Speaker 1: Mmm, hello friends, and welcome again to Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert evans Uh and this is a podcast where
Speaker 1: we tell you everything you don't know about the very
Speaker 1: worst people in all of history. Now with me today
Speaker 1: is a guest who I'll be reading a story to.
Speaker 1: My guest is coming in cold to this tale and
Speaker 1: does not know what I'll be talking about today except
Speaker 1: for in a very broad term. And my guest today
Speaker 1: is miss Theresa Lee. Hello, are you doing, Theresa? I'm
Speaker 1: doing okay? Well, I like, I am really cold because
Speaker 1: I had to ask before what it was about, and
Speaker 1: then even that change, so I well, you listened to
Speaker 1: the two parter we did on Leopold I did, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I visualized it so it was like I was
Speaker 1: watching it fantast same time. Um, well, this is another
Speaker 1: episode set in the Congo and it's about what happened
Speaker 1: after leopold Um. And when I started working in this,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do an episode about the dictator who
Speaker 1: took over the Congo after the Belgian's left, a guy
Speaker 1: named Bootoo siss Sickle. But as I started researching it,
Speaker 1: there was just way too much bullshit that Europeans in
Speaker 1: America got up to in the Congo between Leopold dying
Speaker 1: and Boobootoo taking over. And so that's what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today is all the how the West
Speaker 1: continued to fuck the Congo even after, like you think
Speaker 1: it had been fucked enough like that that you couldn't
Speaker 1: really screw over a group of people more than Leopold had,
Speaker 1: But then everything I've written about happens. Yeah, you're yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like getting out of an abusive relationship. You're probably
Speaker 1: going to get into another one. The studies show, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's actually, it's kind of like getting out
Speaker 1: of an abusive relationship and getting hit by a bus,
Speaker 1: and then the doctor who helps put you back together,
Speaker 1: you get into an abusive relationship. It's a that's a
Speaker 1: solid sitcom. My Doctor's a bus, my doctor husband the bus. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the season to finale me, that's the wedding, my
Speaker 1: husband bus busbnd A busbends, a busbend. Someone's gonna photoshop
Speaker 1: a poster for that's. Um, are you ready to well?
Speaker 1: First off, let's let's love the audience here. A little
Speaker 1: bit about you and I worked together for years and
Speaker 1: you are a writer, comedian, actress. Yeah, we did. Uh well,
Speaker 1: we are most most most famously worked together on a
Speaker 1: video about ancient drugs based on or to promote the
Speaker 1: book you wrote. And recently it keeps resurfacing. And I
Speaker 1: know when a resurfaces because I'll get messages. Um and
Speaker 1: last week I got a few that were like, so,
Speaker 1: how was doing so much? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that video must have popped up again. We we took mushrooms,
Speaker 1: legal mushrooms, mascara and unexpectedly tripped very hard, to the
Speaker 1: point where like all of us who were together had
Speaker 1: to get a hotel room for the night. They just
Speaker 1: kind of sit it out and wait until we were
Speaker 1: not actively tripping to go back to our homes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was real crazy. And the craziest part is that
Speaker 1: video is just like the beginning of the trip, Like
Speaker 1: it got so much more intense after we wrapped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah it was it was not intended to be
Speaker 1: that that intense. But yeah, if you want to, uh, well,
Speaker 1: we'll post a link in this episode, I guess to
Speaker 1: us doing tremendous amounts of mushrooms. Uh, it's it's great fun.
Speaker 1: Now let's get into an episode that I have tentatively
Speaker 1: titled The Congo after Leopold. So, UM, if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast for the first time, you may want
Speaker 1: to go back and download the two episodes we did
Speaker 1: on King Leopold of Belgium. But I'm gonna give a
Speaker 1: little sort of run through of of what happened with
Speaker 1: that guy here, just in case you're joining us for
Speaker 1: the first time, or maybe you forgot since then, because
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of bastards in between him and
Speaker 1: and now. So. King Leopold was a Belgian king, obviously
Speaker 1: who had a chip on his shoulder. Because Belgian kings
Speaker 1: did not have much power in the late eighteen hundreds, UH,
Speaker 1: he concocted an incredibly complex scheme in order to take
Speaker 1: over a huge chunk of Central Africa up He named
Speaker 1: it the Congo Free State. On the surface of the
Speaker 1: free state had a philanthropic mission to civilize the tribes
Speaker 1: people and fight Arab slavers. In reality, it was all
Speaker 1: one gigantic rubber mining operation. Leopold's men enslaved armies of
Speaker 1: child soldiers, three quarters of whom died without being trained UH,
Speaker 1: and he enforced order through brutal, sometimes fatal whippings and
Speaker 1: the severing of millions of hands. Between ten and fifteen
Speaker 1: million people died during Leopold's reign in the Congo. So
Speaker 1: that's the story. We've a good guy, Yeah, sweet dude,
Speaker 1: sweet Beard. By the early nineteen hundreds, word had gotten
Speaker 1: out of what was happening in the Congo, and by
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight the international community forced Leopold to seed
Speaker 1: control of his Congo to the Belgian nation. And that's
Speaker 1: sort of where the last podcast ends, you know, Leopold dies,
Speaker 1: and I thought long after that, now today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about what happened in the Congo in the
Speaker 1: intermediate period. Like, so Belgium is in charge of the Congo,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, so you would expect things to it
Speaker 1: a lot better now that this absolute monster is out
Speaker 1: of power. But it turned out that Belgium, the nation,
Speaker 1: was not much better than King Leopold had been for
Speaker 1: the Congolese people. The chacote, which is that brutal hippo
Speaker 1: hide whip that Leopold's men used to keep order, wasn't
Speaker 1: banned until it was hippo hip. How do you even
Speaker 1: get a hit? Like aren't they very dangerous? Super dangerous?
Speaker 1: Kill the hell out of you. You got to shoot
Speaker 1: him with a real big gun. Wow. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: they head guns. Back then. They had tons of guns
Speaker 1: for shooting hippos, so they can make more whips. I
Speaker 1: was thinking, this is so long ago. I'm like they
Speaker 1: were using spears. No, I mean yeah, they did use
Speaker 1: spears to kill hippos, but not as efficiently. But there
Speaker 1: was a weird little side thing. Is Adolf Hitler carried
Speaker 1: a dog with his entire life. Um oh, I whipped
Speaker 1: to whip dogs made out of dogs. It was to
Speaker 1: whipped dogs. It was called a dog whip because you
Speaker 1: were supposed to use it to whip dogs, and he
Speaker 1: would whip dogs with it when he wanted to impress girls,
Speaker 1: but he also mainly used it for fighting. This is
Speaker 1: confusing because the hippo hide whip is named hippo hyde
Speaker 1: whip because it's made of hippo hyde, and so if
Speaker 1: you like follow the logic of that, the dog whip
Speaker 1: should be made out of dogs. Like, there's no consistency
Speaker 1: in the naming of whips right now. But you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to hit would you? Would I do on'tly go
Speaker 1: a whip? Would doo? Much to a hippo. No, but
Speaker 1: I'm just saying these naming conventions, somebody needs to organize
Speaker 1: the naming here. What if they called it what if
Speaker 1: they called it a whippo? Whippo? We should go back
Speaker 1: in time. What's Indiana Jones whip out of? Probably leather? Like,
Speaker 1: that's probably true. So it's a cow whip, No, it's
Speaker 1: a whip. For it's a Nazi whip. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: fucking Nazi whip right there. Yeah. So Belgium continued to
Speaker 1: use forced labor uh pretty much the entire time they
Speaker 1: were in charge of the Congo. They claimed it was
Speaker 1: a labor tax uh and they would so they would
Speaker 1: basically force people to work for like half the year
Speaker 1: or more to mine minerals and extract rubber from the Congo.
Speaker 1: All of the uranium used to make the Hiroshima and
Speaker 1: Nagasaki bombs was mine in the Congo by people who
Speaker 1: are regularly whipped bloody to guarantee their compliance. So this
Speaker 1: goes on the early nine hundreds through the forties. Right now,
Speaker 1: In a tiny bit of fairness to the Belgians, they
Speaker 1: didn't do nothing in the Congo. They built one of
Speaker 1: the biggest hospitals in Africa and established a really good infrastructure,
Speaker 1: so like good power system, good roads, um better than
Speaker 1: most African colonies got. So if you're just looking at
Speaker 1: what the Belgians had sort of installed, the buildings they
Speaker 1: put together, the municipal like stuff, uh, Congo seemed like
Speaker 1: it was in a good position, like for when it
Speaker 1: was finally free, because stuff for Western civilization, right, It's
Speaker 1: like they needed to make it so that Western people
Speaker 1: could see a familiar life there. Yes, zero of the
Speaker 1: things they built in the Congo were meant for Africans,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the society was super segregated, like they
Speaker 1: were building nice houses for Belgians and then the Africans
Speaker 1: could the huts. They were building nice houses for white
Speaker 1: people and they were building they were really building it.
Speaker 1: The Africans were probably building that and they were being
Speaker 1: forced to build it through labor taxes. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's amazing how shitty they continue to be to the
Speaker 1: Congo even after this monster leaves. And because it's one,
Speaker 1: it's yet another one of the stories where the world
Speaker 1: gets angry, Like stories come out about how bad Leopold
Speaker 1: is and the world gets furious and he demand he
Speaker 1: not be in charge anymore. And then as soon as
Speaker 1: he's gone, they're like, well, guess the problems over. We
Speaker 1: can stop caring about the Congo. They just need a
Speaker 1: place blame somewhere. Yeah, and once that guy gets out,
Speaker 1: the story is done and nobody pays any more attention. Yeah. Remarkable.
Speaker 1: Um So the capital of the Belgian Congo was Leopoldville,
Speaker 1: and it was divided into African and Western areas. Like Leopoldville.
Speaker 1: It's Conshosha today, but it was called Leopoldville. Classy right,
Speaker 1: not creative at all, name it after the guy who
Speaker 1: did the worst things of anyone in the country. Black
Speaker 1: people were not allowed in the European parts of town
Speaker 1: after dark and would not be served in white's only
Speaker 1: hotels and restaurants. Belgians considered most Congolese people to be macOS,
Speaker 1: which literally means monkeys. The good ones were called evolu,
Speaker 1: which means basically the evolved. Yeah wow, you got that
Speaker 1: French real quick? Is it differently pronounced that? I out? Okay? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So yeah, be evolved. So these people would be allowed
Speaker 1: to be evolved, to be allowed to say, buy wine
Speaker 1: if they little white inspector coming to their home first
Speaker 1: and make sure the toilet was clean, specifically their toilet.
Speaker 1: If you're evolved, you can pay me money. How awful,
Speaker 1: No wine unless you're toilets clean, which college would be different.
Speaker 1: If that's how it worked, is all I'll say. Yeah, true,
Speaker 1: evolved children were allowed to attend school with white kids,
Speaker 1: but they had to agree to be regularly checked for fleas.
Speaker 1: Children are literally not done growing. That's the definition of children. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how can even white children are not evolved? It's not
Speaker 1: internally consider the logic of racist colonialists. But no, it's
Speaker 1: a good Yeah, it's it's frustrating the language they use
Speaker 1: as always really frustrating because that's also so it's just
Speaker 1: the dick thing to call people. Sure, yeah, um ad
Speaker 1: dick thing to call yourself to which, yeah, it's more
Speaker 1: like a Nazi into things. It's everybody like that's one
Speaker 1: of the big stories of the twentieth century is like
Speaker 1: the first half of the twentieth century is just everybody
Speaker 1: getting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution wrong and using it like, well,
Speaker 1: I hate people who aren't white, so that means like
Speaker 1: I'm just going to take this book that's popular right
Speaker 1: now and use it to like justify my hatred. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, I just trust that. I'm like, they assume
Speaker 1: that they're evolved or whatever, and then they're like, so,
Speaker 1: then I must be right all the time, because that's
Speaker 1: how I'm here. Yeah, scientist is like animals that are
Speaker 1: more fit survived better, and so guys like, oh, I've
Speaker 1: got a big house. That means I'm more evolved. I
Speaker 1: stole all my stuff from are people? Yeah people, the
Speaker 1: deductions we come to, it's remarkable. So, yeah, the few
Speaker 1: African children who are allowed to attend schools in the
Speaker 1: Congo had to endure lessons on why King Leopold, the
Speaker 1: guy who had killed by some counts half the country,
Speaker 1: was a great hero. Jacques Delpecheen, a historian interviewed for
Speaker 1: the documentary version of King Leopold's Ghost, grew up in
Speaker 1: the Congo during this time. He's an African, and he
Speaker 1: said this quote. What we learned in the textbooks was
Speaker 1: that Leopold was the greatest benefactor the Congo ever had
Speaker 1: because he sacrificed his fortune for the Congolese. Is he
Speaker 1: like a Thanos character? Because he killed half the country
Speaker 1: and then some people celebrate him, but he's actually evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah kind of, except for like, wasn't Thanos's goal to like,
Speaker 1: he wanted to eliminate half the population to create more resources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was killing people to do that. Leopold wanted
Speaker 1: to build sweet houses and was willing to kill half
Speaker 1: the population for that. Also, he wanted to tricycle. He
Speaker 1: bought a really cool tricycle. Um, so that's different than Thanos.
Speaker 1: But well, there's going to be more monrable movies that
Speaker 1: tricycle might show up. Tricycle might show up. He might
Speaker 1: write a tricycle to his teenage prostitute Bride's house. If
Speaker 1: that's Infinity War two, I will be in the front row.
Speaker 1: This isn't testing super well for Disney. Are you do
Speaker 1: we need the teenage Prostitute Bride? Actually? I feel like
Speaker 1: the Teenage Prostitute Bride is very Disney because most of
Speaker 1: those princesses are like fourteen years old. Boy. Yep, there's
Speaker 1: always a king in those stories. Okay, anyways, so h
Speaker 1: most kids in the Congo were not even lucky enough
Speaker 1: to benefit from a shitty education. Educating Black Africans was
Speaker 1: not considered a priority by the Belgians because Congolese independence
Speaker 1: was assumed to be decades away, so they were just
Speaker 1: going to be working in mines anyway, why teach them
Speaker 1: how to read? When the Belgians were said the forced
Speaker 1: to hand over control of the Congo to the Congolese
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty, only seventeen Congolese people actually had university
Speaker 1: degrees now. A major source for this episode was a
Speaker 1: book called In the Footsteps of Colonel Kurtz by Michelle
Speaker 1: O Wong, a journalist who lived and worked in the
Speaker 1: Congo in the early nineteen nineties. As part of her
Speaker 1: research for the book, she talks to a Belgian professor
Speaker 1: named Stingers. Uh this she was asking this guy if
Speaker 1: she if he thought that Leopold's legacy of exploitation had
Speaker 1: had any impact on the continued disastrous mismanagement of the
Speaker 1: Congo's resources under African rule since in the decades since independence,
Speaker 1: and Professor Stinger claimed that since Congolese people don't have
Speaker 1: any memories of that time. Because people don't there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of like passed down recollections of what happened
Speaker 1: during the Leopold years, Leopold couldn't be at fault for
Speaker 1: the modern state of the Congo because people didn't even
Speaker 1: remember him, which ignores the fact that carry much like
Speaker 1: a like just the frat boy who like he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: she didn't remember I roofied her, So I can't be
Speaker 1: at fault because she the memory. That is exactly what's
Speaker 1: going This is like the national version of that. They
Speaker 1: don't remember what happened. It's fine, yeah, yeah, he's it's
Speaker 1: ignoring the fact that this guy killed between a third
Speaker 1: and more than half of all of the human beings
Speaker 1: in the congo um, which probably would not leave a
Speaker 1: lot of strong memories. Like it's like if if you've
Speaker 1: ever met a Jewish person whose whole family but one
Speaker 1: person died in the Holocaust, they don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of stories of that time, but it has an impact,
Speaker 1: Like surviving that sort of trauma does something to you.
Speaker 1: And the people with the worst memories are gone because
Speaker 1: that they're dead, yeah, and there's just an absence in
Speaker 1: their place. And that is a kind of trauma in
Speaker 1: and of itself. And that's the kind of trauma that
Speaker 1: the Congo was going for. So in her book, Michelle
Speaker 1: Wong sums up what she sees is Leopold's impact on
Speaker 1: monitored Congolese people. Quote, keep your head down, think small,
Speaker 1: look after yourself. These constituted the lessons of Leopold. The
Speaker 1: spirit what's compreh sensibly crushed does not recover easily. For
Speaker 1: seventy five years, from eighteen eighty five to nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: Congo's population had marinated in humiliation. No malevolent witch doctor
Speaker 1: could have devised a better preparation for the coming of
Speaker 1: a second great dictator. So that second great dictator would
Speaker 1: be Mobot Ciccu, who we will talk about on a
Speaker 1: future episode about the Congo, but before we talk about
Speaker 1: that guy, and what this episode is about is about
Speaker 1: the first hopeful attempts at reform and happiness for the
Speaker 1: Congo and the bastards who ruined it all because there
Speaker 1: was a chance in nineteen sixty the things we're going
Speaker 1: to go okay for the Congo, that it was going
Speaker 1: to become a prosperous democratic nation. And yeah, this is
Speaker 1: an episode about how that was all shattered. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: look super excited. Can't wait, just really can't wait for
Speaker 1: the good mood this is going to put me in. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it all starts with a guy named Elias Elias Okita
Speaker 1: Sumbo who would grow into a man named Patrice Emery
Speaker 1: the Mumba. Wait, he changes his name when he becomes
Speaker 1: a man. Yeah, a cultural thing. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was a cultural thing, but he did it. So
Speaker 1: I became a man and now my name is different,
Speaker 1: and I think there was a little bit of like
Speaker 1: Patrise Lamomba is kind of a more European eed named
Speaker 1: than Elias okay to Sombo, and so he was like, yes,
Speaker 1: it might have been a little bit of that. He
Speaker 1: was born on July two and a small village in
Speaker 1: a part of the Congo called the Kasai Oriental. Patrise
Speaker 1: is something of a hero to very large numbers of people,
Speaker 1: particularly Africans. Now, Patrise is a big hero to very
Speaker 1: large numbers of people, particularly in Africa. And we are
Speaker 1: going to go into some detail on him because he's
Speaker 1: an interesting dude, but not as much as we'd go
Speaker 1: into for someone like Saddam Hussein because alas this podcast
Speaker 1: is behind the bastards and not behind the chill dudes
Speaker 1: who got sucked over by politics. Um. Now, Patrise received
Speaker 1: a minimal education from a missionary school, so one of
Speaker 1: those schools where he's learning about how great Leopold was,
Speaker 1: and he wound up as a young adult in Stanleyville,
Speaker 1: named after a frequent Bastard podcast side character, Henry Morton Stanley. Uh,
Speaker 1: the explorer who discovered the Congo, mainly by shooting his
Speaker 1: way through it and murdering thousands of people. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So basically every city in the Congo was named after
Speaker 1: someone who had killed huge numbers of Congolese people. Um.
Speaker 1: Pretty sweet. Also, what the Stanley cups named after? I
Speaker 1: hope not that would I'm not aware of him inventing hockey.
Speaker 1: That would be a very surprising turn for his I
Speaker 1: think he died poor and filled with syphilis. I hope so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Patrice grew up conscious of all of this, of
Speaker 1: the fact that he was living in a city named
Speaker 1: after a murderer, that his the Congo had been essentially
Speaker 1: conquered by this terrible king. He was aware of all this,
Speaker 1: Like the propaganda did not take and he grew up
Speaker 1: resentful of the cruel and obvious plunder of his people. Uh.
Speaker 1: He eventually moved to the capital, Leopoldville, and worked as
Speaker 1: a postal clerk, press correspondent, and then brewery sales director.
Speaker 1: Uh so that's cool. Yeah, it sounds like very more
Speaker 1: turn Yeah, just you know, yeah, those were all just
Speaker 1: ways to pay the rent. Patrese's passion to day it
Speaker 1: would be a podcast, but back then it was anti
Speaker 1: colonial activism. Um. He was charismatic and good at giving speeches,
Speaker 1: so he got pretty popular. And he looked like some
Speaker 1: guy you went to high school with. Oh is this him? Yeah? Ok, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this picture will be up on our website. He's smirking
Speaker 1: like he's kind of like to take a picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he does not want to take a picture, but
Speaker 1: he just looks like it just looks like some guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nice guy. Now. Patrese was the head of the Congolese
Speaker 1: National Movement, the largest political party in the country. It
Speaker 1: was dedicated to achieving independence within a quote reasonable time frame.
Speaker 1: Their main foe was the center right Alliance of Bakongo,
Speaker 1: who demanded immediate independence. Both parties applied a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure to the Belgian administrators of the colony. Things reached
Speaker 1: a fever pitch in ninety nine with protests that descended
Speaker 1: into hiding so bloody and violent it convinced Belgium to
Speaker 1: abandon the Congo asap. So before in like recently the
Speaker 1: late fifties, they had been sure that it was decades away.
Speaker 1: Probably the eighties or nineties is when they'd have to
Speaker 1: give up the Congo. But this unrest convinces them, we
Speaker 1: just gotta fucking leave now. Um really modern or really
Speaker 1: um yeah, very recently, like they were in in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, they were whipping people to death for not
Speaker 1: mining uranium fast enough. And that uranium is what made
Speaker 1: all of the first nuclear weapons that the US used
Speaker 1: in the Cold War or had in the Cold War.
Speaker 1: It's also in Mission Impossible, the new one. Oh cool. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was a less exploitative use of the Congo.
Speaker 1: They probably filmed in Canada, right, probably, I don't know,
Speaker 1: on a green screen screen. Uh So, Independence Day was
Speaker 1: set for June nineteen sixty. Now, Belgium's King Bowdwin the
Speaker 1: first flew to the Central African nation to give the
Speaker 1: colony away to itself. Boudwin was the great great grandson
Speaker 1: of Leopold. I'm pretty sure I did the math in
Speaker 1: my head. In pictures he looks no judgment here, but
Speaker 1: he looks like the biggest nerd ever. In fact, everyone
Speaker 1: in this story kind of looks like a guy you'd
Speaker 1: have played D and D with in junior high. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you were going to cast about to win the
Speaker 1: first in a movie, you would want to travel back
Speaker 1: in time to steal Crispin Glover off the set of
Speaker 1: Back to the Future and stick him in a uniform
Speaker 1: like that. There's a picture of Leopold like it's a
Speaker 1: huge nerd, which you know, no judgment, but so you
Speaker 1: have an accurate but you kind of want. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a contrast from like villainous, looks like a villain right
Speaker 1: to like kind of nerdy, Like I'm sorry, you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to be in charge of the Congo. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're going to learn about what happened during that
Speaker 1: independent ceremony, which is a big story, and of course
Speaker 1: the what happened afterwards next. But first, before we get
Speaker 1: into more of the Congo history, we're going to sell
Speaker 1: some products. Who loved drugs maybe, Now that's what when
Speaker 1: you say products, it's possible, it's possible that the ad
Speaker 1: that comes up will involve a drug. It is and
Speaker 1: actually that might be happening. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: do you like, do you like Dorritos. I love Derita.
Speaker 1: Is it let me ask you, is it the Is
Speaker 1: it the crisp crunch of biting into one for the
Speaker 1: first time? Or is it Is it the way that
Speaker 1: that the coding of the dorritos, that the way the
Speaker 1: flavor builds upon itself as you eat more. It's like
Speaker 1: an orchestra just builds and then the beat drops and
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, cheesy, cheezy, jeezy, yeah, And that's I
Speaker 1: love it when that cheesy beat drops. That's what really
Speaker 1: gets me going. And let it get you going to
Speaker 1: buy some derritos today. All right, here's the ads that
Speaker 1: paid us, and we're back. We have just been talking
Speaker 1: about the Congo after Leopold of Belgium gave it up
Speaker 1: and then I and uh, yeah, we've been talking about
Speaker 1: a guy, Lene Patrice Lamba, who has become something of
Speaker 1: a rabble rouser and an advocate for independence and he's
Speaker 1: gotten his wish. Protesting and rioting got bad enough that
Speaker 1: the Belgians decided to abandon the colony. And yeah, they're
Speaker 1: new king. The great great grand descendant of Leopold, a
Speaker 1: guy named Badwin the First flew on down to give
Speaker 1: the colony away to itself. Now, Badwin had visited the
Speaker 1: Congo once before, in nineteen fifty five, and at that
Speaker 1: point there had been a big parade for him. Everybody
Speaker 1: had cheered. They had all been super because Leopold never
Speaker 1: even visited the Congo. So this guy does get some
Speaker 1: points in my book, for like, if you country winds
Speaker 1: up owning a chunk of land that it should never
Speaker 1: have been in for any reason, at least go go there, like,
Speaker 1: at least look at what it is to just sit
Speaker 1: and count their re seats, which is what Leopold did.
Speaker 1: So Badwin had gone and he had a good reaction.
Speaker 1: People had liked him. But then he'd come back in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine and he'd been pelted with bottles and feces,
Speaker 1: and like, the temperature had changed, and some of that,
Speaker 1: a lot of that was due to guys like Patrice Lama,
Speaker 1: who had sort of educated everyone on like how fucked
Speaker 1: they had been by Belgium, because a lot of people
Speaker 1: hadn't really known because the education wasn't there. Everyone who
Speaker 1: had gotten the worst fucked over had died. There weren't
Speaker 1: a lot of oral traditions, and so the temperature was
Speaker 1: high at this point, and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: anti colonial scent within. They should have just been like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this is our tradition to welcome people. It's
Speaker 1: the poop. Yeah, you haven't been here. It's change. It's
Speaker 1: just our point tradition. We yell at you and you Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna cut you with this razor blade and
Speaker 1: smears and poop in the wounds. That's now poop points
Speaker 1: are a thing. Yeah, it's religious or whatever. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna use a hippohide whip on you. Yeah, everybody who
Speaker 1: comes here has to have that done to them by
Speaker 1: this whole line of people. Yeah. Battle when the first
Speaker 1: goes to the Congo to prepare to release it. You know,
Speaker 1: he clearly had a more positive view of his ancestor,
Speaker 1: Leopold's deeds in the Congo than the facts would support
Speaker 1: uh during the speech that he gave. So, you know,
Speaker 1: they have the big Independent Day thing, and so there's
Speaker 1: all of these uh Congolese Africans that people who are
Speaker 1: going to be taking over the government once a lot
Speaker 1: of the Belgian's leave, and there's also all of the Belgians.
Speaker 1: So it's like a bunch of white people and a
Speaker 1: bunch of black Africans altogether for this ceremony in a
Speaker 1: place where these two groups have been segregated, so like
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a big deal that they're all
Speaker 1: in the like black people are allowed in the same
Speaker 1: room as the white people in the king because again
Speaker 1: it's a super racist colony. So the King gets up
Speaker 1: in front of this mixed group and praises Leopold's civilizing
Speaker 1: mission in the Congo, calls him a genius for foreseeing
Speaker 1: the Congo uh and basically gives a speech that's one
Speaker 1: giant You're welcome to the whole country. Now. Patrice Lamumba
Speaker 1: was again a big figure at this point. He was
Speaker 1: set to be the prime minister when the Congo got
Speaker 1: its freedom, so he had written up a speech that
Speaker 1: was already kind of peppery to because this was like
Speaker 1: his big chance to get up in front of the
Speaker 1: nation and really tell the Belgians what he thought. And
Speaker 1: while the King is giving this speech about how cool
Speaker 1: Leopold was and how great the Congo colony worked out
Speaker 1: for everyone, Patrese is like writing furiously in the margins
Speaker 1: of his speech, just like red faced and just just
Speaker 1: adding to what he was going to say, so ships
Speaker 1: was already really hot, and the King's speech makes people
Speaker 1: angrier because it's being broadcast through like loudspeakers across the city.
Speaker 1: So there's just crowds of Congolese people in the streets
Speaker 1: hearing this guy talk about how his psycho great great
Speaker 1: granddad had been so good at civilizing them. So they
Speaker 1: get really, really really pissed. And then Patrice Lamomba takes
Speaker 1: the stage and he proceeds to say this to King
Speaker 1: Shittass and every other European in the audience. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a decent chunk of this speech because
Speaker 1: it's it's cathartic. Although this independence of the Congo is
Speaker 1: being proclaimed today by the agreement with Belgium, an amiable
Speaker 1: country with which we are on equal terms, no Congolese
Speaker 1: will ever forget that independence was one in struggle, a
Speaker 1: persevering and inspired struggle carried on from day to day,
Speaker 1: a struggle in which we were undaunted by privation or suffering,
Speaker 1: and stinted neither strength nor blood. It was filled with tears,
Speaker 1: fire and blood. We are deeply proud of our struggle
Speaker 1: because it was just and noble and indispensable. In putting
Speaker 1: an into the humiliating bondage forced upon us. This was
Speaker 1: our lot for the eighty years of colonial rule, and
Speaker 1: our wounds are too fresh and much too painful to
Speaker 1: be forgotten. We have experienced forced labor in exchange for
Speaker 1: pay that did not allow us to satisfy our hunger,
Speaker 1: to clothe ourselves, to have decent lodgings, or to bring
Speaker 1: up our children as dearly loved ones, morning, noon and night.
Speaker 1: We were subjected to jeers, insults, and blows because we
Speaker 1: were negroes. Who will ever forget that the black was
Speaker 1: addressed as too, not because he was a friend, but
Speaker 1: because the polite voo was reserved for the white man.
Speaker 1: We have seen our land seized in the name of
Speaker 1: ostensibly just laws which gave recognition only to the right
Speaker 1: of might. We have not forgotten that the law was
Speaker 1: never the same for the black and the white, that
Speaker 1: it was lenient to the ones and cruel and inhumane
Speaker 1: to the others. We've experienced atrocious sufferings, being persecuted for
Speaker 1: political convictions and religio beliefs, and exiled from our native land.
Speaker 1: Our lot was worse than death itself. So this is
Speaker 1: very well well spoken too, and like uh because like
Speaker 1: when you were saying like he was jotting furiously as
Speaker 1: expecting to be really like vengeful and angry, but it's
Speaker 1: actually it's comes off like it's like almost too nice
Speaker 1: for what they did, but like in a very political way,
Speaker 1: like you get the underlying text, but also concee him
Speaker 1: as a leader because he's like very composed. He's it's
Speaker 1: very composed and eloquent range and he's getting up there
Speaker 1: in front of the guys who had done this to
Speaker 1: them and telling them, y'all are fucking assholes, like and
Speaker 1: it's like more of a funk you that he can
Speaker 1: say it so calmly because it's like it's like you're like,
Speaker 1: oh ship, yeah, we're wrong. And the whole speech. I
Speaker 1: recommend reading it. Um it's it's it's much longer, and
Speaker 1: it it continues to just throw shitloads of shade on
Speaker 1: the Belgians, and it's kind of intoxicating to read, especially
Speaker 1: if you've listened to the Leopold podcast and so you
Speaker 1: if you've been sort of inundating yourself with how shitty
Speaker 1: the Belgians were to the Congolese, just this guy getting
Speaker 1: up in front of them and really letting them have
Speaker 1: it is. You don't get a lot of moments like
Speaker 1: this in history. It's yeah, it's like if a council
Speaker 1: of rabbis right before Hitler had died, had gotten to
Speaker 1: just roast him for an hour and a half, like
Speaker 1: like that sort of thing, like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that never happened. Put the face to a lot of
Speaker 1: the injustices they did, because I'm sure so much of
Speaker 1: colonialism is built on like the idea that the colonized
Speaker 1: are less than human, because then people can justify it
Speaker 1: by thinking like, oh, is this abstract idea like we're
Speaker 1: better people and that's why we can do this civilizing them, Right,
Speaker 1: But then you see a guy like that get up
Speaker 1: and speak eloquently and you're like, oh, yeah, they're just
Speaker 1: people that we've sucked over, really fucked over for like
Speaker 1: a century. Yeah. So the image of Patrise, this kid
Speaker 1: from the Congo, standing up in front of his former
Speaker 1: masters and in the most eloquent terms telling them fuck
Speaker 1: you when the horse you rode in on it gets
Speaker 1: around owned this goes viral and it is a huge
Speaker 1: moment in like African liberation um, and it is to
Speaker 1: this day, a really significant moment in the continuing struggle
Speaker 1: to Yeah, unfuncked what the Europeans did in that continent.
Speaker 1: So Lamimba just lays into the Belgians while they're all
Speaker 1: standing around looking at him, surrounded by Congolese citizens and
Speaker 1: unable to do anything to stop him. Um And this
Speaker 1: is remember a place where just a few years earlier
Speaker 1: African children were whipped bloody for things like laughing in
Speaker 1: the presence of a white man. That was a real crime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people died for laughing in the presence of a white man.
Speaker 1: A couple of even the logic behind that, like the
Speaker 1: fact that they want to regulate their joy or is
Speaker 1: it like maybe it's still seen less human. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: if they don't have emotions, I think it's it's they
Speaker 1: don't want to be mocked. I think in the and
Speaker 1: they're not. They're not sure if they're laughing at them,
Speaker 1: eat them. If you're laughing near a white man, you
Speaker 1: might be laughing at him, and they can't let that
Speaker 1: be happening. Wow, some petty as ship. That's colonial Europeans
Speaker 1: right there. They are the pettiest ass people you'll ever
Speaker 1: read about. Um So It probably won't surprise you to
Speaker 1: hear that Lamomba's speech was Yeah, as I said so.
Speaker 1: Lamba speech became one of the most positive and iconic
Speaker 1: moments in the whole African struggle for independence. But he
Speaker 1: didn't just throw shade in the speech. He also outlined
Speaker 1: an optimistic and even utopian vision of what Congolese society
Speaker 1: could be after independence. Quote, we shall eradicate all discrimination,
Speaker 1: whatever its origin, and we shall ensure for everyone a
Speaker 1: station in life befitting his human dignity and worthy of
Speaker 1: his labor and his loyalty to the country. He also
Speaker 1: said we shall institute in the country at peace, resting
Speaker 1: not on guns and bayonets, but on conquered and goodwill.
Speaker 1: So he's saying all the right things on conquered concorde
Speaker 1: yeah sorright like well like like people getting along. I
Speaker 1: mean yes, it's the same spot, like the grape as
Speaker 1: opposed to being conquered. Yeah. Yeah, he built on grapes
Speaker 1: and good will. Yeah. English is that my first language? Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not mine either. Screaming is okay? Yeah? Um? So
Speaker 1: that is Patrice Lamamba in a nutshell. Seems like a
Speaker 1: pretty sweet dude, right yeah, nice guy, well spoken, says
Speaker 1: the right things and human dignity. Oh no, there's no
Speaker 1: butts he was. He was a good man by all accounts.
Speaker 1: He was a good man. Uh So, yeah, let me
Speaker 1: tell you why Dwight D. Eisenhower decided he needed to die.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I mean, this is the podcast it is.
Speaker 1: It wasn't gonna end well for the nice guy. So
Speaker 1: under the terms of the independence agreement, the Congo was
Speaker 1: set up to be one of those democracies with both
Speaker 1: the president and a prime minister in a parliament. Right,
Speaker 1: Lamombo was set to be the first prime minister. And
Speaker 1: it is possible that Lamamba's speech angreed up some folks
Speaker 1: because a bunch of Congolese soldiers mutinied and murdered their
Speaker 1: Belgian officers that night. The mutiny turned into a general
Speaker 1: assault on all white people in the area and like
Speaker 1: a thousand people died. Uh. Now, at this point, the
Speaker 1: Belgians hadn't had time to hand everything over, so the
Speaker 1: Congolese army was commanded by a Belgian and the Congolese
Speaker 1: units were commanded by Belgian officers, and that seems to
Speaker 1: be what started the mutiny. Uh. These African soldiers were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're independent now, and then their officers come by and say,
Speaker 1: but we're still in charge of the army, and they're like,
Speaker 1: the funk you are? I just heard we're independent. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna shoot me an officer or too. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: gets bad, and uh yeah, there's always chaos and changing
Speaker 1: of well not always, I guess, but like an unstable governments,
Speaker 1: there is because it's like everything's up for grabs and
Speaker 1: and it it happened so suddenly, like there's there's less
Speaker 1: than a year where they've known they're going to be
Speaker 1: handing it over. So the Belgians are not doing what
Speaker 1: you would want to do for this to go well,
Speaker 1: because you do have cases like Taiwan was was handed
Speaker 1: over from. I mean also they are now dealing with
Speaker 1: transitional justice and a lot of a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that wasn't dealt with that I didn't even know growing
Speaker 1: up because my parents generation was fed so much propaganda
Speaker 1: that like about chung Kaishak and everything that now it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that were killed and yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's this is never a smooth process, and it's
Speaker 1: especially not spruit smooth when the country in charge just
Speaker 1: immediately cuts ties in the space of a few months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like so yeah, something that is hard is made impossible
Speaker 1: once the murder spree starts. The soldiers start killing people,
Speaker 1: all of the white people, huge at least a huge
Speaker 1: chunk of the white people in the country run the
Speaker 1: funk away and just start getting on boats and planes
Speaker 1: getting the hell out of there, which leaves the country
Speaker 1: with a distinct lack of people who have experienced actually
Speaker 1: running infrastructure because again the Belgian's number one, the Africans
Speaker 1: usually hadn't benefited for most of the infrastructure, the buildings
Speaker 1: had built, and they certainly had been taught how to run.
Speaker 1: It's all white people. They weren't allowed in the same rooms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they they weren't let in the same rooms. There
Speaker 1: hadn't been time to train people because they just cut ties.
Speaker 1: So this causes additional instability in addition to the fact
Speaker 1: that handing over control of a huge reason of land.
Speaker 1: The Congo is twice the size of Texas, so it's
Speaker 1: just a gigantic miss all the funk around. So Patrice
Speaker 1: Lamumba and the president like are working over time to
Speaker 1: try to calm things down to stabilize ship. Patrese tries
Speaker 1: to calm the mutineers by firing the Belgian guy in
Speaker 1: charge of the army. Um he replaces him with the
Speaker 1: soldier he trusted, a colonel named Mabotu, who again we
Speaker 1: will hear about in a subsequent episode. Mabooto managed to
Speaker 1: get the army back under control, but things continue to
Speaker 1: get messed up during this time, and basically things go
Speaker 1: from f to fucked her um. So, the Congo is
Speaker 1: very very wealthy. If people were robots, right, and the
Speaker 1: sole determining factor of how wealthy your nation was was
Speaker 1: its natural resources, the Congo's probably in the top ten
Speaker 1: on the planet, maybe in the top five, because they
Speaker 1: have they have old they have copper, they have cobalt,
Speaker 1: they have uranium, and they have a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 1: and they don't just have these minerals. They're usually purer
Speaker 1: in the Congo than they are anywhere else on the planet.
Speaker 1: Their mind. They have the purest copper, they have the
Speaker 1: purest cobal, they have the best uranium. They also have
Speaker 1: this gigantic river in it that in its own with
Speaker 1: technology that has existed for quite a while, you could
Speaker 1: if you properly made use of the Congo rivers hydroelectric potential,
Speaker 1: the just the Congo state could provide enough power to
Speaker 1: power all of Africa. Like, so that's what. Like they're
Speaker 1: set up in a good position, but all of these minerals,
Speaker 1: all of these valuable minerals, means there's ship that people
Speaker 1: want to steal. And the Belgians, who again hadn't expected
Speaker 1: to give up the Congo for a few decades yet,
Speaker 1: had kind of been counting on having access to all
Speaker 1: of those minerals. So what do they do when they
Speaker 1: suddenly lose control of the Congo take it back? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they send some mercenaries and some guns, and they
Speaker 1: go to different tribal groups and a couple of provinces
Speaker 1: in the Congo, and they're like, you know, you guys
Speaker 1: should really be your own country. You've got all these
Speaker 1: nice resources in this province. You've got all this gyms
Speaker 1: or whatever the hell you've got. What if we just
Speaker 1: give you some machine guns and helped you secede from
Speaker 1: the Congo and then you let us mind your minerals. Ah,
Speaker 1: what if? What if that happens? So, yeah, two provinces
Speaker 1: secede from the Congo and a civil war begins. Both
Speaker 1: of the provinces are backed by Belgian guns in Belgian money,
Speaker 1: and in many cases the people running these rebel provinces
Speaker 1: are Belgians, like they're appointed leaders and big chunks there
Speaker 1: are also Belgian. So it's essentially Belgium gives the Congo
Speaker 1: away and then immediately foments the civil war within. It's
Speaker 1: just changing the name of it's it's all just ceremonious.
Speaker 1: But it's like in the first episode that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: Leopold kept changing the name of his organization but wouldn't
Speaker 1: catch on. Yeah he would. He would start like, this
Speaker 1: is the Society of the African Society and the International
Speaker 1: African Society, and then it's the African Society or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like they came up with all these different names so
Speaker 1: that it seemed like a philanthropic gesture. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: doing that again, except that there now they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we gave your independence. Oh we didn't say we couldn't
Speaker 1: start a civil war. Yeah we didn't. See well, and
Speaker 1: if you're not the Congo anymore, then we couldn't take
Speaker 1: it over. We just said we were going to give
Speaker 1: your independence. We didn't say we were going to start
Speaker 1: a three way civil war. Did you want that? On
Speaker 1: the You didn't mention it. So we just thought it
Speaker 1: was fine, this is normal in Europe. Well, actually that
Speaker 1: is normal in Europe, the shipload a civil wars. But
Speaker 1: uh yeah, so two of the Congo's most profitable and
Speaker 1: resource rich provinces, uh Katanga and East Kassai, rebel against
Speaker 1: the government. Um So, now it is important to note that,
Speaker 1: I think still to this day when people talk about, like, um,
Speaker 1: there's this big controversy over Syria with the White Helmet,
Speaker 1: it's because the White Helmets have received funding from the
Speaker 1: United States and NATO forces. And so there's this like
Speaker 1: myth that like there essentially a US supported uh terrorist
Speaker 1: group faking chemical weapons attacks over and and they're definitely
Speaker 1: like the White Helmets have gotten support from Western powers.
Speaker 1: But it's like there's this tendency among a bunch of
Speaker 1: groups to assume that if the West gets involved in
Speaker 1: one of these countries and backing aside and a fight,
Speaker 1: then that's where all of the division started. And no,
Speaker 1: there were pre existing divisions. So the Congo was never
Speaker 1: a nation before Leopold came there. It was different tribal groups.
Speaker 1: It's like those Real Housewives shows when the producers like
Speaker 1: or a bachelor or whatever they like, we'll get the
Speaker 1: people contestants of fight, but they don't come out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, we saw that you guys don't like
Speaker 1: each other, so I don't like she I heard she
Speaker 1: said this about you. But but they wouldn't just started
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. Yeah, so there's something these already comproving exactly.
Speaker 1: These provinces were mainly consisting of people who were members
Speaker 1: of tribes who had issues with the dominant tribes in
Speaker 1: the Congo, and with the tribes because La Mumba was
Speaker 1: largely supported by members of a specific tribe. Like, that's
Speaker 1: the way politics worked at that point in the Congo.
Speaker 1: And so the Belgians would go to these other tribes
Speaker 1: who controlled or who were dominant in areas they wanted
Speaker 1: and would be like, you guys deserve to be independent.
Speaker 1: And these guys already kind of wanted their independence, and
Speaker 1: now this Western power shows up offering them machine guns
Speaker 1: and military aid and stuff. Let's give it a shot.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the way that works. So they're offering
Speaker 1: it to all sides right, but then each side thinks
Speaker 1: like they're being favored. No, they're only offering it to
Speaker 1: both sides. Are two sides, but two provinces that want independent.
Speaker 1: But the two sides are also fighting each other, or
Speaker 1: the two sides fighting against the one just fighting. They're
Speaker 1: not fighting together, but they're fighting against the government. They
Speaker 1: just both want to be independent, and the Belgians want
Speaker 1: those two breakaway provinces independence so that they can keep
Speaker 1: getting those sweet, sweet minerals. Yeah, so the rebellion breaks out.
Speaker 1: Lamimba and Mobow two are overworked trying to deal with it. Uh.
Speaker 1: It becomes clear very quickly that they cannot beat the
Speaker 1: Belgian backed separatists, so they call in the UN. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they try to do it legally, you know,
Speaker 1: the UN basically the cops. You're somebody's fucking with your ship,
Speaker 1: you call the police. You try to get it done
Speaker 1: with a legal way. So the UN sins and troops.
Speaker 1: But all they'll agree to do is basically help the
Speaker 1: Congolese government maintain control in the areas they already hold.
Speaker 1: They will not help the Congo beat the rebels. They
Speaker 1: won't do anything about the Belgians. So we're gonna find
Speaker 1: out what happens next. The was Belgium not part of
Speaker 1: the u N. Oh, it was, so they're okay. See,
Speaker 1: so everything's kind of sucked up. Everything is super fucked up.
Speaker 1: I guess the cops are a good example for this
Speaker 1: that they're great. When the cops are bullying you and
Speaker 1: you're like, m they're gonna take the side of the cops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or if guys who are retired cops are bullying you
Speaker 1: and you call the cops, probably not gonna go well
Speaker 1: for you. Uh So, we will talk more about throw
Speaker 1: more shade on the UN and probably throw more shade
Speaker 1: on cops. But first let's do the opposite of throw shade,
Speaker 1: shine some sunlight on these products and or services, and
Speaker 1: we're back. Uh So, when we last left this, the
Speaker 1: Belgians had sort of definitely kind of helped start a
Speaker 1: couple of civil wars within the CONGO so that they
Speaker 1: could get their hands on some more minerals. Uh and
Speaker 1: Patrice Lamumba had called in the u N for help
Speaker 1: dealing with these rebellions in the UN and basically been like,
Speaker 1: I can't really help you with the fact that the Belgians,
Speaker 1: who are also UN members are the ones responsible for
Speaker 1: all this. So Lamimba is like, that's some bullshit, and
Speaker 1: he goes to the Soviet Union and he says, we
Speaker 1: need support and some vehicles and ship and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Unions like, well, totally give you guys whatever if you
Speaker 1: communist a little bit. And Lamamba was like our communist
Speaker 1: a little bit because he was a socialist, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't a communist really and he uh he didn't like
Speaker 1: actually do anything terrible or whatever. He wasn't stalinist purging people.
Speaker 1: He was just taking the Soviet Union's offer of aid
Speaker 1: in a time when his country needed it because the
Speaker 1: UN had said no. Uh So, pretty soon Soviet technicians
Speaker 1: and military advisors are flooding into the country and unfortunately
Speaker 1: for Patrice Lamamba and everyone really, the CIA was also
Speaker 1: in the Congo and they start counting every Russian they
Speaker 1: see step out of an airplane. Uh Now, Larry Devlin
Speaker 1: was the big CIA guy in Leopoldville at the time,
Speaker 1: the station chief, and he's still alive and around today.
Speaker 1: I think he's still alive. He was still alive pretty
Speaker 1: recently because you can watch interviews of him talking about
Speaker 1: everything that happens here and giving his opinions on it.
Speaker 1: So if you want to see Larry Devlin, the CIA
Speaker 1: guys opinion of all this, you can find it. So
Speaker 1: Devlin counts like a thousand some odds Soviets who are
Speaker 1: in the country, and he starts sending this information back
Speaker 1: to Washington, and this stuff goes up the food chain
Speaker 1: and it gets to Dwight the ice Shower's ear. Now,
Speaker 1: this is right when the Cold War is ratcheting up,
Speaker 1: and the way it's presented to the president is the
Speaker 1: Communists are gaining influence in the Congo, and thanks to
Speaker 1: this Lamumba guy, the Congo might go red. And the
Speaker 1: Congo it's full of uranium, which you need to make nukes. So,
Speaker 1: like fuck, Eisenhower is going to let that happen. Now,
Speaker 1: for a long time, the exact chain of command for
Speaker 1: everything was in doubt. But in two thousand The Guardian
Speaker 1: dug up some information from the National Archives interview with
Speaker 1: a guy named Robert Johnson, who had been the minute
Speaker 1: taker in the White House on the Fateful Day when
Speaker 1: they discussed all this quote. Robert Johnson said in the
Speaker 1: interview that he vividly recalled the President turning to Alan Dullis,
Speaker 1: director of the CIA, and the full hearing of all
Speaker 1: those in attendance and saying something to the effect that
Speaker 1: Lamumbo should be eliminated. So Dwight Eisenhower says, killed this
Speaker 1: fucking guy. Essentially, he says he should be eliminated, and
Speaker 1: the CIA reads it as killed this fucking guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see, but he's because it's like the US, they
Speaker 1: don't want to help, but so they just want to
Speaker 1: like kind of like put a little pause on the
Speaker 1: situation because they don't want this civil war. They just
Speaker 1: don't want to be involved in civore right, They're not
Speaker 1: going to try to get involved in help that way.
Speaker 1: But they also don't want to help this guy. So
Speaker 1: even though this guy went to the Soviets for help,
Speaker 1: they're just like, oh, we can't have that, so we're
Speaker 1: just going to kill the guy. But then someone else
Speaker 1: will just come in. Well, but they can make sure
Speaker 1: it's someone else who wants to do who they're in
Speaker 1: charge of. Yeah, they don't like this guy. I think
Speaker 1: it a lot of it comes down to the fact
Speaker 1: that Patrice Lammbo was not somebody they owned or could
Speaker 1: and he had and he and the people who supported him,
Speaker 1: had their own view of what the Congo should be,
Speaker 1: and they didn't really give a shit about being part
Speaker 1: of the US's sphere of influence. And the US was
Speaker 1: definitely most worried about because the Domino theory was big
Speaker 1: at this time, which is the idea that like, if
Speaker 1: one nation falls to communism, it will lead other nations
Speaker 1: around it to fall, and soon all of Africa will
Speaker 1: be read. But there's also this very real concern that
Speaker 1: they have that like, well, this is full of uranium
Speaker 1: and if the Soviets gained influence here, that's going to
Speaker 1: go to them. So it's a few things going on,
Speaker 1: but it all comes down to the fact that they
Speaker 1: didn't think they could control this guy, and so they
Speaker 1: decided to have him killed. Mr Johnson recalled after Eisenhower
Speaker 1: said that there was a stunned silence for about fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds and then the meeting continued. Um because this is
Speaker 1: one of the first times that anything like this had
Speaker 1: ever happened. Um, the CIA was not super experienced murdering
Speaker 1: people at this point. Now, the New York Times published
Speaker 1: an expose the CIA and Lamomba. It revealed that on
Speaker 1: September nineteenth, nineteen sixty, the CIA's Leopoldville station chief received
Speaker 1: a top secret message telling him to prepare for the
Speaker 1: arrival of quote Joe from Paris now Devlin. The CIA
Speaker 1: chief guy was warned to keep all this information to himself.
Speaker 1: Joe wound up being a guy named Sidney Gottlieb. He
Speaker 1: was the CIA Special Assistant for scientific matters. That's a
Speaker 1: fancy way of saying he was the agency's top scientist
Speaker 1: and in this case, top poisoner. Yeah. So, Sydney brought
Speaker 1: with him a bizarre bespoke virus that had been engineered
Speaker 1: by the CIA to mimic the deadly effects of a
Speaker 1: local Congolese disease. The scientist told the station chief. The
Speaker 1: chief that this poison was meant for Patrice Lamomba, something
Speaker 1: he put in his beverage or whatever to assassinate and
Speaker 1: be undetected. Yeah, exactly. He just got some terrible Congolese
Speaker 1: disease and died. Um. I'm gonna quote the New York
Speaker 1: Times here. The poison, the scientist said, was somehow to
Speaker 1: be slipped into Lamomba's food or perhaps into his toothpaste.
Speaker 1: Poison was not the only acceptable method any form of
Speaker 1: assassination would do so long as it could not be
Speaker 1: traced back to the United States government. Now, at this
Speaker 1: point in history, the CIA is very new and they
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of experience murdering foreign leaders. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think they've only done it one time before this
Speaker 1: that we have any kind of evidence about. Now, considering
Speaker 1: Castro's history, you might argue that they never did good
Speaker 1: good at killing world leaders, but this is sort of
Speaker 1: their the proving ground for that, that tactic, you know,
Speaker 1: just murdering people who disagree with America. Um, and they're
Speaker 1: not great at yet. The poison winds up expiring before
Speaker 1: they can give it to Lamamba in a few different expires. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one did. Wow. Yeah, there's they They suck at
Speaker 1: this so far. They're going to get better. And the
Speaker 1: whole isn't poison, Okay, I think it's like a virus.
Speaker 1: So that's like, that's not potent anymore. Yeah. No, like
Speaker 1: the CIA sent a chemical weapon over to assassinate a
Speaker 1: world leader, like poppers, Like if you're once it's out
Speaker 1: too long, but the effects are gone, just like poppers.
Speaker 1: We should have an episode of this podcast we do
Speaker 1: will take poppers. So if he can we do a
Speaker 1: line of poppers or will be a very short episode?
Speaker 1: So yeah, all of the different plans they have for
Speaker 1: Lamamba kind of fall through at least for a while now.
Speaker 1: As I had said before, Lamamba is a hero in
Speaker 1: Africa and certainly within the Congo's very popular at this point.
Speaker 1: A philosopher of liberation, he looked different to the mostly
Speaker 1: white American cold warriors of the Eisenhower era. Now they've
Speaker 1: gotten to meet him face to face shortly after Congle's independence.
Speaker 1: Because Lamamba had visited the New York Times to talk
Speaker 1: to or to had visited New York City to talk
Speaker 1: to the UN Secretary General when he was still asking
Speaker 1: for help with the civil war thing. He'd been invited
Speaker 1: down to Washington during that same trip. Um Here's how
Speaker 1: the New York Times described it. For both Lamamba and
Speaker 1: the United States. It was a decisive encounter. The new
Speaker 1: Secretary of State, Christian Herder, received him and spent a
Speaker 1: frustrating half hour trying to persuade him to rely exclusively
Speaker 1: on the United Nations and refrain from calling to outside
Speaker 1: powers for assistance. But obviously the UN wasn't willing to
Speaker 1: help him do what needed to be done, and Lama
Speaker 1: didn't take well to this, considering the rebels were being funded, armed,
Speaker 1: in many cases led by Belgian military officers. Quote. His
Speaker 1: arguments fell on deaf ears. Dylan, under Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: who was present at the meeting, testified that Lamamba had
Speaker 1: struck him as quote, an irrational, almost psychotic personality. The
Speaker 1: impression that was left, Dylan said, was very bad, that
Speaker 1: this was an individual whom it was impossible to deal with,
Speaker 1: and the feelings of the government as a result sharpened
Speaker 1: considerably during this time. Now, well they say impossible to deal,
Speaker 1: what they just mean impossible to control. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think they also mean black and talking like he's equal
Speaker 1: to a white guy. I really do think that's most
Speaker 1: of why they consider him crazy. Because Devlin, the CIA chief,
Speaker 1: who actually knew Lamambo, I don't think was a racist
Speaker 1: and did not describe him as a crazy person. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: I didn't regard Lamamba as the kind of person who
Speaker 1: is going to bring on World War three. I saw
Speaker 1: him as a danger to the political position of the
Speaker 1: United States in Africa, but nothing more than that, which
Speaker 1: is reasonable. Um, and he did not stay out. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and devil in the CIA guy tried to help kill
Speaker 1: him but didn't want to, Like it was one of
Speaker 1: those like, well that's the orders. I'm a CIA guy.
Speaker 1: I kill people if I got to kill people. But
Speaker 1: that's part of why I think Dylan, the under Secretary
Speaker 1: of State, is just a racist. Like he sees a
Speaker 1: black man with an opinion and he's he's crazy. We
Speaker 1: got a poison this guy. Yeah, and I'm guessing Eisenhower
Speaker 1: had some racism in them too. Um. Yeah, probably Ike
Speaker 1: doesn't come off well in this story. Um. One thing
Speaker 1: I do think is important to note is kind of
Speaker 1: how the artificial nature of the Congo exacerbated the civil
Speaker 1: war that had just started off, made it easier for
Speaker 1: the Belgians to foment, which we already talked about a
Speaker 1: little bit, and also was responsible for a lot of
Speaker 1: the continuing violence that's there today. Um. There's a U. S.
Speaker 1: Diplomat named Robert McNamara who worked in the Congo for
Speaker 1: a while, and he traced a lot of the political
Speaker 1: problems they had directly to King Leopold. He said that
Speaker 1: the Congo as it was put put together by King
Speaker 1: Leopold was an artificial entity. It had no relationship to
Speaker 1: anything African. It cut across tribal, ethnic and national geographic lines.
Speaker 1: A few of the people in Africa had any real
Speaker 1: identity with the Congo as a nation. So it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a big mess that we're we've got into right now,
Speaker 1: right this is like a fake thing that's been cobbled together.
Speaker 1: Lament was trying to make it into a real country
Speaker 1: because you can force that sort of thing. But it's
Speaker 1: also very easy for the Belgians too, it's unstable. Then
Speaker 1: he come in and exactly so local politics and the
Speaker 1: Congo moved faster than c i A. Lamumbo's initial military
Speaker 1: campaign to suppress the rebels did not go well, and
Speaker 1: his decision to seek Soviet aid was controversial within his
Speaker 1: own nation. In September of nineteen sixty, President Cosa Vubu
Speaker 1: dismissed Prime Minister Lamomba, so Lammbo went before Parliament directly
Speaker 1: and gave a big speech and convinced them to reinstate him,
Speaker 1: which seemed to prove to the Americans that this young
Speaker 1: socialist was just so charismatic he could only be stopped
Speaker 1: by death. So the CIA went to a guy who
Speaker 1: happened to be the second in command of the army
Speaker 1: at the time, Colonel Joseph Mobutu uh and they were like,
Speaker 1: it would be great if someone could coupe this current
Speaker 1: government out of power, and Someboto did exactly that. He
Speaker 1: kicked the Soviet advisors out of the Congo and deposed
Speaker 1: Lamomba and his supporters. At this point, the Congo had
Speaker 1: effectively two different governments, Patrice Lamamba's which was like half legitimate,
Speaker 1: and President Cassa Bubus which was backed by Mobutu and
Speaker 1: was also like half legitimate. And then of course there
Speaker 1: are the two different breakos, so there's four governments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now we've gone from three to four governments in
Speaker 1: the Congo at this point in time. So the UN
Speaker 1: chose to recognize Cassavubu's government because they didn't like Lamomba
Speaker 1: and Patrice Lamombo fled the capital for the town of Stanleyville,
Speaker 1: where he had all of his supporters because again it's
Speaker 1: the tribal sort of thing, so like the tribes who
Speaker 1: supported him are mainly there. He has his people there,
Speaker 1: but he gets caught along the way by Colonel Mbutu's
Speaker 1: men and they imprison him in a place called Ticeville,
Speaker 1: near the capital. But after a couple of weeks, like
Speaker 1: Lamumba is in this prison guarded by soldier and he
Speaker 1: starts talking to the soldiers and again he can talk
Speaker 1: anybody in any He's He's a charismatic dude. He's charming,
Speaker 1: and so within a couple of weeks they're mutinying for
Speaker 1: higher pay because he's essentially convinced them that they deserve
Speaker 1: more uh and they threatened to put him back in
Speaker 1: charge of the country. Mbootoo sends in some soldiers and
Speaker 1: very quickly pulls Lamumba out of there before things can
Speaker 1: get worse, and puts him on a plane to Tanga,
Speaker 1: the rebel province where he had been prosecuting a war
Speaker 1: against uh So. The plane that flies him there is
Speaker 1: piloted by Belgians. The mercenaries who are guarding him on
Speaker 1: his flight to the rebel thing are Belgian soldiers, and
Speaker 1: they drop him off in the heart of rebel territory,
Speaker 1: blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his backs. Back
Speaker 1: um he was beaten badly by Catangan soldiers and then
Speaker 1: executed in front of several of their officials, including some
Speaker 1: Belgians who were officials in the Contagian government. So Lamamba
Speaker 1: has just been horribly murdered with heavy help from the Belgians, right,
Speaker 1: But technically the US did it, but they did it
Speaker 1: through the Belgians, so that in the Congolese and like,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say how much of this was the
Speaker 1: c i A, but it was. They seemed to have
Speaker 1: been guiding all this because they wanted Lamomba out of power,
Speaker 1: and I think they had something to do with him
Speaker 1: getting sacked in the first place. And then when he
Speaker 1: managed to talk his way back into power, you know,
Speaker 1: the U in which is really the US, backs the
Speaker 1: government that doesn't want him back in power and forces
Speaker 1: him to flee and then just so happens that he gets,
Speaker 1: you know, captured, and yeah, Belgian soldiers fly him to
Speaker 1: go be murdered. So Cea is not the only person
Speaker 1: that falled here, but they're definitely I guess nice guys
Speaker 1: really do finish last. Yeah, nice guys getting murdered in
Speaker 1: front of their enemies. Uh yeah, So it probably want
Speaker 1: surprised you to learn that Lamomba's assassination was treated as
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing by the Belgian people in press. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read a quote from an important book, The
Speaker 1: Assassination of Lamumba by Ludo do Witt. At one point
Speaker 1: he reviews Belgian newspaper coverage of the murder, which is
Speaker 1: mostly focused on shifting the blame from Belgium to the Congolese.
Speaker 1: What has occurred demonstrates alas that in Africa and certain
Speaker 1: other countries at the same stage of evolution, access to
Speaker 1: the democratic process remains a murderous affair and was from
Speaker 1: like yeah, a Belgian colonial newspaper. Another newspaper noted, Patrice
Speaker 1: Lamamba has died the way he always wanted violently. What yeah,
Speaker 1: gas lighting? Yeah, it's super He was asking for it,
Speaker 1: he wanted it. Belgium's leading financial paper there, equivalent to
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, considered the assassination to be a
Speaker 1: dangerous but crucial sort of surgery. Quote. The very existence
Speaker 1: of Lamombo was an abscess which had already infected the
Speaker 1: Congo and was threatening to infect it further. What yeah,
Speaker 1: So the West breathed socieh of release as soon as
Speaker 1: this guy is horribly murdered. But people across Africa were
Speaker 1: very much piste off by the murder of a liberationist icon.
Speaker 1: Uh Kwamain Akruma, then the President of Ghana, gave a
Speaker 1: fiery speech that was heard across the continent once the
Speaker 1: news of this broke. About their end, many things are uncertain,
Speaker 1: but one fact is crystal clear. They have been killed
Speaker 1: because the United Nations, who Patrice Lamombo himself as Prime Minister,
Speaker 1: had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order,
Speaker 1: not only failed to maintain that law and order, but
Speaker 1: also denied to the lawful government of the Congo all
Speaker 1: other means of self protect action. History records many occasions
Speaker 1: when rulers of states have been assassinated. The murder of
Speaker 1: Patrice Lamamba and two of his colleagues, however, is unique
Speaker 1: in that it is the first time in history that
Speaker 1: the legal ruler of a country has been done to
Speaker 1: death with the open connivance of a world organization in
Speaker 1: whom that ruler put his trust. Oh no, it really
Speaker 1: is an abusive relationship. Yeah, for sure. The speech goes
Speaker 1: on and it's it's a really good speech. Do wit
Speaker 1: considers Lamamba's assassination, to be quote, the most important political
Speaker 1: assassination of the twentieth century. Uh, And it's hard to
Speaker 1: argue with him. Lamambo was not the first CIA backed overthrow.
Speaker 1: Alan Dulls had masterminded the end of Jacobo are Beza's
Speaker 1: democratically elected government in Guatemala in nineteen fifty four and
Speaker 1: an operation called PBS Success. Yeah weird, they picked weird names.
Speaker 1: But Lamambo's death was probably the most significant of the
Speaker 1: CIA backed coups that came mostly after this um. Not
Speaker 1: only was the Congo an enormous nation for the CIA
Speaker 1: too of directly sort of intervened to change the course
Speaker 1: of its politics. But this is kind of like popping
Speaker 1: a hole in the dam. And after this, the CIA
Speaker 1: just goes fucking nuts for regime change. So they tried
Speaker 1: it once before in fifty four, but after they successfully
Speaker 1: get Lamomba had a taste for control on there. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: we could do this more if we just do this everywhere.
Speaker 1: Is how America works now. Yeah. So the CIA targets
Speaker 1: Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republican nineteen sixty one. They
Speaker 1: support the Bothists and our old pal Saddam Hussein and
Speaker 1: overthrowing a Rax President Kossum in nineteen sixty three. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are dozens of confirmed and suspected regime changes all
Speaker 1: over the world carried out by the CIA and the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and early seventies. One of the most striking
Speaker 1: cases was the killing of Salvador Allende. He was the
Speaker 1: democratically elected socialist leader of Chile. Here's how the Washington
Speaker 1: Post described as politics quote. He had rejected the Cuban
Speaker 1: model as too extreme. SHA's revolution is too violent. He
Speaker 1: was adamantly against armed struggle. Winning the presidency on September four,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, he vowed to overturn Chile's harsh economic injustices.
Speaker 1: He put forward a doctrine of geoeconomic sovereignty and self determination,
Speaker 1: a U S free future in which Chile would make
Speaker 1: its own way alone. The United States must realize that
Speaker 1: Latin America has now been changed, he said during one
Speaker 1: of his campaigns. Once in office, he would try to
Speaker 1: prove it. So so probably not going to end well
Speaker 1: for him, just based on that speech. Yeah, they probably
Speaker 1: don't like that he wants independence. But yeah, that's it's
Speaker 1: like weird because hearing all this, I know, we're supposed
Speaker 1: to talk about villains and other countries, but the US
Speaker 1: is coming off We're the bastard of this. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: one of ends first orders of business once he was
Speaker 1: elected legally to be in charge of Chile was to
Speaker 1: nationalize the copper and nitrate industries, making them property of
Speaker 1: all Chileans. The US did not appreciate this since these
Speaker 1: industries at the time were run by amy Kins and Brits.
Speaker 1: So he nationalizes copper and nitrates because he wants a
Speaker 1: Latin America free of what he called multinational vampires. He
Speaker 1: thought it was unfair that U S corporations made enormous
Speaker 1: profits off Chilean resources while playing paying Chilean workers a pittance.
Speaker 1: Here's the Washington Post again. As Allende's presidential campaign gain traction.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy, corporations with interest in Chile, PepsiCo, Chase, Manhattan,
Speaker 1: I t T, Anaconda, kennicott Ford made their panic known
Speaker 1: to the US government. Once Allende was elected, Kissinger advised
Speaker 1: Nixon to mobilize quote quietly and covertly, to oppose Allende
Speaker 1: as strongly as we can and do all we can
Speaker 1: to keep him from consolidating power. Kissinger activated the CIA's
Speaker 1: Food Belt Plan, which involved encouraging a variety of subversive
Speaker 1: elements in Chilean society. Nixon ordered US Intel agencies to
Speaker 1: quote make the Chilean economy scream. He said to Kissinger,
Speaker 1: all's fair on Chile. Kick him in the ass. Okay, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: Nixon is a great guy. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: like us in this story. Well, you can blame it
Speaker 1: on Nixon if it makes you feel better, and pretend
Speaker 1: it wasn't PepsiCo, as I said, a delicious PepsiCo beverage.
Speaker 1: What was the There was a similar situation with Dole,
Speaker 1: I think, or Chiquita Bana. Yeah, that's what was happening
Speaker 1: in guadal Because I'm learning about that long time ago.
Speaker 1: We will go into more information on several of these
Speaker 1: clups in the future. Um, but it's I'm going over
Speaker 1: this all now because this is all sort of Lamumbo's
Speaker 1: assassination is again like that's the door is over right,
Speaker 1: because they've done it successfully, and they're like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: one lie leads to another, one coup leads to another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in this case, one coup leads to fucking shipload
Speaker 1: of coups all over the world. So yeah, the CIA
Speaker 1: tried to stop and from being sworn in at all.
Speaker 1: After his election. This kind of found out was found
Speaker 1: out in two thousand that the CIA had supported kidnapping
Speaker 1: Chile's top general when he refused to use the army
Speaker 1: to stop and from being sworn in as president. It Um.
Speaker 1: The kidnapping failed, but he this general was shot and
Speaker 1: killed two days later, probably by the CIA. But I
Speaker 1: end a wound up in power, so like they had
Speaker 1: tried to stop him from even taking office, and then
Speaker 1: once he took office, they escalated their plans. So on
Speaker 1: September eleven, nineteen seventy three, a military coup seized power
Speaker 1: in Chile. End was surrounded in his home and wound
Speaker 1: up either killing himself or being shot to death through
Speaker 1: other means. The CIA has been very heavily rumored to
Speaker 1: have been involved, and they've always denied it. In the
Speaker 1: modern interviews you'll find with these guys like because the
Speaker 1: CIA agents again, like with Devlin, these guys are all
Speaker 1: giving interviews now for documentaries because some of has been
Speaker 1: declassified UM, and they will admit the CIA knew a
Speaker 1: coup was brewing within the military and claimed they just
Speaker 1: kind of decided not to stop it and maybe helped
Speaker 1: it along once they knew it was happening. But they
Speaker 1: didn't spark anything. They didn't start. It didn't happen because
Speaker 1: then we only found out about it two days beforehand.
Speaker 1: That's the CIA's line about this guy who we know
Speaker 1: they tried. They killed the guy because he wouldn't stop
Speaker 1: this dude from taking office. Yeah, they're like someone was
Speaker 1: not somebody getting robbed and they screamed for help. We
Speaker 1: weren't the one robbing. Then. Also we to guy we'd
Speaker 1: give him crack if he robbed. Also blocked the police.
Speaker 1: We told the police it was a different alley just
Speaker 1: but we didn't do it. It was awful and we
Speaker 1: shot him after he got robbed. But you can't really
Speaker 1: blame any of this on us. Yeah, and then we
Speaker 1: also robbed him. We robbed him to stow his organs.
Speaker 1: It's fine with the CIA, with the good guys. There's
Speaker 1: a new movie coming out about you know, Jack Ryan
Speaker 1: CI agent. Yeah, good guys. Jim from the Office is
Speaker 1: playing one of the good guys. Yeah. Yeah, our propaganda
Speaker 1: because other country is a propaganda so blatant, but it's
Speaker 1: like Hollywood is our propaganda yea, and that is whoa
Speaker 1: My mind is blood there, I don't know. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the guy who took power from my end and Chile
Speaker 1: was a general named Augusto Pinochet. He was the dictator
Speaker 1: of the of Chile from nineteen seventy three to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety and remained in charge of the army until nine.
Speaker 1: During that time, he killed at least three thousand people
Speaker 1: and tortured thousands more. But at least at least Teresa
Speaker 1: Chile remains safe for PepsiCo. Yeah. That should They should
Speaker 1: put that on the cans of coke, like instead of
Speaker 1: the names like share coke with Diane, it should be
Speaker 1: like like steal a government from Chile. That no, that
Speaker 1: that I think you've nailed. That's a great marketing campaign.
Speaker 1: Open a can of coup. That's the CIA's internal soda.
Speaker 1: It just tastes like the tears of colonized peoples. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so fun. Fact, there are also allegations that the CIA
Speaker 1: tried to overthrow or kill Charles de Gaul several times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have called France so not even a colonial
Speaker 1: nation like like one of our staunchest allies. Now with Lamombo,
Speaker 1: we do know for sure that the CIA wanted him
Speaker 1: gone and that Eisenhower asked for him to be eliminated.
Speaker 1: That ship is documented. The Degala sassination is murkier. The
Speaker 1: CIA has not admitted ship, and in fact, this is
Speaker 1: officially a conspire your c theory, right, because that'd be
Speaker 1: crazy if they admitted that. But then I feel like,
Speaker 1: also the US and France have always been kind of
Speaker 1: weird and friend the front of me because whenever ship
Speaker 1: hits the fan, like like technically because the two big
Speaker 1: world powers are always like, okay, yeah, we sport each other,
Speaker 1: but then when something happens, like people are like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, We're gonna wait this one out and see
Speaker 1: how everyone else feels, like after September eleven, like of course, right,
Speaker 1: but it's like that's but they liked it when they
Speaker 1: were right. But also the US has done ship like
Speaker 1: that too, and every time it's always like I want
Speaker 1: to jump in right away. I mean, yeah, we're friends,
Speaker 1: but like she also owes me like twenty dollars and
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know I really are her. I
Speaker 1: don't really like talking to him. I mean, he's he's
Speaker 1: I guess we're friends, but like it's fine if you know,
Speaker 1: we're all hanging out in a group, but if it's
Speaker 1: just like a pregame with her, but I don't want
Speaker 1: to hang out with the one on one it's going
Speaker 1: to be awkward. That's France in America. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 1: here's how we tried to have Charles de Gaull killed
Speaker 1: um So Basically, in nineteen sixty two, four retired French
Speaker 1: generals attempted to overthrew throw the government to France. They
Speaker 1: captured Algiers in the French colony of Algeria, but they
Speaker 1: failed to capture Paris. Their coup was put down four
Speaker 1: days later. Now, the goal of this coup was to
Speaker 1: stop Charles de gaul from freeing Algeria. He wanted to
Speaker 1: colonize at least that French colony. This angered the French
Speaker 1: far right and it also freaked out the CIA. According
Speaker 1: to this theory, Alan Dulis, the same CIA director who
Speaker 1: backed the coups of Lamomba and Allende, was scared Algeria
Speaker 1: would go communist if it was let go, which was
Speaker 1: exactly the reasoning we had for killing Lamamba. So, according
Speaker 1: to this theory, we backed the coup and probably had
Speaker 1: a hand and several of the thirty attempts on Degall's
Speaker 1: life between nineteen fifty eight and nineteen sixty six because
Speaker 1: people kept trying to kill him. Well, the other thing
Speaker 1: that everyone being afraid of communism. It's like they're showing them.
Speaker 1: You're like, we're capitalism, here's a free democracy. And then
Speaker 1: you're all the side they see as like colonialism and
Speaker 1: dying and not having resources. So when you leave them,
Speaker 1: of course they're like, Okay, let's try something else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something how about doing good version of the democracy. Let
Speaker 1: them see how good Like I don't know anyways, just
Speaker 1: don't just walk with them. You don't walk with them.
Speaker 1: But also if you're going to show them a terrible time, like,
Speaker 1: they're probably gonna try something different. Now. The CIA denies
Speaker 1: all this. Alan Dullas, while he was alive, denied all this.
Speaker 1: The French generals in charge of the coup denied this.
Speaker 1: Much of the evidence you'll find for this comes from
Speaker 1: a book called The Devil's Chessboard by Salon dot com
Speaker 1: co founder David Talbot. The CIA says he's full of ship.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read one quote from the book. Um Degall
Speaker 1: was convinced that the coup was supported by the Alan
Speaker 1: Dullas led CIA and the French press. Was filled with
Speaker 1: leaks alleging this secret involvement, but Kennedy took pains to
Speaker 1: assure De gall that he did not back the coup,
Speaker 1: and in fact, he offered to defend the embattled French
Speaker 1: government with US military firepower. De Gall acknowledge that JFK
Speaker 1: himself was not behind the French officers rebellion, but the
Speaker 1: incident made it clear to both leaders something equally ominous.
Speaker 1: Kennedy was not in control of his own government. So
Speaker 1: this is a book by the guy who found at
Speaker 1: Salon dot com, which is not the most credible journalistic
Speaker 1: institution dot com. I'm not It's hard to tell what
Speaker 1: happened here. Um. We do know for a fact that
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen, the CIA admitted that back in
Speaker 1: sixty five, several French dissidents had asked the CIA for
Speaker 1: help killing degall Um. They claimed they did not do anything.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read a quote from the Guardian here about
Speaker 1: this plan that the CIA was supposed to be warned of,
Speaker 1: not warned of. These guys came to the CIA and
Speaker 1: told them basically they wanted to kill the gall and
Speaker 1: they said quote the killer was to be an old soldier.
Speaker 1: He was to wear a poisoned ring on one of
Speaker 1: his fingers, and he was to shake the general's hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what would have been ship my ring? This poison They
Speaker 1: just made a virus to kill a guy a ring
Speaker 1: and gill a poison ring and poison. Anybody with a
Speaker 1: ring can just really die from a if the poison
Speaker 1: is deadly enough. The Soviet Union killed a guy once
Speaker 1: with a might have been Putin's I forget which, but
Speaker 1: they had like a rice and tipped dart inside an umbrella.
Speaker 1: They shot into a dissident's leg when he was in
Speaker 1: a dart. Makes sense. The ring is like, that would
Speaker 1: be the ultimate revenge, as if you like, you know,
Speaker 1: get someone to propose to you that you hate and
Speaker 1: then like when they put the ring on the Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a long, long com Well, it's hard to say
Speaker 1: what happened. The CIA has been willing to admit they
Speaker 1: knew about attempts on Degaul's life, but has denied having
Speaker 1: any part in it. It's hard to think that the
Speaker 1: CIA wouldn't have tried to kill someone for this back then,
Speaker 1: because they were trying to kill a shipload of people
Speaker 1: for out of worry that their colonies would go communists.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. Um, it's worth noting that like
Speaker 1: this usually gets wrapped into the JFK killing conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: and stuff, So there's there's a lot of messy conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories in here. We can't get too much more into it.
Speaker 1: I will say that all of the CIA facori we've
Speaker 1: talked about today, which descended from the assassination of Lamumba,
Speaker 1: led eventually to the Church Committee in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: which was a congressional committee that revealed that basically looked
Speaker 1: over what the funk the CIA had been doing because
Speaker 1: you keep cooing governments without because a lot of time
Speaker 1: the president wouldn't even say I want this done. The
Speaker 1: CIA was moving on its own for a significant amount
Speaker 1: of it, or would be something like the president would
Speaker 1: be like, boy, I don't like these guys, and Alan
Speaker 1: Dulas would be like, I think that means the president
Speaker 1: once these people killed, let's go get our murdering on.
Speaker 1: So in seventy five, Congress is like, we should we
Speaker 1: should do something about all the murders because they don't
Speaker 1: want the president to be implicated. Is that so he
Speaker 1: has to speaking code or did did. They literally just
Speaker 1: were like, do you want to ask him? What do
Speaker 1: you meant by that? Now, let's just do it. I
Speaker 1: think it was sort of understood, like because Eisenhower didn't
Speaker 1: say kill amm, but he said he should be eliminated.
Speaker 1: Alan Dulas went back to the CIA and said, all right,
Speaker 1: presidents on board. But is it because oh I see,
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering why the president was something so big.
Speaker 1: Why they wouldn't make it more explicit, like as out
Speaker 1: of protection so they can't get in trouble on an
Speaker 1: international Yeah, you don't. You don't want the president to
Speaker 1: be able to or anyone to be able to say, yes,
Speaker 1: the president ordered for this person to be killed, right,
Speaker 1: so they can say, oh, he didn't say it, but
Speaker 1: he imployed it. Yeah. Yeah. The CIA sort of ran
Speaker 1: with it. So yeah. This all leads to the Church
Speaker 1: Committee in ninteen seventy five, which revealed to the nation
Speaker 1: a bunch of shady ship about the CIA, like that
Speaker 1: they had been assassinating people across four presidencies to Republican
Speaker 1: and too democratics. So it's by murdering people for the
Speaker 1: sake of American economics is bipartisan? I will say that,
Speaker 1: which is nice that we can all agree on something.
Speaker 1: Mass murder is very American. Yeah. Uh. This led to
Speaker 1: the Church Committee, led to the establishment of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Senates Select Committee on Intelligence, which is a congressional committee
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be some oversight for the CIA rather
Speaker 1: than just letting them do whatever they want. It also
Speaker 1: prompted the issue of an Exect of Order by President
Speaker 1: Gerald Ford. The EO basically restricted the CIA from gathering
Speaker 1: intel in a lot of different ways inside the US.
Speaker 1: So Ford's response to hearing about all this assassinations was
Speaker 1: to try to protect Americans rather than the stop the
Speaker 1: CIA from doing more foreign murders. But at least it
Speaker 1: was something, you know. Another result of the Church Committee
Speaker 1: was the Foreign Intelligent Surveillance Act or FISA in nineteen
Speaker 1: Most of the restrictions on the CIA placed after their
Speaker 1: wild years have of course been repealed, gutted, or otherwise
Speaker 1: removed post nine eleven. One of the sources I said
Speaker 1: it earlier that New York Times article The CIA and
Speaker 1: Lamombo was actually published in the mid nineteen eighties, during
Speaker 1: a time when the Reagan administration was starting to push
Speaker 1: back on the limitations placed on the CIA after the
Speaker 1: Church Committee. They basically said, the Soviet Union is funding
Speaker 1: terrorism all over the world, and the CIA doesn't have
Speaker 1: the freedom to track down these terrorists and murder them
Speaker 1: wherever they happen to be, even if they're Americans or whatever.
Speaker 1: We should loo the strings in the SIA so they
Speaker 1: can keep us safe. It's hard to have oversight over
Speaker 1: secret intelligence because it does rely on a certain amount
Speaker 1: of there it has to be a little trust if
Speaker 1: it's a secret intelligence committee. But then, of course people
Speaker 1: in power are never good. I don't know, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: just shouldn't it. It has never worked out. There's all
Speaker 1: these different cases you can look into where we backed
Speaker 1: the overthrow of a democratically elected leader through assassination or not.
Speaker 1: It never ends well. You never wind up with a
Speaker 1: good dude like Patrice Lamimba, who was at least seemed
Speaker 1: to be a reasonable guy who was very popular with
Speaker 1: the people, gets replaced by Mobotu se Seko, who knew
Speaker 1: how to play ball with the UN in the United
Speaker 1: States and then robbed the country blind. Like he wasn't
Speaker 1: even a killing guy. Like he killed plenty of people,
Speaker 1: but his whole thing was just stealing. He just wanted
Speaker 1: to be Well, well, I think that's what happens is
Speaker 1: like they know how to pick people who are we
Speaker 1: because they're hungry for power, and so most of the
Speaker 1: time it's just like a selfish need for private wealth
Speaker 1: and private power. I mean in a way that's kind
Speaker 1: of like what I mean, well, all Rushia stuff, but
Speaker 1: like Trump is very much the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: is selfish. It's not even that he wants anything specific
Speaker 1: for the country, it's that he wants personal gain. So
Speaker 1: those are the best types of figures for other countries
Speaker 1: to put in power because because they're easy to manipuy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, um. Well, the United States was the
Speaker 1: first nation to recognize Leopold's Congo Free State. To bring
Speaker 1: this back to the Congo. You know, back when Leopold
Speaker 1: was trying to make it a thing, he sent a
Speaker 1: rich guy out to Cohn, our president at the time,
Speaker 1: into recognizing the Congo, and we did. We were also
Speaker 1: one of the nations that pushed Leopold to give up
Speaker 1: his colony to Belgium, which is good, but then we
Speaker 1: kind of ignored everything that happened in the Congo for
Speaker 1: decades because we needed the uranium. Now Patrise. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: I said, Momombo was or Patrice Lamombo was seceeded by
Speaker 1: Mobotu SCO. And as soon as Moboto took power, the
Speaker 1: UN past Resolution one which authorized you enforce is to
Speaker 1: go on the offensive against the Catangan breakaway state, just
Speaker 1: like Lamomba had asked in the first place before he
Speaker 1: was murdered. UN and US forces ended the rebellions in
Speaker 1: the Congo by nineteen sixty three. Maboo two wound up
Speaker 1: his dictator and yeah, stole everything that wasn't nailed down
Speaker 1: in the Congo. We will talk about him later, but
Speaker 1: it's important to know that as a result of Maboto's reign,
Speaker 1: which was a result of the CIA's factory, living standards
Speaker 1: in the Congo actually fell over the course of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, so much so that by nineteen ninety the
Speaker 1: population had tripled, but their GDP remained unchanged since like
Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties. Um So it is worth noting
Speaker 1: that very recently the Belgian state at least has taken
Speaker 1: some responsibility for their share of the Congo's horror. Two
Speaker 1: thousand one, Belgium took quote moral responsibility for the assassination
Speaker 1: of Patrice Lamomba. This June two eighteen, they dedicated to
Speaker 1: Square in Brussels to Patrice Lamomba. So Belgium has apologized
Speaker 1: in a couple of tiny ways. The CIA still won't
Speaker 1: admit they really had all that much to do with
Speaker 1: the assassination of Almamba and still won't take any credit
Speaker 1: for the continuing in the current fucked up state of
Speaker 1: the Congo. Yeah, I mean, it's they're probably a cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 1: It's hard for them to face it. And like even
Speaker 1: the apologies are never really enough because it's like change
Speaker 1: the course of history, right, you can't go back and
Speaker 1: change it. I mean unless they're going to be like
Speaker 1: all right, let's trade, like you guys take Belgium, will
Speaker 1: take Congo. Like they're not gonna do that. So it's like, well, well,
Speaker 1: and the effects of this, like all, like the Congo
Speaker 1: is still really messed up today, and Belgium is more
Speaker 1: responsible for the Congo state in the United States, but
Speaker 1: we've got a hand in there. And if you look
Speaker 1: at like right now, where all of these the families
Speaker 1: of people who are fleeing for asylum in the United States,
Speaker 1: one of the countries that they come from the most
Speaker 1: is Guatemala, which in nineteen fifty four we backed and
Speaker 1: overthrow their democratically elected government, and then decades later we
Speaker 1: backed essentially another civil war that led to a genocide,
Speaker 1: which the violence of which is still continuing in the
Speaker 1: kind of like all of the CIA factory, um is
Speaker 1: still very much with us in the world. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of why I I initially planned to just do
Speaker 1: this episode about Mobutu, but the more I learned about
Speaker 1: Lamomba and what had been done to overthrew him, I
Speaker 1: felt like this is a necessary interstillal story. UM. It's
Speaker 1: like we looked in the mirror and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. Yeah, we we were the slasher the whole time.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a messy story because again, with the CIA,
Speaker 1: it's not as easy as like, oh, this battle was here,
Speaker 1: this guy was in charge then and he ordered this.
Speaker 1: Like it's like the forty different journalists have made these
Speaker 1: allegations based on all this stuff, but the CIA denies
Speaker 1: it and says they're all liars, and you know, how
Speaker 1: do you Yeah, well, I'm also sure what things like
Speaker 1: national security, there's all I mean, it doesn't justify anything,
Speaker 1: but there's probably also a lot of facts we don't
Speaker 1: know at the time, Like it's like a spider web, right,
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as like should we kill this
Speaker 1: guy is probably like, oh, there's also this person who
Speaker 1: might die if this happens, or if we don't kill him,
Speaker 1: then we're fucked here or whatever. I mean. That's a
Speaker 1: problem with these secret agencies too, is that like deals
Speaker 1: and things happening that we can't know about. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is like, I guess that's to some extent how it's
Speaker 1: going to be in geopolitics. But also it makes it
Speaker 1: really easy to just ignore people criticizing you for fucking
Speaker 1: up the world when you're like, oh, but it would
Speaker 1: have been so much more fucked up if well, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you just trust me, right and you're good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's hard to trust the government if they do
Speaker 1: and if they continue to show that they can't be trusted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they do stuff like that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess values are important because if you share the
Speaker 1: same values and you see that they're following that, then
Speaker 1: it's easier to trust that they'll do the right thing.
Speaker 1: But if you start to see there's like corrupt people,
Speaker 1: then they're going to be taking advantage and like manipulating you.
Speaker 1: And we pretty much just back the corrupt people because
Speaker 1: the people who aren't corrupt or like, why do American
Speaker 1: companies own all of my nation's mineral rights? I don't
Speaker 1: think this is okay. The corrupt people are able to
Speaker 1: they're like we always want to think of villains and
Speaker 1: manipulators and liars. We think they must be evil. But
Speaker 1: they got there because they're good at line. So when
Speaker 1: you meet them, they're probably Okay, this is boring to you,
Speaker 1: all right, because you're yawning. No our second podcast, It's okay,
Speaker 1: it's cool. I just went on a rant three Wow, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're right, like these people are good at and then
Speaker 1: so and it's it's possible maybe PATRICEA. Mumbo would have
Speaker 1: wound up being really really widely now the bastard today
Speaker 1: for yawning. No anyone, I'm taking a lot of flak
Speaker 1: in this room right now. Is that I'm just kidding. Well,
Speaker 1: so that's the Congo in between its first dictator and
Speaker 1: its second dictator. And also a little bit about the
Speaker 1: CIA murdering people all around the world. Yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: join the CIA now, Theresa, Well, I can't tell you that.
Speaker 1: Oh fair, that's fair, solid solid. Okay. Well I'm just
Speaker 1: going to hope you don't shake my hand with Okay,
Speaker 1: you've got a plug plug sure. Yeah, I have a podcast.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of related to line. It's called you
Speaker 1: Can Tell Me Anything. This feels like the weirdest transition,
Speaker 1: but people confess secrets to me. Come on, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got so many secrets. Well anyways, yeah, Well my name
Speaker 1: is Robert Evans. I am the host of this podcast.
Speaker 1: As always, I will be back next Tuesday with another
Speaker 1: tale of someone terrible. Until then, you can find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at I Write Okay to letters. You can
Speaker 1: find this podcast at Bastard's Pod on Twitter, and you
Speaker 1: can find us on the world wide Web at behind
Speaker 1: the Bastard It's dot com. So until next week, I
Speaker 1: have a great time and remember I love like you.
Speaker 1: M h m hm