Devlin lit a cigarette and stared down at his shoes.
‘It’s your responsibility to carry out the operation, you alone,’ Gottlieb said ‘The details are up to you, but it’s got to be clean – nothing that can be traced back to the US government.’ There was silence. Then he pulled out a small package. ‘Take this,’ he said, handing it over. ‘With the stuff that’s in there, no one will ever be able to know that Lumumba was assassinated.’
There were several different poisons which had come from the US army biological warfare institution at Fort Detrick. Gottlieb had explored using rabbit fever, undulant fever, anthrax, smallpox and sleeping sickness. One poison was concealed in a tube of toothpaste and was designed to make it look as if Lumumba had died from polio. Grimly Devlin took the poisons and the accessories, including needles, rubber gloves and a mask.
Devlin always says that after accepting the poisons he threw them in the Congo River, neglecting to mention that he only did this months later when their potency had expired. In the meantime he kept them in his safe. When one officer visited Devlin, he mentioned he had a virus in the safe. ‘I knew it wasn’t for somebody to get his polio shot up to date,’ recalled the visitor later.82
Devlin maintained that he had no intention of going ahead with this plan. ‘To me it was murder,’ he said on his deathbed. ‘I’m not a 007 guy.’83 He said he knew that refusing the order outright would lead to his recall and someone else being appointed who would carry out the order, destroying his career in the process. So Devlin says he decided to play it slow. He had only one agent with access to Lumumba’s living quarters, where he was effectively imprisoned, but Devlin said he was not sure the agent could get in. He looked at having another agent take refuge with Lumumba to administer the poison but that did not work. He also had conversations with Congolese contacts interested in killing Lumumba.84
Headquarters became impatient. It offered to send out another officer to help in case Devlin was not able to devote enough time to the plans. Devlin replied that, if that were done, the officer should be supplied through the diplomatic pouch with a high-powered hunting rifle which could be kept ‘in office pending opening of hunting season’.85 A shady stateless mercenary, willing to do anything, was provided with plastic surgery and a toupee by the CIA and sent off to the Congo to help, but he never got close to Lumumba.86 The CIA even suggested using a ‘commando type group’ to abduct Lumumba by assaulting his residence.87
On 19 September, Alec Douglas-Home talked to President Eisenhower. ‘Lord Home said the Soviets have lost much by their obvious efforts to disrupt matters in the Congo,’ the minutes recorded. ‘The president expressed his wish that Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles; Lord Home said regretfully that we have lost many of the techniques of old-fashioned diplomacy.’88 A week later Home, along with Prime Minister Macmillan, met President Eisenhower in New York. ‘Lord Home raised the question why we are not getting rid of Lumumba at the present time,’ the American note-taker recorded. ‘He stressed now is the time to get rid of Lumumba.’89
Murder was on the minds of some in London. Ian Scott sent a telegram to London, including Downing Street, on 27 September: ‘It seems to me that the best interests of the Congo (and the rest of us) would be served by the departure of Lumumba from the scene either to jail (and sufficient evidence exists to convict him of treason and of complicity in attempted murder of Colonel Mobutu) or abroad,’ he wrote, calling for pressure to be brought on Mobutu, who was looking ‘irresolute’ (‘he has not the makings of a dictator’, Scott wrongly predicted).90 One response, in a secret document which could only travel in a locked box, came from H. F. T. Smith, a Foreign Office official who would later be appointed head of MI5. He agreed that pressure should be brought to bear to prevent Lumumba’s return. But Smith doubted Scott’s remedies would solve the problem. Mobutu was too weak and other African leaders would support Lumumba in jail or abroad. There were only two solutions. ‘The first is the simple one of ensuring Lumumba’s removal from the scene by killing him. This should in fact solve the problem, since, so far as we can tell, Lumumba is not a leader of a movement within which there are potential successors of his quality and influence. His supporters are much less dangerous material.’ The other solution offered was a constitutional change to reduce the Prime Minister’s powers so that he could return to office but weakened. ‘Of these two possibilities, my preference (though it might be expressed as a wish rather than a proposal) would be for Lumumba to be removed from the scene altogether, because I fear that as long as he is about his power to do damage can only be slightly modified.’ Comments added to Smith’s memo include ‘There is much to be said for eliminating Lumumba’, although others voiced scepticism.91
Killing people, Daphne Park maintained, was not on MI6’s agenda. ‘We didn’t have a licence to kill,’ she explained years later. ‘Much as I hated people I don’t think I actually would have felt easy killing them or even having them killed. It was much more important to deal with the people who were alive. And fight the others by any way you can, of course, including destroying their reputation if you can – if that’s going to do the damage.’ Park, who was not told of the CIA plan, always believed that Devlin was too honourable and sensible to carry out his plan.
MI6 did contemplate murder at times – notably against Nasser – but even as it feared Nasser’s hand in the Congo, it also knew that in this case the nastier side of the business could be left to others.92 Daphne Park might not have been given a licence to kill, nor Devlin’s killer toothpaste, but she did have her own gadgets, courtesy of Q, the quartermaster for MI6. ‘Q used to produce the most wonderful gadgets for almost anything you could think of,’ explained Park. ‘Sometimes they didn’t totally succeed.’ Most gadgets supplied to field officers were designed to hide or pass information. These ranged from the typically British – a hollowed-out cricket ball – to the more painful – a bullet-shaped ‘rectal concealing device’. In the Congo there were concerns about crowds storming embassies and attacking cars, and so it had been decided that Park needed some protection. Head Office first of all gave her a gun, which Park put in the office safe fearing it would be stolen from her home. She was then informed that Q had come up with a device that had worked wonders in the Sudan in terms of crowd control and was ‘absolutely infallible’. It was a capsule which when thrown broke apart and emitted a smell guaranteed to send a gathered throng reeling. In other words it was a large stink bomb. A man was sent out to Leopoldville with a box of tricks to demonstrate. Q had clearly spent some time in the joke shop looking for inspiration because with him also came some itching powder (Park duly applied some of this to a Foreign Office official in the Embassy whom she loathed).
Daphne Park’s counterpart from Nairobi happened to be visiting. ‘Now, Daffers, we must test these things,’ he said, volunteering to try out the stink bomb.
‘Oh no you don’t. This is my patch,’ Park replied, unwilling to miss out on the fun. They drove out of town in her car to a quiet spot with a large storm ditch. One person would have to be the guineapig.
‘It has got to be me,’ said her counterpart. In true buccaneering style, both wanted to volunteer for the trenches.
‘We’ll toss for it,’ replied Park. Hugo won.
The capsule was duly opened and thrown in and he went down into the ditch. There was a long silence. It’s knocked him out, thought Park. She crept to the edge of the ditch and peered over and there he was crawling about in the mud.
‘Hugo, what the hell are you doing?’ she said.
‘Looking for that bloody thing – I can’t find it anywhere.’ It must have been a dud, they concluded.
‘Get out. It’s my turn now,’ she said. After they had used four of the stink bombs they faced facts and telegraphed London. ‘One of the things might just have been confused with a little smell of armpit but that was as far as it got. We do not think it would have made much difference to angry Congolese.’93
&
nbsp; The Belgian government, like the CIA, was willing to entertain darker ambitions. It had made clear that it wanted Lumumba’s ‘Elimination definitive’, a phrase employed by their Minister for African Affairs. The Belgian codename for Lumumba was ‘Satan’, a reflection of how they worked to portray him in the media and internationally. Their plan to kill him was called ‘Operation Barracuda’.94 It is unclear if they co-ordinated with the Americans. Three days after a meeting in the White House on 21 September, Dulles sent a personal cable to Devlin. ‘WE WISH GIVE EVERY POSSIBLE SUPPORT IN ELIMINATING LUMUMBA FROM ANY POSSIBILITY RESUMING GOVERNMENTAL POSITION.’95 By November, the CIA had focused on a plan to lure Lumumba out of his refuge and then hand him over to the Congolese authorities who could take care of the rest. Events intervened before they had a chance to try.
An almighty thunderstorm struck Leopoldville on the night of 27 November 1960. Lumumba exploited it as cover to stow himself away in a Chevrolet used to take servants home. He began to make his way to Stanleyville, one of his bastions of support. He managed only slow progress through the driving rain, stopping to speak to supporters en route while Mobutu’s men, aided by the Belgians, pursued him.96
Around midnight on 1 December, Lumumba was captured at a river crossing just before he reached friendly territory. The local UN garrison was given orders not to place him in protective custody or to get in the way of his arrest.97 He was taken by aeroplane back to Leopoldville the next day. He emerged with his hands tied behind his back. A soldier lifted his head to show his face to the waiting cameraman, who could see blood on him. He was driven in the back of a truck through town. His hair was dishevelled and his glasses lost. The truck drove right past the UN headquarters.98 Images of his mistreatment led to a wave of anger internationally, directed at the UN among others for failing to intervene. As the UN found in later years, maintaining a policy of neutrality and non-interference often meant becoming passive observers to tragic, sometimes violent events.99 Although there was a sense that some in the UN had taken sides or at least were willing to play both sides, the Secretary General of the UN had told a British diplomat a few months earlier that Lumumba was ‘already clearly a Communist stooge’ and that he hoped to prevent the Soviet penetration of Africa.100 Next Lumumba was driven to Mobutu’s house where his old friend paid his respects. He was then taken to a paratrooper camp at Thysville a hundred miles from the city. A soldier read out a statement he had written in which he said he was head of the government and then stuffed the paper into his mouth. But the dilemma remained over how to eliminate him definitively from the political scene. The US and Belgians both realised that it was better to have the Congolese do the dirty work for them now he was in their hands.
Lumumba’s powers of oratory had not deserted him and on 13 January 1961 there was a mutiny at the paratrooper camp. This led to immediate fears that Lumumba might escape again. He had to be dealt with. ‘I assumed, particularly after the Thysville mutiny, that the government would seek a permanent solution to the Lumumba problem,’ said Devlin. ‘But I was never consulted on the matter and never offered advice.’101 He may not have been consulted, but he was told it was going to happen by Victor Nendaka, his man who ran the Security Service, a subtle, largely semantic difference. Devlin would later write a cable to CIA headquarters outlining what would happen next but delayed sending it for reasons that remain unclear.102 The incoming Kennedy administration in Washington was divided over whether to continue the hard line over African nationalists or to appeal to the newly independent countries. There were fears in the CIA that the new administration was going ‘soft’. Kennedy himself wondered after his election whether or not to ‘save’ Lumumba and to work with him. Devlin had cabled Washington just before the mutiny desperately trying to maintain a firm line by providing the most alarmist possible take on the situation. ‘PRESENT GOVERNMENT MAY FALL WITHIN FEW DAYS,’ Devlin said. ‘RESULT WOULD ALMOST CERTAINLY BE CHAOS AND RETURN LUMUMBA TO POWER … REFUSAL TO TAKE DRASTIC STEPS AT THIS TIME WILL LEAD TO DEFEAT OF UNITED STATES POLICY IN CONGO.’103 The Belgians also made clear that they wanted Lumumba transferred to Katanga and delivered into the hands of his enemies. The job had to be finished quickly.
Just before dawn on 17 January, Lumumba was taken from his cell by Victor Nendaka, his former comrade and now Devlin’s man as head of the Security Service. He was brought to a plane. On board his goatee beard was torn out and he was forced to eat it.104 A debate had been held within the Congolese Commission on how to end the instability. A collective decision was reached to send Lumumba to Elisabethville, the Katangan capital. Among those taking the decision was Damien Kandolo, a member of the College of Commissioners, Daphne Park’s man, as well as Devlin’s man Nendaka. On arrival, Lumumba was dragged out and thrown on to a jeep under watching Belgian eyes. A small Swedish detail of six UN troops at the airport also witnessed him being driven away. Lumumba was conveyed to a colonial villa, owned by a Belgian, where he was beaten again. The UN knew he had landed but did nothing to intervene. Katangan ministers, including Moise Tshombe, joined in the beatings at the villa.105
That night he was led to a clearing in the wood. With Katangan ministers and a number of Belgians present, Lumumba was put up against a tree and executed by a firing squad (the squad included Belgians, who were either mercenaries or working for the Katangan gendarmerie). The corpses of Lumumba and two aides were hacked to pieces and plunged into a barrel of acid by two Europeans. ‘We were there two days,’ recalled one of the men years later. ‘We did things an animal wouldn’t do. And that’s why we were drunk, stone drunk.’106
A few days later it was announced to the world that Lumumba and two aides had escaped from custody and then been killed by villagers. A Katangan minister held a press conference at which he produced a death certificate. It read ‘died in the bush’. ‘There are those people who accuse us of assassination,’ he said. ‘I have only one response – prove it.’107 No one believed the story. Demonstrations erupted in many countries and Belgian embassies were attacked. The crowds may not have known the detail but they understood that Belgian complicity ran deep. Lumumba became a martyr, his death a cause célèbre around the world which Moscow adeptly exploited, even establishing its own university named after him to train and recruit African leaders of the future. ‘It was Belgian advice, Belgian orders and finally Belgian hands that killed Lumumba on that 17 January 1961,’ according to one detailed study of events.108
Mobutu, once Lumumba’s ally and trusted friend, almost certainly knew of the killing of the comrade he had betrayed. ‘I can’t believe he wasn’t involved,’ confessed Devlin. ‘But it was just one of those questions you didn’t ask at the time.’109 Did the CIA know? No direct link to Larry Devlin or the CIA was ever proven, although it is clear that those who ordered the killing were close to both the CIA and MI6 in the Congo. Oddly, one disaffected CIA man claimed that during his training in 1965 another officer had described driving around with Lumumba’s body in the boot of his car. When, a decade later, the disaffected officer again encountered the man who had made the claim, that man went to the bathroom twice during dinner to spend fifteen minutes scrubbing and drying his hands, cleaning his fingernails and staring at himself in the mirror. No evidence has emerged to back up the man’s claim and the issue of who pulled the strings remains obscure.110
Mobutu’s rise to power was complete in 1965 as he launched his final coup. Devlin was there in the background, advising him on whom to appoint.111 ‘He had shuffled new governments like cards, finally settling on Mobutu as president,’ according to one former CIA officer.112 Colonel Mobutu eventually mutated into Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, ‘the all-powerful warrior who goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake’, a strange leopardskin-clad character who began to retreat from reality. He was the archetypal African ‘big man’. Again the Congolese saw nothing of their country’s wealth, as it ended up in Swiss bank accounts.113 The Congo – or Zaire as it was renamed
– was a key US ally, a base for a covert CIA war in Angola, and Mobutu was supported personally with money, guns and intelligence from Devlin’s successors. His regime received something like a billion dollars over three decades.114 When the Cold War ended in the 1990s, Mobutu was quickly abandoned. As in so many other countries, the superpowers came to the Congo, played out their conflict and then left, leaving nothing of value behind.
Devlin says he was haunted by the assassination plan which he never carried out. One of the problems for him was that it became public in the mid-1970s when the US Congress unearthed the CIA’s secret assassination programmes to kill foreign heads of government, including the schemes to poison Lumumba and to use the mafia to kill Fidel Castro at around the same time. The CIA emerged from the process chastened and circumscribed, at least for a few years until President Reagan unleashed it again. Sidney Gottlieb tried to atone for his past by helping young children with speech impediments and volunteering at a hospice.115 For Devlin, the exposure proved difficult. At parties, there would be whispers and people would edge away from him. At one point he was even warned that Carlos the Jackal wanted to kill him to avenge Lumumba. He grew tired of accusations that he was a murderer. But he never really left the Congo. He completed a second tour and then became head of the CIA’s Africa division. In 1974 he retired but went on to work for a financier who was investing in the Congo’s mineral resources, and he remained close to Mobutu.
Daphne Park left the Congo in 1961. On her last night Kandolo came to dinner at her house. He fidgeted throughout the meal before asking her whether she really did not see Africans as different from white people. She did not, she explained. Some she loathed and some she loved. Park, who would always be fascinated by the riddle of power, went on to spend three years as station chief in Lusaka, working closely with Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. MI6, like Britain, struggled with post-colonial Africa, and among a certain breed of officers, though not Park, there was a sense that they could not quite come to terms with the end of the Empire. Rhodesia proved a particularly painful chapter, with much sympathy among some old-school officers for the white settlers. Africa remained important for MI6 as a place where it found it easier to target Soviet bloc officials than it was on their home turf, and so it became an important testing ground for the best new officers to learn the ropes. It also became a place in which MI6 did much work in countering Soviet ideology by supporting academics, trade union leaders and journalists. While operations in the Soviet bloc would become the dominant strand of MI6 work in the coming years and the field where ambitious officers headed, Africa, like the Middle East, would remain an important sub-culture within the office in which specialists operated and a more buccaneering style, evidenced by Park, persisted just beneath the surface.
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