Ike's Spies (48 page)

LUMUMBA WAS NOT THE ONLY TARGET
. One of the
CIA
's plots was to poison Fidel Castro's cigars. Another was to drop a poison pill in his coffee. A third bright idea was to rig an exotic seashell with an explosive device to be placed in Castro's favorite skin-diving area; a fourth was to dust his diving suit with a skin contaminant.

Bissell brought the Mafia in on the plot. He thought the gangsters would be efficient and would keep their mouths shut. It turned out that they blundered every attempt to kill Castro and then sang like canaries, to everyone's embarrassment, especially after it was said that one of the Mafia leaders and John F. Kennedy shared a girl friend.
²

There is no doubt, in either of these cases, that
CIA
Director Allen Dulles ordered Castro and Lumumba murdered. Whether he did so with Ike's knowledge, or not, is hotly debated. Whether he did so under Ike's orders, or not, is even more hotly debated. Eisenhower loyalists, and there are many, swear that Ike did not and could not have known about these assassination plots. In their opinion, it is inconceivable that he could have ordered the murders. Yet these same loyalists insist just as firmly, with regard to the U-2 and other
CIA
programs, that Ike was absolutely in charge, the man in command, and that Allen Dulles would never have dared move without the President's orders.

IN NOVEMBER
1975, the U. S. Senate's Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, popularly known as the Church Committee, conducted widely publicized and highly controversial hearings into
CIA
activities, including the assassination plots against foreign leaders. One of the committee's conclusions was, “The chain of events revealed by the documents and testimony is strong enough to permit a reasonable inference that the plot to assassinate Lumumba was authorized by President Eisenhower.”
³

Two months later, in January 1976, a number of Eisenhower administration insiders, including Gordon Gray, Douglas Dillon, Andrew Goodpaster, and John Eisenhower, challenged this finding. In a statement to the Senate, they requested that the committee “disavow” the finding that President Eisenhower had authorized an assassination. In a reply of February 2, 1976, the committee chairman, Frank Church, and the vice chairman, John
Tower, responded, “After reviewing the evidence in the Lumumba case once again, we remain convinced that the language used in the Committee's findings was warranted.”
⁴

The committee itself had noted in its original report, however, that “there is enough countervailing testimony … and enough ambiguity and lack of clarity in the records of high-level policy meetings to preclude the Committee from making a finding that the President intended an assassination effort against Lumumba.” The committee did state directly and clearly that “Allen Dulles authorized an assassination plot.” In explanation, it wrote, “Strong expressions of hostility toward Lumumba from the President and his national security assistant, followed immediately by
CIA
steps in furtherance of an assassination operation against Lumumba, are part of a sequence of events that, at the least, make it appear that Dulles believed assassination was a permissible means of complying with pressure from the President to remove Lumumba from the political scene.”
⁵

Those close to Ike deny directly and vehemently that the President ever authorized a murder. John Eisenhower, who attended
NSC
meetings as Assistant White House Staff Secretary, said he had no memory of his father ever ordering an assassination at one of them, as was alleged, and pointed out that “if Ike had something as nasty as this to plot, he wouldn't do it in front of twenty-one people,” the number present at
NSC
meetings.

Goodpaster testified unequivocally to the Church Committee, “At no time and in no way did I ever know of or hear about any proposal, any mention of such an activity. It is my belief that had such a thing been raised with the President other than in my presence, I would have known about it.”
⁶

In an interview in the Superintendent's office at West Point in 1979, Goodpaster said he recalled some assistant once making a joking reference to bumping off Lumumba. Ike reddened, the sure sign of anger in the man, and said sternly, “That is beyond the pale. We will not discuss such things. Once you start that kind of business, there is no telling where it will end.”
⁷

Yet Robert H. Johnson, a member of the
NSC
staff from 1951 to 1962, told the Church Committee, “At some time during that discussion in the
NSC
, President Eisenhower said something—I can no longer remember his words—that came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba. There was no discussion;
the meeting simply moved on. I remember my sense of that moment quite clearly because the President's statement came as a great shock to me.”
⁸

At an August 25, 1960, meeting of the 5412 Committee, covert operations against Lumumba were discussed. Gordon Gray, after hearing about attempts to arrange a vote of no confidence against Lumumba in the Congolese Senate, commented that “his associates had expressed extremely strong feelings on the necessity for very straightforward action in this situation.”

Gray later admitted that his reference to his “associates” was a euphemism for Ike, employed to preserve “plausible deniability” by the President.

Dulles replied to Gray's comment by saying “he had every intention of proceeding as vigorously as the situation permits or requires but added that he must necessarily put himself in a position of interpreting instructions of this kind within the bounds of necessity and capability.”

The minutes of the 5412 meeting concluded, “It was finally agreed that planning for the Congo would not necessarily rule out ‘consideration' of any particular kind of activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba.”
⁹

One of the major functions of 5412, Gordon Gray declared in a 1979 interview, was to “protect the President.” In one sense, this meant its task was to carefully scrutinize policies and programs to make sure they did not get the President into trouble. The 5412 Committee also provided a forum for the discussion of operations too sensitive to be discussed before the whole
NSC
.
¹⁰
The committee also provided a perfect device for obscuring the record, making it impossible for the historian to say that this man ordered that action, or otherwise fix responsibility.

The
CIA'S
record, and Ike's, with regard to assassination, is therefore purposely ambiguous. This is true not only with regard to Lumumba but also in the cases of Chou En-lai and Fidel Castro. A review of the whole delicate subject of assassinations and the
CIA
is thus in order before any conclusions can be attempted.

HOWARD HUNT IS THE SOURCE
for the charge that the
CIA
, in the mid-fifties, had an assassination unit. Hunt said that the unit,
which “was set up to arrange for the assassination of suspected double agents and similar low-ranking officials,” was under the command of Colonel Boris T. Pash, a U. S. Army officer assigned to the
CIA
.
¹¹
Pash's title was Chief of Program Branch 7 (PB/7), a “special operations” unit within the Office of Policy Coordination (
OPC
), the original clandestine services organization that eventually became the Directorate of Plans.

Frank Wisner, director of
OPC
and thus supervisor of Program Branch 7, said that Pash's PB/7 functions included assassinations and “kidnapping of personages behind the Iron Curtain … if they were not in sympathy with the regime, and could be spirited out of the country by our people for their own safety; or kidnapping of people whose interests were inimical to ours.” This was, Wisner explained in a memorandum, “a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. Every other power practiced assassination if need be.” The written charter of the unit read, “PB/7 will be responsible for assassinations, kidnapping, and such other functions as from time to time may be given it by higher authority.”

Hunt told the Church Committee that at one point in 1953 he had a meeting with Pash and his deputy to discuss “wet affairs,” i.e., liquidations, with regard to a double-agent who had penetrated the
CIA'S
operation in West Berlin. Hunt said that Pash “seemed a little startled at the subject. He indicated that it was something that would have to be approved by higher authority and I withdrew and never approached Colonel Pash again.”
¹²

One attempt was almost made, in 1955, but PB/7 was not involved, the target was not a low-ranking double-agent, and Ike knew nothing about it. A station chief in East Asia sent a cable to
CIA
headquarters outlining a proposed media propaganda campaign. To it he added a plan to assassinate Communist China's number two man, Chou En-lai. Chou was attending a conference of Third World countries at Bandung. The plan was to have an indigenous agent place an undetectable poison in Chou's rice bowl at the Bandung Conference's final banquet. Chou would die two days later, after his return to Peking.
¹³

Allen Dulles vetoed the plan. He had
CIA
headquarters send out a cable that “strongly censured” the station chief for even suggesting assassination and indicating “in the strongest possible language this Agency has never and never will engage in such activities.”
The cable added orders to “immediately proceed to burn all copies” of any documents relating to the plan.
¹⁴

FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS
, the
CIA
stayed away from any discussion of political assassination. The subject came up again in 1960. Patrice Lumumba was the target. A brief history of developments in the Congo during the fifties is necessary to an understanding of the Lumumba assassination attempts.

The Belgian Congo, a European colony located in central Africa, was governed by the Belgians as if it were the eighteenth century. There was no local government of any kind; not even the 100,000 Belgians employed in the Congo had any political rights. All power resided with the Governor General, who was appointed by the Belgian Government and derived his powers from it. The Belgians made no attempt to prepare the Congo for independence until 1956, when at the urging of the United Nations some local elections were held to choose African advisers to the municipal governments. These elections led to the formation of political parties in the Congo. Joseph Kasavubu, leader of the Bakongo tribe in Léopoldville, formed one party drawn mostly from his tribe. Patrice Lumumba, a post-office clerk, founded another, which, unlike Kasavubu's, tried to attract supporters on a nationwide basis. Moise Tshombe formed a third party in the mineral-rich province of Katanga.

The coming of political parties naturally increased the pressure for independence, as no politician could hope to win votes unless he attacked the Belgians and demanded immediate independence. By the beginning of 1960 the Belgians had come to the conclusion that there was only one way they could keep the goodwill of the Congolese after independence, and thus keep possession of the mines, and that was to grant independence as early as possible and trust that the Congolese would recognize that their total inexperience made it necessary for them to rely on Belgian advisers and managers. Elections were quickly arranged, with independence promised for June 30, 1960. The elections would choose a National Assembly, which would then select a head of state and a prime minister.

Kasavubu and Tshombe urged the Belgians to create a federal state, which was natural as they had mainly local support. Lumumba demanded that the existing unitary state, with a strong central
government, be continued. He argued that it was the only way to keep such a huge and disparate country together. The Belgians supported Lumumba, whose party won the most seats in the National Assembly in the ensuing election, although not enough to enable him to form a government. The Belgian Governor General gave both Lumumba and Kasavubu an opportunity to form a government. When both failed, a deal was made whereby Kasavubu became President, while Lumumba became Prime Minister.
¹⁵