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

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Tmbwfs’’’’’’’’’ (t!Xiffm
revolution. The Congo is about one-fourth the size of the United
States. It is the third largest country by area and is the richest mineral
bearing land of that size on the African continent.
The Congo’s rich deposits of, diamonds, gold, copper and uranium
would go to the other side in the Cold War, creating a deficit on the
economic war’s balance sheet for the West and a huge credit on that of
the East.
Nuclear weapon production numbers and costs for East and West
alone were at stake during the Cold War. For more than twenty years
the United States had known that the Congo held the best source of
uranium for atomic bombs. Albert Einstein, the genius physicist, had
made that point clear in a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in
August 1939.
He wrote Roosevelt, saying, “It may become possible to set up a nuclear
chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts
of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be
generated.”
“This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of
bombs and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely
powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed,” Einstein informed
FDR.
“A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port,
might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding
territory.”
But Einstein zeroed in on the role of the Congo.
“The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate
quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia,
while the most important source of uranium is Belgian
Congo.”
As such, much was at stake if communism held its grip on the
Congo. It was evident in 1960 that it would take many more years to
economically defeat that mindset. Since the Congo bordered eight
countries that were prone to turning communist, it was obvious that
another nine could be affected if communism prevailed.