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

Unjust Rumor
Within a decade, half of Africa’s countries could have been under
the control of the Soviet Union. Guerilla infiltration and rebel camps
for liberation wars fought would have sprung up all along borders
as communism spread.
The muscle of American and Belgian determination and resolve
began to flex through the classified mission of Sully and his Special
Forces team that worked behind the scenes to evacuate whites from
mass extermination in the Congo. Then, indirectly through the CIA
and that trio of Congo mercenaries—Englishman “Mad” Mike
Hoare, Frenchman Bob Denard and Jean “Blackjack” Schramme—
Lumumba and later his associates would not succeed in bringing
the Soviet Union into control of the Congo.
Sully knew all the key players in what started out as a rescue mission
at the urging of Ambassador Tim Timberlake.
****
Silence had set back in at the table after Robin spoke. The looks
of all sitting there were still focused on Sully. He sipped water from
a delicate crystal glass to the right of his plate and set it down. He
spoke slowly and carefully with a telltale accent that could be traced
back to his roots in France.
The once-secret operation that had been unclassified for almost
forty years was not the reason he spoke slowly and precisely. It was
his nature to be humble, quiet and reserved. He would answer my
question and the thousands more I had that day and over the next
years in a manner that was almost a reluctant revelation of his past.
What this unassuming man would tell me was a story of which
legends are made, a story of a leader and his men whose exploits
were little known to the world, one with factions that did not want
to hear the truth. The secrecy was necessary to keep the liberals, socialists
and communists of communist countries and their sympathizers
within the Western powers from yelling, “foul play,” over the
United States’ involvement in Africa and labeling what started as a
humanitarian mission as imperialist American meddling.
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