Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Linn Washington, Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
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J.B.
Prison Bitch
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Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
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Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
January 29 / 30, 2005
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa"
Tempelsman's
Man Weighs In on the Murder of Patrice Lumumba
By
SUZAN MAZUR
"But isn't it passe?"
Mark Garsin responded when I phoned him recently in New York
for an interview about the political assassination of Patrice
Lumumba. I was not surprised. Much progress has been made in
the last five years in getting to the bottom of the Jeffrey Dahlmer-style
disposal of the Congo's first democratically elected leader in
the copper mining province of Katanga 45 years ago.
Garsin is one of a handful of cogent and principal eyewitnesses
to the region's history from that era. He served as director
of operations in Kinshasa for a dozen years or more for diamond
brokers, Leon Tempelsman & Son (Maurice).
He hasn't really wanted to address the subject of Lumumba with
the media, but says "everyone's dead now". So I was
able to persuade him to share his thoughts with me recently over
a glass or two of Merlot at L'Absinthe.
First here's a recap of what is known about Lumumba's death.
Author Ludo de Witte (The
Assassination of Patrice Lumumba (Verso, 2000)) working
from official records from Belgium, US, UN, UK, Portugal and
France identifies Lumumba's "actual executioners" as
Katangan police: Captain Julien Gat, Lt. Gabriel Michels, Commissioner
Frans Verscheure and Sergeant Francois Son, plus a nine-member
firing squad. Belgo-Katangan police commander, Gerard Soete,
and his brother then hacked up what was left of Lumumba and dissolved
the pieces in sulfuric acid, saving a couple of teeth for souvenirs,
which were later flashed at a BBC film crew.
There were myriad accomplices. Even the ANC was involved. The
mission was codenamed: "Operation Barricuda". And
the government of Belgium has now apologized to the Lumumba family
for its role in the murder. Lumumba's son has accepted the apology.
But what role did the CIA and Mobutu play? The Church Committee
Report says they each had a hand in his death. It is also believed
Mobutu was on the CIA's payroll. But De Witte lets the CIA off
the hook regarding transfer of Lumumba to Katanga and in his
mutilation and death by firing squad.
Aside from the mystery of what role the CIA played, there is
the issue of why Lumumba had to be taken out at all. Not everyone
agrees that the Soviet factor was as significant as it was made
out to be.
[Click here: CNN - Map of Zaire ]
Mark Garsin was born in Belgium in 1920. He spent a year in a
Spanish prison during World War II -- caught fleeing the Nazis.
"We lost our visas and it was the only way to escape from
Europe to London at the time," he said,
"Franco one day traded 600 prisoners for a boatload of manure
from Tunisia and I was set free."
Following the war, Garsin studied agriculture and then ran a
plantation in Burundi, beginning in 1953. He first came to the
US from Burundi, bordering Congo, when Burundi became unlivable
in 1960. He said he decided that he'd "rather sleep with
a beautiful woman than with a gun".
He signed on with Belgium-born diamond dealer Maurice Tempelsman
(Jackie O's "beau"), who aside from his own business,
also represented the Oppenheimers (De Beers). Garsin then returned
to Africa to pursue the company's interests in "diamonds,
copper, everything", running things in Zaire's capital
of Kinshasa until 1976 when Tempelsman replaced Garsin with Larry
Devlin -- the CIA's Chief of Station there.
During Garsin's time in Zaire, he naturally established a working
rapport with Mobutu, who he describes as initially "fantastic!"
and later as "totally nuts" . [Click here: Social
Network Diagram for GARSIN MARK ]
Garsin is an intense but open, amusing and animated man. Medium
build with a Belgian mustache. He's retired from the resource
war intrigues, although they are etched in his voice.
At age 84, he prefers to kiss a woman's hand rather than shake
it. He has a vibrant girlfriend named Fern whom he introduced
to me at Restaurant Les Sans Culottes ("without pants")
on a day in New York when the temperature was minus two degrees
Fahrenheit (with wind chill).
He says that his late wife gave him "60 years of happiness".
And that
neither of his two grown sons has settled in Africa. Garsin,
himself, "can't imagine ever living anywhere else in the
world now but New York".
*
* *
Q: Can I ask you first
-- you were working in what capacity for Maurice Tempelsman?
Garsin: I was in charge of Zaire at the time for Tempelsman.
Q: Did Tempelsman visit you in Zaire or did he pretty much
leave things up to you?
Garsin: He left nearly everything up to me. That was the point
of being in charge. I did everything I wanted.
Q: And you worked with him during which years?
Garsin: I started in 1961 and finished in 1982 -- 21 years.
I enjoyed every minute of it.
Q: What was the high point of your career in Zaire?
Garsin: When I got the largest copper mine in the world. I
had a consortium behind me. That was the top of my career.
[University of Arizona history professor David Gibbs, who served
in the Peace Corps in Africa, mentions Garsin and the Societe
Miniere du Tenke Fungurume consortium in his book, The Political
Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and the U.S.
Policy in the Congo Crisis (U. Chicago Press) and cites a
US State Department cable indicating the government was favorable
to the consortium.
Gibbs told me that Soviet involvement in Zaire was "brief"
and "overrated" by the US government as a political
factor, and that there was a "very bitter conflict between
the US and Europe" over mineral interests regionally.]
Q: You were saying that in the US people for a long time missed
the angle on Belgium and the Lamumba assassination.
Garsin: The Belgians played a major role. But the focus
is always on American, Russian, you know. Chinese. God knows.
But . . . the one at the time in Zaire that wanted independence
were the Belgians.
Q: Wanted the independence.
Garsin: They wanted to give independence to the Congo.
Why? Because the large companies started not to like the
taxation that Belgium was putting on them. I'll just give
you one example.
I had a chat with the head of the largest, one of the largest
companies over there in Belgium and he told me:
"Do you know a Congolese who can measure a log?"
I said, "No. Why?"
"So that's the idea. Don't you understand?"
"Oh," I said. "So you would bribe a little bit
the guy?"
"That's it!"
Q: So they wanted Lumumba.
Garsin: They wanted independence.
Q: They did not want Lamumba.
Garsin: No. Lumumba became a little . . . To start with they
were all for Lamumba. To start with. Lamumba start to
go a little bit too much on the left of them. Especially
he was going to the Russians because he couldn't find help anywhere
else.
Q: And the concern was the diamonds. The mineral wealth of
the Congo.
Garsin: Minerals yes. But diamonds were not the first.
Copper was much more important.
Q: Copper was more important then diamonds.
Garsin: Much more important. . . . You know, at the time, the
Group of Binza -- have you heard of the Group of Binza? . . .The
Group of Binza was Mobutu, [Justin] Bomboko, Ndele, Victor Nendaka
[became Mobutu's Chief of Intelligence Services]. Click here:
Social
Network Diagram for BINZA GROUP
[The Group of Binza was a Binza-Kinshasa political clique that
worked in collaboration with foreign sponsors roughly until 1990
to "develop" the country's mineral wealth. It installed
and propped up Mobutu.]
Q: If you go to NameBase.org on the Internet, your name is right
in there with Mobutu . . .
Garsin: I don't get it. What did you tell me? [adjusts hearing
aid] . . .
To start with, I was hundred percent for Mobutu. . . .
And I still was until he became totally nuts.
Q: Even with the assassination? . . . Wasn't the assassination
at all upsetting? The assassination of Lamumba.
Garsin: Oh well you know. You don't make an omelette without
breaking eggs. Everybody wanted Lamumba out! Belgians.
The Americans. They paid the guy, the CIA, to kill. He [CIA
chief Larry Devlin] didn't want to do it. He didn't do it.
He was asked to do it. And everybody wanted to get the
guy out. So Mobutu had it easy.
Q: What was the feeling in the Congo at that time? . . .
Garsin: It was very racial. Tribal. For instance, Kasa
Vubu was back-Congo and the people from Kasai didn't want
to have anything to do with him. You've got to realize that
the tribalism is extremely important in Zaire, in the
Congo. There are 260 tribes that speak different languages
as different from each other as Chinese from English.
. . .
Q: And did you know the people at the US embassy? Did you know
Frank Carlucci?
Garsin: I knew a lot of people at the embassy.
Q: What did you think of him.
Garsin: I'm not going to tell you. [laughs]. . .
I had all kinds of problems with the [US] embassy because we
didn't see the same way. We didn't act the same way. The ambassador
I'm not going to get involved in that. They were at a
different level. They were on top of me. I was at
a lower level. Talking to the people at the lower level.
They were talking at a higher level and behaving differently.
Just totally different. . . .
Well, to give you an example, the charge d' affaires used to
come to Zaire and the first thing he said, "Ha! Let's
go and see Mark and find out who sleeps with whom."
The ambassador was absolutely shocked. "Oou!
What do you mean?"
This is important! -- if you understand what I mean.
In French we say tres premier empire First Empire.
Napoleon First Empire. . . . Who slept with who was very
important. The ambassador was [shocked]! [makes
a face] . . .
Q: Did you have some conversations with Frank Carlucci? How
was his French? . . .
Garsin: I never met him. Carlucci. I never met Carlucci.
I have all the other ones but not Carlucci. . . .
Q: He's someone people accuse of being involved [in the Lumumba
assassination]. . .
Garsin: I never met him. I don't know. I came later . . .
I came in '63. . . .
[George Wittman, now dead, ran Tempelman's Zaire office before
Garsin.]
Q: You were in Zaire with your family?
Garsin: My wife joined me and children. . . . The children
came and joined me for vacation. But otherwise they were in
college.
Q: Lucy Komisar has written that the government of Belgium
has now apologized to Lamumba's family for the assassination.
. . . And then the Church Committee Report revealed that the
US and the government of Belgium and Mobutu all worked together
to get rid of Lamumba. Very interesting because I think you
said you thought Mobutu did it.
Garsin: Sure. . . . Listen. Something you don't understand.
Lamumba was exactly a nobody. A real nobody! But he
had charisma. Okay. But he was a total nobody. You
can't call him a Commie. Or you can't call him anything.
It's ridiculous! Makes no sense. He was a nobody!
He was a total zero.
The president of Zaire, of the Congo at the time was Kasa
Vubu. But Kasa Vubu was a total zero! A complete
zero! The CIA taped him. They had a tape in the
chandelier! The guy who told me all about it. But it's so
idiotic what he said and what he didn't say! It's so
typically idiotic that you can't imagine. . . .
Mobutu was not zero.
Q: He was not zero.
Garsin: Mobutu had to start. Now you have to understand that
Mobutu is the son of a cook. That means nobody! Okay?
He was a sergeant in the Belgian army at the time, in the Congolese
army. And he was not very brilliant. But when you have the
power. The power's worse than champagne. It's worse than
alcohol. It's terrible.
In Africa, if you look at all, Nkrumah [etc.] they all
became nuts with power. They start very well and all
finished completely nuts with power. That happened to
Mobutu. But he started very well. He had some good
ideas. And the Group of Binza who was behind him. . . .
Q: The Group of Binza. Mobutu, Momboko, Ndele, etc.
Garsin: And Nendaka, who was the guy from the CIA who taped
Mr. Kasa Vubu.
Q: He was from the CIA? . . .
Garsin: I still see him in front of me. His name. He was minister
of foreign affairs for a long time. A very charming man.
These guys were not idiots! They were not idiots! You understand.
They proved it after. Then he became governor of the national
bank and he did a fabulous job because he listened
to the advisers. You understand?
Q: Did they have some plans for the people? Mobutu and the Group
of Binza. They cared about the country or they were more interested
in the banking sector?
Garsin: They had ideas. Now you like it or not. That's
the difference. But they were good guys in general.
And Mobutu was a fantastic man! to start. But then he
became nuts. Like all of them with power he became
totally nuts. And he behaved like an idiot killing people.
That was the end. He became an idiot!
There's only one that survived. Bongo. Ever heard
about Bongo? [Omar] Bongo is the president of Gabon.
He's the most charming man you can imagine! [Laughs]
He's got 40 kids I think.
Q: Very charming.
Garsin: He became a Muslim. Some kind of omam [imam]. I liked
him. He's the only one I really like as a president in
Africa. But all the other ones -- I met them all.
Q: So, the government of Belgium has now apologized to the Lamumba
family. It's understood that the CIA now because of the
Church Committee Report -- played a role in the assassination
with the government of Belgium and Mobutu. From Doug Valentine's
wonderful book on the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, The Strength
of the Wolf (Verso, 2004), we now know that a man by the
name of William Harvey -- did you ever meet William Harvey? --
was in charge of Division D, the CIA's assassination unit.
Garsin: The one in charge of CIA in Zaire?
Q: He was in charge of Division D, which was the assassination
unit. . . . You knew him? . . .
Garsin: No never heard that name. . . . When I was kicked
out of Zaire, Larry Devlin was replacing me. He had finished
with the CIA, so you know. He got an order to kill Lamumba.
. . .
Q: He got what?
Garsin: He got order at the time he was CIA -- he was
the CIA, the head in Zaire. He got order to kill Lamumba!
He never did. He never acted on it.
Q: He didn't act on it.
Garsin: They sent poison toothpaste [via the CIA's chief technical
officer, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb]. . . .
[Former CIA agent John Stockwell who wrote a book about the Agency,In
Search of Enemies, revealed that he grew up in the same missionary
community in the Belgian Congo as Lumumba. He had this to say
about Larry Devlin:
"I had a chance to go drinking with this Larry Devlin,
a famous CIA case officer who had overthrown Patrice Lumumba,
and had him killed in 1960, back in the Congo [Katanga]. He
was moving into the Africa division Chief. I talked to him in
Addis Ababa at length one night, and he was giving me an explanatioin
-- I was telling him frankly, 'sir, you know, this stuff doesn't
make any sense, we're not saving anybody from anything, and we
are corrupting people, and everybody knows we're doing it, and
that make the U.S. look bad'. And he said I was getting too
big for my britches."]
Q: Apparently what happened is that this man William Harvey.
Garsin: That one I didn't know at all.
Q: He recruited someone by the codename QJ/WIN to assassinate
Lamumba.
Garsin: Mobutu didn't need anybody. . . . The Group of
Binza decided to get rid of the guy and and that was it.
Q: He was QJ/WIN. He was supposed to recruit people from the
underworld. Valentine writes that Harvey "in considering
candidates for the QJ/WIN position, . . . suggested using 'former
resistance personnel' from OSS days. 'Corsicans were recommended,
. . . as Sicilians could lead to the Mafia'." [They didn't
want to bring in the Mafia because they were protecting the Mafia
as payback for their help in WWII, etc.]
Garsin: It's very complicated. It was just very simple.
Q: William Harvey was the Division D CIA Foreign Intelligence
Branch person. And he hired this man QJ/WIN on November 1, 1960
in Frankfurt for the Lumumba operation. It's believed that he
was either a man by the name of Jose Marie Andre Mankel ("FNU
Mankel")
Garsin: Never heard of him.
Q: Or a Russian
Garsin: Oh!
Q: Mozes Maschkivitzan [Valentine cites author Richard Mahoney,
whose father was a CIA officer in Africa at the time, who says
QJ/WIN was Maschkivitzan, a Russian emigre living in Luxembourg].
Garsin: They didn't need all that. Mobutu and the Group of
Binza wanted to get rid of him and the CIA may have helped.
I don't know. But they didn't need all that help. Believe me.
They wanted to get him. They got him.
Q: Did you see the film Lamumba?
Garsin: No. Was it good?
Q: I thought it was good, not having been in Congo . . .
Garsin: These guys were so zero . . .
Q: But this fellow QJ/WIN chosen for the Lamumba operation --
he was very well known in Parisian circles. A double agent
during WWII.
Garsin: Larry Devlin was in charge of the CIA in Zaire. And
he refused to kill Lamumba. He got orders to kill Lamumba.
He refused to kill Lamumba. He refused to get involved. And
when I was kicked out of Zaire, he took over for me. [Devlin
now lives in Washington, D.C.]
Q: When was that? What year was that?
Garsin: 1975, 1976 [George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976.]
Q: Why were you kicked out of Zaire?
Garsin: I was kicked out by Mobutu. At the time, he was involved
with sorcellerie. Sorcery. Witchcraft.
One of them [his people] was very powerful. A fellow from West
Africa. He put in Mobutu's bed a lovely girl from Niger. I knew
the father very well.
Messr. Jacques Bongoma was the chief of cabinet of Mobutu and
a good friend of mine, especially his wife was adorable. And
I invite them for dinner and he said I'm going to come with Mobutu's
girlfriend. He set exactly what was going to happen. The girl
didn't show up. . .
I said "Mobutu could do better". That was repeated
to Mobutu. And Mobutu kicked me out. . . . Very high politics.
. . .
I got a summons to go to security and they told me "You're
fired".
Q: But you weren't working for them, you were working for Tempelsman.
Couldn't Tempelsman cover for you?
Garsin: No. Absolutely not. They wanted me out. They got
me out. Okay? . . . They met me at the airport. They put me
in the plane. Shook hands with me and said "Bon voyage,
Mr. Garsin. Thank you very much."
Q: Devlin was CIA Chief in Zaire for a long time.
Garsin: Yes. Very long time.
Q: You were working with Maurice Tempelsman until when?
Garsin: 1982 . . . I enjoyed every minute of it. After Africa
they [Tempelsmans] sent me to South America. That was much better.
Peru mostly. Chile. I was there of course when there was
a revolution! I've got great fond memories to speak about
Messr. Pinochet. . . .Let me tell you that the Allende years
were not the sweetest years you could imagine. . . .
Tempelsman was quite involved with the Kennedys.
Q: It's been said that Maurice Tempelsman was also seeing Madeleine
Albright. . . .
Garsin: That must have been after my time. In my time it was
Jackie. She was a lovely woman. . . . And she loved Maurice.
She really loved him. . . .
She learned her trade the hard way. Campaigning. . . . She
was so good at it.
Who am I? . . . But when I was in the room with her -- I was
number one. She was fantastic at doing that! Pushing
your guy up. . . . She knew how to do it. She was
a great woman!
Maurice had this crazy way of always asking questions. And one
day we had the Russians for lunch. The Russians were here to
buy wheat. New York was in a terrible financial state at the
time and Maurice asked the Russians --
"What would you advise New York to do?"
And the Russians said, "If you don't have the money, don't
spend it."
And I had it here [thinking to say], "If you don't have
the wheat, don't eat."
And Maurice knew me very well, and he knew what was coming.
And Jackie was there. He looked at me as if to say, "Shut
up!" He didn't say it but he didn't have to say it.
At his place I met nearly every Senator, every member of the
House -- for lunch the ones important. And I tell you
something, there is not one who had it! The people
who are governing us are idiots. Believe it or not.
. . .
Tempelsman had the biggest fundraiser [and I was introduced]:
"Mr. Garsin from Kinshasa". And they'd say
-- "Where's Kinshasa?" People who were in charge
of foreign affairs! At a time when there was a big business
[in Africa] . . . Where's Kinshasa. . .
Solarz. You remember Solarz? He was a member of the
House from Brooklyn. He asked, "Where is Kinshasa?"
He was a member of the foreign affairs committee.
It's a bunch of zeroes! It's a bunch of zeroes! All
of them. The only one who made me laugh was Koch. . . .
Q: Sally Quinn was on Charlie Rose after the inauguration
talking about how George Bush may have a "learning disability".
. . .
Garsin: Clinton was not better you know. I know people who
told me. I'm not going to tell you who told me -- but they said
I've been a friend of this guy for 15 years but I'm not going
to vote for him.
And you go abroad and it's even worse. Even worse! Politicians.
All of them. More than 50% of the House in Belgium after the
war were checked for collaboration. And those people are trying
to teachs us morals? Perfectly crooked . . . My son for a while
was living in Holland. You can't live in that country anymore.
Q: Drugs.
Garsin: If you're robbed you've got to say thank you. It's
not going to last. It's not going to last. We're going to see
a binge one of these days like in Chile.
Q: What do you think about all the security now here in the
US? Overreaction?
Garsin: What's the opposite solution? . . . I don't know. I
don't like to get a bomb every time I cross the street. Something
has to be done. But what? How?
Q: Organized crime. William Colby, former Director of the CIA
before he died, said it's possible that organized crime is "calling
the shots" at all levels of government. And then he died
mysteriously.
Garsin: It's obvious.
But when they speak about torture, it's hypocrisy! It's
been going on for years. I was talking to a Frenchman, a veterinarian
who was taking care of all the animals for Mobutu. Mobutu had
a zoo at the time. . . . He told me -- "We did that in
Algeria. We tortured people." And he was the sweetest guy
I ever met. . . .
And I asked him, "How can you do that [torture]?"
He said, "I promise you -- you'd do it."
"I would do it? Why?"
"You know that the guy knows something that's going to kill
your friends -- you'll do it."
I've been thinking maybe he's right. I don't know. He was the
sweetest guy you could imagine. And you realize -- he said to
me, "I torture people" . . .
Suzan Mazur covered developments in science and technology
in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia in the 1980s for Omni
magazine. Her reports have also appeared in the Financial Times,
Economist, Forbes, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on PBS,
CBC and MBC. She has been a guest on McLaughlin, Charlie Rose
and various Fox television programs. Email: <mailto:sznmzr@aol.com>sznmzr@aol.com.
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