Fatal Neutrality: Lumumba, the CIA, and the Cold War

Deconstructed

The Intercept

News

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1960, the Congo gained independence from Belgium. Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president. Within a year, Lumumba was deposed and assassinated. This week on Deconstructed, executive editor of Foreign Affairs and author Stuart Reid joins Ryan Grim to discuss U.S. Cold War paranoia and the plot to assassinate Lumumba. “The great tragedy of these events,” says Reid, who has read the American cables, “the Americans are seeing Soviet ghosts everywhere and every possible move Lumumba makes is interpreted as he's under Communist influence and from the flimsiest evidence.” Reid’s new book is titled, “The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Ryan Grimm, and I will be in San Francisco on Sunday, March 3rd at 2 p.m. for a conversation
0:08.1	on the Progressive Political Movement at Book Passage in the Ferry Building in San Francisco. I'll be talking about my new book. book Pitney. He's a co-founder and senior director of More Perfect Union, a nonprofit news organization.
0:25.2	He's also my former colleague at Huffpost. Attendance is free and seating his first come, first serve.
0:32.2	The book, The Squad, explores the history and future of the progressive movement
0:36.3	and takes a deep look at the role of A-Pack and the Super-Pack Democratic majority for Israel
0:40.8	and the way that they're shaping the contours of political debate on the question
0:44.8	of Israel, Palestine.
0:46.1	Should be a beautiful day at the Ferry Building Sunday.
0:49.0	We hope to see you there.
0:50.6	We'll link more details in the show notes.
0:55.0	I'm Ryan Grimm.
0:58.0	Welcome to Deconsstructed.
1:00.0	Today we're going to be talking with Stuart Reed,
1:02.0	who's an executive editor at Foreign Affairs,
1:04.7	but more importantly for the context of this conversation, the author of the new book you may have heard of,
1:10.9	the LAMumba plot, the secret history of the CIA and a Cold War
1:15.8	assassination and we're going to talk a lot about this new book but also you know fit
1:21.0	it into the context of what we've been talking about on this show
1:24.8	recently that's the US kind of relationship today with countries that either
1:30.2	attempt some form of neutrality like Pakistan or you know have
1:35.8	histories of that but are veering in other directions like we talked about
1:38.9	recently with Indonesia but I think our history of this really informs how we ought to understand what we're up to today.
	...

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