A Green Beret's True Story of His Jack Lawson with Sully de Fontaine

M arry
Preface
Devlin, Central Intelligence Agency station chief of the
Congo during the Lumumba period, wrote the book Chief of
Station, Congo. The book mentioned no involvement of the U.S.
Army Special Forces rescue operation prior to the United Nations’
peacekeeping operations in the Congo. In my view, the book strays
from the real causes of the unrest and problems in the Congo.
I have always had the utmost praise and admiration for Larry
Devlin as the CIA station chief during the first years after Congo
Independence. I took a personal liking to him. He was a first-class
intelligence chief and after he got up to speed with the situation in
the Congo he dealt decisively and swiftly with issues confronting
the United States and the free world.
But Devlin made the classic mistake of relying on the American
version of African history. He also doubted that Patrice Lumumba
was a communist, a statement I find hard to believe considering the
conversations I had with Lumumba. I believe from these conversations
that the relationship Lumumba had with the Soviets was created
far before the Congo’s independence.
For the most part, newer generations do not understand the perilous
world that existed in the desperate struggle between democracy
and communism before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. They
lack the concept of the word “communism,” which underscores the
intensity of the fight and dangers of that period. The menace of
this ideology was that “communism destroys the spirit and individ-