CIA HELPS ZAIRE LEADER CRUSH PLOT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130015-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: November 22, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130015-4
R.T?Tr'1_r EARED
WASHINGTON POST
_T 22 November 1984
JACK ANDERSON
CIA Helps Zaire Leader Crush Plot
o matter what you may read, the CIA doesn't at the airport outside the Zairean capital of
always fumble the ball. Last month, Kinshasa, Mobutu suggested that the Libyans had
President, Mobutu Seso Seko of Zaire was engineered the uns
f
uccess
ul attack through their
able'to crush a coup attempt after he was given a embassy in neighboring Congo.
timely tip by the CIA. Details on last month's plot against Mobutu are
What makes the successful squelching of the sketchy. One source said that Zairean military
attempted coup particularly satisfying to the CIA is officers from Mobutu's home province of Equateur
that it was Libya's Soviet-leaning dictator, were behind it, and that they had Libyan backing.
Muammar Qaddafi, who was behind the plot. So the The plotters were reportedly unhappy over
CIA helped protect the 19-year rule of a Mobutu's intervention in Chad and jealous o:' a civil
pro-Western African leader against the most police guard that had won the president's favor.
virulent anti-American leader in all of Africa and Whoever the Zairean conspirators were, and
the Arab world. whatever their backing was, the plan was to seize
CIA sources told my associate Dale Van Atta Mobutu at the Kinshasa airport on his arrival from
that the Libyan egomaniac's ire was aroused a visit to Western Europe early last month. Though
against Mobutu for several reasons: one faction reportedly favored Mobutu's summary
Qaddafi was furious at Mobutu for sending 2,000 execution, most of the plotters wanted to send him
troops into Chad last year to block a Libyan into exile on the plane that brought him home.
invasion. He also resented Mobutu's pro-Western But Mobutu was tipped off by the CIA and had
stance in general. And Qaddafi has never forgiven his plane land at another airport. The conspirators
Mobutu's decision to resume diplomatic relations learned about the tipoff to Mobutu when they stole
with Israel in 1982. a suitcase containing the secret plans for the plot
Zaire, which has a negligible Moslem population, from a hotel room in Brussels. The suitcase
was the first black country to do so; it gave Israel belonged to Mukundji Kasongo, president of
an enormously important listening post in Africa. Mobutu's parliament.
Qaddafi was also ticked off at Mobutu for The CIA has had a long and highly supportive
proposing last July to replace the Organization of relationship with Mobutu since he first gained
African Unity, which the Libyan dictator hoped to power in the early years of the former Belgian
use as a means to dominate the whole continent, Congo's independence. It is probably no
with a league of black African states, which would coincidence that Larry Devlin, the CIA station chief
have cut Qaddafi off at the Sahara. who helped Mobutu seize power in a bloodless coup
The thwarted coup wasn't the first attempt 19 years ago, became the Zairean representative of
Qaddafi had made on Mobutu. Last January, when a the top American diamond broker when he retired
bomb exploded in luggage taken off a Soviet airliner from the CIA in 1974.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130015-4