(2. Aug 1981) Others, including the C.I.A.‘s critics, warn that if these restraints are loosened, the United States may well find itself slipping back to the situation that prevailed in the 1960‘s, when the agency was virtually unbridled, when assassination of inconvenient foreign political figures was an acceptable technique, and when top officials cultivated a deliberate fuzziness that obscured the line of command from the President to the Director of Central Intelligence and on down to the operatives in the field. These critics fear that if the C.I.A. is given too much leeway in the means it employs, it may once again be tempted to interpret a President‘s wishes in a way that will damage the good name and long-range interests of the United States.
Archiv: Patrice Lumumba
President John F. Kennedy hears of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba‘s murder from UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.
Perhaps no photo from the Kennedy presidency summarises who Kennedy was, and how he differed from what preceded him and what came after him, than this picture.
President ‚ordered murder‘ of Congo leader
(10. Aug 2000) The evidence comes in a previously unpublished 1975 interview with the minute-taker at an August 1960 White House meeting of Eisenhower and his national security advisers on the Congo crisis.
The minute-taker, Robert Johnson, said in the interview that he vividly recalled the president turning to Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, „in the full hearing of all those in attendance, and saying something to the effect that Lumumba should be eliminated“.
Mr Johnson recalled: „There was stunned silence for about 15 seconds and the meeting continued.“