This is an example of the CIA Meddling in African Affairs during the cold-war era
| Other CIA activities in Africa |

By Douglas Okwatch

Fresh details of a conspiracy that could have provided a motive for the assassination of Cabinet Minister Thomas Joseph Mboya have emerged ahead of the 39th year since his death.

Kenyatta
The CIA appears to have recruited the flamboyant minister and former trade unionist in a heavily funded “selective liberation” programme to isolate Kenya’s founding President Jomo Kenyatta, who the American spy agency labelled as “unsafe.”

Declassified information in an undated issue of Ramparts, an American political and literary magazine published in the 1960s and early 1970s, accessed by The Standard at the Kenya National Archives, shows an elaborate conspiracy by CIA to prop up Mboya and isolate Kenyatta.

Ramparts closed shop in 1975. Whether this scheme sowed seeds of suspicion and mistrust between Kenyatta and Mboya, who at the time of his assassination was the Economic Planning minister and Kamukunji MP, is a matter for further investigation.

The revelations come four months after Mboya’s widow, Pamela, wrote to Mr Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general who also chaired talks that ended political violence in Kenya early in the year, asking that the matter be investigated afresh by a truth commission.

“The assassination of my husband, like others after him, is a matter that has remained shrouded in mystery and speculation, and which has been avoided by successive regimes in this country,” she wrote.

Trail of Questions

In a telephone conversation with this writer last month, Mrs Mboya promised to “drop the bombshell” in an interview. But she later changed her mind. Her last word was that she would spill the beans at an “appropriate time.”

Questions also abound on whether the convicted assassin, Nahashon Njenga Njoroge, was actually executed. The testimony of the assassin’s own brother and anecdotal evidence that he has been seen by a retired military officer, among other claims, pile on the doubts of his execution.

Mboya
Secret letters, also declassified, further show that Mboya had a particularly tumultuous relationship with Mr Mbiyu Koinange, a minister and power broker of the Kenyatta presidency.

In one instance, Koinange wrote an emotional letter to Kenyatta to defend himself against allegations of disloyalty by Mboya.

“Sir, you know my loyalty to you personally, to our Kanu party; of my long loyalty to Kenya and latterly my loyalty to our new independent Council of Ministers.”

“My loyalty is beyond doubt, therefore, my Prime Minister. I frankly feel that there is no need for me to reply to Mr Mboya’s letter.”

“It is unfortunate, ill-timed, egoistic and, if I may say so, an irresponsible letter which is skilfully designed by one of my colleagues to endanger the good working spirit among us.”

Koinange was then Minister of State in the Office of the President and one of the most powerful figures in the Government. He died in September 1981.

The secret letters in our possession cover the period between 1961 and 1966. Desperate to extricate himself from the tag of traitor, Mboya, in a letter on March 11, 1961, pleaded with Kenyatta, who was languishing in a Lodwar jail: “I’d hate to appear a hero at your expense.”

He attached copies of various statements he had made in meetings with the Governor for Kenyatta’s perusal. The move appeared to capture his own internal consciousness that Kenyatta may have begun to perceive him as a threat.

The letters also reveal how the CIA used Kenyatta to finish Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, his Vice-President, politically by amending the Constitution to his office of all powers.

Traitor or nationalist?

Ramparts reported that: “The CIA programme in Kenya could be summed up as one of selective liberation. The chief beneficiary was Tom Mboya who, in 1953, became general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour.”

Koinange
Both a credible nationalist and an economic conservative, Mboya who was popularly known as ‘TJ’, was ideal for CIA’s purpose. The main nationalist hero and eventual chief of state, Kenyatta, was not considered “sufficiently safe” owing to his initial deep socialist leanings, the dossier said.

Ramparts quotes Mboya as saying: “Those proven codes of conduct in the African societies, which have over the ages conferred dignity on our people and afforded them security regardless of their station in life.

“I refer to the universal charity, which characterises our societies, and I refer to the African thought processes and cosmological ideas, which regard men, not as a social means, but as an end and entity in society.”

This powerful quote not only captures Mboya’s own prescription of African socialism, which endeared him to the West and made the CIA view his policy as safe, but it also paints the picture of an articulate, sophisticated and ambitious political thinker.

Soon after, Mboya joined the CIA jet set, travelling around the world from Oxford in the UK to Calcutta in India on funds from such conduits as the Africa Bureau and from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

ICFTU, which played a key role in Kenya’s independence through trade unionism, is an aggregation of international trade union secretariats set up in 1949 to counter an upsurge of left-wing trade unionism outside the communist bloc, according to Ramparts. The CIA allegedly funded operations at the time.

But when George Cabot Lodge, one of the directors of the ICFTU, made the statement (believed to have been in specific reference to Mboya at the time) that “the obscure trade unionist of today may well be the president or prime minister of tomorrow,” he left no doubt about Mboya’s personal ambitions and by extension the CIA’s scheme of things.

Initially, CIA’s natural strategy was to underwrite Mboya and his labour federation as a force against Kenyatta. But when tact changed in accordance with the world order and the CIA’s new priorities, it was agreed that Western labour groups stop funding Mboya.

An accommodation with Kenyatta was now thought necessary, particularly to ensure that he did not support rebels in Congo, and to get him to close ranks against the agitating Kenyan left.

But the die had been cast. The CIA, through its activities, had effectively propped up Mboya as a possible future President of Kenya. That threat was real during Kenyatta’s time and even at the dawn of the second decade of his leadership, according to Ramparts.

It was a strategy that the CIA would use again to the benefit of Kenyatta against Odinga – use the credibility of the appropriate militant to crush the rest. The CIA link, which Mboya vigorously fought to distance himself with, would be used later to fight him politically by branding him a traitor and a man who could not to be trusted. He wrote lengthy responses in his defence.

But had the CIA sowed enough seeds of wrath between Mboya and the political establishment in Kenya to provide someone with enough reason to kill him?

REFERENCES:

1. Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya’s murder & the return of one-party State
2. Ready or Not - TIME
3. Setback for Tom - TIME

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By KAMAU NGOTHO

Like with politics, espionage knows no permanent friends or enemies, only the convergence of interests.

Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi.
Said to be the second oldest profession, at times it appears to have even lesser morals than the first.

No surprise that when relationship between Nairobi and Washington were at the ice cold, it was still business as usual for legendary Kenyan spy chief James Kanyotu and the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.

Early one morning in February 1991, Mr Kanyotu found himself with a difficult assignment. His friends in the CIA had called with an urgent and unusual request.

Dissidents

They had with them 600 Libyan dissidents they wanted sequestered in Kenya before they could be flown to a safe haven out of the reach of mercurial Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi.

The dissidents had been spirited out of Libya in a daring secret move and first flown to the then Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.

But the CIA was not confident that Zaire was a safe haven.

The country’s dictator, Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko was a US ally and had himself come to power in the 1960s as a CIA protégé.

But the Americans considered him unstable, unreliable and unpredictable.

His avarice and love of money was legendary, and it would not be beyond him to cut a deal with Col Gaddafi and turn over the dissidents in exchange for handsome sums wired to his numerous Swiss bank accounts.

The Americans wanted their charges out of Congo speedily, and Kenya seemed like the best choice.

But there was one problem. President Moi at that time had no time for the US.

Kenya was in the throes of the multi-party campaign and the US had come out strongly in favour of the push for democratisation.

Mr Moi was particularly irked by President George Bush’s ambassador in Kenya, the outspoken Smith Hempstone, who consorted openly with and supported the growing opposition of the day and had been dismissed as the Nyama Choma (roasted meat) ambassador.

An approach through Mr Hempstone would not work, for Moi would have loved nothing better than to tell the envoy to ’shove it.’

A direct approach from Washington, either through the Secretary of State or the President himself, was also considered but none wanted to chance reaching Moi when in one of his foul moods and risk a humiliating rejection.

So the CIA turned to Mr Kanyotu to soften President Moi for them. It was a difficult assignment on two grounds. First of course was Mr Moi’s growing anger with the United States.

Then there was the security risk for Kenya in crossing Mr Gaddafi, who might find a soft target on which to hit back at the US.

The Libyan leader by then was on the American list of unfriendly regimes.

He was fiercely anti-American, and was accused of financing Middle Eastern terrorist groups that were increasingly aiming at targets in the West.

The Libyans at the time were also moving aggressively to position themselves in sub-saharan Africa, unlike many other North African countries, which viewed themselves primarily as members of the Arab world.

That was where Mr Kanyottu found the chink in President Moi’s armour.

Libyan interests in the region had in the past few years been viewed suspiciously by Kenya, which was alarmed by the countries seeming support for dissident movements.

From the early 1980, the Libyan embassy on Loita Street had become a popular calling place for radial student activists from nearby University of Nairobi.

Usually it was to pick up freebies in the form of Mr Gaddafi’s writings, including his famous Green Book, and other literature and posters on Libyan and on the Palestinian cause.

Mr Kanyotu’s agents kept a close watch around the embassy, paying particular attention to student leaders whom they thought might be tempted into going beyond mere infatuation with Gaddafi and enlisting into something sinister.

Libya at the time already had a strong presence in neighbouring Uganda, which under President Yoweri Museveni had become the favoured transit point for Kenyan dissidents fleeing the country for exile in Europe.

By early 1991, Kenya had already severed diplomatic relations with Tripoli after accusing the northern African country of sponsoring anti-Moi elements.

Some student leaders at the University of Nairobi had also been arrested and charged with espionage for allegedly spying for Libya.

Even without the Libyan link, President Moi at time viewed President Museveni as a dangerous radical all too keen to spread his ideology across the region.

Kenya and Uganda had engaged in a brief shooting war across the common border only a few years previously, and still regarded each other with deep suspicion.

With all the information at his fingertips, Mr Kanyotu was able to convince President Moi that the real threat lay not in US support for the multi-party campaign in Kenya, but in Libyan support for dissidents who might want to forment a revolution via neighbouring Uganda.

Mr Kanyotu thought, Moi — even for ego purposes only — would relish the moment to show both Col Gaddafi and Mr Museveni who was boss in the region. Mr Moi gave his nod, and working under the strictest security, Mr Kanyotu’s men and the CIA hurriedly constructed a camp to hold the Libyans at a remote point off the Thika-Garissa highway. Within a week, a makeshift barracks was in place complete with a borehole and a fully-equipped dispensary.

To throw off-scent any nosy characters, signposts were erected purporting that American peace-corps were coming to help sink boreholes in the remote reaches of Mwingi District.

On D-Day, Mr Kanyotu joined the CIA team at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport shortly after midnight. Also present was Mr Hempstone.

As Nairobi slept, two US Air Force jets taxied at the far end of the apron. Unmarked buses from the Kenya Army were in place to transport the delicate human cargo.

Before dawn, the Libyan exiles were sound asleep in their new, but temporary, Kenyan home.

Mr Gaddafi, probably through Ugandan and Soviet intelligence sources in Nairobi, soon came to learn about the presence of Libyans dissidents in Kenya.

He was furious, and immediately set about planning how to retaliate.

Commando squad

A Libyan commando force assembled near the Entebbe Airport in Uganda, ready to strike once the exact location of the secret camp holding Libyan dissidents in Kenya was established.

Gaddafi’s first option was lightning air strike to bomb the camp and kill as many of the residents as possible.

The other was to bring in a commando squad by land, raid the place and capture some of the dissidents.

To keep him off-scent, Mr Kanyotu and the CIA put up several decoys that kept the Libyan intelligence operatives on a wild goose chase.

Meanwhile, the Americans found a permanent refuge for the dissidents, and before the Libyan forces could strike they were secretly flown out of Kenya under cover of darkness.

After ranting and raving for a period, Mr Gaddafi concluded the Kenyan leader was no pushover and offered to make peace.

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By Prof. Ali Mazrui

Africa victim of US fight against terror

The President of Kenya marched in sympathy with the victims of September 11. The Kenyan Muslims marched against the America bombing of Afghanistan. The then President Moi asked “Why didn’t the Kenya Muslims march when Nairobi was bombed by terrorists in August of 1998?” the Kenya Muslims turned the tables on their President “Why didn’t President Moi lead a march when Nairobi was bombed in August 1998?” Read the full story

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