CIA Sent Poison to Kill Congo's First Democratically Elected Leader

The first time most Americans heard about the CIA's attempt to poison Congo's leader, it came wrapped in plausible deniability. For years after Patrice Lumumba's execution in January 1961, the U.S. government maintained that the newly independent nation's political turmoil was simply a consequence of Cold War instability. The narrative was simple: local rivals killed him, unfortunate but inevitable in a volatile region.

What wasn't mentioned was that President Eisenhower had authorized Lumumba's assassination, or that the CIA's chief chemist had personally traveled to Africa carrying lethal toxins designed to kill him.

Lumumba represented something the American government found intolerable: a nationalist leader with genuine popular support who wasn't reliably anti-communist. When he took office as the Congo's first democratically elected prime minister in June 1960, Washington saw a potential Soviet foothold in central Africa. Within weeks, the decision was made. Eisenhower signed off on the operation. Sidney Gottlieb, the architect of MKUltra who had spent years experimenting with mind-control drugs, was tasked with developing a lethal biological agent. Gottlieb personally delivered the poison to CIA operatives in Africa.

The official story held for over a decade. The U.S. expressed regret about the chaos in the Congo but maintained American hands were clean. Lumumba's death was treated as an internal political matter, a tragedy of African instability rather than the consequence of deliberate American action.

The Church Committee changed everything. In 1975, this Senate committee investigating intelligence abuses released its findings on alleged assassination plots involving foreign leaders. The classified evidence was unambiguous: had indeed attempted to assassinate Lumumba with poison. The plot failed not because it was prevented, but because the toxins never reached their target in time. By then, rival Congolese factions—supported and funded by the CIA—had already captured Lumumba. They executed him themselves in January 1961, just before the poisoned toothbrush or whatever delivery method had been planned could take effect.