The Lumumba Plot
The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
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The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times
“This is one of the best books I have read in years . . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN host
It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.
Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Political opportunism, geopolitics, and hubris converge in this intricate and colorful debut from Foreign Affairs editor Reid. In a sweeping and detailed new investigation, Reid recounts Patrice Lumumba's rise as an independence leader in the Belgian Congo and his tumultuous two-month tenure in 1960 as the Republic of Congo's first prime minister. The brief period was beset by an army mutiny, interventions by Belgian and United Nations troops, rebellion in the secessionist province of Katanga, and the coup by Army Chief of Staff Joseph Mobutu that overthrew Lumumba. Mobutu later had him arrested and delivered to the Katangese, who executed him in 1961 (with Belgian officers present). Lumumba has since been cast as a martyr to U.S. imperialist machinations, and fairly so according to Reid: Washington hysterically mistook him for a communist, and although the CIA's assassination plot never came off, CIA station chief Larry Devlin pressed Mobutu to depose and then arrest Lumumba and did nothing to forestall the murder. But Reid also ascribes Lumumba's downfall to his mercurial character: he was a brilliant, idealistic politician, but also an erratic statesman who needlessly antagonized powerful people and curtailed civil liberties. Reid's elegant prose features sharply etched sketches of historical figures, especially of the dynamic, irrepressible Lumumba. This riveting study makes of Lumumba a Shakespearean figure undone by tragic flaws. Photos.
