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The Lumumba plot : the secret history of the CIA and a Cold War assassination / Stuart A. Reid.

by Reid, Stuart A., author.

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New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.

Lumumba, Patrice, 1925-1961 -- Assassination.

United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

Congo (Democratic Republic) -- History -- Civil War, 1960-1965.

Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Politics and government -- 1908-1960.

Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Politics and government -- 1960-1997.

United States -- Foreign relations -- Congo (Democratic Republic)

Congo (Democratic Republic) -- Foreign relations -- United States.

9781524748814 (hardcover) :

1524748811 (hardcover)

xvi, 618 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm.

Prologue : The loose tooth -- Part I : Subject -- The boy from Onalua -- Promising docility -- The most impossible job on earth -- To Brussels and back -- Not a slave -- Awakenings -- The year of Africa -- The rounded table -- Uhuru! -- The king's sword -- Part II : Premier -- The newest country -- A nonexistent army -- A body without a head -- Magic men from the sky -- A political miracle -- An experiment in peace -- Powerless -- A humiliating defeat -- Hail Lumumba! -- The lamp and the statue -- Part III : Target -- The Katanga question -- Simba -- The long way home -- Operation L. suggestions -- Changing the scenery -- Sound and fury -- Desperate measures -- Jungle demagogue -- The special group -- Bakwanga -- Part IV : Captive -- The sleeping crocodile -- A bungled firing -- Hamlet of the Congo -- This is not a military coup -- Spitting on the UN -- Sid from Paris -- Homebound -- Backup plans -- Cold storage -- Vote of confidence -- Part V : Martyr -- The big rabbit has escaped -- A damp cell -- Comeback -- The green light -- Patrice Akufi -- The antelope hunters -- Get Hammarskjöld! -- Lovanium -- The final flight -- Our man in Leopoldville -- Epilogue : The arrogance of power.

"A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller-about the US-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo"--

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. 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 Hammarskjld, 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 αzzle 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. Hammarskjld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-αre 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. -- Provided by publisher.

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