Introduction: Like much of the African continent, Congo has experienced a harsh colonial history.
After Belgium's independence, its backwardness followed a similar trend in its continental neighbors – continued foreign intervention.
At first, the reasons for this lasting effect often revolved around economic risk-taking. Belgium and Western countries benefit from Congo's rich mining operations. In addition, foreign influence has grown through Congo's central location, serving as a barometer of social movements across the continent.
However, a man named Patrice Lumumba led the country's struggle for independence, starting as the head of the local anti-colonial movement and eventually growing to become the first democratically elected prime minister.
In the early 1960s, much of U.S. foreign policy could be viewed through the lens of the Cold War. Congo's independence also proved to be the prototype of this diplomatic thinking, with Lumumba as a pawn.
But the United States ultimately decided that the pawn must be removed from the board by any means necessary — even assassination.
With the onset of the post-independence crisis, the United States presented itself as a powerful player in a way not yet seen on the European continent.
America's misunderstanding of the so-called "Congo crisis" has contributed to a worldview, policy narrative, and operational reality that the death of a Congolese political leader is the most important domino in U.S. control of the Congo – or at least the lack of Soviet control.
On a broader level, the Congolese crisis is characterized by a conflict of resources and the formation of a new political identity for Congo's new ruling class.
While resource-driven separatist movements in Katanga and South Kasai provinces exacerbated political divisions, foreign influences from Belgium, the United Nations, the United States, and the Soviet Union proved to be a preventative factor for full political emancipation in a post-colonial climate.
While the U.S.-orchestrated and Katanga-orchestrated Lumumba assassination removed a nationalist leader with ties to the Soviet Union from Congolese political space, this tactic did not address the worsening of Congolese actor overlap and separatist disintegration.
So to delve into the U.S. position on the Congo crisis, we must first understand the framework of covert operations and the political tools in the U.S. foreign policy arsenal.
First, the background of the Congolese crisis
With the election of Patrice Lumumba in 1960, the new leader was more inclined to communism than capitalism.
His unbridled approach to radical self-determination led to a strong distrust of the United States and immediately associated him with the Soviet Union.
When he was killed by a separatist group with the tacit approval of the United States, rumors about the level of activity in the West, especially the CIA, surged.
The Congo crisis was a confluence of many things, separatist movements, nationalist political struggles, and multifaceted competition, with a lot of cash flow and deaths, which eventually led to dictatorship.
So, what exactly is the problem that the United States is trying to "solve", and how will the assassination of Lumumba achieve this goal?
When the Cold War first began, enthusiasm for fighting communism in the Congo grew.
The Eisenhower administration's top intelligence and foreign policy-making level, headed by field chief Larry Devlin, established views, policies, and actions based on a carefully manipulated 1960 account of Lumumba and Congolese affairs.
Because of Lumumba's relevance at the beginning of the crisis, the Eisenhower administration firmly believed that leadership in the Global South was through specific people rather than through social movements.
The CIA's field chiefs saw Lumumba as a key that, if removed, could prevent the Soviet Union from entering Congo.
But at what cost? According to declassified cables from the station chief to the CIA director in August 1960, perhaps the United States was not so sure of itself at the time.
Lumumba's eventual alliance with the Soviet Union did create a dynamic that represented such a key, especially in other Cold War tensions where Fidel Castro gained power in Cuba.
In order to understand the Congolese crisis and how Lumumba was killed by the Katanga authorities, one must explore the politics of the separatist movement in the country.
According to one scholar, the movement's inherent principle is to consolidate Katanga's resource capital in order to maximize its own political capital.
However, international alarmed by Belgian military protection of mining in the province, the United Nations sent peacekeepers to withdraw all Belgian troops from Congo.
While the UN invasion is not the focus, it is worth noting that the nuance of removing Belgian troops in the UN Charter rather than stopping the separatist movement itself poses a new problem for Lumumba – a new leader seeking Congolese unity.
Therefore, he turned to the United States in July 1960 and was rejected. Shortly thereafter, he turned to the Soviet Union, setting off a series of frenzied events that led to a U.S. plot to oust him from power.
The eventual assassination and a series of catastrophic mistakes resulting from the CIA's intervention will also haunt Congo for decades.
After Lumumba's death, and after the United Nations finally put an end to Katangan hopes for comprehensive political and economic emancipation, Congolese puppet President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Chief of Staff Joseph Mobutu insisted on being perennial political participants.
In addition, the CIA-led U.S. foreign policy establishment is involved. Thus, after Lumumba was out, the United States provided weapons, dollars and political polish to the Chong Bei regime.
Nevertheless, Lumumba's ideal of self-determination remained.
Once the Lumumba rebels took over large swathes of the country, including Stanleyville, during the 1964 Simba rebellion, U.S. and U.N. influence in the Congo would grow.
Since the rebellion focused on expressing dissatisfaction with the central Congolese government for squandering the opportunity to reform governance structures after gaining independence, much of the strategic vision would have been lost without Lumumba.
As a result, rebellions like those in Stanleyville became more widespread and violent. Lumumba-thinking rebels project the government's incompetence onto foreign interventionists, especially any Americans or Belgians they can find.
They took hostages to demonstrate their power and focused on the communist leanings and populist message of the Second Revolution to completely free the country from kleptocracy.
Due to Western efforts to rescue the hostages, the Soviet Union called the intervention a secret attempt to "save the Chong Bei regime and suppress the national liberation struggle," citing the example of "Belgian, American, and British armed interference in Congolese internal affairs."
As a result, the repression of the liberation struggle led to an increasingly close link between Lumumba's ideology and Soviet ideology.
This U.S.-led crackdown did provide chips for Chong Bo, but it also provided chips for his chief of staff, Army General Mobutu, to come to power.
Once the latter consolidated his brand of anti-communist politics, Soviet influence diminished compared to the strategic gains of America's alliance with Mobutu.
In the midst of this capricious crisis, Mobutu knows all too well how careful choice of anti-communist rhetoric can create a close relationship with the United States and its wallets. During the Congo crisis, he bought time, gaining permanent relevance every year in his own way.
After the second coup in 1965, he consolidated power by "taking the page from Machiavelli," suppressing critics and limiting the scope of his control over fewer provincial government outposts.
Previously, when he was only the head of the military, it was in his best interest to mediate civil-military relations. Later as Congolese leader, "he found fellow civilian leaders redundant and ensured dictatorship."
Before discussing how the CIA influenced the fate of Lumumba during the Cold War, one should consider how the U.S. foreign policy apparatus was structured at the time.
In particular, why the CIA's secret operation earned a reputation as America's most powerful foreign policy tool during the Eisenhower administration, and why it continued to find its way into Kennedy's arsenal, and even Johnson's.
Second, the background of the U.S. foreign policy establishment
While the U.S. government of the early 1960s was very similar to today's construction, the power of foreign policymaking at the time strongly supported the CIA, a paradigm that was particularly prevalent in the Congo crisis.
As a background, the National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA and the National Security Council to guide it.
The CIA's activities are broad and its mission is to "carry out real-time directives of the National Security Council, intelligence affecting national security, and other related functional duties," including political-economic and informational warfare in a covert environment so that the source and foreknowledge of operations can be denied.
Clandestine activities are governed by the Council's directive, which does not explicitly prohibit assassinations, but more commonly discredits and undermines communist success in the Global South through propaganda.
The Special Panel was therefore at the heart of the discussion of the Congolese crisis, as it limited the way people could see the source and perspective of events.
Despite large-scale declassifications, the archives of documents and cables operated by the State Department revolve almost entirely around CIA personnel and communications, including only occasionally State Department diplomats or members of other agencies and departments.
While the documents do refer to this diversity of government, the nature of the task force, and its tight control over U.S. operations around the Congo crisis, dictates that only senior non-CIA officials can participate in the dialogue.
Even a few dissenting opinions have historically been suppressed, as much of the declassified material relates to CIA memoranda from the Congolese Initiative, a unique perspective through which even the Special Panel viewed the Congolese.
In 1975, Democratic U.S. Senator Frank Church led a Senate Select Committee investigating intelligence abuse.
In fact, this operation of the CIA is to develop a large number of assassination capabilities.
For example, the CIA's chief officer in the Congo, Larry Devlin, planned to assassinate Patrice Lumumba in order to resolve the Congolese crisis.
During this period, the United States, led primarily by the CIA, saw not only the Congo, but also the greater African continent as a monolithic and chaotic space, whose main function was to test whether Soviet ideology had gained a foothold in the world.
As a result, U.S. efforts to eliminate Congolese Lumumba are arbitrary and passive to eliminate perceived threats, rather than long-term strategic plans.
III. Analysis
An inherent aversion to the Congolese political environment is evident in many of the recently declassified U.S. government foreign policy documents.
This concept, whether racist, ill-informed or both, was particularly prominent in the CIA's 1961 reflection on the Congo crisis, with senior government leaders, including the president and the National Security Council.
It said that "the country is unprepared for independence, the Congolese people are mostly illiterate and primitive, and there is no concept of national unity", indicating the need to fight for successful decolonization.
Despite Lumumba's oratory ability and nationwide focus, the CIA's analysis continued.
The abrupt political independence of the weak Congolese government, accompanied by a resurgence of terrorism and tribalism, has led almost all of the inexperienced and unstable political groups that appear on the ground to be based on tribal associations, primarily concerned with local interests.
The Church Council, while vigorously criticizing the CIA's overreach in its covert activities, skipped the opportunity to criticize the agency's ideas about Lumumba and focused on his links to the communist cause.
The commission quoted a presidential adviser as saying that "very direct action must be taken against Lumumba" and prompted the decision not to rule out considering any specific activity that could help get rid of Lumumba.
While the Commission did refer to Lumumba's meeting with the United States Secretary of State in Washington, D.C., in July 1960, its analysis concluded that the privileges of that meeting had no effect on Lumumba and that he would again turn to Soviet assistance.
This lazy omission of detail fueled a narrative of Lumumba's political leanings, which at best came into being conjured up years after the heat of the Cold War or, at worst, became popular among decision-makers in 1960 and took Lumumba's life.
In July 1960, the Katanga separatist movement was growing, and Lumumba's request for assistance at the end of that month was directed first at the United States, not the Soviet Union.
Lumumba wanted to talk to President Eisenhower, but because the meeting was not conducive to the schedule of the President of the United States, the Secretary of State took his place.
Despite a slight diplomatic rejection, Lumumba's request for U.S. military assistance met with another condition: it would not be provided bilaterally, but would have to be provided through a United Nations-led mission.
In the weeks that followed, the United Nations delegation delayed closing the Belgian-backed secession, not to mention that it personally escorted the Belgian ambassador out of the country.
Despite his best efforts and initial willingness to ally with the United States and even the United Nations, these two entities actually burned Lumumba.
The neglect of Lumumba's important deliberations in August 1960 suggests that the underlying motives of the United States may have shifted to Belgian influence in the Congo and retaliation for Lumumba's turn to the Soviet Union.
In fact, Weissmann believes that Devlin did have a direct impact on the events that led to Lumumba's death. However, because of delays in government editing and declassification, it is difficult for any scholar to make a conclusive decision about Devlin's culpability.
After years of delays, the United States released cables and information flow archives surrounding the Congo crisis.
But the volume took an overly cautious approach to the editors, withholding all four documents, cutting 22 documents by more than one paragraph, omitting the financial costs of specific activities and trying to protect the identity of the CIA's main Congolese clients with the exception of Mobutu.
Weissmann's criticism of Devlin clashed with the findings of the Church Council and Devlin's own memoirs, in which the CIA station chief tried to clear his name under the guise of obeying secret orders while delaying his steps.
Devlin's tone suggests that the actions of the American political establishment are in their own interest.
In his memoirs, Devlin's accepted justification for U.S. intervention was simply to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining a foothold in Central Africa. Although he expressed no interest in murder, he confirmed the CIA's feeling about Lumumba - death was coming.
When Lumumba's death did not calm his followers, the United States doubled down on the search for a successor.
CIA influence was quickly concentrated in Casavub and then in Mobutu. Since then, Mobutu's dominance has been attributed in part to deliberate bribery, legality campaigns and intelligence gathering led by the CIA.
Mobutu aspired to be an anti-Soviet mainstay in exchange for influence, material possessions and information gathered by the United States.
However, his leadership qualities are not a concern for the U.S. government, but for his ideological alliance. However, his lack of capacity to govern thwarted efforts to "resolve" the Congolese crisis.
Given Mobutu's poor governance, he proved to be an unpredictable partner.
Of course he had his own agency to manage and even sometimes refused secret CIA salaries, and in the post-Lumumba era he continued to benefit in many ways.
Throughout 1966 and 1967, the CIA forwarded Mobutu's intelligence about threats to his regime, revealing many major conspiracies.
However, fundamental problems remain – the 1964 rebellion of Quelu and Simba, the contemporaneous movement of the Lumumbas supported by the Soviet Union, Cuba and China, and the rise of anti-American sentiment in the Congo.
As the insurgents took hostages from the West, including the Americans, their political aims were imminent without U.S. intervention.
The United States was forced to act and mediate through hostage rescues, depriving the rebels of their political capital and the most advantageous means of establishing an alternative government based on Lumumba's principle of independence from the colonial burden.
As a result, Mobutu's stock skyrocketed. While Mobutu is not an ideal solution to the Congo problem, it offers the United States what it wants.
In Devlin's eyes, the U.S. wants stability, even if predictability means that Mobutu's title has changed so long that he has long been an influential stakeholder in Congo's government.
Devlin suggested that the CIA-backed Mobutu had its own integration to manage.
Moreover, the mixed interests of the United Nations and Belgium in the case of the Katanga separatist movement have not yet been resolved.
They lasted for another four years in various forms, until the second coup d'état in Mobutu and the subsequent abolition of parliamentary procedures and government representation, which the CIA was willing to finance and was satisfied with, so much so that the USSR lost influence for a long time.
Thus, this coveted stability came at the cost of an iron fist and eventual dictatorship.
Mobutu's control of the military, political spheres, and the fall of the Congolese economy meant that the actions of the United States limited all political futures except the anti-communist one they cherished.
Although Mobutu plundered Congo's already meager government, before and after Devlin retired from public service, he received the institutional support of the United States and the personal loyalty of the most powerful American intelligence officers.
Fourth, the author believes
The brewing Cold War context makes U.S. policy relevant to Congolese politics.
U.S. policymakers hastily rejected Patrice Lumumba's initial desire to quell the rebellion in the Central African state.
As a result, when he sought assistance from the Soviet Union, the United States took this action both personally and strategically.
The mechanisms behind the U.S. covert operations during the Congo crisis, and how those actions were used to plot life against Lumumba, were used as expedient measures to influence the country away from communism.
However, in its application, the United States may have encouraged an anti-communist regime to gain a foothold through Mobutu, but through a series of incredibly chaotic and costly coups that have taken place over the years, costing lives and putting Congolese political institutions on the path of international dependence.
The United States relies on few experts to shield information and plans from a few, sometimes with only one webmaster.
Today, many sides of U.S. strategic planning should be vigilant against mistaking the ouster of a leader as an inevitable consequence of a regime that benefits the long-term good governance of its citizens themselves.
As a result, statecraft have no expedient measures, only complex socio-political dynamics that cannot be ignored, especially when they could lead to decades-long dictatorships of thieves.
bibliography
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Gleijeses, P, Conflict's Mission: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
CIA, "Declassified Telegrams from Congo Station to the CIA" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government, 1966).
CIA, "Intelligence Memorandum: Joseph Mobutu of Congo: Past, Present, and Future [FOIA Request for Release Documents]" (Langley, Virginia: CIA Intelligence Agency, 1966).
Jonathan E Helmreich, U.S. Relations with Belgium and Congo, 1940-1960 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998).
CIA, "CIA Telegram from Leopoldville to Director," Washington, D.C. (1960).
Paul Nugent, Africa Since Independence: A Comparative History (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004).