Art of Betrayal (21 page)

Lumumba had been trapped with two concentric rings of troops around him. There were Congolese troops who wanted to arrest him on the outer perimeter and closer to him a UN force which said it could guarantee his safety only so long as he remained where he was.

But Lumumba was still dangerous in the eyes of the West. He had the support of a significant section of the country as well as the makings of an alternative government with a small army out in Stanleyville. That made him a threat, especially if he ever got out or if parliament was recalled. Soviet-backed African countries began to pressure Mobutu to return Lumumba to office. The Americans were unsure that Mobutu had the nerve to hold out. They worried he might have a breakdown.
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The CIA wanted a permanent solution to the one man whom it saw as the source of all the problems. Lumumba remained ‘a grave danger as long as he was not disposed of', said Dulles at a National Security Council meeting.
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Five days after the coup, Devlin got a cable with the codeword ‘Prop'. It was from Richard Bissell, the CIA's Deputy Director of Plans. Only four people at CIA headquarters had access to Prop messages and Devlin alone in the Congo received them. His orders were to keep the messages hidden from colleagues and give them priority over all other traffic. The cable said a senior officer whom Devlin would recognise would arrive in Leopoldville around 27 September. He would identify himself as ‘Joe from Paris'. Devlin was to carry out his instructions.
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A week later as he left the Embassy, Devlin saw a man he recognised get up from a table at a café across the street. They got into Devlin's car and he turned up the radio. As they drove away, the man turned to Devlin. ‘I'm Joe from Paris,' he said. ‘I've come to give you instructions about a highly sensitive operation.'

The man's real name was Sidney Gottlieb, known to some as the ‘dark sorcerer' for his conjuring in the most sinister recesses of the CIA. With his club-foot, he was perhaps too easy to caricature as a cross between a Bond villain and Dr Strangelove, a scientist who always wanted to push further without worrying about the morality of where it all led. He masterminded the sprawling MKULTRA programme which had begun in 1953, without any oversight, to experiment on mind control using an array of medical and scientific experiments on Americans, including the use of electroshock and LSD (which Gottlieb himself claimed to have taken 200 times).
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At least one person involved in his experiments died under suspicious circumstances and others went mad. Gottlieb was also the go-to man when it came to eliminating America's enemies. These were busy times. He was looking at ways of removing Fidel Castro using exploding cigars and poisoned wet-suits, as well as removing the leader of the Dominican Republic. The two men in the car in Leopoldville remained quiet until they reached a safe house. Then Gottlieb said he had brought Devlin poison to kill Lumumba.
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‘Isn't this unusual?' Devlin said. He had never been asked to kill anyone before. ‘Who authorised this operation?'

‘President Eisenhower,' Gottlieb said. ‘I wasn't there when he approved it but Dick Bissell said that Eisenhower wanted Lumumba removed.' Had Eisenhower meant the phrase ‘elimination' on 18 August to be an order for assassination? Later some of those present at the meeting said they were not sure that he had. But CIA chief Dulles, as well as others, believed they knew exactly what the President meant even if he had been careful not to say it too directly. Dulles had begun to put a plan into effect through his Deputy, Richard Bissell.

Devlin lit a cigarette and stared down at his shoes.

‘It's your responsibility to carry out the operation, you alone,' Gottlieb said ‘The details are up to you, but it's got to be clean – nothing that can be traced back to the US government.' There was silence. Then he pulled out a small package. ‘Take this,' he said, handing it over. ‘With the stuff that's in there, no one will ever be able to know that Lumumba was assassinated.'

There were several different poisons which had come from the US
army biological warfare institution at Fort Detrick. Gottlieb had explored using rabbit fever, undulant fever, anthrax, smallpox and sleeping sickness. One poison was concealed in a tube of toothpaste and was designed to make it look as if Lumumba had died from polio. Grimly Devlin took the poisons and the accessories, including needles, rubber gloves and a mask.

Devlin always says that after accepting the poisons he threw them in the Congo River, neglecting to mention that he only did this months later when their potency had expired. In the meantime he kept them in his safe. When one officer visited Devlin, he mentioned he had a virus in the safe. ‘I knew it wasn't for somebody to get his polio shot up to date,' recalled the visitor later.
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Devlin maintained that he had no intention of going ahead with this plan. ‘To me it was murder,' he said on his deathbed. ‘I'm not a 007 guy.'
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He said he knew that refusing the order outright would lead to his recall and someone else being appointed who would carry out the order, destroying his career in the process. So Devlin says he decided to play it slow. He had only one agent with access to Lumumba's living quarters, where he was effectively imprisoned, but Devlin said he was not sure the agent could get in. He looked at having another agent take refuge with Lumumba to administer the poison but that did not work. He also had conversations with Congolese contacts interested in killing Lumumba.
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Headquarters became impatient. It offered to send out another officer to help in case Devlin was not able to devote enough time to the plans. Devlin replied that, if that were done, the officer should be supplied through the diplomatic pouch with a high-powered hunting rifle which could be kept ‘in office pending opening of hunting season'.
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A shady stateless mercenary, willing to do anything, was provided with plastic surgery and a toupee by the CIA and sent off to the Congo to help, but he never got close to Lumumba.
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The CIA even suggested using a ‘commando type group' to abduct Lumumba by assaulting his residence.
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On 19 September, Alec Douglas-Home talked to President Eisenhower. ‘Lord Home said the Soviets have lost much by their obvious efforts to disrupt matters in the Congo,' the minutes recorded. ‘The president expressed his wish that Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles; Lord Home said regretfully that we have lost
many of the techniques of old-fashioned diplomacy.'
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A week later Home, along with Prime Minister Macmillan, met President Eisenhower in New York. ‘Lord Home raised the question why we are not getting rid of Lumumba at the present time,' the American note-taker recorded. ‘He stressed now is the time to get rid of Lumumba.'
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Murder was on the minds of some in London. Ian Scott sent a telegram to London, including Downing Street, on 27 September: ‘It seems to me that the best interests of the Congo (and the rest of us) would be served by the departure of Lumumba from the scene either to jail (and sufficient evidence exists to convict him of treason and of complicity in attempted murder of Colonel Mobutu) or abroad,' he wrote, calling for pressure to be brought on Mobutu, who was looking ‘irresolute' (‘he has not the makings of a dictator', Scott wrongly predicted).
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One response, in a secret document which could only travel in a locked box, came from H. F. T. Smith, a Foreign Office official who would later be appointed head of MI5. He agreed that pressure should be brought to bear to prevent Lumumba's return. But Smith doubted Scott's remedies would solve the problem. Mobutu was too weak and other African leaders would support Lumumba in jail or abroad. There were only two solutions. ‘The first is the simple one of ensuring Lumumba's removal from the scene by killing him. This should in fact solve the problem, since, so far as we can tell, Lumumba is not a leader of a movement within which there are potential successors of his quality and influence. His supporters are much less dangerous material.' The other solution offered was a constitutional change to reduce the Prime Minister's powers so that he could return to office but weakened. ‘Of these two possibilities, my preference (though it might be expressed as a wish rather than a proposal) would be for Lumumba to be removed from the scene altogether, because I fear that as long as he is about his power to do damage can only be slightly modified.' Comments added to Smith's memo include ‘There is much to be said for eliminating Lumumba', although others voiced scepticism.
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Killing people, Daphne Park maintained, was not on MI6's agenda. ‘We didn't have a licence to kill,' she explained years later. ‘Much as I hated people I don't think I actually would have felt easy killing them or even having them killed. It was much more important to
deal with the people who were alive. And fight the others by any way you can, of course, including destroying their reputation if you can – if that's going to do the damage.' Park, who was not told of the CIA plan, always believed that Devlin was too honourable and sensible to carry out his plan.

MI6 did contemplate murder at times – notably against Nasser – but even as it feared Nasser's hand in the Congo, it also knew that in this case the nastier side of the business could be left to others.
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Daphne Park might not have been given a licence to kill, nor Devlin's killer toothpaste, but she did have her own gadgets, courtesy of Q, the quartermaster for MI6. ‘Q used to produce the most wonderful gadgets for almost anything you could think of,' explained Park. ‘Sometimes they didn't totally succeed.' Most gadgets supplied to field officers were designed to hide or pass information. These ranged from the typically British – a hollowed-out cricket ball – to the more painful – a bullet-shaped ‘rectal concealing device'. In the Congo there were concerns about crowds storming embassies and attacking cars, and so it had been decided that Park needed some protection. Head Office first of all gave her a gun, which Park put in the office safe fearing it would be stolen from her home. She was then informed that Q had come up with a device that had worked wonders in the Sudan in terms of crowd control and was ‘absolutely infallible'. It was a capsule which when thrown broke apart and emitted a smell guaranteed to send a gathered throng reeling. In other words it was a large stink bomb. A man was sent out to Leopoldville with a box of tricks to demonstrate. Q had clearly spent some time in the joke shop looking for inspiration because with him also came some itching powder (Park duly applied some of this to a Foreign Office official in the Embassy whom she loathed).

Daphne Park's counterpart from Nairobi happened to be visiting. ‘Now, Daffers, we must test these things,' he said, volunteering to try out the stink bomb.

‘Oh no you don't. This is my patch,' Park replied, unwilling to miss out on the fun. They drove out of town in her car to a quiet spot with a large storm ditch. One person would have to be the guineapig.

‘It has got to be me,' said her counterpart. In true buccaneering style, both wanted to volunteer for the trenches.

‘We'll toss for it,' replied Park. Hugo won.

The capsule was duly opened and thrown in and he went down into the ditch. There was a long silence. It's knocked him out, thought Park. She crept to the edge of the ditch and peered over and there he was crawling about in the mud.

‘Hugo, what the hell are you doing?' she said.

‘Looking for that bloody thing – I can't find it anywhere.' It must have been a dud, they concluded.

‘Get out. It's my turn now,' she said. After they had used four of the stink bombs they faced facts and telegraphed London. ‘One of the things might just have been confused with a little smell of armpit but that was as far as it got. We do not think it would have made much difference to angry Congolese.'
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The Belgian government, like the CIA, was willing to entertain darker ambitions. It had made clear that it wanted Lumumba's ‘Elimination definitive', a phrase employed by their Minister for African Affairs. The Belgian codename for Lumumba was ‘Satan', a reflection of how they worked to portray him in the media and internationally. Their plan to kill him was called ‘Operation Barracuda'.
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It is unclear if they co-ordinated with the Americans. Three days after a meeting in the White House on 21 September, Dulles sent a personal cable to Devlin. ‘WE WISH GIVE EVERY POSSIBLE SUPPORT IN ELIMINATING LUMUMBA FROM ANY POSSIBILITY RESUMING GOVERNMENTAL POSITION.'
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By November, the CIA had focused on a plan to lure Lumumba out of his refuge and then hand him over to the Congolese authorities who could take care of the rest. Events intervened before they had a chance to try.

An almighty thunderstorm struck Leopoldville on the night of 27 November 1960. Lumumba exploited it as cover to stow himself away in a Chevrolet used to take servants home. He began to make his way to Stanleyville, one of his bastions of support. He managed only slow progress through the driving rain, stopping to speak to supporters en route while Mobutu's men, aided by the Belgians, pursued him.
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Around midnight on 1 December, Lumumba was captured at a river crossing just before he reached friendly territory. The local UN garrison was given orders not to place him in protective custody or
to get in the way of his arrest.
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He was taken by aeroplane back to Leopoldville the next day. He emerged with his hands tied behind his back. A soldier lifted his head to show his face to the waiting cameraman, who could see blood on him. He was driven in the back of a truck through town. His hair was dishevelled and his glasses lost. The truck drove right past the UN headquarters.
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Images of his mistreatment led to a wave of anger internationally, directed at the UN among others for failing to intervene. As the UN found in later years, maintaining a policy of neutrality and non-interference often meant becoming passive observers to tragic, sometimes violent events.
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Although there was a sense that some in the UN had taken sides or at least were willing to play both sides, the Secretary General of the UN had told a British diplomat a few months earlier that Lumumba was ‘already clearly a Communist stooge' and that he hoped to prevent the Soviet penetration of Africa.
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Next Lumumba was driven to Mobutu's house where his old friend paid his respects. He was then taken to a paratrooper camp at Thysville a hundred miles from the city. A soldier read out a statement he had written in which he said he was head of the government and then stuffed the paper into his mouth. But the dilemma remained over how to eliminate him definitively from the political scene. The US and Belgians both realised that it was better to have the Congolese do the dirty work for them now he was in their hands.