Khrushchev's Cold War

by Aleksandr Fursenko

  The change in Washington’s mood in August inspired renewed planning by the CIA, which now offered a three-point initiative, involving the creation of an opposition, black propaganda (covertly distributed false rumors and assertions concerning the regime), and paramilitary training of a shock force of Cuban émigrés. Most of the discussion concerned the third point. As outlined by Richard Bissell, the agency’s King Midas, who had turned the U-2 program around in the 1950s, this involved the training of five hundred exiles in Guatemala for infiltration into the Cuban mountains. They would be introduced into the country in groups of seventy-five, dropped and supplied by air. over several months these units would make contact with the thousand or so rebels estimated to be actively fighting the regime on the island. Because Bissell was not completely confident that the paramilitary infiltration and the development of a resistance following infiltration would be enough to topple the regime, the agency had begun thinking of a backup émigré invasion of the Isle of Pines to establish a base from which a government-in-exile recognized by the United States could operate.

  It was in this climate that the administration instructed the CIA to begin looking at how to kill both Patrice Lumumba and Fidel Castro. The U.S. government had considered political assassination as a tool of foreign policy once before. Between 1952 and 1954 the CIA had investigated ways of murdering key Guatemalan officials, including President Jacobo Arbenz. According to an internal CIA study, “some assassins were selected, training began, and tentative ‘hit lists’ were drawn up.”96 The State Department under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower was aware of this planning. The Eisenhower administration found a different way to remove Arbenz, however, before the CIA ever received a formal order to use this particular tool.97

  It is one of the conundrums of the Cold War that it was the democratic West and not the Soviet Union that considered the use of political assassination as a means of increasing its influence in the third world. There is no evidence that the Presidium in the Khrushchev era ever contemplated killing Tshombe or Kasavubu or the leaders of the Cuban exile community, let alone the leaders of pro-Western developing countries like Tunisia and Thailand. This difference may reflect Khrushchev’s innate optimism about Soviet prospects in the region, as compared with the deep pessimism of Dwight Eisenhower and even that of his successor, John F. Kennedy, about U.S. prospects in the third world.

  In August 1960 the CIA, opened contacts with members of the Mafia to plan a hit on Castro.98 The Mafia had its own reasons for wanting to eliminate the Cuban leader: He had closed its casinos in Havana. The planning against Lumumba, however, was more urgent, and the CIA received much clearer instructions from the White House. On August 25 the subcommittee of the NSC responsible for planning covert action recommended 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.”99 Eisenhower had already sent word to this group through his national security adviser that he wanted “very straightforward action in this situation.” On August 26 Allen Dulles reported to the CIA chief in Congo that “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.”100 The CIA station in Léopoldville was authorized to spend up to a hundred thousand dollars to “carry out any crash programs.”

  HAVING VOLUNTEERED to risk a minor intervention in Africa, Khrushchev decided to go himself to the United Nations to rally the support of the Afro-Asian countries for Lumumba’s cause and the Soviet Union. The new General Assembly session was scheduled to begin September 20. The Soviet leader decided to go by ship. The creaky Tu-114 that had brought him across the Atlantic in 1959 was undergoing repairs, and no other aircraft in the Soviet fleet could take him nonstop from Moscow to New York City. The trip on the steamer Baltika would take ten days, so he intended to bring along several East bloc leaders to allow for some conferences on the way over.

  As Khrushchev was preparing to leave the Soviet Union in early September, the situation worsened in Congo. Secretary-General Hammarskjöld had lost his patience with Lumumba and told the Americans that he must be “broken.”101 The UN leader, who now shared the dire opinion of the Eisenhower administration, had become convinced that the situation in the Congo could not be stabilized until Lumumba was out of the way. Hammarskjöld “is clearly looking forward to forcing issue with Lumumba,” the US ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge had reported, “but wants latter to create the situation.”102

  Equally worried was President Kasavubu, who insisted that he had not been consulted on Lumumba’s request to Khrushchev for Soviet military assistance. On September 5 Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba on the grounds that his handling of relations with the Soviets suggested he was trying to turn the Congo into a dictatorship.

  Kasavubu’s action caused both a constitutional crisis in Congo and an international crisis between the Soviet Union, which supported Lumumba, and those countries that did not.103 The Congolese president had the right under the constitution to fire the prime minister. However, the elected Congolese Parliament voted on September 9 to annul Kasavubu’s decree against Lumumba and on September 14 called for a cabinet shuffle, retaining Lumumba as prime minister but dropping some of his allies.104 Meanwhile, afraid that the Soviets might try to intervene to restore Lumumba, the UN’s local commander ordered the closure of the country’s airports and shut down Léopoldville’s only radio station after allowing Kasavubu to make a public announcement of Lumumba’s dismissal.105

  Khrushchev was furious when these events in the Congo were reported to him, and he lost any remaining trust in the leadership of the UN. After having argued for two months that it could not intervene in the domestic affairs of the Congo, the UN was now siding with Kasavubu against Khrushchev’s ally. The Soviets refused to recognize Lumumba’s firing and continued with plans to assist the Congolese Army in attacking Katanga. On September 5, 6, and 7 Soviet transport planes, piloted by Soviet citizens, flew an estimated 450 Congolese soldiers south from Lumumba’s headquarters in Stanleyville in the northern Congo in likely preparation for an attack on Tshombe’s forces.106 Moscow permitted Soviet pilots, at some risk to their planes, to take off and land from the grasslands near the airports that had been closed by the UN.107

  Khrushchev sailed for the United States on September 9 and had to monitor the developments in Central Africa from the ship. “All the way across the Atlantic on our way to New York,” Khrushchev later remembered, “we had kept in close touch with our Foreign Ministry about the situation in the Congo, sending and receiving coded messages between our ship and Moscow.”108 Meanwhile, although Khrushchev refused to abandon Lumumba, the Soviet government did place a temporary halt to the use of Soviet planes by the Lumumbists.

  On September 14 Lumumba suffered an even more dramatic blow orchestrated in part by the U.S. government. Lumumba’s former personal secretary, Joseph Désiré Mobutu, whom he had promoted to a leadership position in the Congolese National Army, staged a coup against him. Mobutu seized power, pledging that the country’s elected leaders would be replaced by nonpartisan, nonsectarian professionals until the end of the year, by which time the constitutional crisis could be resolved. “This is not a revolution,” said Mobutu; “it is a truce.”109 In early September, after Kasavubu had proved unable to remove Lumumba, the U.S. Embassy in Léopoldville began intensive discussions with Mobutu, who had been trained in the United States, to encourage him to take action against the Lumumbists and the Soviet bloc.110 On September 16 Mobutu’s forces chased the elected representatives out of the parliament building in Léopoldville, and the next day he ordered the Soviets and the Czechs to close their embassies. Although Mobutu was criticized by Kasavubu for being “insolent,” he was allowed to remain president.111

  Mobutu’s coup and the subsequent expulsion of Soviet diplomats sharpened Khrushchev’s anger at Hammarskjöld and the UN. “I spit on the
UN,” Khrushchev said in reaction to the unceasingly bad news from the Congo. “It’s not our organization…. That good-for-nothing Ham is sticking his nose in important affairs which are none of his business…. We’ll really make it hot for him.”112 The Soviet delegate at the UN, Valerian Zorin, received instructions to charge Hammarskjöld with colluding with the Americans to remove Lumumba from power.113 But Khrushchev was determined to do more. He wanted Hammarskjöld’s resignation and thought it time to eliminate the secretary-general position altogether. “On the ship’s deck the thought came to me,” Khrushchev explained a month later to his colleagues in the Kremlin, “about the structure of the United Nations.”114 Believing the future of the UN was at stake, he concluded that a troika of representatives from the three worlds—capitalist, socialist, and neutral—should jointly run the organization. While deciding to raise the pressure on the UN, Khrushchev nevertheless decided to reduce the immediate risks for the Soviets in the Congo conflict. Moscow ordered the Soviet pilots and planes, whose missions in support of the Lumumbists had already been suspended pending developments, to return with its diplomats.115

  Events at the UN in the days before Khrushchev arrived in the New York showed that he faced a tough campaign to rally majority support for reforming the UN’s leadership structure and reversing its policy in the Congo. In response to Zorin’s charge, Hammarskjöld had appealed for a show of confidence from the delegates. He got it in a resolution proposed by the Ghanaian delegation. Accra supported Lumumba but had no interest in allowing the Congo to become a battlefield in the Cold War. Passed by a unanimous 70–0 vote on September 18, the resolution affirmed that Hammarskjöld should take “vigorous action” to implement Security Council resolutions and declared that no state should send arms or military personnel into the Congo except as part of the UN mission. Only the Soviet bloc, France, and South Africa abstained. Not one of Khrushchev’s new allies in Africa or Asia had opposed the resolution.116

  WASHINGTON WAS NO MORE confident of the outcome in the Congo than was Khrushchev. The administration did not believe that Mobutu alone could effectively contain the threat from Lumumba. On September 16 Lumumba delivered himself into the protective custody of the United Nations. He was given UN guards and allowed to walk around Léopoldville. On September 24 Allen Dulles reaffirmed Washington’s desire to “eliminat[e] Lumumba from any possibility of resuming [a] government position.”117 Two days later the CIA sent its science adviser, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo with a collection of poisons to use against Lumumba. It was believed possible to gain access to his home and put the poison in his toothpaste.118 Lawrence Devlin, the CIA station chief in Léopoldville, was told that the order to kill Lumumba had come from Eisenhower. When Devlin asked if Gottlieb had actually heard the president say these words, Gottlieb said no but explained that Bissell, the CIA’s influential deputy director for plans, had assured him that the president had issued the order.119

  THE STEAMER Baltika with Khrushchev and his delegation on board arrived in New York Harbor on September 19. Khrushchev had not told the Americans how long he planned to spend in New York. There were rumors that he would ring in the New Year in the city famous for its street party in Times Square. Unlike in 1959, the administration did not throw out any red carpet for him. Khrushchev had mentioned his interest in meeting President Eisenhower to the international press, but the president did not respond with an invitation.

  In his speech to the General Assembly four days later, Khrushchev blasted the Western powers for their machinations in the Congo. He denied Lumumba was a Communist and warned the West not to celebrate its victory over him too soon. Then he attacked the leadership of the United Nations. Calling it “one-sided,” he outlined his troika proposal.120

  Hammarskjöld refused to resign. In a calm but firm speech on September 26, he defended the office of the secretary-general. “This is a question not of a man,” he said, “but of an institution.”121

  Between sessions, Khrushchev met with world leaders to solicit support for restructuring the UN. He spent a lot of time with President Nasser of the United Arab Republic and the Ghanaian leader, Kwame Nkrumah. Both men received Soviet military assistance and were pro-Lumumba, yet both disappointed Khrushchev. Ultimately, with one important exception, none of the Soviet Union’s third world allies—India, Ghana, Guinea, the United Arab Republic—supported Khrushchev’s call to replace Hammarskjöld with a troika. Guinea’s Sékou Touré was the most publicly critical of Hammarskjöld, but like Nkrumah, he only endorsed a compromise plan to ensure that Hammarskjöld’s three deputies represented each of the three world groupings.

  Nkrumah presented Khrushchev with the most interesting paradox. On August 6 the African leader had asked for secret Soviet military assistance, now at their meeting in New York he privately told Khrushchev that “there is no other path for Africa except socialism,” but in the General Assembly he refused to support the attack on Hammarskjöld.122

  Fidel Castro was the lone exception among Khrushchev’s third world allies. The two met for the first time at the Soviet consulate and quickly established a personal rapport. The Cubans then demonstrated their friendship by following the Soviets in voting against Hammarskjöld’s Congo policy and in calling for UN restructuring.

  Although Khrushchev could not gain enough votes for his UN proposals, his energetic diplomacy did affect Hammarskjöld’s handling of the Congo operation. The UN informed its team in the Congo that Lumumba would have to be a part of any political settlement. When the United States asked the UN to allow Mobutu’s forces to arrest Lumumba, the secretary-general refused. Instead he wanted Lumumba kept in “cold storage” under UN protection until a political settlement involving all of the parties could be reached.123 When Mobutu’s troops appeared with an arrest warrant at the house where the UN was protecting Lumumba on October 10, the Ghanaian soldiers guarding Lumumba as part of the UN force told them to leave.124

  Disappointed by the secretary-general’s sudden reluctance to pursue Lumumba, the United States accelerated its own efforts to eliminate the deposed prime minister. The CIA considered both using Congolese agents in an assassination attempt and deploying “a commando-type group” to remove Lumumba from UN custody. Devlin, the CIA’s station chief in Léopoldville, did not want to use the poison sent to him from headquarters and threw it into the Congo River.125 Instead he cabled Washington on October 17 to recommend that headquarters send “soonest high powered foreign make rifle with telescopic scope and silencer. Hunting good here when light’s right.”126

  KHRUSHCHEV WAS the center of attention throughout his three weeks in New York. The day before he left, he ensured that this became an indelible impression. While listening to a Filipino diplomat chastise the Soviet Union for its colonial behavior in Eastern Europe, Khrushchev began pounding the desk with both fists. Figuring he was not making enough noise, he then slipped off one of his loafers and began pounding with it. An embarrassed Gromyko, who looked as if he were “about to plunge into a pool of icy water,” removed his shoe and gingerly accompanied his boss as if shoe drumming were a traditionally acceptable form of protest at the United Nations.127

  A buoyant Khrushchev flew back to Moscow on October 13 on a Soviet plane. Although none of his African or Asian allies had endorsed his proposals for reforming the UN, he told the Presidium two days later that he had made the case effectively. He had no doubts about his campaign against Hammarskjöld. Indeed, he informed his colleagues that henceforth “[w]e will not agree to any disarmament if the structure of the UN does not get changed.”128 He also brooked no questioning about Soviet policy toward Lumumba and the Congo. “The Congo [policy] is to our advantage,” said Khrushchev. “It discredits the imperialists and discredits the UN.” If his colleagues disagreed, they stayed silent.

  FOR ALL HIS optimism in these Kremlin discussions, Khrushchev knew that both his third world champions were vulnerable. Lumumba was now in the opposition, not in the government, and under a kind of ho
use arrest. Castro was still in power, but he had a dedicated enemy in Dwight Eisenhower.

  Only days after Khrushchev’s return to Moscow, the Kremlin began receiving information from the KGB that Eisenhower might be preparing a military attack on Cuba to boost his vice president into the White House. Nixon was caught in a tight election against the Democratic challenger, John F. Kennedy. “Acts of sabotage and terrorism are being prepared,” Aleksandr Alekseyev, the KGB resident in Havana, had reported a month earlier, and the reports continued.129

  In anticipation of internal trouble Castro had already launched a crackdown on the island. In August he had purged his own security service, and on October 1 the Cubans initiated a block surveillance system similar to one devised by the East Germans that encouraged neighbors to spy on one another. Castro had learned more recently that he might also face another challenge, this one launched from abroad. Communists had observed the training by the CIA of Cuban émigrés, who Castro assumed might be used in a full-scale military invasion. Moscow shared his concerns and launched a propaganda campaign to deter a U.S. attack.130 On October 14 Pravda asserted that “there are more and more facts which show that the territory of Guatemala is being turned into a bridgehead of aggression against Cuba.”131 Starting on October 18, Izvestia and Pravda warned Washington not to attack. On October 25, at the UN, Zorin denounced U.S. efforts to train Cuban émigrés in neighboring Latin American countries to remove the Castro regime. That same day the Cubans deployed thousands of militiamen along the southern coast of the island, where an invasion force from Guatemala might land. On October 27, 1960, Cuban forces were placed on the highest military alert.132