The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
Stuart A. Reid (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023), 618 pages, index.
It is one of the iconic images of the Cold War. Arms bound, stripped of his signature eyeglasses and bowtie, surrounded by a jeering, abusive crowd, Patrice Lumumba, onetime leader of Africa’s largest country, confronts what he must have known would be his death. It is an arresting and troubling picture. The photographs (actually taken from film footage shot in December 1960 by a journalist on the scene) contribute to the enduring hold Lumumba has on the imagination.
Stuart A. Reid’s The Lumumba Plot tells the story behind the photos. Reid, a senior editor at Foreign Affairs magazine, has done a superb job documenting the Congo’s independence, which took place amidst a wave of decolonization surging across Africa, at the height of the Cold War in 1960. The title, however, is incomplete. The CIA was indeed involved, and there was a plot (many of them in fact) but there is more to the story: The United Nations and the Congo’s former colonial power, Belgium, played equally important roles in the drama. If the subtitle does not capture everything, fortunately Reid’s book does. Thoroughly researched, well organized, and engagingly written, The Lumumba Plot is the best account available in English on Patrice Lumumba and the events surrounding the Congo’s independence.