According to the May 9, 1978 edition of The New York Times Newspaper (Page 6), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised and supported the group of plotters who overthrew the government of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in February, 1996.
The role of the agency was carried out without out without approval from the high-level interagency group in Washington that saw to activities of the CIA and the group, known in 1996 as the 303 Committee had rejected a previous request the CIA had made to plot against Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who had gotten on the bad side of the United States by keeping close ties with the Soviet Union and China.
Even though the CIA has been investigated many years since Dr. Nkrumah was overthrown, there has been no public disclosure at an agency role in the coup until now. Before the coup, sources claim the CIA's station chief in Accra, the capital of Ghana, had requested approval from higher headquarters for the deployment of a small squad of paramilitary experts who were members of the agency's Special Operations Group.
These men, were to wear blackface and attack the Chinese Embassy during the coup and kill everyone there and steal as much material as possible from the Embassy's code room. After some hesitation, the high-level CIA officials in Washington decided against this operation and although the proposal was disapproved, the CIA headquarters in Accra was given full but unofficial credit for the coup but none of this was recorded in the agency's written records.
Dr. Nkrumah had been the subject of more than one assassination attempts and at the time he was deposed, while away on a diplomatic trip to China, there were thousands of Ghanaians in jail without trial and the countrymen were already opposing to his increasingly heavy-handed rule. After the coup, the station chief in Accra, Howard T. Banes, was promoted to a senior position in the agency and was transferred from Ghana to Washington, where he became chief of operations for the African desk.
Post a Comment
0Comments