The troubling history of the U.S. in Ghana

Ghana's first President, Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup.

Former CIA intelligence officer John Stockwell wrote about it.

Americans worried about Donald Trump's anti-democratic activities are whipsawed. U.S. intelligence apparatus--the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, even the military--have been whistleblowers and resisters to Trump. They have been seen defending democratic rules. The anti-war good-government Left finds itself in a strange place, defending institutions it spent a century calling out for misdeeds and hypocrisy. 

American history is complicated and troubling, and how schools should teach it is a top issue in current politics, including an election in Virginia today. Recent posts here looked at America's covert work in Haiti and Guatemala. Today we look at Ghana, from the eyes of someone who did charitable work there.

Coster

John Coster trained as a construction electrician, electrical engineer, and contractor. Over his 40+ year career he has managed huge electrical projects for Fortune 100 companies in over 30 countries. Over the years, he has volunteered on numerous energy, water and community development projects for Christian charitable organizations throughout Africa and Latin America. 

Guest Post by John Coster



Like many from the 1960’s, I learned about U.S. History through a distinctly patriotic lens. The Boston suburb where I grew up was settled in 1655 and its early residents were part of the American Story. We even had a Minuteman Militia complete with period costumes and musket rifles. They would march in the July 4th parade, fire their guns and stage reenactments of the battles at Lexington and Concord. We learned about Manifest Destiny in school in a positive light. Most men I knew were WWII veterans. Television shows like The Rat Patrol, Combat – and even Hogan’s Heroes--celebrated Americans as courageous, strong, clever and of course, virtuous.

Laying Cable in Ghana

“Americans as the good guys” was the accepted storyline for me, but as I started traveling abroad in the late 1980s, I began to see a more complex and disturbing narrative emerge. Here is one example. About 15 years ago I was walking with one of my business partners past the Ghanaian Embassy in D.C., and we discovered that we had each lived in Ghana. Mine was for charitable work, but his father worked for the CIA, and had been involved in the 1966 overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah’s presidency.

This was astonishing news. During my time in Ghana, I had wondered why the much-beloved Nkrumah, with streets, buildings, and monuments with his name, would be driven out? My colleague’s comments got me researching, and it turns out there are many books and articles written about this with declassified documents readily available online. I came across this article, which I think does a credible job synthesizing what I had been able to stitch together over years of my amateur research. Click: Ghana

Kwame Nkrumah

Nkrumah, a Ghanaian, was a U.S.-educated Pan African Black Nationalist - who envisioned a unified post-colonial Africa. He was Ghana's first democratically elected president, serving from 1960-1966. He also saw that hydro-power potential from the Volta River and abundant deposits of bauxite could allow Ghana to flourish as an international aluminum producer. His vision was promising because of Ghana’s relative wealth from their cacao industry and because the population was largely literate. Nkrumah appealed to then President Eisenhower--who in turn referred him to Kaiser Industries which was building industrial plants globally. Kaiser ended up structuring a joint venture agreement with ALCOA and Ghana. But the complex deal structure favored Kaiser’s fortunes and Ghana never realized the jobs and economic prosperity that the project promised. Kaiser was wary that Nkrumah’s more socialist philosophy might result in nationalization of their smelters and supply chain, so they mostly used abundant and low-cost power from the Lake Volta dam project.

His socialist leaning meant Nkrumah was in regular dialog with people like Ho Chi Minh, the President of North Viet Nam. Nkrumah miscalculated the extent to which the U.S. would go to thwart the development of a Ghanian socialist economy. With LBJ’s knowledge and consent, Nkrumah scheduled a meeting with Ho Chi Minh as a diplomatic envoy on behalf of the U.S. to attempt to halt escalation of the Viet Nam War. During Nkrumah’s three-day meeting in Hanoi, the CIA pulled the trigger on the coup plans and over 1,600 Ghanaians died in the violence. Nkrumah was exiled to Conakry Guinea, and never returned to Ghana before his death. Ghana has struggled with seven more coups and when I was there in 1990 had little running water, open sewers and garbage heaps in the middle of Accra, the capitol. While Ghana is reported to be one of the most peaceful countries today , according to 

Heritage, even after more than half a century it ranks 101st in economic freedom.

We can speculate what might have happened if the U.S. had brokered an honest deal with Nkrumah or had not been so frightened of socialism. I have come to believe that people and systems are inherently flawed as well as capable of achieving good and noble things. And if we are honest, we should call out both.