment. It was a great moment. Dana was all smiles, a stream of DDI analysts from other areas stopped by Southern Africa to snigger at State’s footnote, and there was even a solemn call of congratulations from the DDI front office. Later that afternoon the State analyst (whom I actually admired because he knew so much about the Congo) telephoned to ask me to dinner. The only person to omit praise was Colleen, deep into the latest issue of Mademoiselle magazine.

  There was little time to savor my triumph. As expected, cables swarmed in from all over Africa crying bloody murder over Tshombe’s appointment. Some claimed it was a CIA plot, which as far as I could tell, it wasn’t. Others complained it would only make things worse. For whatever reasons, over a third of the Congo had slipped from Leopoldville’s control by late July.

  On 5 August the rebellion took another lurch forward. The signal was a rap on my desk by Colleen, looking unaccustomedly worried. Instead of dropping the usual load of paper in my in-box, she shoved a cable under my nose. “You’d better read this, Sam.”

  It was from Stanleyville. Through a window in the consulate, the chief DDP man had just watched the arrival of Simbas. They were stark naked and waving palm fronds, according to the cable, marching single file down Stanleyville’s main street. Congo Army soldiers were firing in their direction, but to no avail. Perhaps black magic was at work, the cable suggested; witch doctors had put out the story that bullets shot at rebels doubled back, and the Congo garrison appeared to be shooting over the Simbas’ heads.

  That was the message from the city. Stanleyville fell, and with it the consulate, the consulate staff (including the four DDP-ers) and over a thousand white civilians, mostly Belgian plus a few American missionaries. In short order a rebel spokesman got on Stanleyville Radio—which American intelligence monitored from listening posts farther away—to appeal for help from the Russians.

  The fifth of August was a busy day. I wrote up two special memos before lunch, and didn’t get around to the Bulletin piece until late afternoon. Stanleyville’s fall was such big news that I expected it to be the Bulletin’s lead item the next morning. To my surprise it was the second. The lead piece was about bombing raids against North Vietnam launched by the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Apparently the raids were in retaliation for some North Vietnamese PT-boat attacks a short while before against the U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Southeast Asia Branch had written the article in the cubicle next door.

  Despite the rivalry from over the partition, Stanleyville’s capture put the Congo on the front burner. Ambassador Godley, in a catatonic fit since Tshombe’s swearing-in ceremony, now radioed his judgment that we had no choice but to support
the Katangan—after all, Tshombe’s appointment was legal—and the time had come to take drastic measures to scotch the rebellion.

  The U.S. government ground into action. Additional planeloads of munitions skidded into Leopoldville’s municipal airport, Belgium reluctantly agreed to send more advisors to calm the now-horrified Congolese army, and the seventh floor sent down word—which it seldom did about covert operations—that the DDP had added to its small contingent of pilots in the Congo. The pilots were Miami Cubans who flew converted training planes called T-28s. The T-28s’ wings were mounted with machine guns and painted with the colors of the Congolese air force.

  At about this point, Prime Minister Tshombe decided to set off his first big bomb. It detonated in the form of a want ad carried in several Rhodesian and South African newspapers, including the Johannesburg Star:

  Any fit young man looking for employment with a difference at a salary well in excess of 100 pounds a month should telephone 838-5202 during business hours. Employment initially offered for 6 months. Immediate start.

  “White mercenaries,” Dana explained, “same as in Katanga.” Black Africa erupted like a volcano. Foggy Bottom was aghast. A Department spokesman tried to explain that since Tshombe was now the Congo’s legitimate premier, his taking on “soldiers of fortune” was an “internal Congolese affair.” Nobody heard him for the din. To add to State’s problems, the newspapers began calling the head mercenary, Michael Hoare, “Mad Mike.” Even worse, Hoare held a South African passport.

  A short while later, Dana called me to his desk to say that the director wanted a Congo wrap-up every morning by eight. That meant I’d have to show up for work by 3:00 A.M. “Sorry,” he said, “but you have to include overnight cables, and there’s no other way to get it done by eight.” The wrap-up would be called the Congo Situation Report, he explained. Situation reports were SOP during times of crisis. Everybody called them “Sitreps.”

  “But don’t feel bad,” Dana added. “The Southeast Asians are in the same fix. Ed Hauck told me they’re cranking up a Sitrep on Vietnam. It’s because of the PT boats.” Ed Hauck was the chief of the Southeast Asian Branch over the partition.

  The Congo Sitrep was only a few days old when one morning at about ten Colleen shouted in from her desk in the hall: “Hey, Dana. Phone. Front office.” He was out. I picked up the telephone instead.

  “We need a Congo analyst at the director’s right away,” the caller said. “Get somebody there pronto.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I tried to find Dana, couldn’t, then grabbed a stack of my latest three-by-fives and tore up to the seventh floor. Moments later I was in the director’s conference room.

  Some thirty people were there, seated in leather chairs around a large mahogany table. From photographs I recognized most of the agency’s higher-ups: Ray Cline, chief of the DDI, roly-poly, with crinkly red hair; Richard Helms, head of the DDP, looking, I thought, like a Mississippi riverboat gambler dressed in a business suit; and at the head of the table, John McCone, the director. He had white hair, steel-rimmed glasses, and piercing eyes. Next to McCone was a big map of the Congo on an easel.

  I didn’t sit at the table, already full, but on a chair near the door. The meeting was underway. They were talking about Laos rather than the Congo, so I studied my index cards, waiting for my country to be mentioned. A few minutes passed before I heard someone say “Congo.” I looked up. It was the director.

  “Now who are the rebels here,” McCone asked, pointing to a spot just above Lake Tanganyika, “and where are they getting their guns?” Papers shuffled around the room. Then there was silence.

  Good God, I said to myself; I know the answer to that one. I raised my hand slightly and cleared my throat. Ray Cline saw me and wagged his head in encouragement.

  “The Bafulero, sir,” I said, directly to McCone.

  “The who?” McCone replied, looking at me for the first time.

  “The Bafulero, sir. They’re a small tribe in Kivu Province just north of Uvira, that town right next to your finger at the head of the lake, and they’re getting their guns from the Burundi secret police. Who the secret police are getting them from, I’m not sure, although it’s probably the communist Chinese. As you know, sir, Burundi’s king, Mwami Mwambutsa IV, is a Tutsi—same tribe as in the movie “King Solomon’s Mines”—and Peking is backing the monarchy against Burundi’s other main tribe, the Hutus, who say they’re republicans. Maybe Mwambutsa’s running guns to the Bafulero in return for Chinese support. Maybe he wants to do it anyway. In any case, the linchpin of the operations, who’s in touch with the Chinese, the rebels, and the secret police, all three, is Doctor Pie Masumbuko, Burundi’s minister of health, and also its only doctor. Right now the DDP’s trying to get a handle on Masumbuko to determine the extent of Chinese involvement. It’s a complex situation.”

  “I gather. In other words, our immediate concern here is the Bafulero,” said McCone.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “As of now, the Bafulero. But the real problem, the potential one, is the Bashi. They’re a much bigger tribe to the Bafulero’s north, and as of now the Bashi are split in two. One group, led by a chief called Kabare, leans toward the Simbas. The other, led by a Queen Mwami Astrida, is holding out for Leopoldville. It’s partly a personal feud between Kabare and Astrida, and Tshombe, who knows what’s going on, is trying to sweet-talk Kabare into staying on the reservation.”

  “I see,” said McCone, who had been listening intently, as was everyone else. Pointing to Stanleyville, McCone asked, “And what about the rebels here?”

  I ticked off three or four local tribes, explaining that the rebels were about to announce a so-called People’s Republic of the Congo. The republic’s president would be Christophe Gbenye; the minister of defense, Gaston Soumialot, Gbenye’s chief rival; the foreign minister, Thomas Kanza, now in Nairobi talking to Jomo Kenyatta; the head of the Simba army (such as it was), General Olenga, who commanded it from a white Mercedes. They were a rum lot, I went on, a hodgepodge of tribes, often at each other’s throats, with very few interests in common. Although the communists supported the rebels, the only rebel who remotely approached being one himself was the KGB bagman, Antoine Mandungu. At the moment Mandungu was in Cairo. The questions continued for almost fifteen minutes. At last McCone turned from me to Richard Helms.

  “Dick, what was it you said you wanted?” asked the director.

  “The B-26s,” said Helms, explaining that the gas tanks on the Cuban T-28s weren’t big enough to get them to Stanleyville. Fortunately, however, the Air Branch of the DDP’s Special Operations Division had just souped up some old World War II B-26 twin-engine bombers, and he thought these would do the trick. There were still some supply problems; these were being looked into. When Helms was done, McCone asked, “How much will it cost?”

  Helms named a sum of over a million dollars. McCone turned from Helms to a man across the table, apparently a finance officer.

  “Have we got that in the kitty?” McCone asked.

  “Yes, sir,” said the man across the table.

  “Good,” said McCone, turning back to Helms. “Go ahead on the B-26s.”

  At that, the meeting broke up. I left the conference room amid a pack of Ray Cline’s deputies. “First-rate job,” one of them told me. “The director’s a glutton for detail. He particularly liked your knowing about the tribes, I could tell.”

  “Money in the bank,” said another deputy.

  As August proceeded, so did plans to quell the revolt. Some half dozen B-26s, bearing the scarcely dry insignias of the Congolese air force, landed in southern Katanga. Belgian sergeants and captains reported for duty with the Congo army. And the first contingent of white mercenaries joined a unit that Michael Hoare called Commando 5. During World War II, Hoare had been a major in the British army.

  With the arrival of these reinforcements, Leopoldville launched its first attack on the rebels. Called Operation Watch Chain, its goal was to retake Albertv
ille. A Congo army battalion moved on the city by land and some two dozen mercenaries approached it from Lake Tanganyika by motorboat while a couple of Cuban-piloted B-26s flew cover. Beset by mechanical problems, the white soldiers of fortune spent most of Watch Chain paddling around the lake. The black battalion took the city. The rebels had fled, scared off by the B-26s.

  Albertville’s fall brought the first cables describing what life had been like under the Simbas. I read them avidly. They explained that the city folk, hoping for a change for the better, had initially welcomed the rebels, but that disillusion had set in quickly. Most Simbas were teenagers, with neither organization nor discipline. Their sacking of government offices had soon turned into wholesale looting; their execution of government officials into large-scale and random killings. In short order most people had come to think of the pre-Simba era as the good old days. Shortly after its capture, Tshombe toured Albertville in an open jeep. The crowds cheered themselves hoarse.

  Despite this first government success, reports were multiplying about potential arms shipments to the rebels. So far, actual deliveries were few—rifles to the Bafulero, but little else. However, I had marked on a map the itinerary of Thomas Kanza, the rebel “foreign minister,” and by correlating his stops with local DDP reports of gun-running plots, compiled an alphabetical list of the countries most likely involved. There was a folder for each, some twenty-six in all, “Albania” to “Zanzibar,” the thickest being the Soviet Union’s. Clearly the Russians were up to no good.

  Although they must have known as much as we did about the impending shipments, the rebels’ nerves in Stanleyville began to fray. Both mercenary and Congo army units were on the move, Tshombe was stumping the backwoods like a Louisiana politician, and witch doctors were spreading the word that the black magic that had once protected the Simbas no longer worked. One morning Stanleyville Radio announced that on the previous day a crowd had broken into the Simbas’s central headquarters and made off with the office furniture. “Whoever stole the furniture must return it at once,” the broadcast decreed. “This is a people’s revolutionary government, and it can’t function without typewriters and chairs.” In early October, an intercepted rebel message referred to the whites in Stanleyville as “hostages.”