Ex-CIA spy denies blame for Congo's troubled past

[maddezmom]

By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA, June 7 (Reuters) - The CIA's top agent in Congo had been in Kinshasa just three months when he was asked to back a coup that launched the newly independent state into decades of war, dictatorship and chaos.

Larry Devlin, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's newly appointed chief of station, was approached in September 1960 by Joseph-Desire Mobutu, the young head of Congo's army, with a plan to overthrow prime minister Patrice Lumumba.

"He turned to me and said, 'But we will do this only if the United States government will recognise the temporary government which will be put in power'," Devlin told Reuters by telephone from his home in Virginia.

"Although I had no authority to make such an agreement, I finally just said yes," said the former CIA officer, who two months ago published his memoirs of his seven-year posting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

~snip~

The vast central African country, long known under Mobutu as Zaire, would not hold democratic polls again for another 46 years, and only after a 1998-2003 war killed an estimated four million people.

But Devlin remains unapologetic.

more:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07800718.htm