Devlin, Larry

views updated

Devlin, Larry

PERSONAL:

Born in CA.

ADDRESSES:

Home—VA; Provence, France.

CAREER:

Central Intelligence Agency, 1949-74, posts included chief of station, Congo, chief of station Laos, and chief, Africa Division. Military service: Served in the U.S. Army during World War II; attained the rank of captain.

WRITINGS:

Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone, PublicAffairs (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Larry Devlin's career with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) included assignments in Africa and Laos. His first, as chief of station in Congo, began in 1960, just five days after the country gained its independence from Belgium. With the decolonization of Africa, the continent was becoming a hotbed of Cold War activity, with Congo being in a central position. Devlin was immediately faced with violence committed by soldiers of an army that had disbanded and the lack of central authority. In his memoir Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone, Devlin writes of democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lamumba's increasing ties to the Soviets and his assassination, carried out on orders from the United States. It is this incident that Devlin finds most disturbing, and he devotes the last chapter to refuting his or his agency's participation in Lamumba's murder. In reviewing the book in New African, Osei Boateng wrote: "But, not surprisingly, Devlin tries to expiate the guilt by finding refuge in the Cold War. ‘We removed [Prime Minister Patrice] Lumumba from power because the Soviet Union wanted to use him and Congo as a bridge to other African countries’ is his favourite refrain throughout the book. But this excuse does him no credit as anybody with the most tenuous grasp of history knows that Congo was not the first African country to gain independence, or the first to be ruled by a ‘radical’ prime minister friendly to Moscow."

According to Boateng, in the book Devlin writes: "‘Had the Soviets gained a position of control or influence in the nine countries and colonies,’ … ‘they would have had an extraordinary power base in Africa. In addition to gaining control or influence over the minerals, raw materials, and oil produced in Africa, it would also have greatly increased their influence in the Third World, as well as extending their influence within the UN.’" "Translated into simple English," continued Boateng, "Devlin is saying natural resource control was the real motivation for the American and Western machinations in Congo. Fighting communism was just a smokescreen."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the memoir "an unusually open look at CIA operations in the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, adding an interesting, perhaps controversial, footnote to the still-much-debated death of Lumumba."