Louis Armstrong and the spy: how the CIA used him as a 'trojan horse' in Congo

[Jilly_in_VA]

It was a memorable evening: Louis Armstrong, his wife and a diplomat from the US embassy were out for dinner in a restaurant in what was still Léopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo.

The trumpeter, singer and band leader, nicknamed Satchmo as a child, was in the middle of a tour of Africa that would stretch over months, organised and sponsored by the State Department in a bid to improve the image of the US in dozens of countries which had just won freedom from colonial regimes.

What Armstrong did not know was that his host that night in November 1960 was not the political attaché as described, but the head of the CIA in Congo. He was also totally unaware of how his fame had allowed the spy who was making small talk across the starters to gain crucial information that would facilitate some of the most controversial operations of the entire cold war.

“Armstrong was basically a Trojan horse for the CIA. It’s genuinely heartbreaking. He was brought in to serve an interest that was completely contrary to his own sense of what was right or wrong. He would have been horrified,” said Susan Williams, a research fellow at London University’s School of Advanced Study and author of White Malice, a new book which exposes the astonishing extent of the CIA’s activities across central and west Africa in the 1950s and early 60s.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/12/louis-armstrong-and-the-spy-how-the-cia-used-him-as-a-trojan-horse-in-congo

[underpants]

1. 👀

Very interesting. Moe Berg was a pro baseball catcher who also was a spy. Read multiple newspapers in every town (spies used newspapers to communicate) and was sent on a mission in Austria to see if the Nazis were working on an atom bomb. He attended a lecture of a prominent physicist or something and then engaged him in conversation on the walk back to the hotel. He’d read up enough to know what to ask. He reported back that the Nazis couldn’t be very close to having the bomb yet.

[Jilly_in_VA]

2. But Moe did it intentionally

Armstrong was being used.

[underpants]

3. Yeah I get that.

I just love the Moe Berg story.

[underpants]

5. I read it.

Saw this story on ESPN 30 for 30 I think.

There was a movie too. Didn’t do very well. Paul Rudd played Moe.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4602066/fullcredits

The Spy Behind the Plate. Documentary
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10078290/

[Hortensis]

7. CIA agents were famously attached to every embassy and consulate under

disguising titles, "political attache" a classic cliche. This was the Cold War era, and it was being waged in Congo.

The notion that he had no idea anything could be happening is insulting. Claims that people who live big lives, traveling widely and associating with many people at every level of power, could be as ignorant and/or stupid as people who live the smallest of lives are simply not credible. I guess it'd have to be "and" in this case, and he wasn't a stupid man.

He might well have disapproved of what they were specifically doing, and it's credible that he was not informed, but he would not have been unaware that they were there and were doing. And he was every bit as aware as John Lennon later that everyone wanted a piece of him. His presence alone in Congo served political purposes he was of course participating in.

[StarfishSaver]

8. You'd be surprised by how politically and socially unsavvy many of those

who live what you call "big lives" are. They are often more insulated and unaware than people living "the smallest of lives."

[Hortensis]

9. True, naturally bubble-minded people shuffle off a lot of information.

And for others, their own world, such as music, fills their world. If he was one of those, almost never read Time Magazine, a major newspaper, spy novels. or watched spy movies, cut off chat about the Cold War at parties, it'd be possible.

But worldly information is different from what inner circles tend to fudge or withhold from the big guy because it's about him, and them. Over the decades many, many interesting people would have chatted to him about their experiences, related anecdotes, told him things he might find useful in traveling to foreign places. Espionage and CIA stories were big in that era, routine, lurid headlines on tabloids.

In any case, Armstrong himself had to be constantly cautiously aware that mistakes by famous people tend to become chapters in their stories, and that people were always trying to use them.

[StarfishSaver]

10. "Over the decades many, many interesting people would have chatted to him about their experiences"

"related anecdotes, told him things he might find useful in traveling to foreign places."

That's a mighty big assumption to make about someone you didn't know.

The bottom line is, none of us have any way of knowing what Louis Armstrong knew or didn't know, whom he spoke or interacted with and what they told him, or how aware he was of the role he was playing in that situation.

[Hortensis]

11. True. Maybe he spent those years hiding from people.

A common technique for exploiting (using!) people for political purposes, especially those no longer around to speak for themselves, is to portray them as incredibly helpless dupes. Given Armstrong's strong popularity, the expected explanation would be the old "he's just too good to function competently in a world of bad people." (The other choice, of course, far more common and unfortunately far more believable, is to portray them as objects for contempt and/or humor.)

In any case, this device is so much more commonly seen in literature than in real life that I've come to see this characterization as a flashing warning sign. Anyway, just not my style to believe insulting and improbable characterizations that don't come with proper support.

[StarfishSaver]

12. I know people who knew Louis Armstrong well in the 1940s and 50s

They said he never talked politics or current affairs- other than civil rights -with them and when he wasn't on the road performing, he was a homebody. So, while I don't know what other friends and acquaintances may have talked with him about, it certainly isn't far fetched to think it's likely that he was not aware that this was happening, and not because he was ignorant or clueless

[Hortensis]

13. In the 1960s? No. Maybe the difference is that I'm old enough

to remember those days. I was a child too poor to have TV, nonpolitical also, but more aware than Armstrong's being portrayed. The news was on paper in those days, and free headlines leaped to the eye wherever one went.

Seriously, the Cold War was a really big thing, and it played out in many unstable, troubled nations. I'm not insisting he was completely savvy, but this'd be like Armstrong flying into Kabul to perform today and being unaware that the Taliban just took over or that civil rights were involved. Or more to the point, like caring about civil rights and advancement of black people in the U.S., but with a big disconnect between that and the Congolese and big events playing out in their country.

[StarfishSaver]

14. Being aware of current affairs does not translate into knowing that he was being used

Especially given the sophistication and tactics of the people doing the using - and, more important, the fact that much of this did not become known until much later. Under your standard, no one alive in the 1960s could possibly have been misled by the CIA.

But if you would rather assume that Louis Armstrong willingly and knowingly cooperated with these people and was complicit with the CIA - something this author with much more information than you have does not think occurred -, that's on you.

[Hortensis]

15. Please, don't attribute to me indefensible statements I know I didn't make.

I did not at any point say or suggest that he knew he was being used, that he cooperated in any way, or that he was complicit with the CIA. It strikes me as very sloppy for an attorney to get words that wrong, but maybe you were trying to multitask this nice Sunday afternoon and just made a lot of mistaken assumptions without reading?

What I said is I believed he would have known that it was common for CIA agents to operate under the cover of positions in our embassies and consulates and that the Cold War was raging in those days. Because it was normal for adults, like him, to know these things.

If you're concerned about what else you've gotten wrong, you can reread my posts for that. I'd accept an apology just for this, though. This discussion ran over-long a while ago, but I thought your part of it was sincere and deserved the courtesy of responses.

[StarfishSaver]

16. You responded to an OP that stated Armstrong didn't know that he was being used by the CIA

that his fame had allowed the CIA '"to gain crucial information that would facilitate some of the most controversial operations of the entire cold war," that "he was brought in to serve an interest that was completely contrary to his own sense of what was right or wrong," something he would have been horrified by had he known by repeatedly arguing that he did indeed know all of this. In fact, you claimed, that believing he didn't know this was an "insult" to him.

If, as you claim, Armstrong did indeed know all of these things, his continued behavior and lack of attempts to avoid "being a Trojan horse" could be seen as nothing less than a willingness to be complicit or just not caring.

Instead of being offended that anyone read your words just as you wrote them, perhaps you should be more mindful of how you explain your point of view to be sure you're accurately expressing what you really mean.

[Hortensis]

17. No, I did not say he knew all these things. Nor, btw, did I believe

he would have known all these things. Only that as a competent adult there were some things in general that competent adults had reason to know.

But I think we can agree this is not an apology. I'm gong to make another assumption -- that you're not being paid for work product here. So let's wrap it up.