The White House was watching closely. When Devlin went back to Washington to brief CIA chief Allen Dulles he told him that the US ‘could not afford to lose the Congo to the Soviet Union’.51 Devlin said he thought the Soviets were planning to use the anarchy in the country to establish a strategic foothold in Africa. If they controlled Lumumba and the Congo, they could use it as a power base to influence nine neighbouring countries. Devlin painted an incredibly dark picture in which the Soviets would try and outflank NATO by extending their influence from the Congo up through Africa and via Nasser in Egypt to the Mediterranean. The Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon were likewise determined to prevent Soviet control of key airfields and bases.52 Control of the Congo could also give the Soviet Union a near monopoly on the production of cobalt, a critical mineral used in missiles and weapons systems, putting the United States’ own weapons and space programmes at a ‘severe disadvantage’.53 Sixty per cent of the world’s cobalt supply came from a single Belgian company in the Katanga. The Soviets did send people to try and obtain uranium ore for their nuclear programme at one point.54
Suddenly, the Congo was being drawn into the heart of the Cold War. This was a pattern replicated across Africa and Asia as local struggles were sucked into the battle for influence between the two superpowers. ‘Poor Lumumba. He was no Communist,’ Devlin recalled years later. ‘He was just a poor jerk who thought “I can use these people.” I’d seen that happen in Eastern Europe. It didn’t work very well for them, and it didn’t work for him.’55 At the time there was no sympathy, though. This was a man who could not be dealt with. He was ‘a Castro or worse’, said Allen Dulles. ‘It is safe to go on the assumption that Lumumba has been bought by the Communists.’56 Only the State Department’s intelligence arm stood against the consensus by saying he was an opportunist not a Communist.57
Daphne Park and Larry Devlin knew each other well and became lifelong friends. To Devlin, Park was ‘an absolutely charming young woman and one of the best intelligence officers I have ever encountered’. Britain and America were not always easy allies in the developing world, where America’s distaste for colonialism often clashed with British history and investments. In the Congo, American officials were suspicious that the British were manoeuvring to support the Katanga secession.58 Devlin maintained that while he and Park worked separately (formal liaison was supposed to go through the capitals and not be undertaken in the field) and did not carry out joint operations, they ‘had come to similar conclusions’ about Lumumba and the other key players.59
Daphne Park had remained in touch with Lumumba despite, or perhaps because of, her suspicions about him. ‘Lumumba got used to finding me useful and he used to send people to see me.’And it was completely cold blooded – he had no illusions. He knew I wanted to know what he was doing and I was perfectly happy that he should know.’ He knew she worked for MI6, but it was never discussed explicitly. ‘I remember one day having a conversation with Lumumba about it and he said more or less “What’s in it for you?” And I said, “Oh knowing the ideas and the thinking of an important man.” And he said, “So you would put my interests first?” and I said, “No, certainly not – I put my country’s interests first, yours next, but if things go well it will be identical.” Months later he said to me that I had impressed him, that I hadn’t attempted to say that I loved him best. I’d said outright what I stood for, what I believed in.’ Like others, Park watched as Lumumba became increasingly autocratic and mercurial under the pressures of office and of being at the epicentre of the Cold War, alienating and frightening some of his closest colleagues, occasionally employing thugs and violence.60
If Devlin was her ally, then Daphne Park’s nemesis was Andrée Blouin, one of Lumumba’s closest advisers. Madame Blouin was Lumumba’s protocol chief and companion to his deputy and she exerted considerable influence. She was half African, half French, and after being abandoned by her parents grew up in a brutal orphanage in the French Congo. The experience turned her into a steely character, fiercely anti-Western, and she became close to a number of African nationalists and to one of the travelling leftists who had gathered around Lumumba. Always well dressed in Parisian haute couture and a touch aloof, she was, Devlin thought (despite working against her), ‘tantalising’ and ‘glamorous’.61 Those were not words people used about Daphne Park, who had her own views about her opponent. ‘Madame Blouin was a very powerful and rather wicked Guinean who was right in the pocket of the Russians.’
Devlin sat in his office on 18 August 1960 encrypting one of his most important and alarmist cables: ‘EMBASSY AND STATION BELIEVE 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 RAPIDLY INCREASING POWER – THERE MAY BE LITTLE TIME LEFT IN WHICH TO TAKE ACTION TO AVOID ANOTHER CUBA.’62 The reference to Cuba, where a pro-American regime had fallen to Communist Fidel Castro the previous year, was designed to ring alarm bells in Washington as loudly as possible. The fear was that key strategic states were beginning to fall to nationalist, anti-Western forces, friendly to the Soviets.
Devlin’s cable convinced Washington that action needed to be taken. A National Security meeting at the White House began with a discussion of the ‘grave situation’ and fears were expressed that Soviet officials were now pulling Lumumba’s strings.63 It looked as if he might be trying to force the UN out in order to allow the Soviets to intervene in force, it was said. Officials around the table predicted that Lumumba would use the Force Publique to drive all whites out, apart from Soviet technicians. According to the official note, the President stressed that the UN had to be kept in at all costs, ‘even if such action is used by the Soviets as the basis for starting a fight’.64 Something else was said which was never written in the formal note of the meeting. At one point President Eisenhower turned to CIA Director Allen Dulles and said he wanted Lumumba ‘eliminated’.65 The man who took the notes at the meeting could not quite believe what he had heard. There was a silence and then the meeting continued. A week later at a meeting of the so-called Special Group which co-ordinated covert action, Dulles presented a plan to bribe parliamentarians to vote out Lumumba. In response, a presidential adviser said that Eisenhower had ‘expressed extremely strong feelings on the necessity for very straightforward action in this situation and he wondered whether the plans as outlined were sufficient to accomplish this’.66 Dulles personally cabled Devlin the next day: ‘WE CONCLUDE THAT HIS REMOVAL MUST BE AN URGENT AND PRIME OBJECTIVE AND THAT UNDER EXISTING CONDITIONS THIS WOULD BE A HIGH PRIORITY OF OUR COVERT ACTION. HENCE WE WISH TO GIVE YOU WIDE AUTHORITY.’67
Devlin was offered $100,000 in funds for any operation, without anyone back in headquarters signing off. He was told that if need be he could act without referring to either his Ambassador or most of his CIA seniors. Devlin and his team began to work actively against Lumumba, employing the full panoply of political warfare techniques and tapping up the CIA’s network of agents and contacts. Newspapers were used to spread stories attacking Lumumba. Rallies were organised. Opposition members of parliament were ordered to work to get him dismissed in a vote of no-confidence and papers drafted for President Kasavubu on the best way to remove Lumumba from power.68 Eventually in early September, the largely ineffective Kasavubu, encouraged by both Devlin and the Belgians, tried to sack Lumumba. In turn Lumumba tried to remove Kasavubu, creating political deadlock. The city was quiet but the countryside was slipping out of control with murders and refugees spreading anarchy.
One of Park’s most important contacts was Lumumba’s aide de camp, Damian Kandolo. He was from the same tribe as Lumumba and was trusted by him, so his conversations with her were invaluable. He was particularly helpful in explaining what Madame Blouin and the Guineans around Lumumba were up to. But that group had decided they wanted to get rid of Kandolo, possibly because they had learnt of his relationship with Park. One day he was seized under Lumumba�
�s orders. He was beaten up and his arm broken. He was then put in a car and driven away to be killed. But the people who were driving him were drunk and it was raining and dark. They had an accident and Kandolo managed to roll out of the car into a ditch. They searched for him but after a while simply gave up. Kandolo managed to get himself to a small mission hospital which was not too far away and he went to ground there. He sent a message to Park to ask for help to get his wife and child across the river to Brazzaville because he thought that the thugs would go and look for him at his house and attack his wife if they did not find him. Park went to collect her and put her on the ferry to Brazzaville. Then she went to see Kandolo under cover of night. The hospital was no more than a few small huts and she knew which one he was in. But because it was dark when she entered, Kandolo thought it was the thugs who had come to finish the job, and he attacked Park fiercely. ‘It’s me!’ she cried, bringing a halt to the rain of blows. She explained that she had a plan to get him out stuffed into the rear of her tiny car. ‘The great thing about having a Citroën DC is that people never think you are going to hide anything in it. I mean if I’d had a great big car with a boot I’d have had problems … I was an appalling driver, but I always had the back of my car piled up with blankets and boxes and all sorts of things, so it was quite easy to put him in and pile a few boxes and blankets [on top of him].’ Park was nervous but fired up by adrenalin. She eventually made it to the ferry and placed her grateful passenger on board. Kandolo would not be out of the Congo for long.
During the stand-off between Kasavubu and Lumumba, Mobutu went to see Devlin. The two men were extremely close. Devlin had personally wrestled a gunman to the ground who had been trying to assassinate Mobutu, pulling the pistol back to break the man’s finger. Mobutu was grateful and became a regular dinner guest at Devlin’s expansive villa with its six bathrooms and foyer the size of a hotel lobby.
‘I’m anxious to talk to you,’ Mobutu told Devlin. Mobutu understood better than Lumumba how to play the Cold War game. He knew to whisper quietly into the ear of the Soviet-obsessed CIA man exactly what he wanted to hear. ‘The Soviets are pouring into the country. You must know that, Mr Devlin?’ Devlin nodded. ‘We didn’t fight for independence to have another country re-colonize us.’ Mobutu complained that Lumumba had failed to keep the Soviet influence out of his army.69 He said he was prepared to overthrow Lumumba if the US recognised a temporary government, which in turn would remove the Soviets.
‘And Lumumba and Kasavubu, what happens to them?’ asked Devlin.
‘They’ll both have to be neutralised.’
Devlin, knowing that he had not yet received specific authorisation but had been given wide latitude to act, held out his hand with the words: ‘I can assure you the United States government will recognise a temporary government composed of civilian technocrats.’ Devlin drove to see his Ambassador at 2 a.m. to tell him what had happened. He then cabled back to the CIA to say they could still call it all off if they disagreed with his decision to offer support. In true bureaucratic style, Devlin says he never received a reply, providing Washington with deniability for having backed the coup if something went wrong. UN liaison officers reported seeing Western military attachés visiting Mobutu ‘with bulging briefcases containing thick brown paper packets which they obligingly deposited on his table’.70
It was not just Washington that wanted something done. Covert action was London’s preferred option as well. Ambassador Scott had become increasingly concerned after visiting Lumumba in August. He found the Prime Minister’s phone ringing a dozen times in ten minutes and files piled up on his desk. He looked as if he had not slept. ‘It was by then widely known that he could only carry on by taking drugs. There was a kind of glaze in his eyes,’ he recalled, also noting Madame Blouin hanging around the margins.71 In early September, the Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, reported to the cabinet that Lumumba had been ‘successful in obtaining considerable support, probably including some military personnel, from the Soviet bloc’. Eleven Soviet military transport aircraft arrived in Stanleyville, heightening fears that a conflict was on the way. London believed they had an African Nasser on their hands. Douglas-Home proposed and the cabinet agreed that ‘open support of Colonel Mobutu or opposition to Mr Lumumba was likely to prove counterproductive, though it would be right to follow this course privately’.72 Prime Minister Macmillan at the end of August had ordered MI6 to work with the CIA to remove Lumumba from power. MI6 chief Dick White, never a great proponent of aggressive action, was not overly keen on the idea but passed the order to Daphne Park.73
On 14 September Colonel Mobutu’s voice crackled on to the radio. He announced that the army was ‘neutralising’ politicians until the end of the year and installing a College of Commissioners to run the country. Publicly, the coup was directed at both the President and the Prime Minister, but it was primarily directed at Lumumba. As he heard the news, Devlin was at a party. He watched with some satisfaction as Madame Blouin took a phone call and then rushed away. He reflected that his efforts were at last ‘bearing fruit’, especially once Mobutu set about expelling Soviet officials.74 The Russian Ambassador turned up in the middle of the night at UN headquarters asking for protection and saying he feared he might be sent to Siberia by his superiors for having failed.75 Devlin personally made sure that the visas of Soviet diplomats were cancelled, forcing them to leave the country. He also took a lead role in advising which politicians Mobutu should appoint. Kandolo, whom Park had smuggled out of the country in her car, ended up as a commissioner running part of the Security Service. An even more powerful figure was the head of intelligence, Victor Nendaka, another former colleague of Lumumba, who had been persuaded to switch sides. ‘He was Larry Devlin’s man,’ recalled Park. ‘But between us we had it sewn up more or less.’ Madame Blouin fled first to Ghana. A few weeks later, Allen Dulles told the National Security Council in Washington that the agency had ‘succeeded’ in ‘neutralising Mme. Blouin, who now wants to come to the US. She is writing her memoirs, which, Mr Dulles observed, should make interesting reading.’76 How they succeeded in ‘neutralising’ her is not discussed.
Lumumba had been trapped with two concentric rings of troops around him. There were Congolese troops who wanted to arrest him on the outer perimeter and closer to him a UN force which said it could guarantee his safety only so long as he remained where he was.
But Lumumba was still dangerous in the eyes of the West. He had the support of a significant section of the country as well as the makings of an alternative government with a small army out in Stanleyville. That made him a threat, especially if he ever got out or if parliament was recalled. Soviet-backed African countries began to pressure Mobutu to return Lumumba to office. The Americans were unsure that Mobutu had the nerve to hold out. They worried he might have a breakdown.77 The CIA wanted a permanent solution to the one man whom it saw as the source of all the problems. Lumumba remained ‘a grave danger as long as he was not disposed of’, said Dulles at a National Security Council meeting.78
Five days after the coup, Devlin got a cable with the codeword ‘Prop’. It was from Richard Bissell, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans. Only four people at CIA headquarters had access to Prop messages and Devlin alone in the Congo received them. His orders were to keep the messages hidden from colleagues and give them priority over all other traffic. The cable said a senior officer whom Devlin would recognise would arrive in Leopoldville around 27 September. He would identify himself as ‘Joe from Paris’. Devlin was to carry out his instructions.79 A week later as he left the Embassy, Devlin saw a man he recognised get up from a table at a café across the street. They got into Devlin’s car and he turned up the radio. As they drove away, the man turned to Devlin. ‘I’m Joe from Paris,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to give you instructions about a highly sensitive operation.’
The man’s real name was Sidney Gottlieb, known to some as the ‘dark sorcerer’ for his conjuring in the most sinister re
cesses of the CIA. With his club-foot, he was perhaps too easy to caricature as a cross between a Bond villain and Dr Strangelove, a scientist who always wanted to push further without worrying about the morality of where it all led. He masterminded the sprawling MKULTRA programme which had begun in 1953, without any oversight, to experiment on mind control using an array of medical and scientific experiments on Americans, including the use of electroshock and LSD (which Gottlieb himself claimed to have taken 200 times).80 At least one person involved in his experiments died under suspicious circumstances and others went mad. Gottlieb was also the go-to man when it came to eliminating America’s enemies. These were busy times. He was looking at ways of removing Fidel Castro using exploding cigars and poisoned wet-suits, as well as removing the leader of the Dominican Republic. The two men in the car in Leopoldville remained quiet until they reached a safe house. Then Gottlieb said he had brought Devlin poison to kill Lumumba.81
‘Isn’t this unusual?’ Devlin said. He had never been asked to kill anyone before. ‘Who authorised this operation?’
‘President Eisenhower,’ Gottlieb said. ‘I wasn’t there when he approved it but Dick Bissell said that Eisenhower wanted Lumumba removed.’ Had Eisenhower meant the phrase ‘elimination’ on 18 August to be an order for assassination? Later some of those present at the meeting said they were not sure that he had. But CIA chief Dulles, as well as others, believed they knew exactly what the President meant even if he had been careful not to say it too directly. Dulles had begun to put a plan into effect through his Deputy, Richard Bissell.
Art of Betrayal Page 15