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Most of the articles on this site first appeared in Probe.
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BILLBOARD
New
Articles/Reviews
The
Second Dallas, a DVD Robert Kennedy documentary produced, written and
directed by Massimo Mazzucco. Reviewed by Jim DiEugenio
The
Connely Bullet Strong proof that Connally was hit by a
bullet from a different assassin, by Robert Harris
Journalists
and JFK, those who were in and around
Dealey
Plaza
that day and those who made a career
of the case afterwards.
Intro
By Gary King
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3
(new) by Bill Kelly.
Joseph Green on the late Manning
Marable's new full scale biography of Malcolm X.
David
Mantik vs. Pat Speer on the JFK Autopsy X-rays: A Critique of patspeer.com
Chapters 18a, 18b, and 19b, by David W. Mantik
Seamus
Coogan on Joseph Farrell's new book LBJ
and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy: A Coalescence of Interests,
plus a look at the fraudulent MJ 12 papers.
A
Comprehensive Review by David Mantik of Hear No Evil: Social
Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination
by Donald Byron Thomas
The Real Wikipedia? by JP Mroz and Jim DiEugenio
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Sirhan and the RFK Assassination
Part I: The Grand Illusion Part
II: Rubik's Cube by Lisa Pease
Who
is Anton Batey?
CTKA takes a close look at a most curious radio host who is a JFK denier,
Chomskyite, and yet happens to be in league with John McAdams and David
Von Pein. Yep, its all true.
Part 1
Part 2
The
Illusion of Michael Shermer, Principles of Sleight of Hand, reviewed
by Frank Cassano
Jesse
Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory on JFK, reviewed by Seamus Coogan.
Reclaiming
History Part X "How the DA Acquitted everyone but
Oswald," reviewed by Jim DiEugenio.
LBJ:
The Mastermind of JFK's Assassination by Phillip F. Nelson, reviewed
by Joseph Green.
Inside
the ARRB Reviews of Douglas Horne's multi-volume study of
the declassified medical evidence in the JFK case. Reviewed by Jim
DiEugenio, David Mantik and Gary Aguilar.
COMING SOON:
A three part series on John
McAdams in anticipation of his book on the JFK case: The 20 year Evolution of a Rightwing, Propagandist
"Is John McAdams' web site the worst ever on the JFK case?" Who
is a better murder detective, John McAdams or Inspector Clouseau?
Billy Kelly does an update and addition to the
Chicago
plot to kill JFK.
Seamus Coogan on the whole UFO's and aliens and
MJ-12/Kennedy assassination linkage.
Bill Davy continues our Wikipedia exposure series by
examining an entry dealing with the JIm Garrison investigation.
.
|
Introduction:
We are reprinting this article as a complementary essay
to the first part of the
Brian Hunt-Jim DiEugenio essay on Anton Batey and his mentor Noam
Chomsky. Batey and Chomsky try to portray President Kennedy as no
different in his foreign policy views than the president who preceded him,
Eisenhower, or those who came after him, Johnson or Nixon. Hunt and
DiEugenio corrected the record of errors and distortions with copious
footnotes to declassified CIA reports on the Bay of Pigs, and the plots to
kill Fidel Castro, and the newly declassified file of the Assassination
Records Review Board on Kennedy’s plan to withdraw from
Vietnam
. We also used
books by several authors who are much more interested in balance, good
information and logic than either Batey or Chomsky are.
The following essay by Jim DiEugenio appeared in the January-February
1999 issue of Probe (Vol.
6 No. 2). It is largely based on a much and sorrowfully overlooked book by
Richard Mahoney entitled JFK:
Ordeal in Africa. That book contains probably the best
look at President Kennedy’s views of foreign policy, especially in the
Third World
. It concentrates on the
Congo
crisis of the late fifties and early sixties, following it from
Eisenhower, to Kennedy, to Johnson. Mahoney really did use the
declassified record, as he visited the Kennedy library for weeks to attain
documents to fill in the record. In examining this record, there can be no
doubt about the facts, the actions, and the conclusions. In relation to
his predecessor, and his successor, Kennedy was not a Cold Warrior, and he
did not buy the Domino Theory. And he was in conflict with those who did,
hence the title of the essay.
But this essay, and Mahoney's book, go beyond just the
Congo
crisis and Kennedy's sympathy for Lumumba. It explains why he held those
beliefs about the Third World, and why they extended to
Vietnam
. As Mahoney notes, Kennedy was in
Saigon
when the French colonial empire there was crumbling. And it is there where
he met Edmund Gullion, the man who would be his teacher on the subject of
European colonialism. After learning his lessons, Kennedy returned home,
where he tried to break the logjam of anti-communist boilerplate in the
debate between the Dean Acheson Democrats and John Foster Dulles
Republicans. His 1957 speech on the floor of the Senate about
Algeria
is still thrilling to read today--but it was a bombshell at the time. It
is that speech we have to keep in mind in explaining the things he did not
do as president: no Navy forces at the Bay of Pigs, no invasion during the
Missile Crisis, and no combat troops into
Vietnam
. By the end of this essay we then see why Kennedy had those ingrained
sympathies. In his revealing conversation with Nehru, we see that he never
forgot where he came from i.e.
Ireland
had been subjugated by
Britain
for 800 years.
The following is not Batey-Chomsky polemics. It is actually history. It
tells the truth about an important event. But as it does so, it reveals
the true character of the men who helped mold it: Eisenhower, Allen
Dulles, Lumumba, Thomas Dodd, Joseph Mobutu, Hammarskjold, Moise Tshombe,
Cyrille Adoula, Johnson and, primarily, JFK. In doing that, it becomes
larger than its subject, as it magnifies the moment and the people molding
it. It therefore elucidates a complex episode, and by doing so, it
empowers the reader with real information. Which is what good history
usually does.
Dodd and Dulles vs. Kennedy in
Africa
by Jim DiEugenio
“In
assessing the central character ...
Gibbon’s description of the
Byzantine general
Belisarius may suggest a comparison:
‘His imperfections flowed from the
contagion of the times;
his virtues were his own.’”
— Richard Mahoney on President
Kennedy
As Probe has noted elsewhere (especially in last year’s
discussion of Sy Hersh’s anti-Kennedy screed, The Dark Side of
Camelot), a clear strategy of those who wish to smother any search for
the truth about President Kennedy’s assassination is to distort and deny
his achievements in office. Hersh and his ilk have toiled to distort who
Kennedy really was, where he was going, what the world would have been
like if he had lived, and who and what he represented. As with the
assassination, the goal of these people is to distort, exaggerate, and
sometimes just outright fabricate in order to obfuscate specific Kennedy
tactics, strategies, and outcomes.
This blackening of the record—disguised as historical
revisionism—has been practiced on the left, but it is especially
prevalent on the right. Political spy and propagandist Lucianna
Goldberg—such a prominent figure in the current Clinton sex
scandal—was tutored early on by the godfather of the anti-Kennedy books,
that triple-distilled rightwinger and CIA crony Victor Lasky. In fact, at
the time of Kennedy’s death, Lasky’s negative biography of Kennedy was
on the best-seller lists. Lately, Christopher Matthews seemed to be the
designated hitter on some of these issues (see the article on page 26).
Curiously, his detractors ignore Kennedy’s efforts in a part of the
world far from
America
, where Kennedy’s character, who and what he stood for, and how the
world may have been different had he lived are clearly revealed. But to
understand what Kennedy was promoting in
Africa
, we must first explore his activities a decade earlier.
The Self-Education of John F. Kennedy
During Kennedy’s six years in the House, 1947-1952, he concentrated
on domestic affairs, bread and butter issues that helped his middle class
Massachusetts
constituents. As Henry Gonzalez noted in his blurb for Donald Gibson’s Battling
Wall Street, he met Kennedy at a housing conference in 1951 and got
the impression that young Kennedy was genuinely interested in the role
that government could play in helping most Americans. But when Kennedy,
his father, and his advisers decided to run for the upper house in 1952,
they knew that young Jack would have to educate himself in the field of
foreign affairs and gain a higher cosmopolitan profile. After all, he was
running against that effete, urbane, Boston Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge. So
Kennedy decided to take two seven-week-long trips. The first was to
Europe
. The second was a little unusual in that his itinerary consisted of
places like the Middle East,
India
, and
Indochina
. (While in
India
, he made the acquaintance of Prime Minister Nehru who would end up being
a lifelong friend and adviser.)
Another unusual thing about the second trip was his schedule after
he got to his stops. In Saigon, he ditched his French military guides and
sought out the names of the best reporters and State Department officials
so he would not get the standard boilerplate on the French colonial
predicament in
Indochina
. After finding these sources, he would show up at their homes and
apartments unannounced. His hosts were often surprised that such a
youthful looking young man could be a congressman. Kennedy would then pick
their minds at length as to the true political conditions in that country.
If there is a real turning point in Kennedy’s political career it is
this trip. There is little doubt that what he saw and learned deeply
affected and altered his world view and he expressed his developing new
ideas in a speech he made upon his return on November 14, 1951. Speaking
of French Indochina he said: "This is an area of human conflict
between civilizations striving to be born and those desperately trying to
retain what they have held for so long." He later added that
"the fires of nationalism so long dormant have been kindled and are
now ablaze....Here colonialism is not a topic for tea-talk discussion; it
is the daily fare of millions of men." He then criticized the U. S.
State Department for its laid back and lackadaisical approach to this
problem:
One finds too many of our representatives toadying to the shorter aims
of other Western nations with no eagerness to understand the real hopes
and desires of the people to which they are accredited.
The basic idea that Kennedy brought back from this trip was that, in
the
Third World
, the colonial or imperial powers were bound to lose in the long run since
the force of nationalism in those nascent countries was so powerful, so
volcanic, that no extended empire could contain it indefinitely. This did
not mean that Kennedy would back any revolutionary force
fighting an imperial power. Although he understood the appeal of communism
to the revolutionaries, he was against it. He wanted to establish
relations and cooperate with leaders of the developing world who wished to
find a "third way," one that was neither Marxist nor necessarily
pro-Western. He was trying to evolve a policy that considered the
particular history and circumstances of the nations now trying to break
the shackles of poverty and ignorance inflicted upon them by the
attachments of empire. Kennedy understood and sympathized with the
temperaments of those leaders of the
Third World
who wished to be nonaligned with either the Russians or the Americans and
this explains his relationships with men like Nehru and Sukarno of
Indonesia. So, for Kennedy, Nixon’s opposition toward Ho Chi Minh’s
upcoming victory over the French in
Vietnam
was not so much a matter of Cold War ideology, but one of cool and
measured pragmatism. As he stated in 1953, the year before the French
fell:
The war would never be successful ... unless large numbers of the
people of
Vietnam
were won over from their sullen neutrality and open hostility. This could
never be done ... unless they were assured beyond doubt that complete
independence would be theirs at the conclusion of the war.
To say the least, this is not what the Dulles brothers John Foster and
Allen had in mind. Once the French empire fell, they tried to urge upon
Eisenhower an overt American intervention in the area. When Eisenhower
said no, Allen Dulles sent in a massive CIA covert operation headed by Air
Force officer Edward Lansdale. In other words, the French form of foreign
domination was replaced by the American version.
Kennedy and
Africa
Needless to say, the Eisenhower-Nixon-Dulles decision on
Indochina
had an epochal ring that can be heard down to the present day. But there
was another developing area of the world where Kennedy differed with these
men. In fact it is in the news today because it still suffers from the
parallel pattern of both Indochina and
Indonesia
, i.e. European colonialism followed by American intervention. In 1997,
after years of attempted rebellion, Laurent Kabila finally ousted longtime
dictator Joseph Mobutu in the huge African state of
Congo
. But Kabila’s government has proven quite weak and this year, other
African states have had to come to his aid to prop him up. In late
November, the new warring factions in that state tentatively agreed to a
cease-fire in
Paris
brokered by both France and the United Nations. The agreement is to be
formally signed in late December. If not, this second war in two years may
continue. As commentators Nelson Kasfir and Scott Straus wrote in the Los
Angeles Times of October 19th,
What
Congo
so desperately needs and never has enjoyed is a democratic assembly, one
that can establish a constitution that will allow the country’s next
president to enjoy sufficient legitimacy to get started on a long overdue
development agenda.
There was a Congolese leader who once could have united the factions
inside that country and who wanted to develop its immense internal
resources for the Congolese themselves: Patrice Lumumba. As with Achmed
Sukarno of
Indonesia
, Lumumba is not talked about very much today. At the time, he was viewed
as such a threat that the Central Intelligence Agency, on the orders of
Allen Dulles, planned his assassination. Lumumba was killed just before
President Kennedy was inaugurated.
Yet, in the media commentaries on the current crisis, the epochal
changes before and after Kennedy’s presidency that took place in the
Congo
are not mentioned. As with
Indonesia
, few commentators seem cognizant of the breaks in policy there that paved
the way for three decades of dictatorship and the current chaos. One thing
nobody has noted was that Mobutu came to absolute power after Kennedy’s
death in a policy decision made by the Johnson administration. This
decision directly contradicted what Kennedy had been doing while in
office. Kennedy’s
Congo
effort was a major preoccupation of his presidency in which many of his
evolving ideas that originated in 1951 were put to the test and dramatized
in a complex, whirring cauldron. The cauldron featured
Third World
nationalism, the inevitable pull of Marxism, Kennedy’s sympathy for
nonaligned leaders, his antipathy for European colonialism, and the
domestic opposition to his policies both inside the government and
without. This time the domestic opposition was at least partly represented
by Senator Thomas Dodd and CIA Director Allen Dulles. This tortured
three-year saga features intrigue, power politics, poetic idealism, a
magnetic African revolutionary leader, and murder for political reasons.
How did it all begin?
Kennedy Defines Himself
In 1956, the Democrats, always sensitive to the charge of being
"soft on communism", did very little to attack the
Eisenhower-Nixon-Dulles foreign policy line. When they did, it was with
someone like Dean Acheson who, at times, tried to out-Dulles John Foster
Dulles. Kennedy was disturbed by this opportunistic crowd-pleasing
boilerplate. To him it did not relate to the reality he had seen and heard
firsthand in 1951. For him, the nationalistic yearning for independence
was not to be so quickly linked to the "international Communist
conspiracy." Kennedy attempted to make some speeches for Adlai
Stevenson in his race for the presidency that year. In them he attempted
to attack the Manichean world view of the Republican administration, i.e.
that either a nation was allied with
America
or she was leaning toward the Communist camp:
the Afro-Asian revolution of nationalism, the revolt against
colonialism, the determination of people to control their national
destinies....In my opinion, the tragic failure of both Republican and
Democratic administrations since World War II to comprehend the nature of
this revolution, and its potentialities for good and evil, has reaped a
bitter harvest today—and it is by rights and by necessity a major
foreign policy campaign issue that has nothing to do with anti-communism.
(Speech in
Los Angeles
9/21/56)
This was too much even for the liberal Stevenson. According to author
Richard Mahoney, "Stevenson’s office specifically requested that
the senator make no more foreign policy statements in any way associated
with the campaign." (JFK: Ordeal in Africa p. 18)
Kennedy objected to the "for us or against us" attitude that,
in Africa, had pushed
Egypt
’s Gamel Abdul Nasser into the arms of the Russians. He also objected to
the self-righteousness with which people like Dulles and Nixon expressed
this policy. John Foster Dulles’ string of bromides on the subject e.g.
"godless Communism", and the "Soviet master plan", met
with this response from Senator Kennedy: "Public thinking is still
being bullied by slogans which are either false in context or irrelevant
to the new phase of competitive coexistence in which we live."
(Mahoney p. 18)
Kennedy on
Algeria
Kennedy bided his time for the most fortuitous moment to make a major
oratorical broadside against both political parties’ orthodoxies on the
subject of
Third World
nationalism. He found that opportunity with
France
’s colonial crisis of the late 1950’s: the struggle of the African
colony of
Algeria
to be set free. By 1957, the French had a military force of 500,000 men in
Algeria
committed to putting down this ferocious rebellion. The war degenerated at
times into torture, atrocities, and unmitigated horror, which when
exposed, split the French nation in two. It eventually caused the fall of
the French government and the rise to power of Charles De Gaulle.
On July 2, 1957, Senator Kennedy rose to speak in the Senate chamber
and delivered what the New York Times was to call "the most
comprehensive and outspoken arraignment of Western policy toward
Algeria
yet presented by an American in public office." (7/3/57) As historian
Allan Nevins wrote later, "No speech on foreign affairs by Mr.
Kennedy attracted more attention at home and abroad." (The
Strategy of Peace, p. 67) It was the mature fruition of all the ideas
that Kennedy had been collecting and refining since his 1951 trip into the
nooks and corners of
Saigon
. It was passionate yet sophisticated, hard-hitting but controlled,
idealistic yet, in a fresh and unique way, also pragmatic. Kennedy
assailed the administration, especially Nixon and Dulles, for not urging
France
into a non-military solution to the bloody crisis. He even offered some
diplomatic alternatives. He attacked both the
United States
and
France
for not seeing in
Algeria
a reprise of the 1954
Indochina
crisis:
Yet, did we not learn in Indochina ... that we might have served both
the French and our own causes infinitely better had we taken a more firm
stand much earlier than we did? Did that tragic episode not teach us that,
whether France likes it or not, admits it or not, or has our support or
not, their overseas territories are sooner or later, one by one,
inevitably going to break free and look with suspicion on the Western
nations who impeded their steps to independence. (Ibid p. 72)
The speech ignited howls of protest, especially from its targets, i.e.
Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, Acheson, and Nixon. The latter called it
"a brashly political" move to embarrass the administration. He
further added that, "Ike and his staff held a full-fledged policy
meeting to pool their thinking on the whys underlying Kennedy’s damaging
fishing in troubled waters." (
Los Angeles
Herald-Express 7/5/57) Mahoney noted that, of the 138 editorials
clipped by Kennedy’s office, 90 opposed the speech. (p. 21) Again,
Stevenson was one of Kennedy’s critics. Jackie Kennedy was so angry with
Acheson’s disparaging remarks about the speech that she berated him in
public while they were both waiting for a train at
New York
’s Penn Central.
But abroad the reaction was different. Newspapers in
England
and, surprisingly, in
France
realized what the narrowly constricted foreign policy establishment did
not: Kennedy knew what he was talking about. The speech was a mature,
comprehensive, and penetrating analysis of a painful and complicated
topic. As one French commentator wrote at the time:
Strangely enough, as a Frenchman I feel that, on the whole, Mr. Kennedy
is more to be commended than blamed for his forthright, frank and
provocative speech.... The most striking point of the speech ... is the
important documentation it revealed and his thorough knowledge of the
French milieu.
As a result, Kennedy now became the man to see in
Washington
for incoming African dignitaries. More than one commented that they were
thrilled reading the speech and noted the impact it had on young African
intellectuals studying abroad at the time. The Algerian guerrillas hiding
in the hills were amazed at its breadth of understanding. On election
night of 1960 they listened to their wireless radios and were alternately
depressed and elated as Nixon and Kennedy traded the lead.
Ike and the
Congo
Once in office, Kennedy had very little time to prepare for his first
African crisis. It had been developing during the latter stages of the
Eisenhower administration and like
Laos
,
Vietnam
, and
Cuba
it was a mess at the time Kennedy inherited it. With John Foster Dulles
dead and Eisenhower embittered over the U-2 incident and what it had done
for his hopes for détente, Allen Dulles and, to a lesser extent, Nixon
had an increasingly stronger pull over National Security Council meetings.
This was even more true about subject areas which Eisenhower had little
interest in or knowledge about.
In June of 1960,
Belgium
had made a deliberately abrupt withdrawal from the
Congo
. The idea was that the harder the shock of colonial disengagement, the
easier it would be to establish an informal yet de facto control
afterward. Before leaving, one Belgian commander had written on a
chalkboard:
Before
Independence
= After
Independence
As hoped for, the heady rush of freedom proved too much for the new
Congolese army. They attacked the Europeans left behind and pillaged their
property. The Belgians used this as a pretext to drop paratroops into the
country. In response, the democratically elected premier, Patrice Lumumba
and President Joseph Kasavubu asked United Nations Secretary General Dag
Hammarskjold for help. At his request, the United Nations asked
Belgium
to leave and voted to send a peacekeeping mission to the
Congo
.
At this point, the Belgians made a crucial and insidious move.
Realizing Hammarskjold would back the newly elected government against the
foreign invaders,
Belgium
began to financially and militarily abet the secession of the
Congo
’s richest province,
Katanga
, in the southeast corner of the state. There was a primitive tribal
rivalry that served as a figleaf for this split. But the real reason the
Belgians promoted the break was the immense mineral wealth in
Katanga
. They found a native leader who would support them and they decided to
pay Moise Tshombe a multimillion dollar monthly bounty to head the
secessionist rebellion. As Jonathan Kwitny has noted, some of the major
media e.g. Time and the New York Times actually backed the
Belgians in this act. Yet, as Kwitny also notes:
Western industrial interests had been egging Tshombe on toward
succession, hoping to guarantee continued Western ownership of the mines.
They promised to supply mercenaries to defend the province against
whatever ragtag army Lumumba might assemble to reclaim it. (Endless
Enemies, p. 55)
In spite of the Belgian plotting and Tshombe’s opportunistic
betrayal, Allen Dulles blamed Lumumba for the impending chaos. His
familiar plaint to the National Security Council was that Lumumba had now
enlisted in the Communist cause. This, even though the American embassy in
Leopoldville cabled
Washington
that the Belgian troops were the real root of the problem. The
embassy further stated that if the UN did not get the Belgians out, the
Congo
would turn to someone who would: the Russians. Further, as Kwitny and
others have noted, Lumumba was not a Communist:
Looking at the outsiders whom Lumumba chose to consult in times of
trouble, it seems clear that his main socialist influence in terms of
ideas ... wasn’t from Eastern Europe at all, but from the more
left-leaning of the new African heads of state, particularly, Kwame
Nkrumah of Ghana. (p. 53)
As Mahoney makes clear in his study, Nkrumah was a favorite of
Kennedy’s who the new president backed his entire time in office.
Eisenhower Turns on Lumumba
At this inopportune moment, July of 1960, Lumumba visited
Washington
for three days. Eisenhower deliberately avoided him by escaping to
Rhode Island
. Lumumba asked both Secretary of State Christian Herter and his assistant
Douglas Dillon for help in kicking out the Belgians. The response was
purposefully noncommittal. Meanwhile, the Soviets helped Lumumba by flying
in food and medical supplies. Rebuffed by
Washington
, Lumumba then asked the Russians for planes, pilots, and technicians to
use against
Katanga
. This was a major step in sealing his fate in the eyes of Allen Dulles.
Larry Devlin, the CIA station chief in Leopoldville (then the capital of
the
Congo
), wired CIA headquarters that the
Congo
was now experiencing "a classic Communist effort" to subjugate
the government. Within 24 hours, Dulles, apparently with Eisenhower’s
approval, set in motion a series of assassination plots that would
eventually result in Lumumba’s death. Ironically, on the day the plots
originated, Lumumba made the following radio address to his citizens:
We know that the
US
understands us and we are pleased to see the
US
position in bringing about international peace.... If the Congolese place
their confidence in the
US
, which is a good friend, they will find themselves rewarded. (Mahoney, p.
44)
What the unsuspecting Lumumba did not know was that Eisenhower’s
advisers had already made up their mind about him. As Douglas Dillon told
the Church Committee, the National Security Council believed that Lumumba
was a "very difficult, if not impossible person to deal with, and was
dangerous to the peace and safety of the world." (Kwitny, p. 57)
Imagine, the newly elected premier of an undeveloped nation whose army
could not even stop an internal secession was now threatening the safety
of the world. But, to reiterate, there is little evidence of Lumumba even
being a Communist. As Kwitny notes, "all through his brief career ...
he had publicly pledged to respect private property and even foreign
investment" (p. 72). (Kwitny also could have noted that Dillon was
hardly an unbiased source. As revealed in the book Thy Will be
Done, Dillon was a co-investor with his friend Nelson Rockefeller
in properties inside the
Belgian Congo
and therefore had an interest in it remaining a puppet state.)
Lumumba wanted the UN to invade
Katanga
. Hammarskjold refused. At this point Lumumba made his final, fatal error
in the eyes of the Eisenhower establishment. He invited the Russians into
the
Congo
so they could expel the Belgians from
Katanga
. Simultaneously, the Belgians began to work on Kasavubu to split him off
from, and therefore isolate, Lumumba. The CIA now begin to go at Lumumba
full bore. The CIA station, led by Devlin, began to supersede the State
Department policy-making apparatus. Allen Dulles began to funnel large
amounts of money to Devlin in a mad rush to covertly get rid of Lumumba.
At the same time, Devlin began to work with the Belgians by recruiting and
paying off possible rivals to Lumumba i.e. Kasavubu and Joseph Mobutu.
This tactic proved successful. On September 5, 1960 Devlin got Kasavubu to
dismiss Lumumba as premier. But the dynamic and resourceful Lumumba got
the legislative branch of government to reinstate him. When it appeared
Lumumba would reassert himself, Dulles redoubled his efforts to have him
liquidated. (The story of these plots, with new document releases plus the
questions surrounding the mysterious death of Hammarskjold will be related
in the second part of this article.)
With a split in the government, Hammarskjold was in a difficult
position. He decided to call a special session of the UN to discuss the
matter. At around this time, presidential candidate Kennedy wired foreign
policy insider Averill Harriman a query asking him if Harriman felt
Kennedy should openly back Lumumba. Harriman advised him not to. Since he
felt that there was little the
US
could do unilaterally, he told the candidate to just stay behind the
United Nations. (Interestingly, Harriman would later switch sides and back
Tshombe and
Katanga
’s secession.) Kennedy, whose sympathies were with Lumumba, took the
advice and backed an undecided UN. In public, Eisenhower backed
Hammarskjold, but secretly the CIA had united with the Belgians to topple
Lumumba’s government, eliminate Lumumba, and break off
Katanga
. Lumumba’s chief African ally, Kwame Nkrumah of
Ghana
, made a speech at the UN in September of 1960 attacking Western policy in
the
Congo
. Kennedy now made references in his speeches to Nkrumah which—not so
subtly—underlined his split with Eisenhower over the
Congo
.
The Death of Lumumba
As of late 1960, the situation in the
Congo
was a chaotic flux. Hammarskjold’s deputy on the scene, Rajeshwar Dayal
of India, refused to recognize the Kasavubu-Mobutu regime. Dayal went
further and decided to protect Lumumba and his second in command, Antoine
Gizenga, from arrest warrants made out for them by this new government.
The American ambassador on the scene, Clare Timberlake, was now openly
supporting the pretenders, Kasavubu and Mobutu. His cables to
Washington
refer to Lumumba as a Communist with ties to
Moscow
. With Timberlake’s sympathies now clear, and the Belgians pumping in
more war supplies to
Katanga
, Lumumba’s followers decided to set up their own separatist state in
the northwest
Congo
, the
province
of
Orientale
with a capital at
Stanleyville
.
In November of 1960, Dayal rejected the Kasavubu-Mobutu government and
blamed them for playing a role in murder plots against Lumumba. Following
this declaration—and exposure of covert action—the
US
openly broke with Hammarskjold on
Congo
policy. The State Department issued a press release stating (incredibly)
that it had "every confidence in the good faith of
Belgium
." (Mahoney, p. 55) The White House further warned the UN that if
Hammarskjold tried any compromise that would restore Lumumba to power, the
U. S.
would make "drastic revision" of its
Congo
policy. As Kwitny notes, this clearly implied that the
US
would take unilateral military action to stop a return to power by Lumumba.
Dayal had tried to save Lumumba’s life against Devlin’s plots by
placing him under house arrest, surrounded by UN troops in
Leopoldville
. On November 27th, Lumumba tried to flee
Congo
territory and escape to his followers in
Stanleyville
. Devlin, working with the Belgians, blocked his escape routes. He was
captured on December 1st and returned to
Leopoldville
. (There is a famous film of this return featuring Lumumba bloody and
beaten inside a cage, being hoisted by a crane, which Timberlake tried to
suppress at the time.) Enraged, Lumumba’s followers in Stanleyville
started a civil war by invading nearby Kivu province and arresting the
governor who had been allied with the
Leopoldville
government.
At this juncture, with his followers waging civil war, the Congolese
government not recognized by the UN, and Lumumba still alive, the
possibility existed that he could return to power. On January 17th,
Lumumba was shipped to
Kasai
province which was under the control of Albert Kalonji, a hated enemy of
Lumumba. There he was killed, reportedly on orders of Katangese
authorities, probably Tshombe, but surely with the help of the CIA. As
author John Morton Blum writes in his Years of Discord, the CIA
cable traffic suggests that Dulles and Devlin feared what Kennedy would do
if he took office before Lumumba was gone (p. 23). Kwitny also notes that
the new regime may have suspected Kennedy would be less partial to them
than Eisenhower was (p. 69). He further notes that Kasavubu tried a last
minute deal to get Lumumba to take a subordinate role in the government.
Lumumba refused. He was then killed three days before JFK’s
inauguration.
Although he was murdered on January 17th, the news of his death did not
reach
Washington
until February 13, 1961.
Kennedy’s new Policy
Unaware of Lumumba’s death, Kennedy requested a full-scale policy
review on the
Congo
his first week in office. Kennedy had made an oblique reference to the
Congo
situation in his inaugural address. He had called the UN, "our last
best hope" and pledged to support "its shield of the new and the
weak". Once in office he made clear and forceful those vague
insinuations. On his own, and behind the scenes, he relayed the Russians a
message that he was ready to negotiate a truce in the
Congo
. Ambassador Timberlake got wind of this and other JFK moves and he phoned
Allen Dulles and Pentagon Chief Lyman Lemnitzer to alert them that Kennedy
was breaking with Eisenhower’s policy. Timberlake called this switch a
"sell-out" to the Russians. Upon hearing of the new policy
formation, Hammarskjold told Dayal that he should expect in short order an
organized backlash to oppose Kennedy.
On February 2nd, Kennedy approved a new
Congo
policy which was pretty much a brisk departure from the previous
administration. The new policy consisted of close cooperation with the UN
to bring all opposing armies, including the Belgians, under control. In
addition, the recommendation was to have the country neutralized and not
subject to any East-West competition. Thirdly, all political prisoners
should be freed. (Not knowing Lumumba was dead, this recommendation was
aimed at him without naming him specifically.) Fourth, the secession of
Katanga
should be opposed. To further dramatize his split with Eisenhower and
Nixon, Kennedy invited Lumumba’s staunch friend Nkrumah to
Washington
for an official visit. Even further, when Nehru of India asked Kennedy to
promise to commit US forces to the UN military effort and to use
diplomatic pressure to expel the Belgians, Kennedy agreed. But although
his policies were an improvement, Kennedy made a tactical error in keeping
Timberlake in place.
The Republican Timberlake now teamed with Devlin and both ignored the
new administration’s diplomatic thrust. They continued their efforts to
back the increasingly rightwing Kasavubu-Mobutu government with Devlin
also helping Tshombe in
Katanga
. When
Congo
government troops fired on the newly strengthened and JFK-backed UN
forces, Timberlake stepped over the line. In early March of 1961 he
ordered a
US
naval task force to float up the
Congo River
. This military deployment, with its accompanying threat of American
intervention, was not authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, let alone
Kennedy. Coupled with this was another unauthorized act by Devlin. The
CIA, through a friendly "cut-out" corporation, flew three French
jet trainers into
Katanga
. Kennedy was enraged when he heard of these acts. He apologized to
Nkrumah and recalled Timberlake. He then issued a written warning that the
prime American authority in countries abroad was the ambassador. This
included authority over the CIA station.
Enter Thomas Dodd
At this point, another figure emerged in opposition to Kennedy and his
Congo
policy. Clearly, Kennedy’s new
Congo
policy had been a break from Eisenhower’s. It ran contra to the covert
policy that Dulles and Devlin had fashioned. To replace the
Eisenhower-Nixon political line, the Belgian government, through
the offices of public relations man Michael Struelens, created a new
political counterweight to Kennedy. He was Senator Thomas Dodd of
Connecticut
. As Mahoney notes, Dodd began to schedule hearings in the senate on the
"loss" of the
Congo
to communism, a preposterous notion considering who was really running the
Congo
in 1961. Dodd also wrote to Kennedy’s United Nations ambassador Adlai
Stevenson that the State Department’s "blind ambition" to
back the UN in
Katanga
could only end in tragedy. He then released the letter to the press before
Stevenson ever got it.
One of the allies that Dodd had in his defense of the
Katanga
"freedom fighters", was the urbane, supposedly independent
journalist William F. Buckley. As Kwitny wittily notes, Buckley saw the
spirit of Edmund Burke in the face of Moise Tshombe. Dodd was a not
infrequent guest on Buckley’s television show which was then syndicated
by Metromedia. Buckley’s supposed "independence" was brought
into question two decades ago by the exposure of his employment by the
CIA. But newly declassified documents by the Assassination Records Review
Board go even further in this regard. When House Select Committee
investigator Dan Hardway was going through Howard Hunt’s Office of
Security file, he discovered an interesting vein of documents concerning
Buckley. First, Buckley was not a CIA "agent" per se. He was
actually a CIA officer who was stationed for at least a part of his
term in
Mexico City
. Second, and dependent on Buckley’s fictional "agent" status,
it appears that both Hunt and Buckley tried to disguise Buckley’s real
status to make it appear that Buckley worked for and under Hunt when it
now appears that both men were actually upper level types. Third, when
Buckley "left" the Agency to start the rightwing journal National
Review, his professional relationship with propaganda expert Hunt
continued. These documents reveal that some reviews and articles for that
journal were actually written by Hunt, e. g. a review of the book The
Invisible Government.
In other words, the CIA was using Buckley’s journal as a propaganda
outlet. This does much to explain that journal’s, and Buckley’s, stand
on many controversial issues, including the
Congo
crisis and the Kennedy assassination. It also helps to explain the
Republican William F. Buckley allying himself with Democrat Tom Dodd in
defending the
Katanga
"freedom-fighters."
The Death of Hammarskjold
In September of 1961, while trying to find a way to reintegrate
Katanga
into the
Congo
, Hammarskjold was killed in a suspicious plane accident (to be discussed
in part two of this article). At this point, with Hammarskjold gone,
Timberlake recalled, and Dodd carrying the propaganda battle to him,
Kennedy made a significant choice for his new ambassador to replace
Timberlake in the
Congo
. He chose Edmund Gullion for the job. As Mahoney writes:
Kennedy’s selection of Edmund Gullion as ambassador was of
singular consequence to
Congo
policy. In the President’s view, Gullion was sans pareil among
his
Third World
ambassadors—his best and brightest. There was no ambassador in the New
Frontier whose access to the Oval Office was more secure than his. (p.
108)
Gullion had been one of Kennedy’s early tutors on foreign policy
issues and the pair had actually first met in 1948. Later, Gullion was one
of the State Department officials Kennedy sought out in his 1951 visit to
Saigon
. He had been important in convincing Kennedy that the French position in
Vietnam
was a hopeless one. In 1954, when Kennedy began attacking the Eisenhower
administration’s policy in
Indochina
, he had drawn on Gullion as a source. The White House retaliated by
pulling Gullion off the
Vietnam
desk. As Mahoney states about the importance of Gullion’s appointment by
Kennedy:
In a very real sense, the
Congo
became a testing ground of the views shared by Kennedy and Gullion on the
purpose of American power in the Third World.… Both Kennedy and Gullion
believed that the
United States
had to have a larger purpose in the
Third World
than the containment of communism. If the
US
did not, it would fall into the trap of resisting change.... By resisting
change, the
US
would concede the strategic advantage to the
Soviet Union
. (p. 108)
What Gullion and Kennedy tried to do in the
Congo
was to neutralize the appeal of the extremes i.e. fascism and communism,
and attempt to forge a left-right ranging coalition around a broad center.
This policy, and Kennedy’s reluctance to let
Katanga
break away, was not popular with traditional American allies. When British
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan questioned Kennedy’s intransigence on
Katanga
, Kennedy wrote back:
In our own national history, our experience with non-federalism and
federalism demonstrates that if a compact of government is to endure, it
must provide the central authority with at least the power to tax, and the
exclusive power to raise armies, We could not argue with the Congolese to
the contrary. (Ibid. p. 109)
This precarious situation, with both domestic and foreign opposition
mounting against him, seemed to galvanize the usually cool and flexible
Kennedy. He went to
New York
to pay tribute to Hammarskjold’s memory. He then moved to supplement
Gullion inside the White House. George Ball was appointed as special
adviser on the
Congo
. Even in 1961, Ball had a reputation as a maverick who was strongly
opposed to
US
intervention in
Vietnam
. Ball agreed with Kennedy and Gullion that a political center had to be
found in the
Congo
. The administration concentrated their efforts on the appointment of
Cyrille Adoula as the new premier. Adoula was a moderate labor leader who,
unfortunately, had little of the dynamism and charisma of Lumumba. By the
end of 1961 he had moved into the premier’s residence in
Leopoldville
.
But there was one difference between Ball and Gullion on American Congo
policy post-Hammarskjold. Ball seemed willing to compromise on the issue
of
Katanga
’s autonomy; perhaps even willing to negotiate it away for a withdrawal
of all mercenary forces from the
Congo
. But it seems that Kennedy’s visit to
New York
for Hammarskjold’s wake at the UN stiffened his resolve on this issue.
Before the General Assembly, Kennedy had stated: "Let us here resolve
that Dag Hammarskjold did not live or die in vain." He then backed
this up by allowing Stevenson to vote for a UN resolution allowing the use
of force to deport the mercenaries and advisory personnel out of
Katanga
.
Dodd in
Katanga
One week after the November 24, 1961 UN resolution, Senator Dodd was in
Katanga
. Moise Tshombe had already labeled the resolution an act of war and had
announced he would fight the deployment of the UN force. Dodd was at
Tshombe’s side when he toured the main mining centers of
Katanga
attempting to drum up support for the anticipated conflict. Dodd later did
all he could to intimidate Kennedy into withdrawing U. S. support for the
mission by telling him that Tshombe’s tour had elicited a
"tremendous" popular response amid "delirious throngs"
of both blacks and whites.
While in
Katanga
, a curious event occurred in the presence of Thomas Dodd. Dodd was being
feted at a private home in Elizabethville when Katangese paratroopers
broke into the house. They took hostage two UN representatives, Brian
Urquhart and George Ivan Smith. A State Department employee, Lewis
Hoffacker, bravely attempted to stop the kidnapping and managed to get
Smith away from his abductors. But he couldn’t get Urquhart away.
Under heavy threats from the UN military commander, Colonel S. S. Maitro,
Urquhart was released shortly afterwards, albeit in badly beaten
condition. The event is curious because it poses some lingering questions:
1) How did the paratroopers know about the location of the private party?
2) Dodd was not molested. Were the soldiers advised not to touch him? 3)
Unlike Hoffacker, it does not appear that Dodd used his influence to
intervene in the abduction. If so, why not?
Whatever the odd circumstances surrounding this event, and whatever
Dodd’s actions in it were, it proved to be the causus belli in
the war for
Katanga
. Shortly afterwards, Katangese tanks blockaded the road from the
UN headquarters to the airport. The UN troops attacked the roadblocks and
heavy fighting now broke out. Supplemented by
U. S.
transport planes, the UN effort was logistically sound. So the Katangese
had to resort to terrorist tactics to stay even. They used civilian homes,
churches, and even hospitals to direct fire at UN troops. The troops had
no alternative except to shell these targets. Kennedy and the UN began to
take a lot of criticism for the civilian casualties. But when the
new Secretary General, U Thant, began to waiver ever so slightly, Kennedy
gave him the green light to expand the war without consulting with the
other Western allies who were not directly involved with the military
effort. When Secretary of State Dean Rusk relayed the allies’ complaints
over the expansion of the war, Kennedy replied that "some of our
friends should use their influence on Tshombe." (Mahoney p. 117) He
further told Rusk that there would be no consideration of a cease-fire
until Tshombe agreed to talk to Adoula.
The Propaganda War over
Katanga
Once the shooting started in earnest, the propaganda war also began to
heat up. A full page ad appeared in the New York Times. It
compared
Katanga
to the Soviet client state of
Hungary
in its 1956 crisis. One of the signers for the ad was Buckley’s young
conservative group, the Young Americans for Freedom. Time magazine
placed Tshombe on its cover. Kennedy fought back by getting
Eisenhower to issue a statement in support of his policies. He also
sent an emissary to break up any attempted alliance between Dodd and
southern senator Richard Russell of
Georgia
. When the same State Department officer tried to get in contact with
Nixon, the former vice-president told him not to waste his time.
In December of 1961, Tshombe sent word to Kennedy that he wanted to
negotiate. Tshombe was in a weak position as fighter jets were
strafing his palace. Kennedy sent Gullion and former UN official
Ralph Bunche to mediate the talks. The session did not go well. Tshombe,
in the middle of the talks wished to leave to consult with other
dignitaries from his government. Gullion would not allow it but he did get
Tshombe to recognize the
Congo
’s constitution and place his soldiers under Kasavubu’s authority. He
would then be allowed to run for the Congolese parliament. This would have
been enough for Ball to agree to a cease-fire. But immediately upon his
return to
Katanga
, Tshombe denounced the bargain and the violence was renewed.
Tshombe’s ploy almost worked. Adoula’s leftist followers
lost faith in him and began to leave for
Stanleyville
.
Britain
and
France
defected from the mission. Congress did not want to refinance the UN
effort to put down the revolt. Even Ball advised Kennedy to cut his losses
and leave. It appears that it was Gullion who decided to press on in the
effort to break
Katanga
and it seems it was his advice, and his special relationship with Kennedy,
that kept the president from losing faith.
Kennedy’s Economic Warfare
In 1962, Kennedy decided to hit Tshombe where it hurt. A joint
British-Belgian company named Union Miniere had been bankrolling the
Katangan war effort in return for mineral rights there. Kennedy, through
some British contacts now attempted to get the company to stop paying
those fees to Tshombe. Union Miniere refused. They replied that they had
billions wrapped up in
Katanga
and could not afford to risk the loss. Kennedy now went through the
American ambassador in
England
to the Belgian representatives of the company. He told them that unless a
good part of the stipend to
Katanga
was curtailed, he would unleash a terrific attack on
Katanga
and then give all of Union Miniere over to Adoula when the
Congo
was reunified. This did the trick. The revenues going to Tshombe were
significantly curtailed. The cutback came at an important time since
Tshombe had already run up a multimillion dollar debt in resisting the UN
effort.
To counter these moves, Dodd forged an alliance with Senator Barry
Goldwater, the ultraconservative senator from
Arizona
. Their clear message to Tshombe was that he should hold out until the
1964 presidential election in which Goldwater had already
expressed an interest in running. Kennedy countered by bringing
Adoula to both
New York
and
Washington
. In his speech at the United Nations, Adoula paid tribute to "our
national hero Patrice Lumumba" and also criticized
Belgium
. (Mahoney, p. 134) At his visit to the White House, Adoula pointed to a
portrait of Andrew Jackson and told Kennedy how much he admired Old
Hickory. Remembering his history, and clearly referring to Tshombe and
Katanga
, Kennedy made a toast to Adoula quoting
Jackson
’s famous reply to secessionist John Calhoun, "Our federal union;
it must be preserved." Two months after the visit, Kennedy wrote a
letter to Adoula:
These three months have been trying for us. I am searching for an
agreement to end the armaments race and you are searching for an agreement
to reunite your country.... You may be assured that we will spare no
effort in bringing about this end. (Ibid p. 135)
The supporters of Tshombe needed to retaliate for the success of the
Adoula visit. Tshombe’s press agent, Michel Struelens arranged for him
to appear on a segment of Meet the Press, a rally at
Madison
Square
Garden
, and a press conference at the National Press Club in
Washington
. Dodd invited Tshombe to testify before his subcommittee. In the face of
all this advance fanfare, Kennedy made it clear that he was considering
not granting Tshombe a visa into the country. Gullion and Stevenson argued
that it was not a legal necessity since Tshombe was not a real
representative of the Congolese government. Kennedy’s legal adviser,
Abram Chayes argued against the denial. In the end, Kennedy again sided
with Gullion and denied the visa. Again, Kennedy took a barrage of
criticism for this maneuver. His father’s old friend, Arthur Krock,
accused the administration of evasion and of denying Tshombe his right to
be heard. The John Birch Society now formally entered on
Katanga
’s side. Even Herbert Hoover lent his name to pro-Katanga statements.
The Last Round
Denied access to the
US
, Tshombe now set about rearming his military. Kennedy decided to push for
economic sanctions followed by a blockade. But Kennedy tried one last time
to open negotiations with Tshombe. But by October of 1962 these had proved
futile. Moreover, Adoula misinterpreted Kennedy’s negotiation attempt as
backing out on his commitment to the
Congo
. Adoula now turned to the UN and the Russians in hopes of one last
knockout blow against Tshombe. On November 2, 1962 the first clashes
began. Gullion worked overtime to get Adoula to stop courting the
Russians. Kennedy then wrote to Rusk and Ball that he wanted both men to
come to a conclusion on what the American role should be in the renewed
hostilities. Finally, Ball decided on the use of force, even if it meant
the direct use of American air power.
On December 24, 1962 Katangese forces fired on a UN helicopter and
outpost. The UN now moved with a combined land and air strike code-named
Operation Grand Slam. By December 29th, Elisabethville, the capital of
Katanga
was under heavy siege. By the second week of January, the UN advance was
proceeding on all fronts. By January 22nd,
Katanga
’s secession effort was over. As Stevenson said later, it was the UN’s
finest hour. Kennedy wrote congratulatory notes to all those involved. To
George McGhee, special State Department emissary on the
Congo
, Kennedy wrote that the task had been "extraordinarily
difficult" but now they were entitled to "a little sense of
pride." (Mahoney p. 156)
The
Congo
: 1963
A few months after
Katanga
had capitulated and Tshombe had fled to
Rhodesia
, the UN, because of the huge expense of the expedition, was ready to
withdraw. Kennedy urged U Thant to keep the force in the
Congo
; he even offered to finance part of the mission if it was held over. But
the UN wanted its forces out, even though it looked like Adoula’s
position was weakening and the Congolese army itself was not stable or
reliable. Kennedy had a difficult choice: he could quit the
Congo
along with the UN, or the
US
could try to stay and assume some responsibility for the mess it was at
least partly responsible for. Kennedy chose to stay. But not before he did
all he could to try to keep the UN there longer. This even included going
to the UN himself on September 20, 1963 to address the General Assembly on
this very subject:
a project undertaken in the excitement of crisis begins to lose its
appeal as the problems drag on and the bills pile up.... I believe that
this Assembly should do whatever is necessary to preserve the gains
already made and to protect the new nation in its struggle for progress.
Let us complete what we have started.
The personal appearance and the speech were enough to turn the UN
around. The body voted to keep the peacekeeping mission in place another
year. Adoula wired Kennedy his sincere gratitude.
But in October and November things began to collapse. President
Kasavubu decided to disband Parliament and this ignited an already
simmering leftist rebellion. Gizenga’s followers called for strikes and
army mutinies. They tried to assassinate Mobutu. Kennedy followed the new
crisis and wanted a retraining of the Congolese army in order to avert a
new civil war. But there was a difference between what Kennedy wanted and
what the Pentagon delivered. By October of 1963, Mobutu had already become
a favorite of the
Fort
Benning
crowd in the Army, the group that would eventually charter at that
military site the School of the
Americas
, an institution that would spawn a whole generation of rightwing
Third World
dictators. Kennedy had wanted the retraining carried out by Colonel
Michael Greene, an African expert who wanted the retraining to be
implemented not just by the
US
but by five other western countries. Kennedy also agreed with U Thant that
there should be African representation in the leadership of that program.
Yet Mobutu, with the backing of his Pentagon allies, including Army Chief
Earle Wheeler, managed to resist both of these White House wishes. In
November, Kennedy ordered a progress report on the retraining
issue. The Pentagon had done little and blamed the paltry effort on the
UN.
1964: LBJ reverses Kennedy’s policies
In 1964, the leftist rebellion picked up strength and began taking
whole provinces. President Johnson and National Security Adviser McGeorge
Bundy decided that a weakened Adoula had to be strengthened with a show of
American help. The CIA sent Cuban exile pilots to fly sorties against the
rebels. When the UN finally withdrew, the
US
now became an ally of
Belgium
and intervened with arms, airplanes and advisors. Incredibly, as Jonathan
Kwitny notes, Mobutu now invited Tshombe back into the
Congo
government (p. 79). Further, Tshombe now blamed the revolts on
China
! To quote Kwitny:
In a move suspiciously reminiscent of a standard US intelligence agency
ploy, Tshombe produced what he said were some captured military documents,
and a Chinese defector who announced that China was attempting to take
over the Congo as part of a plot to conquer all of Africa. (p. 79)
With this, the Mobutu-Tshombe alliance now lost all semblance of a
Gullion-Kennedy styled moderate coalition. Now, rightwing South Africans
and Rhodesians were allowed to join the Congolese army in the war
on the "Chinese-inspired left". Further, as Kwitny also notes,
this dramatic reversal was done under the auspices of the United States.
The UN had now been dropped as a stabilizing, multilateral force. This
meant, of course, that the tilt to the right would now go unabated. By
1965, the new American and Belgian supplemented force had put down the
major part of the rebellion. General Mobutu then got rid of President
Kasavubu. (Adoula had already been replaced by Tshombe.) In 1966, Mobutu
installed himself as military dictator. The rest is a familiar story.
Mobutu, like Suharto in Indonesia, allowed his country to be opened up to
loads of outside investment. The riches of the Congo, like those of
Indonesia, were mined by huge western corporations, whose owners and
officers grew wealthy while Mobutu’s subjects were mired in abject
poverty. As with the economy, Mobutu stifled political dissent as well.
And, like Suharto, Mobutu grew into one of the richest men in the world.
His holdings in Belgian real estate alone topped one hundred million
dollars (Kwitny p. 87). Just one Swiss bank account was worth $143
million. And like Suharto, Mobutu fell after three decades of a corrupt
dictatorship, leaving most of his citizenry in an anarchic, post-colonial
state similar to where they had been at the beginning of his reign.
The policies before and after Kennedy’s in this tale help explain
much about the chaos and confusion going on in Congo today. It’s a story
you won’t read in many papers or see on television. In itself,
the events which occurred there from 1959 to 1966 form a milestone. As
Kwitny writes:
The democratic experiment had no example in Africa, and badly needed
one. So perhaps the sorriest, and the most unnecessary, blight on the
record of this new era, is that the precedent for it all, the very first
coup in post-colonial African history, the very first political
assassination, and the very first junking of a legally constituted
democratic system, all took place in a major country, and were all
instigated by the United States of America. (p. 75)
Whatever Kennedy’s failures as a tactician, whatever his
equivocations were on taking quick and decisive action, he realized that
nationalism would have to have its place in American foreign policy. As
Mahoney concludes, Kennedy did what no other president before or after him
had done. He established "a common ground between African ideals and
American self-interest in the midst of the Cold War." (p. 248) As
Kwitny notes, this was the basis of Lumumba’s (undying) appeal:
Lumumba is a hero to Africans not because he promoted socialism, which
he didn’t, but because he resisted foreign intervention. He stood up to
outsiders, if only by getting himself killed. Most Africans ... would say
that the principal outsider he stood up to was the United States. (p. 72)
Mahoney relates an anecdote which helps explain why Kennedy understood
the appeal of Lumumba. It has little to do with his 1951 trip to Saigon,
although it may help explain why he sought out the people he did while he
was there. The vignette illuminates a lot about the Kennedy mystery, i.e.
why the son of a multimillionaire ended up being on the side of African
black nationalism abroad and integration at home. In January of 1962, in
the midst of the Congo crisis, Kennedy was talking to Nehru of India when,
presumably, the great Indian leader was lecturing him on the subject of
colonialism. Kennedy replied:
I grew up in a community where the people were hardly a generation away
from colonial rule. And I can claim the company of many historians in
saying that the colonialism to which my immediate ancestors were subject
was more sterile, oppressive and even cruel than that of India.
Kennedy, of course, was referring to the conquest and subjugation of
Ireland by the British. A colonization that has now lasted for 800 years.
Clearly, Kennedy never forgot where his family came from.
It is also clear that in his brief intervention in the politics of the
newly liberated continent of Africa, its new progressive leaders realized
Kennedy’s sensitivity to their painful and precarious position. They
also seem to have realized what Kennedy the politician was up against, and
what may have caused his death.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana—a clear leftist who Kennedy had backed against
heavy odds and who was perhaps the greatest of that period’s African
leaders—was overcome with sadness upon hearing of the young American
president’s death. In a speech at that time, he told his citizens that
Africa would forever remember Kennedy’s great sensitivity to that
continent’s special problems. (Mahoney, p. 235) Later, when the American
ambassador handed Nkrumah a copy of the Warren Report, he thumbed through
it and pointed to the name of Allen Dulles as a member of the Warren
Commission. He handed it back abruptly, muttering simply,
"Whitewash."
Books and Resources from this article.
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these links when you make a purchase helps us at CTKA.
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The Assassinations: Probe Magazine
on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X [Paperback]
James DiEugenio (Editor), Lisa Pease (Editor), Judge Joe Brown (Author),
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Additional link for discount and more
information.
CTKA Recommends:
Dissenting Views by
Joseph E. Green
Now, available in e-Book format, the 1999 groundbreaking
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