It was supposed to work against the bad political climate in the US. „What a Wonderful World" is about the beauty of the world and all the small moments of joy in everday life. In Fall 1967 the song was released as a single. George David Weiss composed the music and Bob Thiele (he used the pseudonym George Douglas) wrote the lyrics, specifically for Louis Armstrong who had already been quite famous at that time. I see them bloom for me and you, and I think to myself: What a wonderful world. “Although I represent the government, the government does not represent some of the policies that I am for,” he said.„What a Wonderful World" is a famous song, originally performed by Louis Armstrong and later covered by serveral other artists. Two months after the tour he was assassinated and that made it possible for Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, who had collaborated with the agency, to come to power.ĭevlin, who cheated on Armstrong at that dinner by posing as a diplomat, later claimed that the CIA had given up its interest in killing the Congolese president months before he was assassinated.Īrmstrong drew inspiration from his trip to Africa for the musical The Real Ambassadors, in which he spoke about what he felt representing the United States on that 1960 trip when he was 58 years old. One of the most interesting places was the uranium-rich Katanga region.Īccording to Williams in his book, at that time, and fearing that Patrice Lumumba, the president of the Congo elected at the polls, would align himself with Russia, the CIA planned to eliminate him.
In addition, Armstrong’s presence made it easier for them to access some circles and information. The artist’s visits to different cities were only a cover for the CIA agents to be able to move more freely without raising suspicions. He would have been horrified, ”said Susan Williams, a researcher at the University of London’s School for Advanced Studies, who discusses the agency’s activities in West and Central Africa between 1950 and the early 1960s. He was hired to serve an interest that was completely contrary to his own sense of right or wrong. However, the reality is that the CIA agents hatched a plan to take advantage of Armstrong’s movements and his popularity to gather data and information.Īrmstrong was basically a Trojan horse for the CIA. The idea that they ‘sold’ to its protagonist was to improve the image of the United States on the continent and, specifically, in the countries that had just freed themselves from colonialism. The tour lasted several months and was sponsored by the State Department. The author of the aforementioned book, who has had access to documents of the time and carried out a profuse investigation during five years, concludes that the trumpeter was used as an involuntary spy. There, in the city of Leopoldville, he was invited to a dinner attended by Larry Devlin, head of the CIA in the Congo. Armstrong, as revealed in the recently published book White Malice, its author, Susan Williams, was used as a “Trojan horse” by the US intelligence agency to move more freely through the regions of interest.Īccording to Il Giornale and The Guardian, which have echoed part of the content of Williams’ book, it was in 1960, in the context of the Cold War, when Armstrong, accompanied by his fourth wife, Lucilla Wilson, began a tour of the African continent. There was a time when a figure as iconic as Louis Armstrong was used by the United States Government for its own purposes disguising a CIA mission on the artist’s tour of the African continent. Venga, sí Louis Armstrong was an unwitting CIA spy Oh yeah What A Wonderful World Lyrics In Spanish
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