The Congo After Leopold

doing okay? Well, I like, I am really cold because I had to ask before what it was about, and then even that change, so I well, you listened to the two parter we did on Leopold I did, yeah, but I visualized it so it was like I was watching it fantast same time. Um, well, this is another episode set in the Congo and it's about what happened after leopold Um. And when I started working in this, I wanted to do an episode about the dictator who took over the Congo after the Belgian's left, a guy

named Bootoo siss Sickle. But as I started researching it, there was just way too much bullshit that Europeans in America got up to in the Congo between Leopold dying and Boobootoo taking over. And so that's what we're going to talk about today is all the how the West continued to fuck the Congo even after, like you think it had been fucked enough like that that you couldn't really screw over a group of people more than Leopold had,

But then everything I've written about happens. Yeah, you're yeah, it's like getting out of an abusive relationship. You're probably going to get into another one. The studies show, yeah, and it's it's actually, it's kind of like getting out of an abusive relationship and getting hit by a bus, and then the doctor who helps put you back together, you get into an abusive relationship. It's a that's a

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

you are a writer, comedian, actress. Yeah, we did. Uh well, we are most most most famously worked together on a video about ancient drugs based on or to promote the book you wrote. And recently it keeps resurfacing. And I know when a resurfaces because I'll get messages. Um and last week I got a few that were like, so, how was doing so much? And I was like, oh,

that video must have popped up again. We we took mushrooms, legal mushrooms, mascara and unexpectedly tripped very hard, to the point where like all of us who were together had to get a hotel room for the night. They just kind of sit it out and wait until we were not actively tripping to go back to our homes. Yeah, it was real crazy. And the craziest part is that video is just like the beginning of the trip, Like

it got so much more intense after we wrapped. Yeah, and yeah it was it was not intended to be that that intense. But yeah, if you want to, uh, well, we'll post a link in this episode, I guess to us doing tremendous amounts of mushrooms. Uh, it's it's great fun. Now let's get into an episode that I have tentatively titled The Congo after Leopold. So, UM, if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, you may want to go back and download the two episodes we did

on King Leopold of Belgium. But I'm gonna give a little sort of run through of of what happened with that guy here, just in case you're joining us for the first time, or maybe you forgot since then, because there's been a lot of bastards in between him and and now. So. King Leopold was a Belgian king, obviously

who had a chip on his shoulder. Because Belgian kings did not have much power in the late eighteen hundreds, UH, he concocted an incredibly complex scheme in order to take over a huge chunk of Central Africa up He named it the Congo Free State. On the surface of the free state had a philanthropic mission to civilize the tribes people and fight Arab slavers. In reality, it was all

one gigantic rubber mining operation. Leopold's men enslaved armies of child soldiers, three quarters of whom died without being trained UH, and he enforced order through brutal, sometimes fatal whippings and the severing of millions of hands. Between ten and fifteen million people died during Leopold's reign in the Congo. So that's the story. We've a good guy, Yeah, sweet dude,

sweet Beard. By the early nineteen hundreds, word had gotten out of what was happening in the Congo, and by nineteen o eight the international community forced Leopold to seed control of his Congo to the Belgian nation. And that's sort of where the last podcast ends, you know, Leopold dies, and I thought long after that, now today we're going to talk about what happened in the Congo in the

intermediate period. Like, so Belgium is in charge of the Congo, but uh yeah, so you would expect things to it a lot better now that this absolute monster is out of power. But it turned out that Belgium, the nation, was not much better than King Leopold had been for the Congolese people. The chacote, which is that brutal hippo hide whip that Leopold's men used to keep order, wasn't banned until it was hippo hip. How do you even get a hit? Like aren't they very dangerous? Super dangerous?

Kill the hell out of you. You got to shoot him with a real big gun. Wow. Yeah, I guess they head guns. Back then. They had tons of guns for shooting hippos, so they can make more whips. I was thinking, this is so long ago. I'm like they were using spears. No, I mean yeah, they did use spears to kill hippos, but not as efficiently. But there was a weird little side thing. Is Adolf Hitler carried a dog with his entire life. Um oh, I whipped to whip dogs made out of dogs. It was to

whipped dogs. It was called a dog whip because you were supposed to use it to whip dogs, and he would whip dogs with it when he wanted to impress girls, but he also mainly used it for fighting. This is confusing because the hippo hide whip is named hippo hyde whip because it's made of hippo hyde, and so if you like follow the logic of that, the dog whip should be made out of dogs. Like, there's no consistency in the naming of whips right now. But you wouldn't

want to hit would you? Would I do on'tly go a whip? Would doo? Much to a hippo. No, but I'm just saying these naming conventions, somebody needs to organize the naming here. What if they called it what if they called it a whippo? Whippo? We should go back in time. What's Indiana Jones whip out of? Probably leather? Like, that's probably true. So it's a cow whip, No, it's a whip. For it's a Nazi whip. Yeah, that's a

fucking Nazi whip right there. Yeah. So Belgium continued to use forced labor uh pretty much the entire time they were in charge of the Congo. They claimed it was a labor tax uh and they would so they would basically force people to work for like half the year or more to mine minerals and extract rubber from the Congo. All of the uranium used to make the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was mine in the Congo by people who are regularly whipped bloody to guarantee their compliance. So this

goes on the early nine hundreds through the forties. Right now, In a tiny bit of fairness to the Belgians, they didn't do nothing in the Congo. They built one of the biggest hospitals in Africa and established a really good infrastructure, so like good power system, good roads, um better than

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

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

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

place blame somewhere. Yeah, and once that guy gets out, the story is done and nobody pays any more attention. Yeah. Remarkable. Um So the capital of the Belgian Congo was Leopoldville, and it was divided into African and Western areas. Like Leopoldville. It's Conshosha today, but it was called Leopoldville. Classy right, not creative at all, name it after the guy who

did the worst things of anyone in the country. Black people were not allowed in the European parts of town after dark and would not be served in white's only hotels and restaurants. Belgians considered most Congolese people to be macOS, which literally means monkeys. The good ones were called evolu, which means basically the evolved. Yeah wow, you got that French real quick? Is it differently pronounced that? I out? Okay? Yeah?

So yeah, be evolved. So these people would be allowed to be evolved, to be allowed to say, buy wine if they little white inspector coming to their home first and make sure the toilet was clean, specifically their toilet. If you're evolved, you can pay me money. How awful, No wine unless you're toilets clean, which college would be different.

If that's how it worked, is all I'll say. Yeah, true, evolved children were allowed to attend school with white kids, but they had to agree to be regularly checked for fleas. Children are literally not done growing. That's the definition of children. Yeah, yeah, how can even white children are not evolved? It's not

internally consider the logic of racist colonialists. But no, it's a good Yeah, it's it's frustrating the language they use as always really frustrating because that's also so it's just the dick thing to call people. Sure, yeah, um ad dick thing to call yourself to which, yeah, it's more

like a Nazi into things. It's everybody like that's one of the big stories of the twentieth century is like the first half of the twentieth century is just everybody getting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution wrong and using it like, well, I hate people who aren't white, so that means like I'm just going to take this book that's popular right now and use it to like justify my hatred. Yeah,

they're like, I just trust that. I'm like, they assume that they're evolved or whatever, and then they're like, so, then I must be right all the time, because that's how I'm here. Yeah, scientist is like animals that are more fit survived better, and so guys like, oh, I've got a big house. That means I'm more evolved. I stole all my stuff from are people? Yeah people, the

deductions we come to, it's remarkable. So, yeah, the few African children who are allowed to attend schools in the Congo had to endure lessons on why King Leopold, the guy who had killed by some counts half the country, was a great hero. Jacques Delpecheen, a historian interviewed for the documentary version of King Leopold's Ghost, grew up in the Congo during this time. He's an African, and he

said this quote. What we learned in the textbooks was that Leopold was the greatest benefactor the Congo ever had because he sacrificed his fortune for the Congolese. Is he like a Thanos character? Because he killed half the country and then some people celebrate him, but he's actually evil. Yeah kind of, except for like, wasn't Thanos's goal to like, he wanted to eliminate half the population to create more resources. Yeah,

but he was killing people to do that. Leopold wanted to build sweet houses and was willing to kill half the population for that. Also, he wanted to tricycle. He bought a really cool tricycle. Um, so that's different than Thanos. But well, there's going to be more monrable movies that tricycle might show up. Tricycle might show up. He might write a tricycle to his teenage prostitute Bride's house. If that's Infinity War two, I will be in the front row.

This isn't testing super well for Disney. Are you do we need the teenage Prostitute Bride? Actually? I feel like the Teenage Prostitute Bride is very Disney because most of those princesses are like fourteen years old. Boy. Yep, there's always a king in those stories. Okay, anyways, so h most kids in the Congo were not even lucky enough

to benefit from a shitty education. Educating Black Africans was not considered a priority by the Belgians because Congolese independence was assumed to be decades away, so they were just going to be working in mines anyway, why teach them how to read? When the Belgians were said the forced to hand over control of the Congo to the Congolese in nineteen sixty, only seventeen Congolese people actually had university

degrees now. A major source for this episode was a book called In the Footsteps of Colonel Kurtz by Michelle O Wong, a journalist who lived and worked in the Congo in the early nineteen nineties. As part of her research for the book, she talks to a Belgian professor

named Stingers. Uh this she was asking this guy if she if he thought that Leopold's legacy of exploitation had had any impact on the continued disastrous mismanagement of the Congo's resources under African rule since in the decades since independence, and Professor Stinger claimed that since Congolese people don't have

any memories of that time. Because people don't there's not a lot of like passed down recollections of what happened during the Leopold years, Leopold couldn't be at fault for the modern state of the Congo because people didn't even remember him, which ignores the fact that carry much like a like just the frat boy who like he's like, oh, she didn't remember I roofied her, So I can't be at fault because she the memory. That is exactly what's going This is like the national version of that. They

don't remember what happened. It's fine, yeah, yeah, he's it's ignoring the fact that this guy killed between a third and more than half of all of the human beings in the congo um, which probably would not leave a lot of strong memories. Like it's like if if you've ever met a Jewish person whose whole family but one person died in the Holocaust, they don't have a lot of stories of that time, but it has an impact, Like surviving that sort of trauma does something to you.

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

spirit what's compreh sensibly crushed does not recover easily. For seventy five years, from eighteen eighty five to nineteen sixty, Congo's population had marinated in humiliation. No malevolent witch doctor could have devised a better preparation for the coming of

a second great dictator. So that second great dictator would be Mobot Ciccu, who we will talk about on a future episode about the Congo, but before we talk about that guy, and what this episode is about is about the first hopeful attempts at reform and happiness for the Congo and the bastards who ruined it all because there was a chance in nineteen sixty the things we're going to go okay for the Congo, that it was going to become a prosperous democratic nation. And yeah, this is

an episode about how that was all shattered. Yeah, you look super excited. Can't wait, just really can't wait for the good mood this is going to put me in. Yeah, Well, it all starts with a guy named Elias Elias Okita Sumbo who would grow into a man named Patrice Emery the Mumba. Wait, he changes his name when he becomes a man. Yeah, a cultural thing. I don't know if

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

large numbers of people, particularly in Africa. And we are going to go into some detail on him because he's an interesting dude, but not as much as we'd go into for someone like Saddam Hussein because alas this podcast is behind the bastards and not behind the chill dudes

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

someone who had killed huge numbers of Congolese people. Um. Pretty sweet. Also, what the Stanley cups named after? I hope not that would I'm not aware of him inventing hockey. That would be a very surprising turn for his I think he died poor and filled with syphilis. I hope so. Yeah. So Patrice grew up conscious of all of this, of the fact that he was living in a city named after a murderer, that his the Congo had been essentially

conquered by this terrible king. He was aware of all this, Like the propaganda did not take and he grew up resentful of the cruel and obvious plunder of his people. Uh. He eventually moved to the capital, Leopoldville, and worked as a postal clerk, press correspondent, and then brewery sales director. Uh so that's cool. Yeah, it sounds like very more turn Yeah, just you know, yeah, those were all just ways to pay the rent. Patrese's passion to day it would be a podcast, but back then it was anti

colonial activism. Um. He was charismatic and good at giving speeches, so he got pretty popular. And he looked like some guy you went to high school with. Oh is this him? Yeah? Ok, yeah, yeah, this picture will be up on our website. He's smirking like he's kind of like to take a picture. Yeah, he he does not want to take a picture, but he just looks like it just looks like some guy. Yeah, nice guy. Now. Patrese was the head of the Congolese

National Movement, the largest political party in the country. It was dedicated to achieving independence within a quote reasonable time frame. Their main foe was the center right Alliance of Bakongo, who demanded immediate independence. Both parties applied a lot of pressure to the Belgian administrators of the colony. Things reached a fever pitch in ninety nine with protests that descended into hiding so bloody and violent it convinced Belgium to

abandon the Congo asap. So before in like recently the late fifties, they had been sure that it was decades away. Probably the eighties or nineties is when they'd have to give up the Congo. But this unrest convinces them, we just gotta fucking leave now. Um really modern or really um yeah, very recently, like they were in in the nineteen forties, they were whipping people to death for not

mining uranium fast enough. And that uranium is what made all of the first nuclear weapons that the US used in the Cold War or had in the Cold War. It's also in Mission Impossible, the new one. Oh cool. Well, I'm sure that was a less exploitative use of the Congo. They probably filmed in Canada, right, probably, I don't know, on a green screen screen. Uh So, Independence Day was set for June nineteen sixty. Now, Belgium's King Bowdwin the first flew to the Central African nation to give the

colony away to itself. Boudwin was the great great grandson of Leopold. I'm pretty sure I did the math in my head. In pictures he looks no judgment here, but he looks like the biggest nerd ever. In fact, everyone in this story kind of looks like a guy you'd have played D and D with in junior high. Uh, if you were going to cast about to win the first in a movie, you would want to travel back in time to steal Crispin Glover off the set of Back to the Future and stick him in a uniform

like that. There's a picture of Leopold like it's a huge nerd, which you know, no judgment, but so you have an accurate but you kind of want. Yeah, like a contrast from like villainous, looks like a villain right to like kind of nerdy, Like I'm sorry, you're like, I don't really want to be in charge of the Congo. Yeah. So we're going to learn about what happened during that independent ceremony, which is a big story, and of course

the what happened afterwards next. But first, before we get into more of the Congo history, we're going to sell some products. Who loved drugs maybe, Now that's what when you say products, it's possible, it's possible that the ad that comes up will involve a drug. It is and actually that might be happening. But before we do that, do you like, do you like Dorritos. I love Derita. Is it let me ask you, is it the Is it the crisp crunch of biting into one for the

first time? Or is it Is it the way that that the coding of the dorritos, that the way the flavor builds upon itself as you eat more. It's like an orchestra just builds and then the beat drops and you're like, yeah, cheesy, cheezy, jeezy, yeah, And that's I love it when that cheesy beat drops. That's what really gets me going. And let it get you going to buy some derritos today. All right, here's the ads that

paid us, and we're back. We have just been talking about the Congo after Leopold of Belgium gave it up and then I and uh, yeah, we've been talking about a guy, Lene Patrice Lamba, who has become something of a rabble rouser and an advocate for independence and he's gotten his wish. Protesting and rioting got bad enough that the Belgians decided to abandon the colony. And yeah, they're new king. The great great grand descendant of Leopold, a guy named Badwin the First flew on down to give

the colony away to itself. Now, Badwin had visited the Congo once before, in nineteen fifty five, and at that point there had been a big parade for him. Everybody had cheered. They had all been super because Leopold never

even visited the Congo. So this guy does get some points in my book, for like, if you country winds up owning a chunk of land that it should never have been in for any reason, at least go go there, like, at least look at what it is to just sit and count their re seats, which is what Leopold did. So Badwin had gone and he had a good reaction.

People had liked him. But then he'd come back in nineteen fifty nine and he'd been pelted with bottles and feces, and like, the temperature had changed, and some of that, a lot of that was due to guys like Patrice Lama, who had sort of educated everyone on like how fucked they had been by Belgium, because a lot of people hadn't really known because the education wasn't there. Everyone who

had gotten the worst fucked over had died. There weren't a lot of oral traditions, and so the temperature was high at this point, and there was a lot of anti colonial scent within. They should have just been like, oh no, this is our tradition to welcome people. It's the poop. Yeah, you haven't been here. It's change. It's just our point tradition. We yell at you and you Yeah, I'm just gonna cut you with this razor blade and smears and poop in the wounds. That's now poop points

are a thing. Yeah, it's religious or whatever. We're just gonna use a hippohide whip on you. Yeah, everybody who comes here has to have that done to them by this whole line of people. Yeah. Battle when the first goes to the Congo to prepare to release it. You know, he clearly had a more positive view of his ancestor, Leopold's deeds in the Congo than the facts would support

uh during the speech that he gave. So, you know, they have the big Independent Day thing, and so there's all of these uh Congolese Africans that people who are going to be taking over the government once a lot of the Belgian's leave, and there's also all of the Belgians.

So it's like a bunch of white people and a bunch of black Africans altogether for this ceremony in a place where these two groups have been segregated, so like it's it's kind of a big deal that they're all in the like black people are allowed in the same room as the white people in the king because again

it's a super racist colony. So the King gets up in front of this mixed group and praises Leopold's civilizing mission in the Congo, calls him a genius for foreseeing the Congo uh and basically gives a speech that's one giant You're welcome to the whole country. Now. Patrice Lamumba

was again a big figure at this point. He was set to be the prime minister when the Congo got its freedom, so he had written up a speech that was already kind of peppery to because this was like his big chance to get up in front of the

nation and really tell the Belgians what he thought. And while the King is giving this speech about how cool Leopold was and how great the Congo colony worked out for everyone, Patrese is like writing furiously in the margins of his speech, just like red faced and just just adding to what he was going to say, so ships was already really hot, and the King's speech makes people angrier because it's being broadcast through like loudspeakers across the city.

So there's just crowds of Congolese people in the streets hearing this guy talk about how his psycho great great granddad had been so good at civilizing them. So they get really, really really pissed. And then Patrice Lamomba takes the stage and he proceeds to say this to King Shittass and every other European in the audience. And I'm going to read a decent chunk of this speech because

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

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

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

to the others. We've experienced atrocious sufferings, being persecuted for political convictions and religio beliefs, and exiled from our native land.

Our lot was worse than death itself. So this is very well well spoken too, and like uh because like when you were saying like he was jotting furiously as expecting to be really like vengeful and angry, but it's actually it's comes off like it's like almost too nice for what they did, but like in a very political way, like you get the underlying text, but also concee him

as a leader because he's like very composed. He's it's very composed and eloquent range and he's getting up there in front of the guys who had done this to them and telling them, y'all are fucking assholes, like and it's like more of a funk you that he can say it so calmly because it's like it's like you're like, oh ship, yeah, we're wrong. And the whole speech. I

recommend reading it. Um it's it's it's much longer, and it it continues to just throw shitloads of shade on the Belgians, and it's kind of intoxicating to read, especially if you've listened to the Leopold podcast and so you if you've been sort of inundating yourself with how shitty the Belgians were to the Congolese, just this guy getting up in front of them and really letting them have it is. You don't get a lot of moments like

this in history. It's yeah, it's like if a council of rabbis right before Hitler had died, had gotten to just roast him for an hour and a half, like like that sort of thing, like the kind of thing

that never happened. Put the face to a lot of the injustices they did, because I'm sure so much of colonialism is built on like the idea that the colonized are less than human, because then people can justify it by thinking like, oh, is this abstract idea like we're better people and that's why we can do this civilizing them, Right, But then you see a guy like that get up and speak eloquently and you're like, oh, yeah, they're just people that we've sucked over, really fucked over for like

a century. Yeah. So the image of Patrise, this kid from the Congo, standing up in front of his former masters and in the most eloquent terms telling them fuck you when the horse you rode in on it gets around owned this goes viral and it is a huge moment in like African liberation um, and it is to this day, a really significant moment in the continuing struggle to Yeah, unfuncked what the Europeans did in that continent.

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

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

read about. Um So It probably won't surprise you to hear that Lamomba's speech was Yeah, as I said so. Lamba speech became one of the most positive and iconic moments in the whole African struggle for independence. But he didn't just throw shade in the speech. He also outlined an optimistic and even utopian vision of what Congolese society

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

yeah sorright like well like like people getting along. I mean yes, it's the same spot, like the grape as opposed to being conquered. Yeah. Yeah, he built on grapes and good will. Yeah. English is that my first language? Okay, it's not mine either. Screaming is okay? Yeah? Um? So that is Patrice Lamamba in a nutshell. Seems like a pretty sweet dude, right yeah, nice guy, well spoken, says the right things and human dignity. Oh no, there's no butts he was. He was a good man by all accounts.

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

Lamombo was set to be the first prime minister. And it is possible that Lamamba's speech angreed up some folks because a bunch of Congolese soldiers mutinied and murdered their Belgian officers that night. The mutiny turned into a general assault on all white people in the area and like

a thousand people died. Uh. Now, at this point, the Belgians hadn't had time to hand everything over, so the Congolese army was commanded by a Belgian and the Congolese units were commanded by Belgian officers, and that seems to be what started the mutiny. Uh. These African soldiers were like, oh, we're independent now, and then their officers come by and say, but we're still in charge of the army, and they're like, the funk you are? I just heard we're independent. I'm

gonna shoot me an officer or too. So yeah, it gets bad, and uh yeah, there's always chaos and changing of well not always, I guess, but like an unstable governments, there is because it's like everything's up for grabs and and it it happened so suddenly, like there's there's less than a year where they've known they're going to be handing it over. So the Belgians are not doing what you would want to do for this to go well, because you do have cases like Taiwan was was handed

over from. I mean also they are now dealing with transitional justice and a lot of a lot of stuff that wasn't dealt with that I didn't even know growing up because my parents generation was fed so much propaganda that like about chung Kaishak and everything that now it's like, oh, there's a lot of people that were killed and yeah. Yeah, So it's this is never a smooth process, and it's especially not spruit smooth when the country in charge just

immediately cuts ties in the space of a few months. Yeah, like so yeah, something that is hard is made impossible

once the murder spree starts. The soldiers start killing people, all of the white people, huge at least a huge chunk of the white people in the country run the funk away and just start getting on boats and planes getting the hell out of there, which leaves the country with a distinct lack of people who have experienced actually running infrastructure because again the Belgian's number one, the Africans usually hadn't benefited for most of the infrastructure, the buildings

had built, and they certainly had been taught how to run. It's all white people. They weren't allowed in the same rooms. Yeah, and they they weren't let in the same rooms. There hadn't been time to train people because they just cut ties. So this causes additional instability in addition to the fact that handing over control of a huge reason of land. The Congo is twice the size of Texas, so it's

just a gigantic miss all the funk around. So Patrice Lamumba and the president like are working over time to try to calm things down to stabilize ship. Patrese tries to calm the mutineers by firing the Belgian guy in charge of the army. Um he replaces him with the soldier he trusted, a colonel named Mabotu, who again we will hear about in a subsequent episode. Mabooto managed to get the army back under control, but things continue to get messed up during this time, and basically things go

from f to fucked her um. So, the Congo is very very wealthy. If people were robots, right, and the sole determining factor of how wealthy your nation was was its natural resources, the Congo's probably in the top ten on the planet, maybe in the top five, because they have they have old they have copper, they have cobalt, they have uranium, and they have a bunch of stuff, and they don't just have these minerals. They're usually purer in the Congo than they are anywhere else on the planet.

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

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

suddenly lose control of the Congo take it back? Yeah? Yeah, So they send some mercenaries and some guns, and they go to different tribal groups and a couple of provinces in the Congo, and they're like, you know, you guys should really be your own country. You've got all these nice resources in this province. You've got all this gyms or whatever the hell you've got. What if we just give you some machine guns and helped you secede from the Congo and then you let us mind your minerals. Ah,

what if? What if that happens? So, yeah, two provinces secede from the Congo and a civil war begins. Both of the provinces are backed by Belgian guns in Belgian money, and in many cases the people running these rebel provinces are Belgians, like they're appointed leaders and big chunks there are also Belgian. So it's essentially Belgium gives the Congo away and then immediately foments the civil war within. It's just changing the name of it's it's all just ceremonious.

But it's like in the first episode that you're talking about, Leopold kept changing the name of his organization but wouldn't catch on. Yeah he would. He would start like, this is the Society of the African Society and the International African Society, and then it's the African Society or whatever. Like they came up with all these different names so that it seemed like a philanthropic gesture. Yeah, so they're doing that again, except that there now they're like, oh,

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

is normal in Europe, the shipload a civil wars. But uh yeah, so two of the Congo's most profitable and resource rich provinces, uh Katanga and East Kassai, rebel against the government. Um So, now it is important to note that, I think still to this day when people talk about, like, um, there's this big controversy over Syria with the White Helmet, it's because the White Helmets have received funding from the

United States and NATO forces. And so there's this like myth that like there essentially a US supported uh terrorist group faking chemical weapons attacks over and and they're definitely like the White Helmets have gotten support from Western powers. But it's like there's this tendency among a bunch of groups to assume that if the West gets involved in one of these countries and backing aside and a fight, then that's where all of the division started. And no,

there were pre existing divisions. So the Congo was never a nation before Leopold came there. It was different tribal groups. It's like those Real Housewives shows when the producers like or a bachelor or whatever they like, we'll get the people contestants of fight, but they don't come out of nowhere. They're like, yeah, we saw that you guys don't like each other, so I don't like she I heard she said this about you. But but they wouldn't just started

out of nowhere. Yeah, so there's something these already comproving exactly. These provinces were mainly consisting of people who were members of tribes who had issues with the dominant tribes in the Congo, and with the tribes because La Mumba was largely supported by members of a specific tribe. Like, that's the way politics worked at that point in the Congo.

And so the Belgians would go to these other tribes who controlled or who were dominant in areas they wanted and would be like, you guys deserve to be independent. And these guys already kind of wanted their independence, and now this Western power shows up offering them machine guns and military aid and stuff. Let's give it a shot. So yeah, that's the way that works. So they're offering it to all sides right, but then each side thinks like they're being favored. No, they're only offering it to

both sides. Are two sides, but two provinces that want independent. But the two sides are also fighting each other, or the two sides fighting against the one just fighting. They're not fighting together, but they're fighting against the government. They just both want to be independent, and the Belgians want those two breakaway provinces independence so that they can keep getting those sweet, sweet minerals. Yeah, so the rebellion breaks out.

Lamimba and Mobow two are overworked trying to deal with it. Uh. It becomes clear very quickly that they cannot beat the Belgian backed separatists, so they call in the UN. Uh. You know, they try to do it legally, you know, the UN basically the cops. You're somebody's fucking with your ship, you call the police. You try to get it done with a legal way. So the UN sins and troops.

But all they'll agree to do is basically help the Congolese government maintain control in the areas they already hold. They will not help the Congo beat the rebels. They won't do anything about the Belgians. So we're gonna find out what happens next. The was Belgium not part of the u N. Oh, it was, so they're okay. See, so everything's kind of sucked up. Everything is super fucked up. I guess the cops are a good example for this that they're great. When the cops are bullying you and

you're like, m they're gonna take the side of the cops. Yeah, Or if guys who are retired cops are bullying you and you call the cops, probably not gonna go well for you. Uh So, we will talk more about throw more shade on the UN and probably throw more shade on cops. But first let's do the opposite of throw shade, shine some sunlight on these products and or services, and

we're back. Uh So, when we last left this, the Belgians had sort of definitely kind of helped start a couple of civil wars within the CONGO so that they could get their hands on some more minerals. Uh and Patrice Lamumba had called in the u N for help dealing with these rebellions in the UN and basically been like, I can't really help you with the fact that the Belgians, who are also UN members are the ones responsible for

all this. So Lamimba is like, that's some bullshit, and he goes to the Soviet Union and he says, we need support and some vehicles and ship and the Soviet Unions like, well, totally give you guys whatever if you communist a little bit. And Lamamba was like our communist a little bit because he was a socialist, but he wasn't a communist really and he uh he didn't like actually do anything terrible or whatever. He wasn't stalinist purging people.

He was just taking the Soviet Union's offer of aid in a time when his country needed it because the UN had said no. Uh So, pretty soon Soviet technicians and military advisors are flooding into the country and unfortunately for Patrice Lamamba and everyone really, the CIA was also in the Congo and they start counting every Russian they see step out of an airplane. Uh Now, Larry Devlin was the big CIA guy in Leopoldville at the time, the station chief, and he's still alive and around today.

I think he's still alive. He was still alive pretty recently because you can watch interviews of him talking about everything that happens here and giving his opinions on it. So if you want to see Larry Devlin, the CIA guys opinion of all this, you can find it. So Devlin counts like a thousand some odds Soviets who are in the country, and he starts sending this information back to Washington, and this stuff goes up the food chain

and it gets to Dwight the ice Shower's ear. Now, this is right when the Cold War is ratcheting up, and the way it's presented to the president is the Communists are gaining influence in the Congo, and thanks to this Lamumba guy, the Congo might go red. And the Congo it's full of uranium, which you need to make nukes. So, like fuck, Eisenhower is going to let that happen. Now, for a long time, the exact chain of command for

everything was in doubt. But in two thousand The Guardian dug up some information from the National Archives interview with a guy named Robert Johnson, who had been the minute taker in the White House on the Fateful Day when they discussed all this quote. Robert Johnson said in the interview that he vividly recalled the President turning to Alan Dullis, director of the CIA, and the full hearing of all those in attendance and saying something to the effect that

Lamumbo should be eliminated. So Dwight Eisenhower says, killed this fucking guy. Essentially, he says he should be eliminated, and the CIA reads it as killed this fucking guy. Yeah, I see, but he's because it's like the US, they don't want to help, but so they just want to like kind of like put a little pause on the situation because they don't want this civil war. They just don't want to be involved in civore right, They're not going to try to get involved in help that way.

But they also don't want to help this guy. So even though this guy went to the Soviets for help, they're just like, oh, we can't have that, so we're just going to kill the guy. But then someone else will just come in. Well, but they can make sure it's someone else who wants to do who they're in

charge of. Yeah, they don't like this guy. I think it a lot of it comes down to the fact that Patrice Lammbo was not somebody they owned or could and he had and he and the people who supported him, had their own view of what the Congo should be, and they didn't really give a shit about being part

of the US's sphere of influence. And the US was definitely most worried about because the Domino theory was big at this time, which is the idea that like, if one nation falls to communism, it will lead other nations around it to fall, and soon all of Africa will be read. But there's also this very real concern that they have that like, well, this is full of uranium and if the Soviets gained influence here, that's going to

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

an expose the CIA and Lamomba. It revealed that on September nineteenth, nineteen sixty, the CIA's Leopoldville station chief received a top secret message telling him to prepare for the arrival of quote Joe from Paris now Devlin. The CIA chief guy was warned to keep all this information to himself. Joe wound up being a guy named Sidney Gottlieb. He was the CIA Special Assistant for scientific matters. That's a fancy way of saying he was the agency's top scientist

and in this case, top poisoner. Yeah. So, Sydney brought with him a bizarre bespoke virus that had been engineered by the CIA to mimic the deadly effects of a local Congolese disease. The scientist told the station chief. The chief that this poison was meant for Patrice Lamomba, something he put in his beverage or whatever to assassinate and be undetected. Yeah, exactly. He just got some terrible Congolese disease and died. Um. I'm gonna quote the New York

Times here. The poison, the scientist said, was somehow to be slipped into Lamomba's food or perhaps into his toothpaste. Poison was not the only acceptable method any form of assassination would do so long as it could not be traced back to the United States government. Now, at this point in history, the CIA is very new and they don't have a lot of experience murdering foreign leaders. In fact, I think they've only done it one time before this

that we have any kind of evidence about. Now, considering Castro's history, you might argue that they never did good good at killing world leaders, but this is sort of their the proving ground for that, that tactic, you know, just murdering people who disagree with America. Um, and they're not great at yet. The poison winds up expiring before they can give it to Lamamba in a few different expires. Yeah, this one did. Wow. Yeah, there's they They suck at

this so far. They're going to get better. And the whole isn't poison, Okay, I think it's like a virus. So that's like, that's not potent anymore. Yeah. No, like the CIA sent a chemical weapon over to assassinate a world leader, like poppers, Like if you're once it's out too long, but the effects are gone, just like poppers. We should have an episode of this podcast we do will take poppers. So if he can we do a line of poppers or will be a very short episode?

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

Because Lamamba had visited the New York Times to talk to or to had visited New York City to talk to the UN Secretary General when he was still asking for help with the civil war thing. He'd been invited down to Washington during that same trip. Um Here's how the New York Times described it. For both Lamamba and

the United States. It was a decisive encounter. The new Secretary of State, Christian Herder, received him and spent a frustrating half hour trying to persuade him to rely exclusively on the United Nations and refrain from calling to outside powers for assistance. But obviously the UN wasn't willing to help him do what needed to be done, and Lama didn't take well to this, considering the rebels were being funded, armed, in many cases led by Belgian military officers. Quote. His

arguments fell on deaf ears. Dylan, under Secretary of State, who was present at the meeting, testified that Lamamba had struck him as quote, an irrational, almost psychotic personality. The impression that was left, Dylan said, was very bad, that this was an individual whom it was impossible to deal with, and the feelings of the government as a result sharpened considerably during this time. Now, well they say impossible to deal,

what they just mean impossible to control. Yeah, and I think they also mean black and talking like he's equal to a white guy. I really do think that's most of why they consider him crazy. Because Devlin, the CIA chief, who actually knew Lamambo, I don't think was a racist and did not describe him as a crazy person. He said, quote, I didn't regard Lamamba as the kind of person who

is going to bring on World War three. I saw him as a danger to the political position of the United States in Africa, but nothing more than that, which is reasonable. Um, and he did not stay out. Yeah, Yeah, and devil in the CIA guy tried to help kill him but didn't want to, Like it was one of those like, well that's the orders. I'm a CIA guy. I kill people if I got to kill people. But that's part of why I think Dylan, the under Secretary of State, is just a racist. Like he sees a

black man with an opinion and he's he's crazy. We got a poison this guy. Yeah, and I'm guessing Eisenhower had some racism in them too. Um. Yeah, probably Ike doesn't come off well in this story. Um. One thing I do think is important to note is kind of how the artificial nature of the Congo exacerbated the civil war that had just started off, made it easier for the Belgians to foment, which we already talked about a little bit, and also was responsible for a lot of

the continuing violence that's there today. Um. There's a U. S. Diplomat named Robert McNamara who worked in the Congo for a while, and he traced a lot of the political problems they had directly to King Leopold. He said that the Congo as it was put put together by King Leopold was an artificial entity. It had no relationship to anything African. It cut across tribal, ethnic and national geographic lines. A few of the people in Africa had any real

identity with the Congo as a nation. So it's it's it's a big mess that we're we've got into right now, right this is like a fake thing that's been cobbled together. Lament was trying to make it into a real country because you can force that sort of thing. But it's

also very easy for the Belgians too, it's unstable. Then he come in and exactly so local politics and the Congo moved faster than c i A. Lamumbo's initial military campaign to suppress the rebels did not go well, and his decision to seek Soviet aid was controversial within his

own nation. In September of nineteen sixty, President Cosa Vubu dismissed Prime Minister Lamomba, so Lammbo went before Parliament directly and gave a big speech and convinced them to reinstate him, which seemed to prove to the Americans that this young socialist was just so charismatic he could only be stopped

by death. So the CIA went to a guy who happened to be the second in command of the army at the time, Colonel Joseph Mobutu uh and they were like, it would be great if someone could coupe this current government out of power, and Someboto did exactly that. He kicked the Soviet advisors out of the Congo and deposed

Lamomba and his supporters. At this point, the Congo had effectively two different governments, Patrice Lamamba's which was like half legitimate, and President Cassa Bubus which was backed by Mobutu and was also like half legitimate. And then of course there are the two different breakos, so there's four governments. Yeah, so now we've gone from three to four governments in

the Congo at this point in time. So the UN chose to recognize Cassavubu's government because they didn't like Lamomba and Patrice Lamombo fled the capital for the town of Stanleyville, where he had all of his supporters because again it's the tribal sort of thing, so like the tribes who supported him are mainly there. He has his people there, but he gets caught along the way by Colonel Mbutu's men and they imprison him in a place called Ticeville,

near the capital. But after a couple of weeks, like Lamumba is in this prison guarded by soldier and he starts talking to the soldiers and again he can talk anybody in any He's He's a charismatic dude. He's charming, and so within a couple of weeks they're mutinying for higher pay because he's essentially convinced them that they deserve more uh and they threatened to put him back in

charge of the country. Mbootoo sends in some soldiers and very quickly pulls Lamumba out of there before things can get worse, and puts him on a plane to Tanga, the rebel province where he had been prosecuting a war against uh So. The plane that flies him there is piloted by Belgians. The mercenaries who are guarding him on his flight to the rebel thing are Belgian soldiers, and they drop him off in the heart of rebel territory,

blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his backs. Back um he was beaten badly by Catangan soldiers and then executed in front of several of their officials, including some Belgians who were officials in the Contagian government. So Lamamba has just been horribly murdered with heavy help from the Belgians, right, But technically the US did it, but they did it through the Belgians, so that in the Congolese and like, it's hard to say how much of this was the

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

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

Assassination of Lamumba by Ludo do Witt. At one point he reviews Belgian newspaper coverage of the murder, which is mostly focused on shifting the blame from Belgium to the Congolese. What has occurred demonstrates alas that in Africa and certain other countries at the same stage of evolution, access to the democratic process remains a murderous affair and was from like yeah, a Belgian colonial newspaper. Another newspaper noted, Patrice

Lamamba has died the way he always wanted violently. What yeah, gas lighting? Yeah, it's super He was asking for it, he wanted it. Belgium's leading financial paper there, equivalent to The Wall Street Journal, considered the assassination to be a dangerous but crucial sort of surgery. Quote. The very existence of Lamombo was an abscess which had already infected the Congo and was threatening to infect it further. What yeah, So the West breathed socieh of release as soon as

this guy is horribly murdered. But people across Africa were very much piste off by the murder of a liberationist icon. Uh Kwamain Akruma, then the President of Ghana, gave a fiery speech that was heard across the continent once the news of this broke. About their end, many things are uncertain,

but one fact is crystal clear. They have been killed because the United Nations, who Patrice Lamombo himself as Prime Minister, had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order, not only failed to maintain that law and order, but also denied to the lawful government of the Congo all other means of self protect action. History records many occasions

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

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

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

get Lamomba had a taste for control on there. Yeah. Oh, we could do this more if we just do this everywhere. Is how America works now. Yeah. So the CIA targets Raphael Trujillo of the Dominican Republican nineteen sixty one. They support the Bothists and our old pal Saddam Hussein and overthrowing a Rax President Kossum in nineteen sixty three. Uh. There are dozens of confirmed and suspected regime changes all over the world carried out by the CIA and the

nineteen sixties and early seventies. One of the most striking cases was the killing of Salvador Allende. He was the democratically elected socialist leader of Chile. Here's how the Washington Post described as politics quote. He had rejected the Cuban model as too extreme. SHA's revolution is too violent. He was adamantly against armed struggle. Winning the presidency on September four, nineteen seventy, he vowed to overturn Chile's harsh economic injustices.

He put forward a doctrine of geoeconomic sovereignty and self determination, a U S free future in which Chile would make its own way alone. The United States must realize that Latin America has now been changed, he said during one of his campaigns. Once in office, he would try to prove it. So so probably not going to end well for him, just based on that speech. Yeah, they probably

don't like that he wants independence. But yeah, that's it's like weird because hearing all this, I know, we're supposed to talk about villains and other countries, but the US is coming off We're the bastard of this. Yeah, so one of ends first orders of business once he was elected legally to be in charge of Chile was to nationalize the copper and nitrate industries, making them property of

all Chileans. The US did not appreciate this since these industries at the time were run by amy Kins and Brits. So he nationalizes copper and nitrates because he wants a Latin America free of what he called multinational vampires. He thought it was unfair that U S corporations made enormous profits off Chilean resources while playing paying Chilean workers a pittance. Here's the Washington Post again. As Allende's presidential campaign gain traction.

In nineteen seventy, corporations with interest in Chile, PepsiCo, Chase, Manhattan, I t T, Anaconda, kennicott Ford made their panic known to the US government. Once Allende was elected, Kissinger advised Nixon to mobilize quote quietly and covertly, to oppose Allende as strongly as we can and do all we can to keep him from consolidating power. Kissinger activated the CIA's Food Belt Plan, which involved encouraging a variety of subversive

elements in Chilean society. Nixon ordered US Intel agencies to quote make the Chilean economy scream. He said to Kissinger, all's fair on Chile. Kick him in the ass. Okay, Oh, no, Nixon is a great guy. I don't know if I like us in this story. Well, you can blame it on Nixon if it makes you feel better, and pretend it wasn't PepsiCo, as I said, a delicious PepsiCo beverage. What was the There was a similar situation with Dole,

I think, or Chiquita Bana. Yeah, that's what was happening in guadal Because I'm learning about that long time ago. We will go into more information on several of these clups in the future. Um, but it's I'm going over this all now because this is all sort of Lamumbo's assassination is again like that's the door is over right, because they've done it successfully, and they're like, yeah, well,

one lie leads to another, one coup leads to another. Yeah, and in this case, one coup leads to fucking shipload of coups all over the world. So yeah, the CIA tried to stop and from being sworn in at all. After his election. This kind of found out was found out in two thousand that the CIA had supported kidnapping Chile's top general when he refused to use the army to stop and from being sworn in as president. It Um. The kidnapping failed, but he this general was shot and

killed two days later, probably by the CIA. But I end a wound up in power, so like they had tried to stop him from even taking office, and then once he took office, they escalated their plans. So on September eleven, nineteen seventy three, a military coup seized power in Chile. End was surrounded in his home and wound up either killing himself or being shot to death through other means. The CIA has been very heavily rumored to

have been involved, and they've always denied it. In the modern interviews you'll find with these guys like because the CIA agents again, like with Devlin, these guys are all giving interviews now for documentaries because some of has been declassified UM, and they will admit the CIA knew a coup was brewing within the military and claimed they just kind of decided not to stop it and maybe helped it along once they knew it was happening. But they

didn't spark anything. They didn't start. It didn't happen because then we only found out about it two days beforehand. That's the CIA's line about this guy who we know they tried. They killed the guy because he wouldn't stop this dude from taking office. Yeah, they're like someone was not somebody getting robbed and they screamed for help. We weren't the one robbing. Then. Also we to guy we'd give him crack if he robbed. Also blocked the police. We told the police it was a different alley just

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

playing one of the good guys. Yeah. Yeah, our propaganda because other country is a propaganda so blatant, but it's like Hollywood is our propaganda yea, and that is whoa My mind is blood there, I don't know. So, Yeah, the guy who took power from my end and Chile was a general named Augusto Pinochet. He was the dictator of the of Chile from nineteen seventy three to nineteen ninety and remained in charge of the army until nine. During that time, he killed at least three thousand people

and tortured thousands more. But at least at least Teresa Chile remains safe for PepsiCo. Yeah. That should They should put that on the cans of coke, like instead of the names like share coke with Diane, it should be like like steal a government from Chile. That no, that that I think you've nailed. That's a great marketing campaign. Open a can of coup. That's the CIA's internal soda. It just tastes like the tears of colonized peoples. Yeah, so fun. Fact, there are also allegations that the CIA

tried to overthrow or kill Charles de Gaul several times. Yeah, you wouldn't have called France so not even a colonial nation like like one of our staunchest allies. Now with Lamombo, we do know for sure that the CIA wanted him gone and that Eisenhower asked for him to be eliminated. That ship is documented. The Degala sassination is murkier. The CIA has not admitted ship, and in fact, this is officially a conspire your c theory, right, because that'd be

crazy if they admitted that. But then I feel like, also the US and France have always been kind of weird and friend the front of me because whenever ship hits the fan, like like technically because the two big world powers are always like, okay, yeah, we sport each other, but then when something happens, like people are like, I don't know, We're gonna wait this one out and see how everyone else feels, like after September eleven, like of course, right,

but it's like that's but they liked it when they were right. But also the US has done ship like that too, and every time it's always like I want to jump in right away. I mean, yeah, we're friends, but like she also owes me like twenty dollars and it's like, I don't know I really are her. I

don't really like talking to him. I mean, he's he's I guess we're friends, but like it's fine if you know, we're all hanging out in a group, but if it's just like a pregame with her, but I don't want to hang out with the one on one it's going to be awkward. That's France in America. Yeah. So yeah, here's how we tried to have Charles de Gaull killed um So Basically, in nineteen sixty two, four retired French

generals attempted to overthrew throw the government to France. They captured Algiers in the French colony of Algeria, but they failed to capture Paris. Their coup was put down four days later. Now, the goal of this coup was to stop Charles de gaul from freeing Algeria. He wanted to colonize at least that French colony. This angered the French

far right and it also freaked out the CIA. According to this theory, Alan Dulis, the same CIA director who backed the coups of Lamomba and Allende, was scared Algeria would go communist if it was let go, which was exactly the reasoning we had for killing Lamamba. So, according to this theory, we backed the coup and probably had a hand and several of the thirty attempts on Degall's life between nineteen fifty eight and nineteen sixty six because

people kept trying to kill him. Well, the other thing that everyone being afraid of communism. It's like they're showing them. You're like, we're capitalism, here's a free democracy. And then you're all the side they see as like colonialism and dying and not having resources. So when you leave them, of course they're like, Okay, let's try something else. Yeah, something how about doing good version of the democracy. Let them see how good Like I don't know anyways, just

don't just walk with them. You don't walk with them. But also if you're going to show them a terrible time, like, they're probably gonna try something different. Now. The CIA denies all this. Alan Dullas, while he was alive, denied all this. The French generals in charge of the coup denied this. Much of the evidence you'll find for this comes from a book called The Devil's Chessboard by Salon dot com co founder David Talbot. The CIA says he's full of ship.

I'm gonna read one quote from the book. Um Degall was convinced that the coup was supported by the Alan Dullas led CIA and the French press. Was filled with leaks alleging this secret involvement, but Kennedy took pains to assure De gall that he did not back the coup, and in fact, he offered to defend the embattled French

government with US military firepower. De Gall acknowledge that JFK himself was not behind the French officers rebellion, but the incident made it clear to both leaders something equally ominous. Kennedy was not in control of his own government. So this is a book by the guy who found at Salon dot com, which is not the most credible journalistic institution dot com. I'm not It's hard to tell what

happened here. Um. We do know for a fact that in two thousand fifteen, the CIA admitted that back in sixty five, several French dissidents had asked the CIA for help killing degall Um. They claimed they did not do anything. I'm gonna read a quote from the Guardian here about this plan that the CIA was supposed to be warned of, not warned of. These guys came to the CIA and told them basically they wanted to kill the gall and they said quote the killer was to be an old soldier.

He was to wear a poisoned ring on one of his fingers, and he was to shake the general's hand. Yeah, what would have been ship my ring? This poison They just made a virus to kill a guy a ring and gill a poison ring and poison. Anybody with a ring can just really die from a if the poison is deadly enough. The Soviet Union killed a guy once with a might have been Putin's I forget which, but they had like a rice and tipped dart inside an umbrella. They shot into a dissident's leg when he was in

a dart. Makes sense. The ring is like, that would be the ultimate revenge, as if you like, you know, get someone to propose to you that you hate and then like when they put the ring on the Yeah, that's a long, long com Well, it's hard to say what happened. The CIA has been willing to admit they knew about attempts on Degaul's life, but has denied having

any part in it. It's hard to think that the CIA wouldn't have tried to kill someone for this back then, because they were trying to kill a shipload of people for out of worry that their colonies would go communists. So I don't know. Um, it's worth noting that like this usually gets wrapped into the JFK killing conspiracy theory and stuff, So there's there's a lot of messy conspiracy theories in here. We can't get too much more into it.

I will say that all of the CIA facori we've talked about today, which descended from the assassination of Lamumba, led eventually to the Church Committee in nineteen seventy five, which was a congressional committee that revealed that basically looked over what the funk the CIA had been doing because you keep cooing governments without because a lot of time

the president wouldn't even say I want this done. The CIA was moving on its own for a significant amount of it, or would be something like the president would be like, boy, I don't like these guys, and Alan Dulas would be like, I think that means the president once these people killed, let's go get our murdering on. So in seventy five, Congress is like, we should we should do something about all the murders because they don't want the president to be implicated. Is that so he

has to speaking code or did did. They literally just were like, do you want to ask him? What do you meant by that? Now, let's just do it. I think it was sort of understood, like because Eisenhower didn't say kill amm, but he said he should be eliminated. Alan Dulas went back to the CIA and said, all right, presidents on board. But is it because oh I see, but I'm wondering why the president was something so big.

Why they wouldn't make it more explicit, like as out of protection so they can't get in trouble on an international Yeah, you don't. You don't want the president to be able to or anyone to be able to say, yes, the president ordered for this person to be killed, right, so they can say, oh, he didn't say it, but he imployed it. Yeah. Yeah. The CIA sort of ran

with it. So yeah. This all leads to the Church Committee in ninteen seventy five, which revealed to the nation a bunch of shady ship about the CIA, like that they had been assassinating people across four presidencies to Republican and too democratics. So it's by murdering people for the sake of American economics is bipartisan? I will say that, which is nice that we can all agree on something.

Mass murder is very American. Yeah. Uh. This led to the Church Committee, led to the establishment of the U. S. Senates Select Committee on Intelligence, which is a congressional committee that's supposed to be some oversight for the CIA rather than just letting them do whatever they want. It also prompted the issue of an Exect of Order by President Gerald Ford. The EO basically restricted the CIA from gathering intel in a lot of different ways inside the US.

So Ford's response to hearing about all this assassinations was to try to protect Americans rather than the stop the CIA from doing more foreign murders. But at least it was something, you know. Another result of the Church Committee was the Foreign Intelligent Surveillance Act or FISA in nineteen Most of the restrictions on the CIA placed after their wild years have of course been repealed, gutted, or otherwise

removed post nine eleven. One of the sources I said it earlier that New York Times article The CIA and Lamombo was actually published in the mid nineteen eighties, during a time when the Reagan administration was starting to push back on the limitations placed on the CIA after the

Church Committee. They basically said, the Soviet Union is funding terrorism all over the world, and the CIA doesn't have the freedom to track down these terrorists and murder them wherever they happen to be, even if they're Americans or whatever. We should loo the strings in the SIA so they can keep us safe. It's hard to have oversight over secret intelligence because it does rely on a certain amount of there it has to be a little trust if

it's a secret intelligence committee. But then, of course people in power are never good. I don't know, Yeah, you just shouldn't it. It has never worked out. There's all these different cases you can look into where we backed the overthrow of a democratically elected leader through assassination or not.

It never ends well. You never wind up with a good dude like Patrice Lamimba, who was at least seemed to be a reasonable guy who was very popular with the people, gets replaced by Mobotu se Seko, who knew how to play ball with the UN in the United States and then robbed the country blind. Like he wasn't even a killing guy. Like he killed plenty of people,

but his whole thing was just stealing. He just wanted to be Well, well, I think that's what happens is like they know how to pick people who are we because they're hungry for power, and so most of the time it's just like a selfish need for private wealth and private power. I mean in a way that's kind of like what I mean, well, all Rushia stuff, but like Trump is very much the kind of guy who is selfish. It's not even that he wants anything specific

for the country, it's that he wants personal gain. So those are the best types of figures for other countries to put in power because because they're easy to manipuy. Yeah yeah, yeah, um. Well, the United States was the first nation to recognize Leopold's Congo Free State. To bring this back to the Congo. You know, back when Leopold was trying to make it a thing, he sent a rich guy out to Cohn, our president at the time,

into recognizing the Congo, and we did. We were also one of the nations that pushed Leopold to give up his colony to Belgium, which is good, but then we kind of ignored everything that happened in the Congo for decades because we needed the uranium. Now Patrise. Yeah, as I said, Momombo was or Patrice Lamombo was seceeded by

Mobotu SCO. And as soon as Moboto took power, the UN past Resolution one which authorized you enforce is to go on the offensive against the Catangan breakaway state, just like Lamomba had asked in the first place before he was murdered. UN and US forces ended the rebellions in the Congo by nineteen sixty three. Maboo two wound up his dictator and yeah, stole everything that wasn't nailed down

in the Congo. We will talk about him later, but it's important to know that as a result of Maboto's reign, which was a result of the CIA's factory, living standards in the Congo actually fell over the course of the twentieth century, so much so that by nineteen ninety the population had tripled, but their GDP remained unchanged since like the late nineteen fifties. Um So it is worth noting that very recently the Belgian state at least has taken

some responsibility for their share of the Congo's horror. Two thousand one, Belgium took quote moral responsibility for the assassination of Patrice Lamomba. This June two eighteen, they dedicated to Square in Brussels to Patrice Lamomba. So Belgium has apologized in a couple of tiny ways. The CIA still won't admit they really had all that much to do with the assassination of Almamba and still won't take any credit for the continuing in the current fucked up state of

the Congo. Yeah, I mean, it's they're probably a cognitive dissonance. It's hard for them to face it. And like even the apologies are never really enough because it's like change the course of history, right, you can't go back and change it. I mean unless they're going to be like all right, let's trade, like you guys take Belgium, will

take Congo. Like they're not gonna do that. So it's like, well, well, and the effects of this, like all, like the Congo is still really messed up today, and Belgium is more responsible for the Congo state in the United States, but

we've got a hand in there. And if you look at like right now, where all of these the families of people who are fleeing for asylum in the United States, one of the countries that they come from the most is Guatemala, which in nineteen fifty four we backed and overthrow their democratically elected government, and then decades later we backed essentially another civil war that led to a genocide, which the violence of which is still continuing in the kind of like all of the CIA factory, um is

still very much with us in the world. And that's kind of why I I initially planned to just do this episode about Mobutu, but the more I learned about Lamomba and what had been done to overthrew him, I felt like this is a necessary interstillal story. UM. It's like we looked in the mirror and we're like, oh, it's awesome. Yeah, we we were the slasher the whole time.

It's kind of a messy story because again, with the CIA, it's not as easy as like, oh, this battle was here, this guy was in charge then and he ordered this.

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

might die if this happens, or if we don't kill him, then we're fucked here or whatever. I mean. That's a problem with these secret agencies too, is that like deals and things happening that we can't know about. Yeah, which is like, I guess that's to some extent how it's going to be in geopolitics. But also it makes it really easy to just ignore people criticizing you for fucking up the world when you're like, oh, but it would have been so much more fucked up if well, I

can't tell you just trust me, right and you're good. Yeah, And it's hard to trust the government if they do and if they continue to show that they can't be trusted. Yeah, I don't know if they do stuff like that. Well, yeah, I guess values are important because if you share the same values and you see that they're following that, then it's easier to trust that they'll do the right thing.

But if you start to see there's like corrupt people, then they're going to be taking advantage and like manipulating you. And we pretty much just back the corrupt people because the people who aren't corrupt or like, why do American companies own all of my nation's mineral rights? I don't think this is okay. The corrupt people are able to they're like we always want to think of villains and manipulators and liars. We think they must be evil. But

they got there because they're good at line. So when you meet them, they're probably Okay, this is boring to you, all right, because you're yawning. No our second podcast, It's okay, it's cool. I just went on a rant three Wow, no, no, you're right, like these people are good at and then so and it's it's possible maybe PATRICEA. Mumbo would have wound up being really really widely now the bastard today for yawning. No anyone, I'm taking a lot of flak

in this room right now. Is that I'm just kidding. Well, so that's the Congo in between its first dictator and its second dictator. And also a little bit about the CIA murdering people all around the world. Yeah, you're gonna join the CIA now, Theresa, Well, I can't tell you that. Oh fair, that's fair, solid solid. Okay. Well I'm just going to hope you don't shake my hand with Okay, you've got a plug plug sure. Yeah, I have a podcast. It's it's kind of related to line. It's called you

Can Tell Me Anything. This feels like the weirdest transition, but people confess secrets to me. Come on, yeah, I've got so many secrets. Well anyways, yeah, Well my name is Robert Evans. I am the host of this podcast. As always, I will be back next Tuesday with another tale of someone terrible. Until then, you can find me on Twitter at I Write Okay to letters. You can find this podcast at Bastard's Pod on Twitter, and you can find us on the world wide Web at behind

the Bastard It's dot com. So until next week, I have a great time and remember I love like you. M h m hm