"Some of That Blood Is on Our Hands"

"A half-century later, we should surely look back on the death of Lumumba with shame, for we helped install the men who deposed and killed him. In the scholarly journal Intelligence and National Security, Stephen R. Weissman, a former staff director of the House Subcommittee on Africa, recently pointed out that Lumumba’s violent end foreshadowed today’s American practice of 'extraordinary rendition.' The Congolese politicians who planned Lumumba’s murder checked all their major moves with their Belgian and American backers, and the local C.I.A. station chief made no objection when they told him they were going to turn Lumumba over—render him, in today’s parlance—to the breakaway government of Katanga, which, everyone knew, could be counted on to kill him."

Adam Hochschild in The New York Times recalls the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.