G. Edward Griffin - The Fearful Master - PDF Archive

so dangerous when one is . . . armed; and if the house which was being visited was
empty, a little ransacking was included. 5
Operation Rumpunch (the UN code name for the August attack) was a success. Only a
handful of European officers remained in the Katangese army. The mercenaries, as the
UN called them, had been expelled.
As we have seen, the UN--in the beginning, at least--justified its action against Katanga on
the claim that it had to remove Tshombe's mercenaries. Aside from the fact that the
composition of the Katangese army is not the concern of the UN, United Nations troops
themselves were mercenaries of the first order. Irish, Swedish, Italian, Ethiopian and
Gurkha troops were fighting as hired agents of the UN. If the mercenary issue was a real
one, why did not the United Nations insist that the Indonesian Communist Kwame
Nkrumah get rid of the British officers in his army? What would one call the American
officers serving in Laos? The truth of the matter is that the whole mercenary issue was
nothing but an excuse for the United Nations to initiate military action against Katanga with
the ultimate objective of bringing it under the control of the Communist-dominated central
government. By removing the professional leadership from Katanga's army, the UN not
only reduced the chances of effective military opposition to its own future plans, but also
greatly enhanced the return of civil disorder and chaos to Katanga province--the very thing
that it professed to be there to prevent.
At any rate, Tshombe did not throw in the towel as the UN apparently expected. Katanga
did not fall apart. Tshombe had been expecting something like this and had initiated a
crash program to train African officers and noncoms for effective leadership. The program
was far from complete, but sufficient progress had been made to enable Katanga to stand
firm in its determination to remain independent. Tshombe appointed a Colonel Muké as
commander of the army, and Katanga now had not only an African president and an
African government but an African commander as well. It soon became obvious that if
Katanga were to topple, even stronger measures would have to be taken.
On the morning of September 11, Conor O'Brien met with Moise Tshombe and once again
gave his personal assurances that the United Nations had no intentions of intervening in
the internal affairs of Katanga or of using force in the settlement of any issue. 6 That very
same day, however, he met in secret with other UN officials and helped lay detailed plans
for another surprise military attack on Elisabethville. The following is O'Brien's own
description of those plans:
As regards Tshombe, we were to arrest him only in the last resort. His
residence was to be cut off, the entries and exits to it sealed, and then I
was to parley with him, making it clear that his only hope lay in
cooperating with the United Nations, and in peacefully liquidating the
secession of Katanga. Meanwhile, UN forces were to secure the post
office and the radio studios and transmitters, and to raid the offices of
sûreté and ministry of information and remove the files. Europeans and
senior African personnel working in these departments were to be
apprehended if possible. The flag of the Republic of the Congo should
be run up at the earliest appropriate moment on public buildings and on
UN buildings; we had a supply of these flags which Michel Tombelaine
had recently brought back from Leopoldville. The central government