The Congo After Leopold

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmm, hello friends, and welcome again to Behind the Bastards.
I'm Robert evans Uh and this is a podcast where
we tell you everything you don't know about the very
worst people in all of history. Now with me today
is a guest who I'll be reading a story to.

(00:21):
My guest is coming in cold to this tale and
does not know what I'll be talking about today except
for in a very broad term. And my guest today
is miss Theresa Lee. Hello, are you doing, Theresa? I'm
doing okay? Well, I like, I am really cold because
I had to ask before what it was about, and
then even that change, so I well, you listened to
the two parter we did on Leopold I did, yeah,

(00:42):
but I visualized it so it was like I was
watching it fantast same time. Um, well, this is another
episode set in the Congo and it's about what happened
after leopold Um. And when I started working in this,
I wanted to do an episode about the dictator who
took over the Congo after the Belgian's left, a guy
named Bootoo siss Sickle. But as I started researching it,
there was just way too much bullshit that Europeans in

(01:05):
America got up to in the Congo between Leopold dying
and Boobootoo taking over. And so that's what we're going
to talk about today is all the how the West
continued to fuck the Congo even after, like you think
it had been fucked enough like that that you couldn't
really screw over a group of people more than Leopold had,
But then everything I've written about happens. Yeah, you're yeah,

(01:29):
it's like getting out of an abusive relationship. You're probably
going to get into another one. The studies show, yeah,
and it's it's actually, it's kind of like getting out
of an abusive relationship and getting hit by a bus,
and then the doctor who helps put you back together,
you get into an abusive relationship. It's a that's a
solid sitcom. My Doctor's a bus, my doctor husband the bus. Well,

(01:54):
that's the season to finale me, that's the wedding, my
husband bus busbnd A busbends, a busbend. Someone's gonna photoshop
a poster for that's. Um, are you ready to well?
First off, let's let's love the audience here. A little
bit about you and I worked together for years and

(02:14):
you are a writer, comedian, actress. Yeah, we did. Uh well,
we are most most most famously worked together on a
video about ancient drugs based on or to promote the
book you wrote. And recently it keeps resurfacing. And I
know when a resurfaces because I'll get messages. Um and

(02:35):
last week I got a few that were like, so,
how was doing so much? And I was like, oh,
that video must have popped up again. We we took mushrooms,
legal mushrooms, mascara and unexpectedly tripped very hard, to the
point where like all of us who were together had
to get a hotel room for the night. They just
kind of sit it out and wait until we were

(02:57):
not actively tripping to go back to our homes. Yeah,
it was real crazy. And the craziest part is that
video is just like the beginning of the trip, Like
it got so much more intense after we wrapped. Yeah,
and yeah it was it was not intended to be
that that intense. But yeah, if you want to, uh, well,
we'll post a link in this episode, I guess to

(03:18):
us doing tremendous amounts of mushrooms. Uh, it's it's great fun.
Now let's get into an episode that I have tentatively
titled The Congo after Leopold. So, UM, if you're listening
to this podcast for the first time, you may want
to go back and download the two episodes we did
on King Leopold of Belgium. But I'm gonna give a
little sort of run through of of what happened with

(03:40):
that guy here, just in case you're joining us for
the first time, or maybe you forgot since then, because
there's been a lot of bastards in between him and
and now. So. King Leopold was a Belgian king, obviously
who had a chip on his shoulder. Because Belgian kings
did not have much power in the late eighteen hundreds, UH,
he concocted an incredibly complex scheme in order to take
over a huge chunk of Central Africa up He named

(04:00):
it the Congo Free State. On the surface of the
free state had a philanthropic mission to civilize the tribes
people and fight Arab slavers. In reality, it was all
one gigantic rubber mining operation. Leopold's men enslaved armies of
child soldiers, three quarters of whom died without being trained UH,
and he enforced order through brutal, sometimes fatal whippings and
the severing of millions of hands. Between ten and fifteen

(04:22):
million people died during Leopold's reign in the Congo. So
that's the story. We've a good guy, Yeah, sweet dude,
sweet Beard. By the early nineteen hundreds, word had gotten
out of what was happening in the Congo, and by
nineteen o eight the international community forced Leopold to seed
control of his Congo to the Belgian nation. And that's
sort of where the last podcast ends, you know, Leopold dies,

(04:45):
and I thought long after that, now today we're going
to talk about what happened in the Congo in the
intermediate period. Like, so Belgium is in charge of the Congo,
but uh yeah, so you would expect things to it
a lot better now that this absolute monster is out
of power. But it turned out that Belgium, the nation,
was not much better than King Leopold had been for

(05:06):
the Congolese people. The chacote, which is that brutal hippo
hide whip that Leopold's men used to keep order, wasn't
banned until it was hippo hip. How do you even
get a hit? Like aren't they very dangerous? Super dangerous?
Kill the hell out of you. You got to shoot
him with a real big gun. Wow. Yeah, I guess
they head guns. Back then. They had tons of guns

(05:26):
for shooting hippos, so they can make more whips. I
was thinking, this is so long ago. I'm like they
were using spears. No, I mean yeah, they did use
spears to kill hippos, but not as efficiently. But there
was a weird little side thing. Is Adolf Hitler carried
a dog with his entire life. Um oh, I whipped
to whip dogs made out of dogs. It was to

(05:48):
whipped dogs. It was called a dog whip because you
were supposed to use it to whip dogs, and he
would whip dogs with it when he wanted to impress girls,
but he also mainly used it for fighting. This is
confusing because the hippo hide whip is named hippo hyde
whip because it's made of hippo hyde, and so if
you like follow the logic of that, the dog whip
should be made out of dogs. Like, there's no consistency

(06:10):
in the naming of whips right now. But you wouldn't
want to hit would you? Would I do on'tly go
a whip? Would doo? Much to a hippo. No, but
I'm just saying these naming conventions, somebody needs to organize
the naming here. What if they called it what if
they called it a whippo? Whippo? We should go back
in time. What's Indiana Jones whip out of? Probably leather? Like,

(06:30):
that's probably true. So it's a cow whip, No, it's
a whip. For it's a Nazi whip. Yeah, that's a
fucking Nazi whip right there. Yeah. So Belgium continued to
use forced labor uh pretty much the entire time they
were in charge of the Congo. They claimed it was
a labor tax uh and they would so they would
basically force people to work for like half the year
or more to mine minerals and extract rubber from the Congo.

(06:55):
All of the uranium used to make the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombs was mine in the Congo by people who
are regularly whipped bloody to guarantee their compliance. So this
goes on the early nine hundreds through the forties. Right now,
In a tiny bit of fairness to the Belgians, they
didn't do nothing in the Congo. They built one of
the biggest hospitals in Africa and established a really good infrastructure,
so like good power system, good roads, um better than

(07:18):
most African colonies got. So if you're just looking at
what the Belgians had sort of installed, the buildings they
put together, the municipal like stuff, uh, Congo seemed like
it was in a good position, like for when it
was finally free, because stuff for Western civilization, right, It's
like they needed to make it so that Western people

(07:38):
could see a familiar life there. Yes, zero of the
things they built in the Congo were meant for Africans,
and in fact, the society was super segregated, like they
were building nice houses for Belgians and then the Africans
could the huts. They were building nice houses for white
people and they were building they were really building it.
The Africans were probably building that and they were being

(08:01):
forced to build it through labor taxes. Yeah. Yeah, So
it's amazing how shitty they continue to be to the
Congo even after this monster leaves. And because it's one,
it's yet another one of the stories where the world
gets angry, Like stories come out about how bad Leopold
is and the world gets furious and he demand he
not be in charge anymore. And then as soon as
he's gone, they're like, well, guess the problems over. We

(08:22):
can stop caring about the Congo. They just need a
place blame somewhere. Yeah, and once that guy gets out,
the story is done and nobody pays any more attention. Yeah. Remarkable.
Um So the capital of the Belgian Congo was Leopoldville,
and it was divided into African and Western areas. Like Leopoldville.

(08:43):
It's Conshosha today, but it was called Leopoldville. Classy right,
not creative at all, name it after the guy who
did the worst things of anyone in the country. Black
people were not allowed in the European parts of town
after dark and would not be served in white's only
hotels and restaurants. Belgians considered most Congolese people to be macOS,
which literally means monkeys. The good ones were called evolu,

(09:07):
which means basically the evolved. Yeah wow, you got that
French real quick? Is it differently pronounced that? I out? Okay? Yeah?
So yeah, be evolved. So these people would be allowed
to be evolved, to be allowed to say, buy wine
if they little white inspector coming to their home first
and make sure the toilet was clean, specifically their toilet.

(09:30):
If you're evolved, you can pay me money. How awful,
No wine unless you're toilets clean, which college would be different.
If that's how it worked, is all I'll say. Yeah, true,
evolved children were allowed to attend school with white kids,
but they had to agree to be regularly checked for fleas.
Children are literally not done growing. That's the definition of children. Yeah, yeah,

(09:54):
how can even white children are not evolved? It's not
internally consider the logic of racist colonialists. But no, it's
a good Yeah, it's it's frustrating the language they use
as always really frustrating because that's also so it's just
the dick thing to call people. Sure, yeah, um ad

(10:16):
dick thing to call yourself to which, yeah, it's more
like a Nazi into things. It's everybody like that's one
of the big stories of the twentieth century is like
the first half of the twentieth century is just everybody
getting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution wrong and using it like, well,
I hate people who aren't white, so that means like
I'm just going to take this book that's popular right

(10:36):
now and use it to like justify my hatred. Yeah,
they're like, I just trust that. I'm like, they assume
that they're evolved or whatever, and then they're like, so,
then I must be right all the time, because that's
how I'm here. Yeah, scientist is like animals that are
more fit survived better, and so guys like, oh, I've
got a big house. That means I'm more evolved. I

(10:57):
stole all my stuff from are people? Yeah people, the
deductions we come to, it's remarkable. So, yeah, the few
African children who are allowed to attend schools in the
Congo had to endure lessons on why King Leopold, the
guy who had killed by some counts half the country,
was a great hero. Jacques Delpecheen, a historian interviewed for

(11:20):
the documentary version of King Leopold's Ghost, grew up in
the Congo during this time. He's an African, and he
said this quote. What we learned in the textbooks was
that Leopold was the greatest benefactor the Congo ever had
because he sacrificed his fortune for the Congolese. Is he
like a Thanos character? Because he killed half the country
and then some people celebrate him, but he's actually evil.

(11:42):
Yeah kind of, except for like, wasn't Thanos's goal to like,
he wanted to eliminate half the population to create more resources. Yeah,
but he was killing people to do that. Leopold wanted
to build sweet houses and was willing to kill half
the population for that. Also, he wanted to tricycle. He
bought a really cool tricycle. Um, so that's different than Thanos.

(12:06):
But well, there's going to be more monrable movies that
tricycle might show up. Tricycle might show up. He might
write a tricycle to his teenage prostitute Bride's house. If
that's Infinity War two, I will be in the front row.
This isn't testing super well for Disney. Are you do
we need the teenage Prostitute Bride? Actually? I feel like

(12:27):
the Teenage Prostitute Bride is very Disney because most of
those princesses are like fourteen years old. Boy. Yep, there's
always a king in those stories. Okay, anyways, so h
most kids in the Congo were not even lucky enough
to benefit from a shitty education. Educating Black Africans was

(12:50):
not considered a priority by the Belgians because Congolese independence
was assumed to be decades away, so they were just
going to be working in mines anyway, why teach them
how to read? When the Belgians were said the forced
to hand over control of the Congo to the Congolese
in nineteen sixty, only seventeen Congolese people actually had university
degrees now. A major source for this episode was a
book called In the Footsteps of Colonel Kurtz by Michelle

(13:12):
O Wong, a journalist who lived and worked in the
Congo in the early nineteen nineties. As part of her
research for the book, she talks to a Belgian professor
named Stingers. Uh this she was asking this guy if
she if he thought that Leopold's legacy of exploitation had
had any impact on the continued disastrous mismanagement of the
Congo's resources under African rule since in the decades since independence,

(13:33):
and Professor Stinger claimed that since Congolese people don't have
any memories of that time. Because people don't there's not
a lot of like passed down recollections of what happened
during the Leopold years, Leopold couldn't be at fault for
the modern state of the Congo because people didn't even
remember him, which ignores the fact that carry much like
a like just the frat boy who like he's like, oh,

(13:54):
she didn't remember I roofied her, So I can't be
at fault because she the memory. That is exactly what's
going This is like the national version of that. They
don't remember what happened. It's fine, yeah, yeah, he's it's
ignoring the fact that this guy killed between a third
and more than half of all of the human beings

(14:14):
in the congo um, which probably would not leave a
lot of strong memories. Like it's like if if you've
ever met a Jewish person whose whole family but one
person died in the Holocaust, they don't have a lot
of stories of that time, but it has an impact,
Like surviving that sort of trauma does something to you.
And the people with the worst memories are gone because

(14:37):
that they're dead, yeah, and there's just an absence in
their place. And that is a kind of trauma in
and of itself. And that's the kind of trauma that
the Congo was going for. So in her book, Michelle
Wong sums up what she sees is Leopold's impact on
monitored Congolese people. Quote, keep your head down, think small,
look after yourself. These constituted the lessons of Leopold. The

(14:58):
spirit what's compreh sensibly crushed does not recover easily. For
seventy five years, from eighteen eighty five to nineteen sixty,
Congo's population had marinated in humiliation. No malevolent witch doctor
could have devised a better preparation for the coming of
a second great dictator. So that second great dictator would
be Mobot Ciccu, who we will talk about on a
future episode about the Congo, but before we talk about

(15:21):
that guy, and what this episode is about is about
the first hopeful attempts at reform and happiness for the
Congo and the bastards who ruined it all because there
was a chance in nineteen sixty the things we're going
to go okay for the Congo, that it was going
to become a prosperous democratic nation. And yeah, this is
an episode about how that was all shattered. Yeah, you

(15:42):
look super excited. Can't wait, just really can't wait for
the good mood this is going to put me in. Yeah, Well,
it all starts with a guy named Elias Elias Okita
Sumbo who would grow into a man named Patrice Emery
the Mumba. Wait, he changes his name when he becomes
a man. Yeah, a cultural thing. I don't know if
it was a cultural thing, but he did it. So

(16:03):
I became a man and now my name is different,
and I think there was a little bit of like
Patrise Lamomba is kind of a more European eed named
than Elias okay to Sombo, and so he was like, yes,
it might have been a little bit of that. He
was born on July two and a small village in
a part of the Congo called the Kasai Oriental. Patrise
is something of a hero to very large numbers of people,

(16:25):
particularly Africans. Now, Patrise is a big hero to very
large numbers of people, particularly in Africa. And we are
going to go into some detail on him because he's
an interesting dude, but not as much as we'd go
into for someone like Saddam Hussein because alas this podcast
is behind the bastards and not behind the chill dudes
who got sucked over by politics. Um. Now, Patrise received

(16:46):
a minimal education from a missionary school, so one of
those schools where he's learning about how great Leopold was,
and he wound up as a young adult in Stanleyville,
named after a frequent Bastard podcast side character, Henry Morton Stanley. Uh,
the explorer who discovered the Congo, mainly by shooting his
way through it and murdering thousands of people. Uh. Yeah,
So basically every city in the Congo was named after

(17:08):
someone who had killed huge numbers of Congolese people. Um.
Pretty sweet. Also, what the Stanley cups named after? I
hope not that would I'm not aware of him inventing hockey.
That would be a very surprising turn for his I
think he died poor and filled with syphilis. I hope so. Yeah.

(17:30):
So Patrice grew up conscious of all of this, of
the fact that he was living in a city named
after a murderer, that his the Congo had been essentially
conquered by this terrible king. He was aware of all this,
Like the propaganda did not take and he grew up
resentful of the cruel and obvious plunder of his people. Uh.
He eventually moved to the capital, Leopoldville, and worked as

(17:52):
a postal clerk, press correspondent, and then brewery sales director.
Uh so that's cool. Yeah, it sounds like very more
turn Yeah, just you know, yeah, those were all just
ways to pay the rent. Patrese's passion to day it
would be a podcast, but back then it was anti
colonial activism. Um. He was charismatic and good at giving speeches,

(18:15):
so he got pretty popular. And he looked like some
guy you went to high school with. Oh is this him? Yeah? Ok, yeah, yeah,
this picture will be up on our website. He's smirking
like he's kind of like to take a picture. Yeah,
he he does not want to take a picture, but
he just looks like it just looks like some guy. Yeah,

(18:36):
nice guy. Now. Patrese was the head of the Congolese
National Movement, the largest political party in the country. It
was dedicated to achieving independence within a quote reasonable time frame.
Their main foe was the center right Alliance of Bakongo,
who demanded immediate independence. Both parties applied a lot of
pressure to the Belgian administrators of the colony. Things reached

(18:56):
a fever pitch in ninety nine with protests that descended
into hiding so bloody and violent it convinced Belgium to
abandon the Congo asap. So before in like recently the
late fifties, they had been sure that it was decades away.
Probably the eighties or nineties is when they'd have to
give up the Congo. But this unrest convinces them, we
just gotta fucking leave now. Um really modern or really

(19:19):
um yeah, very recently, like they were in in the
nineteen forties, they were whipping people to death for not
mining uranium fast enough. And that uranium is what made
all of the first nuclear weapons that the US used
in the Cold War or had in the Cold War.
It's also in Mission Impossible, the new one. Oh cool. Well,
I'm sure that was a less exploitative use of the Congo.

(19:41):
They probably filmed in Canada, right, probably, I don't know,
on a green screen screen. Uh So, Independence Day was
set for June nineteen sixty. Now, Belgium's King Bowdwin the
first flew to the Central African nation to give the
colony away to itself. Boudwin was the great great grandson
of Leopold. I'm pretty sure I did the math in

(20:03):
my head. In pictures he looks no judgment here, but
he looks like the biggest nerd ever. In fact, everyone
in this story kind of looks like a guy you'd
have played D and D with in junior high. Uh,
if you were going to cast about to win the
first in a movie, you would want to travel back
in time to steal Crispin Glover off the set of

(20:24):
Back to the Future and stick him in a uniform
like that. There's a picture of Leopold like it's a
huge nerd, which you know, no judgment, but so you
have an accurate but you kind of want. Yeah, like
a contrast from like villainous, looks like a villain right
to like kind of nerdy, Like I'm sorry, you're like,

(20:45):
I don't really want to be in charge of the Congo. Yeah.
So we're going to learn about what happened during that
independent ceremony, which is a big story, and of course
the what happened afterwards next. But first, before we get
into more of the Congo history, we're going to sell
some products. Who loved drugs maybe, Now that's what when

(21:07):
you say products, it's possible, it's possible that the ad
that comes up will involve a drug. It is and
actually that might be happening. But before we do that,
do you like, do you like Dorritos. I love Derita.
Is it let me ask you, is it the Is
it the crisp crunch of biting into one for the
first time? Or is it Is it the way that
that the coding of the dorritos, that the way the

(21:29):
flavor builds upon itself as you eat more. It's like
an orchestra just builds and then the beat drops and
you're like, yeah, cheesy, cheezy, jeezy, yeah, And that's I
love it when that cheesy beat drops. That's what really
gets me going. And let it get you going to
buy some derritos today. All right, here's the ads that
paid us, and we're back. We have just been talking

(21:55):
about the Congo after Leopold of Belgium gave it up
and then I and uh, yeah, we've been talking about
a guy, Lene Patrice Lamba, who has become something of
a rabble rouser and an advocate for independence and he's
gotten his wish. Protesting and rioting got bad enough that
the Belgians decided to abandon the colony. And yeah, they're
new king. The great great grand descendant of Leopold, a

(22:17):
guy named Badwin the First flew on down to give
the colony away to itself. Now, Badwin had visited the
Congo once before, in nineteen fifty five, and at that
point there had been a big parade for him. Everybody
had cheered. They had all been super because Leopold never
even visited the Congo. So this guy does get some
points in my book, for like, if you country winds

(22:37):
up owning a chunk of land that it should never
have been in for any reason, at least go go there, like,
at least look at what it is to just sit
and count their re seats, which is what Leopold did.
So Badwin had gone and he had a good reaction.
People had liked him. But then he'd come back in
nineteen fifty nine and he'd been pelted with bottles and feces,
and like, the temperature had changed, and some of that,

(22:58):
a lot of that was due to guys like Patrice Lama,
who had sort of educated everyone on like how fucked
they had been by Belgium, because a lot of people
hadn't really known because the education wasn't there. Everyone who
had gotten the worst fucked over had died. There weren't
a lot of oral traditions, and so the temperature was
high at this point, and there was a lot of
anti colonial scent within. They should have just been like,

(23:18):
oh no, this is our tradition to welcome people. It's
the poop. Yeah, you haven't been here. It's change. It's
just our point tradition. We yell at you and you Yeah,
I'm just gonna cut you with this razor blade and
smears and poop in the wounds. That's now poop points
are a thing. Yeah, it's religious or whatever. We're just
gonna use a hippohide whip on you. Yeah, everybody who

(23:39):
comes here has to have that done to them by
this whole line of people. Yeah. Battle when the first
goes to the Congo to prepare to release it. You know,
he clearly had a more positive view of his ancestor,
Leopold's deeds in the Congo than the facts would support
uh during the speech that he gave. So, you know,
they have the big Independent Day thing, and so there's

(24:01):
all of these uh Congolese Africans that people who are
going to be taking over the government once a lot
of the Belgian's leave, and there's also all of the Belgians.
So it's like a bunch of white people and a
bunch of black Africans altogether for this ceremony in a
place where these two groups have been segregated, so like
it's it's kind of a big deal that they're all
in the like black people are allowed in the same

(24:22):
room as the white people in the king because again
it's a super racist colony. So the King gets up
in front of this mixed group and praises Leopold's civilizing
mission in the Congo, calls him a genius for foreseeing
the Congo uh and basically gives a speech that's one
giant You're welcome to the whole country. Now. Patrice Lamumba

(24:43):
was again a big figure at this point. He was
set to be the prime minister when the Congo got
its freedom, so he had written up a speech that
was already kind of peppery to because this was like
his big chance to get up in front of the
nation and really tell the Belgians what he thought. And
while the King is giving this speech about how cool
Leopold was and how great the Congo colony worked out

(25:04):
for everyone, Patrese is like writing furiously in the margins
of his speech, just like red faced and just just
adding to what he was going to say, so ships
was already really hot, and the King's speech makes people
angrier because it's being broadcast through like loudspeakers across the city.
So there's just crowds of Congolese people in the streets

(25:24):
hearing this guy talk about how his psycho great great
granddad had been so good at civilizing them. So they
get really, really really pissed. And then Patrice Lamomba takes
the stage and he proceeds to say this to King
Shittass and every other European in the audience. And I'm
going to read a decent chunk of this speech because
it's it's cathartic. Although this independence of the Congo is

(25:45):
being proclaimed today by the agreement with Belgium, an amiable
country with which we are on equal terms, no Congolese
will ever forget that independence was one in struggle, a
persevering and inspired struggle carried on from day to day,
a struggle in which we were undaunted by privation or suffering,
and stinted neither strength nor blood. It was filled with tears,
fire and blood. We are deeply proud of our struggle

(26:07):
because it was just and noble and indispensable. In putting
an into the humiliating bondage forced upon us. This was
our lot for the eighty years of colonial rule, and
our wounds are too fresh and much too painful to
be forgotten. We have experienced forced labor in exchange for
pay that did not allow us to satisfy our hunger,
to clothe ourselves, to have decent lodgings, or to bring
up our children as dearly loved ones, morning, noon and night.

(26:30):
We were subjected to jeers, insults, and blows because we
were negroes. Who will ever forget that the black was
addressed as too, not because he was a friend, but
because the polite voo was reserved for the white man.
We have seen our land seized in the name of
ostensibly just laws which gave recognition only to the right
of might. We have not forgotten that the law was
never the same for the black and the white, that

(26:51):
it was lenient to the ones and cruel and inhumane
to the others. We've experienced atrocious sufferings, being persecuted for
political convictions and religio beliefs, and exiled from our native land.
Our lot was worse than death itself. So this is
very well well spoken too, and like uh because like
when you were saying like he was jotting furiously as

(27:12):
expecting to be really like vengeful and angry, but it's
actually it's comes off like it's like almost too nice
for what they did, but like in a very political way,
like you get the underlying text, but also concee him
as a leader because he's like very composed. He's it's
very composed and eloquent range and he's getting up there

(27:32):
in front of the guys who had done this to
them and telling them, y'all are fucking assholes, like and
it's like more of a funk you that he can
say it so calmly because it's like it's like you're like,
oh ship, yeah, we're wrong. And the whole speech. I
recommend reading it. Um it's it's it's much longer, and
it it continues to just throw shitloads of shade on

(27:52):
the Belgians, and it's kind of intoxicating to read, especially
if you've listened to the Leopold podcast and so you
if you've been sort of inundating yourself with how shitty
the Belgians were to the Congolese, just this guy getting
up in front of them and really letting them have
it is. You don't get a lot of moments like
this in history. It's yeah, it's like if a council
of rabbis right before Hitler had died, had gotten to

(28:14):
just roast him for an hour and a half, like
like that sort of thing, like the kind of thing
that never happened. Put the face to a lot of
the injustices they did, because I'm sure so much of
colonialism is built on like the idea that the colonized
are less than human, because then people can justify it
by thinking like, oh, is this abstract idea like we're

(28:35):
better people and that's why we can do this civilizing them, Right,
But then you see a guy like that get up
and speak eloquently and you're like, oh, yeah, they're just
people that we've sucked over, really fucked over for like
a century. Yeah. So the image of Patrise, this kid
from the Congo, standing up in front of his former
masters and in the most eloquent terms telling them fuck

(28:57):
you when the horse you rode in on it gets
around owned this goes viral and it is a huge
moment in like African liberation um, and it is to
this day, a really significant moment in the continuing struggle
to Yeah, unfuncked what the Europeans did in that continent.
So Lamimba just lays into the Belgians while they're all

(29:18):
standing around looking at him, surrounded by Congolese citizens and
unable to do anything to stop him. Um And this
is remember a place where just a few years earlier
African children were whipped bloody for things like laughing in
the presence of a white man. That was a real crime. Yeah,
people died for laughing in the presence of a white man.
A couple of even the logic behind that, like the
fact that they want to regulate their joy or is

(29:40):
it like maybe it's still seen less human. And it's like, well,
if they don't have emotions, I think it's it's they
don't want to be mocked. I think in the and
they're not. They're not sure if they're laughing at them,
eat them. If you're laughing near a white man, you
might be laughing at him, and they can't let that
be happening. Wow, some petty as ship. That's colonial Europeans

(30:06):
right there. They are the pettiest ass people you'll ever
read about. Um So It probably won't surprise you to
hear that Lamomba's speech was Yeah, as I said so.
Lamba speech became one of the most positive and iconic
moments in the whole African struggle for independence. But he
didn't just throw shade in the speech. He also outlined
an optimistic and even utopian vision of what Congolese society
could be after independence. Quote, we shall eradicate all discrimination,

(30:29):
whatever its origin, and we shall ensure for everyone a
station in life befitting his human dignity and worthy of
his labor and his loyalty to the country. He also
said we shall institute in the country at peace, resting
not on guns and bayonets, but on conquered and goodwill.
So he's saying all the right things on conquered concorde

(30:49):
yeah sorright like well like like people getting along. I
mean yes, it's the same spot, like the grape as
opposed to being conquered. Yeah. Yeah, he built on grapes
and good will. Yeah. English is that my first language? Okay,

(31:10):
it's not mine either. Screaming is okay? Yeah? Um? So
that is Patrice Lamamba in a nutshell. Seems like a
pretty sweet dude, right yeah, nice guy, well spoken, says
the right things and human dignity. Oh no, there's no
butts he was. He was a good man by all accounts.
He was a good man. Uh So, yeah, let me

(31:31):
tell you why Dwight D. Eisenhower decided he needed to die.
Oh no, I mean, this is the podcast it is.
It wasn't gonna end well for the nice guy. So
under the terms of the independence agreement, the Congo was
set up to be one of those democracies with both
the president and a prime minister in a parliament. Right,
Lamombo was set to be the first prime minister. And

(31:52):
it is possible that Lamamba's speech angreed up some folks
because a bunch of Congolese soldiers mutinied and murdered their
Belgian officers that night. The mutiny turned into a general
assault on all white people in the area and like
a thousand people died. Uh. Now, at this point, the
Belgians hadn't had time to hand everything over, so the
Congolese army was commanded by a Belgian and the Congolese

(32:13):
units were commanded by Belgian officers, and that seems to
be what started the mutiny. Uh. These African soldiers were like, oh,
we're independent now, and then their officers come by and say,
but we're still in charge of the army, and they're like,
the funk you are? I just heard we're independent. I'm
gonna shoot me an officer or too. So yeah, it
gets bad, and uh yeah, there's always chaos and changing

(32:35):
of well not always, I guess, but like an unstable governments,
there is because it's like everything's up for grabs and
and it it happened so suddenly, like there's there's less
than a year where they've known they're going to be
handing it over. So the Belgians are not doing what
you would want to do for this to go well,
because you do have cases like Taiwan was was handed

(32:56):
over from. I mean also they are now dealing with
transitional justice and a lot of a lot of stuff
that wasn't dealt with that I didn't even know growing
up because my parents generation was fed so much propaganda
that like about chung Kaishak and everything that now it's like, oh,
there's a lot of people that were killed and yeah. Yeah,

(33:18):
So it's this is never a smooth process, and it's
especially not spruit smooth when the country in charge just
immediately cuts ties in the space of a few months. Yeah,
like so yeah, something that is hard is made impossible
once the murder spree starts. The soldiers start killing people,
all of the white people, huge at least a huge
chunk of the white people in the country run the
funk away and just start getting on boats and planes

(33:40):
getting the hell out of there, which leaves the country
with a distinct lack of people who have experienced actually
running infrastructure because again the Belgian's number one, the Africans
usually hadn't benefited for most of the infrastructure, the buildings
had built, and they certainly had been taught how to run.
It's all white people. They weren't allowed in the same rooms. Yeah,
and they they weren't let in the same rooms. There
hadn't been time to train people because they just cut ties.

(34:02):
So this causes additional instability in addition to the fact
that handing over control of a huge reason of land.
The Congo is twice the size of Texas, so it's
just a gigantic miss all the funk around. So Patrice
Lamumba and the president like are working over time to
try to calm things down to stabilize ship. Patrese tries

(34:23):
to calm the mutineers by firing the Belgian guy in
charge of the army. Um he replaces him with the
soldier he trusted, a colonel named Mabotu, who again we
will hear about in a subsequent episode. Mabooto managed to
get the army back under control, but things continue to
get messed up during this time, and basically things go
from f to fucked her um. So, the Congo is

(34:44):
very very wealthy. If people were robots, right, and the
sole determining factor of how wealthy your nation was was
its natural resources, the Congo's probably in the top ten
on the planet, maybe in the top five, because they
have they have old they have copper, they have cobalt,
they have uranium, and they have a bunch of stuff,
and they don't just have these minerals. They're usually purer

(35:07):
in the Congo than they are anywhere else on the planet.
Their mind. They have the purest copper, they have the
purest cobal, they have the best uranium. They also have
this gigantic river in it that in its own with
technology that has existed for quite a while, you could
if you properly made use of the Congo rivers hydroelectric potential,
the just the Congo state could provide enough power to

(35:29):
power all of Africa. Like, so that's what. Like they're
set up in a good position, but all of these minerals,
all of these valuable minerals, means there's ship that people
want to steal. And the Belgians, who again hadn't expected
to give up the Congo for a few decades yet,
had kind of been counting on having access to all
of those minerals. So what do they do when they

(35:51):
suddenly lose control of the Congo take it back? Yeah? Yeah,
So they send some mercenaries and some guns, and they
go to different tribal groups and a couple of provinces
in the Congo, and they're like, you know, you guys
should really be your own country. You've got all these
nice resources in this province. You've got all this gyms

(36:13):
or whatever the hell you've got. What if we just
give you some machine guns and helped you secede from
the Congo and then you let us mind your minerals. Ah,
what if? What if that happens? So, yeah, two provinces
secede from the Congo and a civil war begins. Both
of the provinces are backed by Belgian guns in Belgian money,

(36:34):
and in many cases the people running these rebel provinces
are Belgians, like they're appointed leaders and big chunks there
are also Belgian. So it's essentially Belgium gives the Congo
away and then immediately foments the civil war within. It's
just changing the name of it's it's all just ceremonious.
But it's like in the first episode that you're talking about,

(36:55):
Leopold kept changing the name of his organization but wouldn't
catch on. Yeah he would. He would start like, this
is the Society of the African Society and the International
African Society, and then it's the African Society or whatever.
Like they came up with all these different names so
that it seemed like a philanthropic gesture. Yeah, so they're
doing that again, except that there now they're like, oh,
we gave your independence. Oh we didn't say we couldn't

(37:17):
start a civil war. Yeah we didn't. See well, and
if you're not the Congo anymore, then we couldn't take
it over. We just said we were going to give
your independence. We didn't say we were going to start
a three way civil war. Did you want that? On
the You didn't mention it. So we just thought it
was fine, this is normal in Europe. Well, actually that
is normal in Europe, the shipload a civil wars. But

(37:39):
uh yeah, so two of the Congo's most profitable and
resource rich provinces, uh Katanga and East Kassai, rebel against
the government. Um So, now it is important to note that,
I think still to this day when people talk about, like, um,
there's this big controversy over Syria with the White Helmet,

(38:00):
it's because the White Helmets have received funding from the
United States and NATO forces. And so there's this like
myth that like there essentially a US supported uh terrorist
group faking chemical weapons attacks over and and they're definitely
like the White Helmets have gotten support from Western powers.
But it's like there's this tendency among a bunch of

(38:22):
groups to assume that if the West gets involved in
one of these countries and backing aside and a fight,
then that's where all of the division started. And no,
there were pre existing divisions. So the Congo was never
a nation before Leopold came there. It was different tribal groups.
It's like those Real Housewives shows when the producers like

(38:43):
or a bachelor or whatever they like, we'll get the
people contestants of fight, but they don't come out of nowhere.
They're like, yeah, we saw that you guys don't like
each other, so I don't like she I heard she
said this about you. But but they wouldn't just started
out of nowhere. Yeah, so there's something these already comproving exactly.
These provinces were mainly consisting of people who were members

(39:05):
of tribes who had issues with the dominant tribes in
the Congo, and with the tribes because La Mumba was
largely supported by members of a specific tribe. Like, that's
the way politics worked at that point in the Congo.
And so the Belgians would go to these other tribes
who controlled or who were dominant in areas they wanted
and would be like, you guys deserve to be independent.

(39:26):
And these guys already kind of wanted their independence, and
now this Western power shows up offering them machine guns
and military aid and stuff. Let's give it a shot.
So yeah, that's the way that works. So they're offering
it to all sides right, but then each side thinks
like they're being favored. No, they're only offering it to
both sides. Are two sides, but two provinces that want independent.
But the two sides are also fighting each other, or

(39:48):
the two sides fighting against the one just fighting. They're
not fighting together, but they're fighting against the government. They
just both want to be independent, and the Belgians want
those two breakaway provinces independence so that they can keep
getting those sweet, sweet minerals. Yeah, so the rebellion breaks out.
Lamimba and Mobow two are overworked trying to deal with it. Uh.
It becomes clear very quickly that they cannot beat the

(40:10):
Belgian backed separatists, so they call in the UN. Uh.
You know, they try to do it legally, you know,
the UN basically the cops. You're somebody's fucking with your ship,
you call the police. You try to get it done
with a legal way. So the UN sins and troops.
But all they'll agree to do is basically help the
Congolese government maintain control in the areas they already hold.
They will not help the Congo beat the rebels. They

(40:31):
won't do anything about the Belgians. So we're gonna find
out what happens next. The was Belgium not part of
the u N. Oh, it was, so they're okay. See,
so everything's kind of sucked up. Everything is super fucked up.
I guess the cops are a good example for this
that they're great. When the cops are bullying you and
you're like, m they're gonna take the side of the cops. Yeah,

(40:52):
Or if guys who are retired cops are bullying you
and you call the cops, probably not gonna go well
for you. Uh So, we will talk more about throw
more shade on the UN and probably throw more shade
on cops. But first let's do the opposite of throw shade,
shine some sunlight on these products and or services, and

(41:16):
we're back. Uh So, when we last left this, the
Belgians had sort of definitely kind of helped start a
couple of civil wars within the CONGO so that they
could get their hands on some more minerals. Uh and
Patrice Lamumba had called in the u N for help
dealing with these rebellions in the UN and basically been like,

(41:37):
I can't really help you with the fact that the Belgians,
who are also UN members are the ones responsible for
all this. So Lamimba is like, that's some bullshit, and
he goes to the Soviet Union and he says, we
need support and some vehicles and ship and the Soviet
Unions like, well, totally give you guys whatever if you

(41:58):
communist a little bit. And Lamamba was like our communist
a little bit because he was a socialist, but he
wasn't a communist really and he uh he didn't like
actually do anything terrible or whatever. He wasn't stalinist purging people.
He was just taking the Soviet Union's offer of aid
in a time when his country needed it because the
UN had said no. Uh So, pretty soon Soviet technicians

(42:18):
and military advisors are flooding into the country and unfortunately
for Patrice Lamamba and everyone really, the CIA was also
in the Congo and they start counting every Russian they
see step out of an airplane. Uh Now, Larry Devlin
was the big CIA guy in Leopoldville at the time,
the station chief, and he's still alive and around today.
I think he's still alive. He was still alive pretty

(42:40):
recently because you can watch interviews of him talking about
everything that happens here and giving his opinions on it.
So if you want to see Larry Devlin, the CIA
guys opinion of all this, you can find it. So
Devlin counts like a thousand some odds Soviets who are
in the country, and he starts sending this information back
to Washington, and this stuff goes up the food chain
and it gets to Dwight the ice Shower's ear. Now,

(43:01):
this is right when the Cold War is ratcheting up,
and the way it's presented to the president is the
Communists are gaining influence in the Congo, and thanks to
this Lamumba guy, the Congo might go red. And the
Congo it's full of uranium, which you need to make nukes. So,
like fuck, Eisenhower is going to let that happen. Now,

(43:21):
for a long time, the exact chain of command for
everything was in doubt. But in two thousand The Guardian
dug up some information from the National Archives interview with
a guy named Robert Johnson, who had been the minute
taker in the White House on the Fateful Day when
they discussed all this quote. Robert Johnson said in the
interview that he vividly recalled the President turning to Alan Dullis,
director of the CIA, and the full hearing of all

(43:43):
those in attendance and saying something to the effect that
Lamumbo should be eliminated. So Dwight Eisenhower says, killed this
fucking guy. Essentially, he says he should be eliminated, and
the CIA reads it as killed this fucking guy. Yeah,
I see, but he's because it's like the US, they
don't want to help, but so they just want to

(44:04):
like kind of like put a little pause on the
situation because they don't want this civil war. They just
don't want to be involved in civore right, They're not
going to try to get involved in help that way.
But they also don't want to help this guy. So
even though this guy went to the Soviets for help,
they're just like, oh, we can't have that, so we're
just going to kill the guy. But then someone else

(44:24):
will just come in. Well, but they can make sure
it's someone else who wants to do who they're in
charge of. Yeah, they don't like this guy. I think
it a lot of it comes down to the fact
that Patrice Lammbo was not somebody they owned or could
and he had and he and the people who supported him,
had their own view of what the Congo should be,
and they didn't really give a shit about being part
of the US's sphere of influence. And the US was

(44:47):
definitely most worried about because the Domino theory was big
at this time, which is the idea that like, if
one nation falls to communism, it will lead other nations
around it to fall, and soon all of Africa will
be read. But there's also this very real concern that
they have that like, well, this is full of uranium
and if the Soviets gained influence here, that's going to
go to them. So it's a few things going on,

(45:08):
but it all comes down to the fact that they
didn't think they could control this guy, and so they
decided to have him killed. Mr Johnson recalled after Eisenhower
said that there was a stunned silence for about fifteen
seconds and then the meeting continued. Um because this is
one of the first times that anything like this had
ever happened. Um, the CIA was not super experienced murdering
people at this point. Now, the New York Times published

(45:31):
an expose the CIA and Lamomba. It revealed that on
September nineteenth, nineteen sixty, the CIA's Leopoldville station chief received
a top secret message telling him to prepare for the
arrival of quote Joe from Paris now Devlin. The CIA
chief guy was warned to keep all this information to himself.
Joe wound up being a guy named Sidney Gottlieb. He

(45:53):
was the CIA Special Assistant for scientific matters. That's a
fancy way of saying he was the agency's top scientist
and in this case, top poisoner. Yeah. So, Sydney brought
with him a bizarre bespoke virus that had been engineered
by the CIA to mimic the deadly effects of a
local Congolese disease. The scientist told the station chief. The
chief that this poison was meant for Patrice Lamomba, something

(46:15):
he put in his beverage or whatever to assassinate and
be undetected. Yeah, exactly. He just got some terrible Congolese
disease and died. Um. I'm gonna quote the New York
Times here. The poison, the scientist said, was somehow to
be slipped into Lamomba's food or perhaps into his toothpaste.
Poison was not the only acceptable method any form of

(46:35):
assassination would do so long as it could not be
traced back to the United States government. Now, at this
point in history, the CIA is very new and they
don't have a lot of experience murdering foreign leaders. In fact,
I think they've only done it one time before this
that we have any kind of evidence about. Now, considering
Castro's history, you might argue that they never did good
good at killing world leaders, but this is sort of

(46:57):
their the proving ground for that, that tactic, you know,
just murdering people who disagree with America. Um, and they're
not great at yet. The poison winds up expiring before
they can give it to Lamamba in a few different expires. Yeah,
this one did. Wow. Yeah, there's they They suck at
this so far. They're going to get better. And the
whole isn't poison, Okay, I think it's like a virus.

(47:20):
So that's like, that's not potent anymore. Yeah. No, like
the CIA sent a chemical weapon over to assassinate a
world leader, like poppers, Like if you're once it's out
too long, but the effects are gone, just like poppers.
We should have an episode of this podcast we do
will take poppers. So if he can we do a
line of poppers or will be a very short episode?

(47:45):
So yeah, all of the different plans they have for
Lamamba kind of fall through at least for a while now.
As I had said before, Lamamba is a hero in
Africa and certainly within the Congo's very popular at this point.
A philosopher of liberation, he looked different to the mostly
white American cold warriors of the Eisenhower era. Now they've
gotten to meet him face to face shortly after Congle's independence.

(48:06):
Because Lamamba had visited the New York Times to talk
to or to had visited New York City to talk
to the UN Secretary General when he was still asking
for help with the civil war thing. He'd been invited
down to Washington during that same trip. Um Here's how
the New York Times described it. For both Lamamba and
the United States. It was a decisive encounter. The new
Secretary of State, Christian Herder, received him and spent a
frustrating half hour trying to persuade him to rely exclusively

(48:28):
on the United Nations and refrain from calling to outside
powers for assistance. But obviously the UN wasn't willing to
help him do what needed to be done, and Lama
didn't take well to this, considering the rebels were being funded, armed,
in many cases led by Belgian military officers. Quote. His
arguments fell on deaf ears. Dylan, under Secretary of State,
who was present at the meeting, testified that Lamamba had

(48:49):
struck him as quote, an irrational, almost psychotic personality. The
impression that was left, Dylan said, was very bad, that
this was an individual whom it was impossible to deal with,
and the feelings of the government as a result sharpened
considerably during this time. Now, well they say impossible to deal,
what they just mean impossible to control. Yeah, and I

(49:09):
think they also mean black and talking like he's equal
to a white guy. I really do think that's most
of why they consider him crazy. Because Devlin, the CIA chief,
who actually knew Lamambo, I don't think was a racist
and did not describe him as a crazy person. He said, quote,
I didn't regard Lamamba as the kind of person who
is going to bring on World War three. I saw

(49:29):
him as a danger to the political position of the
United States in Africa, but nothing more than that, which
is reasonable. Um, and he did not stay out. Yeah, Yeah,
and devil in the CIA guy tried to help kill
him but didn't want to, Like it was one of
those like, well that's the orders. I'm a CIA guy.
I kill people if I got to kill people. But

(49:49):
that's part of why I think Dylan, the under Secretary
of State, is just a racist. Like he sees a
black man with an opinion and he's he's crazy. We
got a poison this guy. Yeah, and I'm guessing Eisenhower
had some racism in them too. Um. Yeah, probably Ike
doesn't come off well in this story. Um. One thing
I do think is important to note is kind of

(50:11):
how the artificial nature of the Congo exacerbated the civil
war that had just started off, made it easier for
the Belgians to foment, which we already talked about a
little bit, and also was responsible for a lot of
the continuing violence that's there today. Um. There's a U. S.
Diplomat named Robert McNamara who worked in the Congo for
a while, and he traced a lot of the political

(50:32):
problems they had directly to King Leopold. He said that
the Congo as it was put put together by King
Leopold was an artificial entity. It had no relationship to
anything African. It cut across tribal, ethnic and national geographic lines.
A few of the people in Africa had any real
identity with the Congo as a nation. So it's it's
it's a big mess that we're we've got into right now,
right this is like a fake thing that's been cobbled together.

(50:54):
Lament was trying to make it into a real country
because you can force that sort of thing. But it's
also very easy for the Belgians too, it's unstable. Then
he come in and exactly so local politics and the
Congo moved faster than c i A. Lamumbo's initial military
campaign to suppress the rebels did not go well, and
his decision to seek Soviet aid was controversial within his

(51:15):
own nation. In September of nineteen sixty, President Cosa Vubu
dismissed Prime Minister Lamomba, so Lammbo went before Parliament directly
and gave a big speech and convinced them to reinstate him,
which seemed to prove to the Americans that this young
socialist was just so charismatic he could only be stopped
by death. So the CIA went to a guy who
happened to be the second in command of the army

(51:37):
at the time, Colonel Joseph Mobutu uh and they were like,
it would be great if someone could coupe this current
government out of power, and Someboto did exactly that. He
kicked the Soviet advisors out of the Congo and deposed
Lamomba and his supporters. At this point, the Congo had
effectively two different governments, Patrice Lamamba's which was like half legitimate,
and President Cassa Bubus which was backed by Mobutu and

(51:59):
was also like half legitimate. And then of course there
are the two different breakos, so there's four governments. Yeah,
so now we've gone from three to four governments in
the Congo at this point in time. So the UN
chose to recognize Cassavubu's government because they didn't like Lamomba
and Patrice Lamombo fled the capital for the town of Stanleyville,
where he had all of his supporters because again it's

(52:21):
the tribal sort of thing, so like the tribes who
supported him are mainly there. He has his people there,
but he gets caught along the way by Colonel Mbutu's
men and they imprison him in a place called Ticeville,
near the capital. But after a couple of weeks, like
Lamumba is in this prison guarded by soldier and he
starts talking to the soldiers and again he can talk
anybody in any He's He's a charismatic dude. He's charming,

(52:44):
and so within a couple of weeks they're mutinying for
higher pay because he's essentially convinced them that they deserve
more uh and they threatened to put him back in
charge of the country. Mbootoo sends in some soldiers and
very quickly pulls Lamumba out of there before things can
get worse, and puts him on a plane to Tanga,
the rebel province where he had been prosecuting a war
against uh So. The plane that flies him there is

(53:08):
piloted by Belgians. The mercenaries who are guarding him on
his flight to the rebel thing are Belgian soldiers, and
they drop him off in the heart of rebel territory,
blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his backs. Back
um he was beaten badly by Catangan soldiers and then
executed in front of several of their officials, including some

(53:28):
Belgians who were officials in the Contagian government. So Lamamba
has just been horribly murdered with heavy help from the Belgians, right,
But technically the US did it, but they did it
through the Belgians, so that in the Congolese and like,
it's hard to say how much of this was the
c i A, but it was. They seemed to have

(53:48):
been guiding all this because they wanted Lamomba out of power,
and I think they had something to do with him
getting sacked in the first place. And then when he
managed to talk his way back into power, you know,
the U in which is really the US, backs the
government that doesn't want him back in power and forces
him to flee and then just so happens that he gets,
you know, captured, and yeah, Belgian soldiers fly him to

(54:11):
go be murdered. So Cea is not the only person
that falled here, but they're definitely I guess nice guys
really do finish last. Yeah, nice guys getting murdered in
front of their enemies. Uh yeah, So it probably want
surprised you to learn that Lamomba's assassination was treated as
a wonderful thing by the Belgian people in press. I'm
going to read a quote from an important book, The
Assassination of Lamumba by Ludo do Witt. At one point

(54:34):
he reviews Belgian newspaper coverage of the murder, which is
mostly focused on shifting the blame from Belgium to the Congolese.
What has occurred demonstrates alas that in Africa and certain
other countries at the same stage of evolution, access to
the democratic process remains a murderous affair and was from
like yeah, a Belgian colonial newspaper. Another newspaper noted, Patrice

(54:57):
Lamamba has died the way he always wanted violently. What yeah,
gas lighting? Yeah, it's super He was asking for it,
he wanted it. Belgium's leading financial paper there, equivalent to
The Wall Street Journal, considered the assassination to be a
dangerous but crucial sort of surgery. Quote. The very existence

(55:18):
of Lamombo was an abscess which had already infected the
Congo and was threatening to infect it further. What yeah,
So the West breathed socieh of release as soon as
this guy is horribly murdered. But people across Africa were
very much piste off by the murder of a liberationist icon.
Uh Kwamain Akruma, then the President of Ghana, gave a
fiery speech that was heard across the continent once the

(55:41):
news of this broke. About their end, many things are uncertain,
but one fact is crystal clear. They have been killed
because the United Nations, who Patrice Lamombo himself as Prime Minister,
had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order,
not only failed to maintain that law and order, but
also denied to the lawful government of the Congo all
other means of self protect action. History records many occasions

(56:02):
when rulers of states have been assassinated. The murder of
Patrice Lamamba and two of his colleagues, however, is unique
in that it is the first time in history that
the legal ruler of a country has been done to
death with the open connivance of a world organization in
whom that ruler put his trust. Oh no, it really
is an abusive relationship. Yeah, for sure. The speech goes

(56:23):
on and it's it's a really good speech. Do wit
considers Lamamba's assassination, to be quote, the most important political
assassination of the twentieth century. Uh, And it's hard to
argue with him. Lamambo was not the first CIA backed overthrow.
Alan Dulls had masterminded the end of Jacobo are Beza's
democratically elected government in Guatemala in nineteen fifty four and
an operation called PBS Success. Yeah weird, they picked weird names.

(56:49):
But Lamambo's death was probably the most significant of the
CIA backed coups that came mostly after this um. Not
only was the Congo an enormous nation for the CIA
too of directly sort of intervened to change the course
of its politics. But this is kind of like popping
a hole in the dam. And after this, the CIA
just goes fucking nuts for regime change. So they tried

(57:11):
it once before in fifty four, but after they successfully
get Lamomba had a taste for control on there. Yeah. Oh,
we could do this more if we just do this everywhere.
Is how America works now. Yeah. So the CIA targets
Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republican nineteen sixty one. They
support the Bothists and our old pal Saddam Hussein and

(57:32):
overthrowing a Rax President Kossum in nineteen sixty three. Uh.
There are dozens of confirmed and suspected regime changes all
over the world carried out by the CIA and the
nineteen sixties and early seventies. One of the most striking
cases was the killing of Salvador Allende. He was the
democratically elected socialist leader of Chile. Here's how the Washington
Post described as politics quote. He had rejected the Cuban

(57:55):
model as too extreme. SHA's revolution is too violent. He
was adamantly against armed struggle. Winning the presidency on September four,
nineteen seventy, he vowed to overturn Chile's harsh economic injustices.
He put forward a doctrine of geoeconomic sovereignty and self determination,
a U S free future in which Chile would make
its own way alone. The United States must realize that

(58:16):
Latin America has now been changed, he said during one
of his campaigns. Once in office, he would try to
prove it. So so probably not going to end well
for him, just based on that speech. Yeah, they probably
don't like that he wants independence. But yeah, that's it's
like weird because hearing all this, I know, we're supposed
to talk about villains and other countries, but the US

(58:37):
is coming off We're the bastard of this. Yeah, so
one of ends first orders of business once he was
elected legally to be in charge of Chile was to
nationalize the copper and nitrate industries, making them property of
all Chileans. The US did not appreciate this since these

(58:58):
industries at the time were run by amy Kins and Brits.
So he nationalizes copper and nitrates because he wants a
Latin America free of what he called multinational vampires. He
thought it was unfair that U S corporations made enormous
profits off Chilean resources while playing paying Chilean workers a pittance.
Here's the Washington Post again. As Allende's presidential campaign gain traction.

(59:19):
In nineteen seventy, corporations with interest in Chile, PepsiCo, Chase, Manhattan,
I t T, Anaconda, kennicott Ford made their panic known
to the US government. Once Allende was elected, Kissinger advised
Nixon to mobilize quote quietly and covertly, to oppose Allende
as strongly as we can and do all we can
to keep him from consolidating power. Kissinger activated the CIA's

(59:41):
Food Belt Plan, which involved encouraging a variety of subversive
elements in Chilean society. Nixon ordered US Intel agencies to
quote make the Chilean economy scream. He said to Kissinger,
all's fair on Chile. Kick him in the ass. Okay, Oh, no,
Nixon is a great guy. I don't know if I
like us in this story. Well, you can blame it

(01:00:04):
on Nixon if it makes you feel better, and pretend
it wasn't PepsiCo, as I said, a delicious PepsiCo beverage.
What was the There was a similar situation with Dole,
I think, or Chiquita Bana. Yeah, that's what was happening
in guadal Because I'm learning about that long time ago.
We will go into more information on several of these
clups in the future. Um, but it's I'm going over

(01:00:25):
this all now because this is all sort of Lamumbo's
assassination is again like that's the door is over right,
because they've done it successfully, and they're like, yeah, well,
one lie leads to another, one coup leads to another. Yeah,
and in this case, one coup leads to fucking shipload
of coups all over the world. So yeah, the CIA

(01:00:46):
tried to stop and from being sworn in at all.
After his election. This kind of found out was found
out in two thousand that the CIA had supported kidnapping
Chile's top general when he refused to use the army
to stop and from being sworn in as president. It Um.
The kidnapping failed, but he this general was shot and
killed two days later, probably by the CIA. But I

(01:01:07):
end a wound up in power, so like they had
tried to stop him from even taking office, and then
once he took office, they escalated their plans. So on
September eleven, nineteen seventy three, a military coup seized power
in Chile. End was surrounded in his home and wound
up either killing himself or being shot to death through
other means. The CIA has been very heavily rumored to
have been involved, and they've always denied it. In the

(01:01:29):
modern interviews you'll find with these guys like because the
CIA agents again, like with Devlin, these guys are all
giving interviews now for documentaries because some of has been
declassified UM, and they will admit the CIA knew a
coup was brewing within the military and claimed they just
kind of decided not to stop it and maybe helped
it along once they knew it was happening. But they
didn't spark anything. They didn't start. It didn't happen because
then we only found out about it two days beforehand.

(01:01:51):
That's the CIA's line about this guy who we know
they tried. They killed the guy because he wouldn't stop
this dude from taking office. Yeah, they're like someone was
not somebody getting robbed and they screamed for help. We
weren't the one robbing. Then. Also we to guy we'd
give him crack if he robbed. Also blocked the police.
We told the police it was a different alley just

(01:02:11):
but we didn't do it. It was awful and we
shot him after he got robbed. But you can't really
blame any of this on us. Yeah, and then we
also robbed him. We robbed him to stow his organs.
It's fine with the CIA, with the good guys. There's
a new movie coming out about you know, Jack Ryan
CI agent. Yeah, good guys. Jim from the Office is
playing one of the good guys. Yeah. Yeah, our propaganda

(01:02:34):
because other country is a propaganda so blatant, but it's
like Hollywood is our propaganda yea, and that is whoa
My mind is blood there, I don't know. So, Yeah,
the guy who took power from my end and Chile
was a general named Augusto Pinochet. He was the dictator
of the of Chile from nineteen seventy three to nineteen

(01:02:55):
ninety and remained in charge of the army until nine.
During that time, he killed at least three thousand people
and tortured thousands more. But at least at least Teresa
Chile remains safe for PepsiCo. Yeah. That should They should
put that on the cans of coke, like instead of
the names like share coke with Diane, it should be
like like steal a government from Chile. That no, that

(01:03:21):
that I think you've nailed. That's a great marketing campaign.
Open a can of coup. That's the CIA's internal soda.
It just tastes like the tears of colonized peoples. Yeah,
so fun. Fact, there are also allegations that the CIA
tried to overthrow or kill Charles de Gaul several times. Yeah,
you wouldn't have called France so not even a colonial

(01:03:44):
nation like like one of our staunchest allies. Now with Lamombo,
we do know for sure that the CIA wanted him
gone and that Eisenhower asked for him to be eliminated.
That ship is documented. The Degala sassination is murkier. The
CIA has not admitted ship, and in fact, this is
officially a conspire your c theory, right, because that'd be
crazy if they admitted that. But then I feel like,
also the US and France have always been kind of

(01:04:06):
weird and friend the front of me because whenever ship
hits the fan, like like technically because the two big
world powers are always like, okay, yeah, we sport each other,
but then when something happens, like people are like, I
don't know, We're gonna wait this one out and see
how everyone else feels, like after September eleven, like of course, right,

(01:04:27):
but it's like that's but they liked it when they
were right. But also the US has done ship like
that too, and every time it's always like I want
to jump in right away. I mean, yeah, we're friends,
but like she also owes me like twenty dollars and
it's like, I don't know I really are her. I
don't really like talking to him. I mean, he's he's
I guess we're friends, but like it's fine if you know,

(01:04:49):
we're all hanging out in a group, but if it's
just like a pregame with her, but I don't want
to hang out with the one on one it's going
to be awkward. That's France in America. Yeah. So yeah,
here's how we tried to have Charles de Gaull killed
um So Basically, in nineteen sixty two, four retired French
generals attempted to overthrew throw the government to France. They
captured Algiers in the French colony of Algeria, but they

(01:05:12):
failed to capture Paris. Their coup was put down four
days later. Now, the goal of this coup was to
stop Charles de gaul from freeing Algeria. He wanted to
colonize at least that French colony. This angered the French
far right and it also freaked out the CIA. According
to this theory, Alan Dulis, the same CIA director who
backed the coups of Lamomba and Allende, was scared Algeria

(01:05:34):
would go communist if it was let go, which was
exactly the reasoning we had for killing Lamamba. So, according
to this theory, we backed the coup and probably had
a hand and several of the thirty attempts on Degall's
life between nineteen fifty eight and nineteen sixty six because
people kept trying to kill him. Well, the other thing
that everyone being afraid of communism. It's like they're showing them.

(01:05:54):
You're like, we're capitalism, here's a free democracy. And then
you're all the side they see as like colonialism and
dying and not having resources. So when you leave them,
of course they're like, Okay, let's try something else. Yeah,
something how about doing good version of the democracy. Let
them see how good Like I don't know anyways, just
don't just walk with them. You don't walk with them.
But also if you're going to show them a terrible time, like,

(01:06:16):
they're probably gonna try something different. Now. The CIA denies
all this. Alan Dullas, while he was alive, denied all this.
The French generals in charge of the coup denied this.
Much of the evidence you'll find for this comes from
a book called The Devil's Chessboard by Salon dot com
co founder David Talbot. The CIA says he's full of ship.
I'm gonna read one quote from the book. Um Degall

(01:06:38):
was convinced that the coup was supported by the Alan
Dullas led CIA and the French press. Was filled with
leaks alleging this secret involvement, but Kennedy took pains to
assure De gall that he did not back the coup,
and in fact, he offered to defend the embattled French
government with US military firepower. De Gall acknowledge that JFK
himself was not behind the French officers rebellion, but the
incident made it clear to both leaders something equally ominous.

(01:06:59):
Kennedy was not in control of his own government. So
this is a book by the guy who found at
Salon dot com, which is not the most credible journalistic
institution dot com. I'm not It's hard to tell what
happened here. Um. We do know for a fact that
in two thousand fifteen, the CIA admitted that back in

(01:07:20):
sixty five, several French dissidents had asked the CIA for
help killing degall Um. They claimed they did not do anything.
I'm gonna read a quote from the Guardian here about
this plan that the CIA was supposed to be warned of,
not warned of. These guys came to the CIA and
told them basically they wanted to kill the gall and
they said quote the killer was to be an old soldier.
He was to wear a poisoned ring on one of

(01:07:41):
his fingers, and he was to shake the general's hand. Yeah,
what would have been ship my ring? This poison They
just made a virus to kill a guy a ring
and gill a poison ring and poison. Anybody with a
ring can just really die from a if the poison
is deadly enough. The Soviet Union killed a guy once

(01:08:01):
with a might have been Putin's I forget which, but
they had like a rice and tipped dart inside an umbrella.
They shot into a dissident's leg when he was in
a dart. Makes sense. The ring is like, that would
be the ultimate revenge, as if you like, you know,
get someone to propose to you that you hate and
then like when they put the ring on the Yeah,

(01:08:25):
that's a long, long com Well, it's hard to say
what happened. The CIA has been willing to admit they
knew about attempts on Degaul's life, but has denied having
any part in it. It's hard to think that the
CIA wouldn't have tried to kill someone for this back then,
because they were trying to kill a shipload of people
for out of worry that their colonies would go communists.

(01:08:47):
So I don't know. Um, it's worth noting that like
this usually gets wrapped into the JFK killing conspiracy theory
and stuff, So there's there's a lot of messy conspiracy
theories in here. We can't get too much more into it.
I will say that all of the CIA facori we've
talked about today, which descended from the assassination of Lamumba,
led eventually to the Church Committee in nineteen seventy five,

(01:09:09):
which was a congressional committee that revealed that basically looked
over what the funk the CIA had been doing because
you keep cooing governments without because a lot of time
the president wouldn't even say I want this done. The
CIA was moving on its own for a significant amount
of it, or would be something like the president would
be like, boy, I don't like these guys, and Alan
Dulas would be like, I think that means the president

(01:09:30):
once these people killed, let's go get our murdering on.
So in seventy five, Congress is like, we should we
should do something about all the murders because they don't
want the president to be implicated. Is that so he
has to speaking code or did did. They literally just
were like, do you want to ask him? What do
you meant by that? Now, let's just do it. I
think it was sort of understood, like because Eisenhower didn't

(01:09:51):
say kill amm, but he said he should be eliminated.
Alan Dulas went back to the CIA and said, all right,
presidents on board. But is it because oh I see,
but I'm wondering why the president was something so big.
Why they wouldn't make it more explicit, like as out
of protection so they can't get in trouble on an
international Yeah, you don't. You don't want the president to
be able to or anyone to be able to say, yes,

(01:10:14):
the president ordered for this person to be killed, right,
so they can say, oh, he didn't say it, but
he imployed it. Yeah. Yeah. The CIA sort of ran
with it. So yeah. This all leads to the Church
Committee in ninteen seventy five, which revealed to the nation
a bunch of shady ship about the CIA, like that
they had been assassinating people across four presidencies to Republican

(01:10:35):
and too democratics. So it's by murdering people for the
sake of American economics is bipartisan? I will say that,
which is nice that we can all agree on something.
Mass murder is very American. Yeah. Uh. This led to
the Church Committee, led to the establishment of the U. S.
Senates Select Committee on Intelligence, which is a congressional committee
that's supposed to be some oversight for the CIA rather

(01:10:56):
than just letting them do whatever they want. It also
prompted the issue of an Exect of Order by President
Gerald Ford. The EO basically restricted the CIA from gathering
intel in a lot of different ways inside the US.
So Ford's response to hearing about all this assassinations was
to try to protect Americans rather than the stop the
CIA from doing more foreign murders. But at least it

(01:11:18):
was something, you know. Another result of the Church Committee
was the Foreign Intelligent Surveillance Act or FISA in nineteen
Most of the restrictions on the CIA placed after their
wild years have of course been repealed, gutted, or otherwise
removed post nine eleven. One of the sources I said
it earlier that New York Times article The CIA and
Lamombo was actually published in the mid nineteen eighties, during

(01:11:39):
a time when the Reagan administration was starting to push
back on the limitations placed on the CIA after the
Church Committee. They basically said, the Soviet Union is funding
terrorism all over the world, and the CIA doesn't have
the freedom to track down these terrorists and murder them
wherever they happen to be, even if they're Americans or whatever.
We should loo the strings in the SIA so they

(01:12:01):
can keep us safe. It's hard to have oversight over
secret intelligence because it does rely on a certain amount
of there it has to be a little trust if
it's a secret intelligence committee. But then, of course people
in power are never good. I don't know, Yeah, you
just shouldn't it. It has never worked out. There's all

(01:12:21):
these different cases you can look into where we backed
the overthrow of a democratically elected leader through assassination or not.
It never ends well. You never wind up with a
good dude like Patrice Lamimba, who was at least seemed
to be a reasonable guy who was very popular with
the people, gets replaced by Mobotu se Seko, who knew
how to play ball with the UN in the United
States and then robbed the country blind. Like he wasn't

(01:12:45):
even a killing guy. Like he killed plenty of people,
but his whole thing was just stealing. He just wanted
to be Well, well, I think that's what happens is
like they know how to pick people who are we
because they're hungry for power, and so most of the
time it's just like a selfish need for private wealth
and private power. I mean in a way that's kind
of like what I mean, well, all Rushia stuff, but

(01:13:05):
like Trump is very much the kind of guy who
is selfish. It's not even that he wants anything specific
for the country, it's that he wants personal gain. So
those are the best types of figures for other countries
to put in power because because they're easy to manipuy.
Yeah yeah, yeah, um. Well, the United States was the
first nation to recognize Leopold's Congo Free State. To bring

(01:13:27):
this back to the Congo. You know, back when Leopold
was trying to make it a thing, he sent a
rich guy out to Cohn, our president at the time,
into recognizing the Congo, and we did. We were also
one of the nations that pushed Leopold to give up
his colony to Belgium, which is good, but then we
kind of ignored everything that happened in the Congo for
decades because we needed the uranium. Now Patrise. Yeah, as

(01:13:48):
I said, Momombo was or Patrice Lamombo was seceeded by
Mobotu SCO. And as soon as Moboto took power, the
UN past Resolution one which authorized you enforce is to
go on the offensive against the Catangan breakaway state, just
like Lamomba had asked in the first place before he
was murdered. UN and US forces ended the rebellions in

(01:14:09):
the Congo by nineteen sixty three. Maboo two wound up
his dictator and yeah, stole everything that wasn't nailed down
in the Congo. We will talk about him later, but
it's important to know that as a result of Maboto's reign,
which was a result of the CIA's factory, living standards
in the Congo actually fell over the course of the
twentieth century, so much so that by nineteen ninety the

(01:14:33):
population had tripled, but their GDP remained unchanged since like
the late nineteen fifties. Um So it is worth noting
that very recently the Belgian state at least has taken
some responsibility for their share of the Congo's horror. Two
thousand one, Belgium took quote moral responsibility for the assassination
of Patrice Lamomba. This June two eighteen, they dedicated to

(01:14:57):
Square in Brussels to Patrice Lamomba. So Belgium has apologized
in a couple of tiny ways. The CIA still won't
admit they really had all that much to do with
the assassination of Almamba and still won't take any credit
for the continuing in the current fucked up state of
the Congo. Yeah, I mean, it's they're probably a cognitive dissonance.

(01:15:18):
It's hard for them to face it. And like even
the apologies are never really enough because it's like change
the course of history, right, you can't go back and
change it. I mean unless they're going to be like
all right, let's trade, like you guys take Belgium, will
take Congo. Like they're not gonna do that. So it's like, well, well,
and the effects of this, like all, like the Congo
is still really messed up today, and Belgium is more

(01:15:39):
responsible for the Congo state in the United States, but
we've got a hand in there. And if you look
at like right now, where all of these the families
of people who are fleeing for asylum in the United States,
one of the countries that they come from the most
is Guatemala, which in nineteen fifty four we backed and
overthrow their democratically elected government, and then decades later we

(01:16:00):
backed essentially another civil war that led to a genocide,
which the violence of which is still continuing in the
kind of like all of the CIA factory, um is
still very much with us in the world. And that's
kind of why I I initially planned to just do
this episode about Mobutu, but the more I learned about
Lamomba and what had been done to overthrew him, I

(01:16:20):
felt like this is a necessary interstillal story. UM. It's
like we looked in the mirror and we're like, oh,
it's awesome. Yeah, we we were the slasher the whole time.
It's kind of a messy story because again, with the CIA,
it's not as easy as like, oh, this battle was here,
this guy was in charge then and he ordered this.
Like it's like the forty different journalists have made these

(01:16:43):
allegations based on all this stuff, but the CIA denies
it and says they're all liars, and you know, how
do you Yeah, well, I'm also sure what things like
national security, there's all I mean, it doesn't justify anything,
but there's probably also a lot of facts we don't
know at the time, Like it's like a spider web, right,
It's not as simple as like should we kill this
guy is probably like, oh, there's also this person who

(01:17:03):
might die if this happens, or if we don't kill him,
then we're fucked here or whatever. I mean. That's a
problem with these secret agencies too, is that like deals
and things happening that we can't know about. Yeah, which
is like, I guess that's to some extent how it's
going to be in geopolitics. But also it makes it

(01:17:25):
really easy to just ignore people criticizing you for fucking
up the world when you're like, oh, but it would
have been so much more fucked up if well, I
can't tell you just trust me, right and you're good. Yeah,
And it's hard to trust the government if they do
and if they continue to show that they can't be trusted. Yeah,
I don't know if they do stuff like that. Well, yeah,
I guess values are important because if you share the

(01:17:46):
same values and you see that they're following that, then
it's easier to trust that they'll do the right thing.
But if you start to see there's like corrupt people,
then they're going to be taking advantage and like manipulating you.
And we pretty much just back the corrupt people because
the people who aren't corrupt or like, why do American
companies own all of my nation's mineral rights? I don't
think this is okay. The corrupt people are able to

(01:18:10):
they're like we always want to think of villains and
manipulators and liars. We think they must be evil. But
they got there because they're good at line. So when
you meet them, they're probably Okay, this is boring to you,
all right, because you're yawning. No our second podcast, It's okay,
it's cool. I just went on a rant three Wow, no, no,

(01:18:31):
you're right, like these people are good at and then
so and it's it's possible maybe PATRICEA. Mumbo would have
wound up being really really widely now the bastard today
for yawning. No anyone, I'm taking a lot of flak
in this room right now. Is that I'm just kidding. Well,

(01:18:55):
so that's the Congo in between its first dictator and
its second dictator. And also a little bit about the
CIA murdering people all around the world. Yeah, you're gonna
join the CIA now, Theresa, Well, I can't tell you that.
Oh fair, that's fair, solid solid. Okay. Well I'm just

(01:19:16):
going to hope you don't shake my hand with Okay,
you've got a plug plug sure. Yeah, I have a podcast.
It's it's kind of related to line. It's called you
Can Tell Me Anything. This feels like the weirdest transition,
but people confess secrets to me. Come on, yeah, I've
got so many secrets. Well anyways, yeah, Well my name

(01:19:40):
is Robert Evans. I am the host of this podcast.
As always, I will be back next Tuesday with another
tale of someone terrible. Until then, you can find me
on Twitter at I Write Okay to letters. You can
find this podcast at Bastard's Pod on Twitter, and you
can find us on the world wide Web at behind
the Bastard It's dot com. So until next week, I

(01:20:06):
have a great time and remember I love like you.
M h m hm

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