The Lumumba Plot

The Lumumba Plot
Author: Stuart A. Reid
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2024-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1984899147

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times “This is one of the best books I have read in years . . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN host It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go. Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.

American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960-1964

American Foreign Policy in the Congo 1960-1964
Author: Stephen R. Weissman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2019-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 150174383X

This book offers a forthright and discerning evaluation of American foreign policy and its impact on the political system of an important Third World country. After assessing the situation in the Congo when independence was achieved in 1960, Mr. Weissman compares the policies of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. He throws new light on such questions as the role of the United States in the overthrow of Patrice Lumumba, the UN action in Katanga, and the repression of the 1964 rebellions. Weighing various influences—economic, administrative, congressional, international—on U.S. policy, he concludes that the major factor was ideological. American actions, he maintains, were based on certain mistaken assumptions that were held in common by key American decision-makers whose backgrounds and training blinded them to the realities of Congolese life. Based on extensive research, including interviews with nearly all important figures who contributed to the making of American policy, this book effectively challenges some fashionable interpretations of the causes and results of American intervention in the Third World.

Freedom in the World 2005

Freedom in the World 2005
Author: Freedom House
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 812
Release: 2005
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780742550513

Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 192 countries and a group of select territories are used by policy makers, the media, international corporations, and civic activists and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. Press accounts of the survey findings appear in hundreds of influential newspapers in the United States and abroad and form the basis of numerous radio and television reports. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development. Freedom House is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights.

Race, Identity, and Privilege from the US to the Congo

Race, Identity, and Privilege from the US to the Congo
Author: Brenda F. Berrian
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 179364232X

In July 1961, five months after Patrice Lumumba’s assassination, 14-year-old Brenda F. Berrian’s consciousness was raised by her family’s move to the turbulent Republic of the Congo. Race, Identity, and Privilege from the US to the Congo traces Berrian’s experiences of subsequently traveling the United States, Canada, France, and three other African countries against the backdrop of emerging African independence and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Detailing the complexities she faced in her global identity as a Black woman, Berrian explores how the love and support of her parents and her developing racial, feminist, and political consciousness--strengthened by her embrace of literature and music of the African diaspora--prepared her to deal with adversity, stereotypes, and grief along the way. See more info about the book here: www.brendafberrian.com

Death in the Congo

Death in the Congo
Author: Emmanuel Gerard
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2015-02-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674745361

Death in the Congo is a gripping account of a murder that became one of the defining events in postcolonial African history. It is no less the story of the untimely death of a national dream, a hope-filled vision very different from what the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo became in the second half of the twentieth century. When Belgium relinquished colonial control in June 1960, a charismatic thirty-five-year-old African nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became prime minister of the new republic. Yet stability immediately broke down. A mutinous Congolese Army spread havoc, while Katanga Province in southeast Congo seceded altogether. Belgium dispatched its military to protect its citizens, and the United Nations soon intervened with its own peacekeeping troops. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, both the Soviet Union and the United States maneuvered to turn the crisis to their Cold War advantage. A coup in September, secretly aided by the UN, toppled Lumumba’s government. In January 1961, armed men drove Lumumba to a secluded corner of the Katanga bush, stood him up beside a hastily dug grave, and shot him. His rule as Africa’s first democratically elected leader had lasted ten weeks. More than fifty years later, the murky circumstances and tragic symbolism of Lumumba’s assassination still trouble many people around the world. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick pursue events through a web of international politics, revealing a tangled history in which many people—black and white, well-meaning and ruthless, African, European, and American—bear responsibility for this crime.

Katanga 1960-63

Katanga 1960-63
Author: Christopher Othen
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2015-09-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0750965800

In King Leopold II’s infamous Congo ‘Free’ State at the turn of the century, severed hands became a form of currency. But the Belgians didn’t seem to have a sense of historical shame, as they connived for an independent Katanga state in 1960 to protect Belgian mining interests. What happened next was extraordinary. It was an extremely uneven battle. The UN fielded soldiers from twenty nations, America paid the bills, and the Soviets intrigued behind the scenes. Yet to everyone’s surprise the new nation’s rag-tag army of local gendarmes, jungle tribesmen and, controversially, European mercenaries, refused to give in. For two and a half years Katanga, the scrawniest underdog ever to fight a war, held off the world with guerrilla warfare, two-faced diplomacy and some shady financial backing. It even looked as if the Katangese might win. Katanga 1960 tells, for the first time, the full story of the Congolese province that declared independence and found itself at war with the world.

Zaire

Zaire
Author: United States. Department of State
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 1980
Genre:
ISBN:

The Art of Betrayal

The Art of Betrayal
Author: Gordon Corera
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2013-01-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1453271597

“A wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and highly readable history of Britain’s postwar Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as MI6.” ―The Wall Street Journal From Berlin to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the true stories of the agents on the front lines of British intelligence. And the truth is sometimes more remarkable than the spy novels of Ian Fleming or John le Carré. Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction. He tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of the World War II and, by focusing on the real people and the relationships that lie at the heart of espionage, illustrates the danger, the drama, the intrigue, and the moral ambiguities that come with working for British intelligence. From the defining period of the early Cold War through modern day, MI6 has undergone a dramatic transformation from a gung-ho, amateurish organization to its modern, no less controversial, incarnation. And some of the individuals featured here, in turn, helped shape the course of those events. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied, and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they controlled to their sworn enemies, and the result is a “fast-paced” examination that ranges “from the covert diplomacy of the Cold War to recent security concerns in Afghanistan and the Middle East” (The Times, London).

Post Report

Post Report
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 1980
Genre: Diplomatic and consular service, American
ISBN:

Series of pamphlets on countries of the world; revisions issued.