In 1960, the Eisenhower administration made plans to murder Patrice Lumumba. their justifications ranged from the standard, ‘he’s a communist,’ to the surreal, ‘he looks luciferean.’
At one National Security Council meeting, Vice President Nixon observed, “Some of the peoples of Africa have been out of trees for only about 50 years,” to which Budget Director Maurice Stans (who would later serve as President Nixon’s commerce secretary) replied that he “had the impression that many Africans still belonged in trees.”
David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 364.
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