become fully evident.41 The New York Times addressed the question of the coalitions ideology as follows:

There is evidence that most supporters of the Stanleyville regime have no ideological commitment but are mainly Congolese who are disillusioned with the corruption and irresponsibility that has characterized the Leopoldville regimes. The rebel leaders have received advice and money from Communists but few if any of the rebels consider themselves Communists. It is probable that few have heard of Karl Marx.42

In the coalition-controlled area of Stanleyville, between 2,000 and 3,000 white foreign ers found themselves trapped by the war. One of the rebel leaders, Christopher Gbenye, conditioned their safe release upon various military concessions, principally a cessation of American bombing, but negotiations failed to produce an agreement.45

Instead, on 24 November 1964, the United States and Belgium staged a dramatic rescue mission in which over 500 Belgian paratroopers were dropped at dawn into Stanleyville from American transport planes. Much chaos followed, and the reports are conflicting, but it appears that more than 2,000 hostages were rescued, in the process of which the fleeing rebels massacred about 100 others and dragged several hundred more into the bush.

American and Belgian officials took great pains to emphasize the purely humanitarian purpose of the mission. However, the rescuers simultaneously executed a key military maneuver when they seized the strategic points of the city and coordinated their operation with the advancing columns of Tshombes mercenary army that was moving swiftly towards the city. 44 Moreover, in the process of the rescue, the rescuers killed dozens of rebels and did nothing to curtail Tshombes troops when they reached Stanleyville and began an orgy of looting and killing .45

Tshombe may have provided a reminder of the larger-than-humanitarian stake at hand in the Congo when, in the flush of the days success, he talked openly with a correspondent of The Times of London who reported that Tshombe was confident that the fall of Stanleyville would give a new impetus to the economy and encourage investors. It would reinforce a big development plan announced this morning in collaboration with the United States, Britain and West Germany. 46

The collapse of the rebels stronghold in Stanleyville marked the beginning of the end for their cause. By spring 1965 their fortune was in sharp decline, and the arrival of about 100 Cuban revolutionaries, amongst whom was Che Guevara himself, had no known effect upon the course of events. Several months later, Guevara returned to Cuba in disgust at the low level of revolutionary zeal exhibited by the Congolese guerrillas and the local populace.47

The concluding tune for the musical chairs was played in November, when Joseph Mobutu overthrew Tshombe and Kasavubu. Mobutu, later to adopt the name Mobutu Sese Seko, has ruled with a heavy dictatorial hand ever since.

In the final analysis, it mattered precious little to the interests of the US government whether the forces it had helped defeat were really communist or not, by whatever definition. The working premise was that there was now fixed in power, over a more-or-less unified Congo, a man who would be more co-operative with the CIA in its African adventures and with Western capital, and less accessible to the socialist bloc, than the likes of Lumumba, Gizenga, et al. would have been. The CIA has chalked this one up as a victory.

What the people of the Congo (now Zaire) won is not clear. Under Mobutu, terror and repression became facts of daily life, civil liberties and other human rights were markedly absent. The country remains one of the poorest to be found anywhere despite its vast natural riches. Mobutu, however, is reputed to be one of the richest heads of state in the world. (See Zaire chapter)

William Atwood, US Ambassador to Kenya in 1964-65, who played a part in the hostage negotiations, also saw the US role in the Congo in a positive light. Bemoaning African suspicions toward American motives there, he wrote: It was hard to convince people that we had provided the Congo with $420 million in aid since independence just to prevent chaos; they couldnt believe any country could be that altruistic. 48

Atwoods comment is easier to understand when one realizes that the word chaos has long been used by American officials to refer to a situation over which the United States has insufficient control to assure that someone distinctly pro-Western will remain in, or come to, power. When President Eisenhower, for example, decided to send troops into Lebanon in 1958, he saw it as a move, he later wrote, to stop the trend towards chaos .49

27. Brazil 1961-1964

Introducing the marvelous new world of Death Squads

When the leading members of the US diplomatic mission in Brazil held a meeting one day in March 1964, they arrived at the consensus that President Joao Goularts support of social and economic reforms was a contrived and thinly veiled vehicle to seize dictatorial power.1

The American ambassador, Lincoln Gordon, informed the State Department that a desperate lunge [by Goulart] for totalitarian power might be made at any time. 2

The Brazilian army chief of staff, General Humberto de Alencar Castelo (or Castello) Branco, provided the American Embassy with a memorandum in which he stated his fear that Goulart was seeking to close down Congress and initiate a dictatorship.3

Within a week after the expression of these concerns, the Brazilian military, with Castelo Branco at its head, overthrew the constitutional government of President Goulart, the culmination of a conspiratorial process in which the American Embassy had been intimately involved. The military then proceeded to install and maintain for two decades one of the most brutal dictatorships in all of South America.

What are we to make of all this? The idea that men of rank and power lie to the public is commonplace, not worthy of debate. But do they as readily lie to each other? Is their need to rationalize their misdeeds so great that they provide each other a moral shoulder to lean on? Men use thoughts only to justify their injustices, wrote Voltaire, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

The actual American motivation in supporting the coup was something rather less heroic than preserving democracy, even mundane as such matters go. American

opposition to Goulart, who became president in 1961, rested upon a familiar catalogue of complaints:

US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara questioned Brazils neutral stand in foreign policy. The Brazilian ambassador in Washington, Roberto Campos, responded that neutralism was an inadequate term and explained that what was involved was really a deep urge of the Brazilian people to assert their personality in world affairs. 4

American officials did not approve of some of the members of Goularts cabinet, and said so. Ambassador Campos pointed out to them that it was quite inappropriate for the United States to try to influence the composition of the cabinet. 5

Attorney-General Robert Kennedy met with Goulart and expressed his uneasiness about the Brazilian president allowing communists to hold positions in government agencies. (Bobby was presumably acting on the old and very deep-seated American belief that once you welcome one or two communists into your parlor, they take over the whole house and sign the deed over to Moscow.) Goulart did not see this as a danger. He replied that he was in full control of the situation, later remarking to Campos that it was as if he had been told that he had no capacity for judging the men around him.6

The American Defense Attache in Brazil, Col. Vernon Walters, reported that Goulart showed favoritism towards ultra-nationalist military officers over pro-U.S. officers. Goulart saw it as promoting those officers who appeared to be most loyal to his government. He was, as it happens, very concerned about American-encouraged military coups and said so explicitly to President Kennedy.7

Goulart considered purchasing helicopters from Poland because Washington was delaying on his request to purchase them from the United States. Ambassador Gordon told him that he could not expect the United States to like it .8

The Goulart administration, moreover, passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit out of the country, and a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized. Compensation for the takeover was slow in coming because of Brazils precarious financial position, but these were the only significant actions taken against US corporate interests.

Inextricably woven into all these complaints, yet at the same time standing apart, was Washingtons dismay with Brazils drift to the left ... the communist/leftist influence in the labor movement ... leftist infiltration wherever one looked ... anti-Americanism among students and others (the American Consul General in Sao Paulo suggested to the State Department that the United States found competing student organizations ) ... the general erosion of U.S. influence and the power of people and groups friendly to the United States 9... one might go so far as to suggest that Washington officials felt unloved, were it not for the fact that the coup, as they well knew from much past experience, could result only in intensified anti-Americanism all over Latin America.

Goularts predecessor, Janio da Silva Quadros, had also irritated Washington. Why should the United States trade with Russia and her satellites but insist that Brazil trade only with the United States? he asked, and proceeded to negotiate with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries to (reestablish diplomatic and commercial relations. He was, in a word, independent.10

Quadros was also more-or-less a conservative who clamped down hard on unions, sent federal troops to the northeast hunger dens to squash protest, and jailed disobedient students.11 But the American ambassador at the time, John Moors Cabot, saw fit to question Brazils taking part in a meeting of uncommitted (non-aligned! nations. Brazil has signed various obligations with the United States and American nations, he