Talk:National Liberation Council

A fact from National Liberation Council appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 March 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that after the National Liberation Council took over Ghana on February 24, 1966, covert operations specialist Robert Komer called their new government "almost pathetically pro-Western"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2015/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/National Liberation Council.

Wikipedia

Anglo-American involvement

While it is unclear what level of involvement in the United States had in the coup toppling Nkrumah, all reliable sources report on the active efforts of the CIA station in Accra to lead the military to power. Given available documents, testimony and sources there is no credible basis for writing that their participation was "possible." The active question is what the exact nature of their involvement was in the specific events of February 17-24 1966. -Darouet (talk) 17:03, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you read the source better. Prados claimed there is no evidence of any CIA participation in the coup and that they mainly had knowledge that there were tensions within the Ghana military. Having knowledge of what the Ghana military is planning is not the same as participation, nor do preliminary discussions about regime change indicate that they were the lead instigators of the internal tensions in Ghana. They may have been trying to distance themselves from Nkrumah, but did not see him a great enough threat to plan a coup against him. Here's the source, though I will not deny you cannot read page 329 until you scroll down: https://books.google.com/books?id=3OCDelYICIsC&pg=PA42&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false Nkrumah's document which he sourced was also a KGB forgery. Lets not censor the truth. The propaganda has got to end68.47.65.239 (talk) 15:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your modification blatantly misrepresents Prados and attempts to overturn ample scholarly consensus on CIA involvement in the coup overthrowing Nkrumah.

The totality of Prados' writing on the topic confirms CIA efforts to destabilize and topple Nkrumah's government, and other historians agree with Prados:

The Routledge history "Kwame Nkrumah's Politico-Cultural Thought and Politics" by University of Pittsburgh historian Kwame Botwe-Asamoah describes Nkrumah's overthrow as a "CIA inspired coup."

"Africa's Many Divides and Africa's Future", by professors Charles Quist-Adade and Vincent Dodoo, describe Nkrumah's overthrow as a "violent CIA-masterminded coup."

Professor Alex-Assensoh writes in his book "African Military History and Politics," published by Springer, that Stockwell "confirmed" the CIA's role in the coup, which Alex-Assensoh details.

In his "History of Ghana," professor Roger Gocking states that the coup was backed by the CIA and local forces: "It was easy for [Nkrumah] to single out Western intelligence sources led by the U.S. CIA as one of the main forces behind the coup... However, there was obviously too much local support for the coup for even those on the left to accept totally this CIA-engendered explanation of events."

Here is the Prados source:

As early as February 6 1964, Dean Rusk asked John McCone about suitable candidates to head a post-Nkrumah government, and they discussed the very general who was eventually to move against the Ghanaian. The two men speculated on the possibility of concocting a covert operation in concert with the British. When the State Department proposed an action program it had the explicit purpose of slowing Nkrumah's leftward political evolution. The proposal was to actively undermine him by threatening to halt aid to the Volta River project, recognizing opponents, and using psychological warfare and other means to diminish his support. President Johnson deliberated on this program at the exact moment Nkrumah sent his letter protesting CIA subversion.

LBJ went ahead with the Volta dam aid, but he may well have approved undermining Nkrumah. During a home visit in March 1965 Ambassador Mahoney met with Director McCone and AF Division deputy chief John Waller. They specifically discussed a coup plot in Ghana hatched by police and military figures, including Gen. Joseph A Ankrah, the same man McCone and Rusk had considered a year earlier. Evidence indicates the Ghanaian military's plans were well known to the CIA, which reported on them more than half a dozen times in 1965. As yet there is no evidence of direct CIA involvement from the documents. What we do have is a series of confident predictions of a coup from both the ambassador - who accurately foresaw that Nkrumah would be replaced by a military junta within a year - and NSC staffer Robert W. Komer. That summer Nkrumah detected the coup plot and cashiered Ankrah. The Ghanaian generals, their peripatetic plots more than a year old, were temporarily stymied...

William Mahoney left Accra for good in the summer of 1965, and for eight months there was no US ambassador. Station chief Howard T Bane had a much freer hand. Ban proposed the CIA sponser a coup. The views of the Africa Division chief Glen Fields are no known, but he has been amenable to the Congo, and his deputy John Waller had made his mark in the 1953 CIA coup in Iran. The Special Group turned them down. Bane thought this was shortsighted, and as a colleague later put it, he had "no patience for management of which he was not a part."

Howard Bane, another man who came to Africa from the DO Far East Division, had an affinity for the military and determination to go with it... Not phased by the Special Group's rejection, [Bane] took advantage of his instructions to keep a close watch on the Ghanaian military. With a complement variously reported at ten or up to three dozen case officers, Bane exploited his military contacts.

A few winks and nods from Bane betokened US support to Ghanaian soldiers. With just a pair of brigades, both based in Accra, there were not that many to convince. Bane had time to suggest that Langley send a few officers from the CIA Special Operations Division, who could not only concretize the impression of support but use the coup to purloin documents and code materials from the Chinese embassy in Accra, a unilateral operation under cover of the coup. Headquarters spurned him again. But in mid-January 1966 Bane reported that a rash of coups elsewhere in Africa had reenthused the Ghanaian officers, and on 7 February came concrete indications of a plot, Operation Cold Chop. Twenty-four hours before the coup, Bane reported the military planned it for the time Nkrumah was out of the country. President Nkrumah left Ghana on February 22, the coup occurred on the 24th. General Ankrah returned to head the resulting junta.

That the coup actually surprised Washington is suggested by Bob Komer's memo to LBJ a month later, in which he suggested to Johnson that "the coup in Ghana is another example of a fortuitous windfall." Walt Rostow later told historian David Rooney that the CIA knew the plotters, but "we did not throw a match into the haystack." Yet Langley credited Accra station with an assist.

I hope you take these sources seriously and stop removing material from the article in such a confused and partisan fashion. -Darouet (talk) 18:17, 10 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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