“Stories of armies, governments, agencies, and institutions have a way of obscuring the humans behind them,” writes Stuart Reid, an executive editor of Foreign Affairs in his new book, “The Lumumba Plot.” Indeed, his protagonist, Patrice Lumumba, lays claim to one of history’s most contested legacies. In January 1961, just months after taking office as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lumumba was killed in an assassination plot that remained shrouded in mystery for years. As his daughter Juliana once said, “He passed by like a meteor.” 

Amid this mystery and contestation, Stuart sets himself to the task of finding the real Lumumba. As Stuart writes, “This book seeks to exhume Lumumba, to scrape away the mounds of lies, mythology, and conspiracy that have accumulated around him over the decades.”

Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Stuart to discuss his new book. They talked about the charismatic Congolese leader of course and the other colorful and consequential characters that fill Stuart’s pages, the CIA’s complicity in Lumumba’s assassination, and the neocolonial and Cold War attitudes that led U.S. leaders to view such a tragic foreign policy misstep as an unimpeachable success. They also discussed what lessons “The Lumumba Plot” has for policymakers today. 

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