Stephen R. Weissman

The following article was published by UnderstandingCongress.org. The author is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise InstituteTop of Form

 

 

 

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How one congressional staffer made a difference

 

Commentary on Congress By Kevin R. Kosar November 4, 2024

 

 

 

 

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It is not easy being a staffer on Capitol Hill. No, the work is not road paving or ditch digging—but it comes with plenty of stress. 

A staff position is anything but secure. Unlike a civil servant, a congressional staffer is an at-will employee whether he is employed in a legislator's office or by a committee. Staff can be fired on a whim or swept from office by an election.

 

The hours are unpredictable, and everyday your boss —and therefore you— deal with demands from constituents, interest groups, media, and your own party. Yet, unlike a legislator, staff cannot reap the cheers by standing before voters and stumping for policy or hammering political opponents. No, Hill staff must stay in the background and out of the news.

Certainly, their compensation is nothing to brag about. A competent, experienced staffer can earn more in the executive branch or private sector.

 

Yet, if there is one thing I have learned in my two decades in Washington it is that staff who can endure the indignities and insanities of the position can experience a supreme joy: making a difference.

 

I was reminded of this truth by Stephen R. Weissman's memoir, From the Congo to Capitol Hill (Unconventional History Press, 2023). It is quite a story.

 

Weissman joined the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa in 1979. He came equipped with a Ph.D. and a couple years' experience of living in the Congo. He brought with him lessons hard learned, and a real concern about America's policy towards the country that soon would be renamed Zaire.

 

Weissman was very worried about Mobutu Sese Seko, who had become the president of Congo in 1965. Mobutu, who had sold himself as a liberator of the Congolese people from colonial powers, was becoming an autocrat. He stoked public resentment towards anyone who disagreed with his regime, accusing them of being traitors or foreign agents. President Mobutu dissolved the country's parliament, banned all political parties other than his own, and unleashed the military on dissenters.

 

The new-to-the-Hill Weissman found himself in a particularly difficult position. "[D]espite my academic training in American government, I lacked a practical road map of how these functions should be carried out amidst a politically divided Congress, recalcitrant administration,and sometimes opinionated press."

 

The U.S. government had been a longtime supporter of Mobutu. The Central Intelligence Agency had a role in the uprisings against his predecessor, Patrice Lumumba. The State Department and various legislators viewed Mobuto as an ally in the grand geopolitical game against the Soviet Union.

 

Despite being a bona fide expert on Congo, Weissman found little appetite on the Hill for dialing back military aid to Mobutu and denouncing his human rights violations. Thus, Weissman began a long effort to educate and persuade legislators and staff in the chamber.

It was not easy. There was no Internet or live television that was showing the badness occurring in Zaire. Even on the subcommittee, people's minds were on myriad other issues. And, of course, there were domestic politics at play. One potent legislator preferred to keep military aid flowing to Mobutu because a company from his home state had a large contract to upgrade Zaire's electrical grid. Cutting aid could lead Mobutu to end the contract. Another legislator wanted to keep Mobutu's favor as his home district had medical facilities that imported cobalt from Zaire. 

 

With time, Weissman found both legislators and staff who came around to his view. Mobutu, who kept tabs on Capitol Hill, fought back. He disparaged Weissman as a radical agitator with communist sympathies, and visited Capitol Hill to keep the million of dollars in aid flowing. Lobbyists and media pundits criticized the effort to curtail aid as did executive branch officials.

It got ugly, and the politics were rather crazy. Mobutu tried to get a pro-Israel lobby to pressure Congress, as did American plutocrats that did business in Zaire. The Congressional Black Caucus got involved as did a strange group called the Rainbow Lobby. 

 

It took a decade, but Congress did end military aid to Mobutu. Come 1990, it had become obvious that Zaire's leader was a kleptocratic dictator who spent U.S. taxpayer's money to fund an opulent lifestyle, brutalize his opponents, and wine and dine certain members of Congress. Mobutu was irate: money helped him keep his grip on power. A coup removed Mobutu from his perch in 1997, and the despot died soon afterward. 

 

Weissman left the Hill soon afterward. It was time for a break after years of battling on the Mobutu issue and others, such as sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime. When I spoke with him last month, Weissman noted he had left his position feeling a sense of accomplishment.

 

Today's staffers should take heart from Weissman's trim memoir. Yes, being on the Hill means enduring frustrations and lunacies. But it also is a position where a person can make a real difference in the world.

 

Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He hosts the Understanding Congress podcast and edits UnderstandingCongress.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bungle in the Jungle

CIA schemes, Washington intrigue explored in riveting new US-Congo histories

Adam Zagorin
Nov 1
 
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First I have to tell you a story. 

On a late autumn day in 1993, I went to see legendary former CIA station chief Larry Devlin at his apartment in Washington, D.C. It would be the first and last time we would meet. 

Nothing if not gracious, Devlin greeted me at the door of his comfortable place, pointed toward the living room and then vanished, only to reappear with a pair of brimming martinis, never spilling a drop as he glided toward my chair across more than 40 feet of burnished parquet.

 
 
 
CIA Station Chief Larry Devlin in he Congo, early 1960s (AP/SIPA)

Then in his 70s, Devlin had long since retired from the agency after famously serving in Congo, where he befriended Colonel Joseph Desiré Mobutu, later known as the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu played a crucial, behind the scenes role after independence in 1960, as the key figure in a coup that led to his appointment as Army Chief of Staff. Mobutu would often break bread at Devlin's house in the capital, where the duo would go over impending cabinet selections, or foreign policy or how the country needed to cast particular votes in line with U.S. policy at the United Nations. Mobutu later seized full presidential powers in 1965, holding sway over his mineral-rich country — the size of America east of the Mississippi — for more than 30 years….

 

Since my long ago visit with Devlin, a variety of declassified documents have emerged, including records of the U.S. Senate's Church Committee, and other secret materials the panel never saw. In 2010, former House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee chief of staff Steven R. Weissman wrote an important 2010 article in the journal Intelligence and National Security, in which he assembled and analyzed much of the new material, giving a more complete and accurate picture of what had actually happened in Congo during Devlin's tenure—and, to put it kindly, the lack of candor and sins of omission that suddenly jumped out in Devlin's testimony to Congress and subsequent pronouncements. This past summer Weissman also published a memoir that added more flesh on the story— more about which anon.

But first I want to talk about another new and important work on Congo in the volatile 1960s and onward, The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination, by Stuart A. Reid…..

 
 
 
Mobutu and Reagan at the White House (Pinterest)

But back to Steven Weissman, and his very personal retrospective, From the Congo to Capitol Hill: A Coming-of-Age Memoir.  With knowledge he first acquired as a young academic teaching in the country (1969-1971) and, later, as an influential advisor to the House Subcommittee on Africa (1979-1991), Weissman is a deeply experienced Congo- watcher. 

Much of the detail set forth in his earlier Intelligence and National Security article , goes unmentioned in this volume. Instead, Weissman offers some 220 pages of highly personal story-telling, beginning with how, with a recent PhD in political science, he, his wife and infant child lived in Kisangani (the former Stanleyville) where he taught at a local university. 

Weissman has a good eye for scene-setting. The highlight of the first part of his story comes when student protests erupt at his university. Though not directly related to Congo's governance under Mobutu, ever-vigilant university administrators and local security elements perceived a potentially more serious threat and cracked down. Weissman, an admitted liberal and occasional advisor to some students, was unexpectedly accused of complicity in the events, eventually leading to his forced departure from the country.

Weissman concedes his own naiveté, and admits that some of his apparently innocuous actions on behalf of students allowed local authorities to seize upon and misconstrue his conduct. In his telling, as  the student demonstrations became more politically sensitive, even his appeal for help to the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa fell on the deliberately deaf ears of officials who just didn't want to risk upsetting the host government. A good deal more surprising was how, years later, the mostly trivial incident popped up again as Weissman was serving as a key advisor to two successive House subcommittee chairmen, both critics of Mobutu, and U.S. assistance to his ever-more corrupt regime. At this point, Mobutu himself, and various Republican members of Congress (in some cases, Weissman says,  recipients of campaign contributions from pro-Mobutu Washington lobbyists) managed to resurrect Weissman's long ago alleged transgression, targeting him with personal attacks and blame for the controversy over U.S. aid to Congo.

 
 
 
These and other colorful tales make up the instructive, if disconcerting second part of Weissman's book, an insider's look at the political maneuvering and sausage-making that can accompany congressional aid supposedly designed to benefit foreign lands—not just prop up an American-backed dictator, or U.S. vendors doing business in the country. Weissman offers a well-informed perspective based on decades of experience, enlivened with strong narrative, telling anecdotes and detail.

Given the moral and political complexity that lies at the heart of both Reid's and Weissman's histories, it's noteworthy that their relevance extends well beyond Lumumba, Devlin, Mobutu and even Congo itself. The events and arguments date from earlier eras, but many of the same challenges remain with us. That's why scholarship that sharply questions the public  record offers not just a good read, but a timely and cautionary tale. As the spook master says in John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, "You can't be less wicked than your enemies simply because your government's policy is benevolent." Devlin might have agreed with that proposition, but today's readers may be less inclined to do so.

Adam Zagorin is a former senior correspondent for Time magazine.— for further reading see below 
 

https://themessenger.com/opinion/senate-menendez-scandal-corruption-bribery-fbi-indictment-politics

"My Academic Education was not Enough to Navigate the Real World"

"Washington Must Not Allow Another Stolen Election in Congo"

 

https://www.stephenrweissman.com/attachments/Don-t-Allow-Another-Stolen-Election-in-Congo-2.pdf

Book Qs and As with Deborah Kalb