campaign being facilitated by data from the CIAs Subversive Control Watch List. (Standard at many Agency stations, this list would include not only the subjects name, but the names and addresses of his relatives and friends and the places he frequented- anything to aid in tracking him down when the time came).

Civil liberties were suspended; the 1964 elections canceled; another tale told many times in Latin America.

And during these three years, what were the American people told about this witch brew of covert actions carried out, supposedly, in their name? Very little, if anything, if the New York Times is any index. Not once during the entire period, up to and including the coup, was any indication given in any article or editorial on Ecuador that the CIA or any other arm of the US government had played any role whatever in any event which had occurred in that country. This is the way the writings read even if one looks back at them with the advantage of knowledge and hindsight and reads between the lines.

There is a solitary exception. Following the coup, we find a tiny announcement on the very bottom of page 20 that Havana radio had accused the United States of instigating the military takeover.2 The Cuban government had been making public charges about American activities in Ecuador regularly, but this was the first one to make the New York Times. The question must be asked: Why were these charges deemed unworthy of reporting or comment, let alone investigation?

26. The Congo 1960-1964

The assassination of Patrice Lumumba

Within days of its independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960, the land long known as the Belgian Congo, and later as Zaire, was engulfed in strife and chaos as multiple individuals, tribes, and political groups struggled for dominance or independence. For the next several years the world press chronicled the train of Congolese governments, the endless confusion of personalities and conspiracies, exotic place names like Stanleyville and Leopoldville, shocking stories of European hostages and white mercenaries, the brutality and the violence from all quarters with its racist overtones.

Into this disorder the Western powers were naturally drawn, principally Belgium to protect its vast mineral investments, and the United States, mindful of the fabulous wealth as well, and obsessed, as usual, with fighting communism .

Successive American administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, looking through cold-war binoculars perceived an East-West battleground. The CIA station in the Congo cabled Washington in August that Embassy and station believe Congo experiencing classic communist effort [to] takeover government. CIA Director Allen Dulles warned of a communist takeover of the Congo with disastrous consequences ... for the interests of the free world . At the same time, Dulles authorized a crash-program fund of up to $100,000 to replace the existing government of Patrice Lumumba with a pro-western group .1

Its not known what criteria the CIA applied to determine that Lumumbas government was going communist, but we do know how the Washington Post arrived at the same conclusion:

Western diplomats see ... the part [of the Congo] controlled by volatile Premier Patrice Lumumba sliding slowly but surely into the Communist bloc. ... Apart from the fevered activity of Communist bloc nations here, the pattern of events is becoming apparent to students of Communist policy. Premier Lumumbas startling changes of position, his open challenge of the United Nations and Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, his constant agitation of the largely illiterate Congolese can be explained in no other way, veteran observers say.2

Years later, Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon told a Senate investigating committee (the Church committee) that the National Security Council and President Eisenhower had believed in 1960 that Lumumba was a very difficult if not impossible person to deal with, and was dangerous to the peace and safety of the world. 3 This statement moved author Jonathan Kwitny to observe:

How far beyond the dreams of a barefoot jungle postal clerk in 1956, that in a few short years he would be dangerous to the peace and safety of the world! The perception seems insane, particularly coming from the National Security Council, which really does have the power to end all human life within hours.4

Patrice Lumumba became the Congos first prime minister after his party received a plurality of the votes in national elections. He called for the nations economic as well as political liberation and did not shy away from contact with socialist countries. At the Independence Day ceremonies he probably managed to alienate all the attending foreign dignitaries with his speech, which read in part:

Our lot was eighty years of colonial rule ... We have known tiring labor exacted in exchange for salary which did not allow us to satisfy out hunger ... We have known ironies, insults, blows which we had to endure morning, noon, and night because we were Negroes ... We have known that the law was never the same depending on whether it concerned a white or a Negro ... We have known the atrocious sufferings of those banished for political opinions or religious beliefs ... We have known that there were magnificent houses for the whites in the cities and tumble-down straw huts for the Negroes.5

In 1960, it must be borne in mind, this was indeed radical and inflammatory language in such a setting.

On 11 July, the province of Katanga-home to the bulk of the Congos copper, cobalt, uranium, gold, and other mineral wealth-announced that it was seceding. Belgium, the principal owner of this fabulous wealth, never had any intention of giving up real control of the country, and it now supported the move for Katangas independence, perceiving the advantage of having its investments housed in their own little country, not accountable to nor paying taxes to the central government in Leopoldville. Katanga, moreover, was led by Moise Tshombe, a man eminently accommodating to, and respectful of, whites and their investments.

The Eisenhower administration supported the Belgian military intervention on behalf of Katanga; indeed, the American embassy had previously requested such intervention. Influencing this policy, in addition to Washingtons ideological aversion to Lumumba, was the fact that a number of prominent administration officials had financial ties to the Katanga wealth.6

The Belgian intervention, which was a very violent one, was denounced harshly by the Soviet Union, as well as many countries from the Afro-Asian bloc, leading the UN Security Council on the 14th to authorize the withdrawal of Belgian troops and their replacement by a United Nations military force. This was fine with the United States,

for the UN under Dag Hammarskjold was very closely allied to Washington. The UN officials who led the Congo operation were Americans, in secret collaboration with the State Department, and in exclusion of the Soviet bloc; the latters citizens who worked at the UN Secretariat were kept from seeing the Congo cables. Hammarskjold himself was quite hostile toward Lumumba.7

The UN force entered Katanga province and replaced the Belgian troops, but made no effort to end the secession. Unable to put down this uprising on his own, as well as one in another province, Lumumba had appealed to the United Nations as well as the United States to supply him with transport for his troops. When they both refused, he turned to the Soviet Union for aid, and received it,8 though military success still eluded him.

The Congo was in turmoil in many places. In the midst of it, on 5 September, President Joseph Kasavubu suddenly dismissed Lumumba as prime minister-a step of very debatable legality, taken with much American encouragement and assistance, as Kasavubu sat at the feet of the CIA men .9 The action was taken, said the Church committee later, despite the strong support for Lumumba in the Congolese Parliament. 10

During the early 1960s, according to a highly-placed CIA executive, the Agency regularly bought and sold Congolese politicians .11 US diplomatic sources subsequently confirmed that Kasavubu was amongst the recipients.12

Hammarskjold publicly endorsed the dismissal before the Security Council, and when Lumumba tried to broadcast his case to the Congolese people, UN forces closed the radio station. Instead, he appeared before the legislature, and by dint of his formidable powers of speech, both houses of Parliament voted to reaffirm him as prime minister. But he could taste the fruits of his victory for only a few days, for on the 14th, army strongman Joseph Mobutu took power in a military coup designed by the United States.

Even during this period, with Lumumba not really in power, CIA and high Administration officials continued to view him as a threat ... his talents and dynamism appear [to be the] overriding factor in reestablishing his position each time it seems half lost ... Lumumba was a spellbinding orator with the ability to stir masses of people to action ... if he ... started to talk to a battalion of the Congolese Army he probably would have had them in the palm of his hand in five minutes ...13

In late September, the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo carrying lethal biological material (a virus) specifically intended for use in Lumumbas assassination. The virus, which was supposed to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the Congo area of Africa, was transported via diplomatic pouch.14

In 1975, the Church committee went on record with the conclusion that Allen Dulles had ordered Lumumbas assassination as an urgent and prime objective (Dulless words).15 After hearing the testimony of several officials who believed that the order to kill the African leader had emanated originally from President Eisenhower, the committee decided that there was a reasonable inference that this was indeed the case.16

As matters evolved in the Congo, the virus was never used, for the CIAs Congo station was unable to come up with a secure enough agent with the right access to Lumumba before the potency of the biological material was no longer reliable.7

The Church committee observed, however, that the CIA station in Leopoldville

continued to maintain close contact with Congolese who expressed a desire to assassinate Lumumba. CIA officers encouraged and offered to aid these Congolese