Ulipata the latest? Bush and Ouko were friends having met in the UN circles. On the washington trip Bush invited Ouko for a chat, I guess friendly and off the record. Endelea na uchambuzi kwanzia hapo. Seems Anguka was enabled by the system which also wanted him out
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By Kamau Ngotho
Last week, my church, the Nairobi Pentecostal Church (Chief Justice David Maraga has taught us to openly identify with our faiths and denominations), said prayers for the departed soul of Christabel Ouko, wife of the slain former Foreign Affairs minister Dr Robert Ouko.
As I watched the solemn occasion on TV, my mind went back to the moment, two years ago, when I visited Christabel, pictured, at her rural home in Koru, Kisumu.
I am perhaps the only journalist who remembered it was the 25th anniversary of Ouko’s death, hence my visit.
On the way to her home, People Daily Kisumu bureau chief Baraka Karama cautioned me that Christabel would clamp up at the moment I mentioned Ouko, and that I should craft a softer way to approach her. “Fine”, I told my colleague, “I will ask her to talk about the library she has built in honour of her late husband, and how the family has moved on since.”
LIBRARY
Luckily, we found Christabel at the library. She was more than happy to receive us when we told her the purpose of our visit.
The facility is just about the most modern library I have seen anywhere in rural Kenya.
It also has a rich collection from the late minister’s home library and a collection donated by his many friends across the globe.
Looking at the Ouko library catalogue, you can easily tell the kind of a person he was — an intellectual with a bias for history, politics and philosophy.
It reminds me of a remark made by Cabinet minister Fred Matiang’i last year as we looked at the books in the home library of politician John Keen. “You can tell the kind of person from the books he/she reads”, Dr Matiang’i had said.
ENTERTAINED GUESTS
From the library, Christabel rode in our vehicle to the family house about half a kilometre away. By now we had broken ice and she is actually the one who introduced the topic of her late husband.
“This is where we buried Daktari (Doctor) she told us”, as she pointed at the grave of her husband.
“The compound remains the same as it was when he was alive”, she went on. “That’s the upper gate whose keys he was said to have asked for on that last day. And that’s the wooden-hut where he entertained his guests that night”, she said as she ushered us to the front lounge next to where the white car said to have picked up Ouko on the fateful night was packed.
I had no difficulty bringing up a conversation about her husband’s mysterious murder. I specifically wanted to ask her about the White House photograph secretly sent to her through the US embassy in Nairobi.
**
Here is the background to the story. Late in January 1990, President Moi made a visit to Washington to attend the annual Congress Prayer Breakfast. Since it was not a state visit at the invitation of the US government, no official meetings were scheduled with the US President George Bush or any other high-ranking official.
FOREIGN SECRETARY
The only official function attended by Moi and his entourage was a breakfast hosted by the assistant US foreign secretary in charge of Africa desk, Herman J. Cohen.
But it so happened that just at the time Moi was meeting Cohen, the White House invited Foreign Affairs minister Ouko for breakfast without Moi’s knowledge. The President only came to learn about it when Ouko was already at the White House.
The secret meeting with Ouko was arranged by the White House chief of protocol, Joseph Verner Reed, who, like President Bush, personally knew Ouko. The US President had known Ouko when he was his country’s ambassador to the UN, while White House protocol officer, Verner Reed, had known Ouko when he was US ambassador to Morocco.
When Bush was Vice-President in 1981, Ouko had done the US a favour by securing permission for the US Intelligence to bug hotel rooms of certain delegations of “interest” attending the AU heads of state summit in Nairobi. At the meeting to discuss the secret plot, then Internal Security minister G.G. Kariuki had questioned the morality of allowing a foreign government to secretly tap delegates attending a conference in Nairobi, to which the CIA Nairobi station chief had replied non-apologetically: “Mr Minister, espionage is the second oldest profession and sometimes with even fewer morals than the oldest!”
Apparently, Vice-President Bush never forgot the favour extended by Ouko years gone by, hence the invitation to the White House.
The Ouko secret White House meeting was not received well by some members of the Kenyan delegation. At the Commission of Inquiry on his death a year later, his sister, the late Dorothy Radiak, revealed that a few hours before his brother was picked up from his home never to be seen alive again, he had confided that while in the US, he was hosted by President Bush, something that had caused so much bad blood between him and a much feared Cabinet minister.
SMITH HEMPSTONE
But with the US government categorically denying Ouko was hosted at the White House, there was no credible collaboration of the testimony by Ouko’s sister and the matter rested there.
The Pandora’s Box would be partially opened by the US ambassador to Kenya at the time of Ouko murder, Smith Hempstone, who was to write in his memoirs: “About a year after Ouko death, I received, from my friend Joseph Verner Reed, President Bush’s long-time friend and White House chief of protocol, a manila envelope containing an undated photograph of a smiling President Bush shaking hands with an equally happy Ouko at the steps of the White House.”
The covering note in the envelope asked Ambassador Hempstone to pass on the photograph to Dr Ouko. He replied it wouldn’t be possible since Ouko had been dead for a year, but promised to pass on the photograph to Christabel, which he did. There was no further communication either from the White House official or from Christabel.
When I brought up the issue of the photograph with Christabel two years ago, she responded: “Yes, the re-sealed manila envelope was dropped at our Nairobi home by an official from the US embassy, and received by a member of my family.” She further confided that fearful that somebody may follow up on the matter with her, she handed over the photograph to a family lawyer for safe-keeping.
FAMILY LAWYER
Back in Nairobi, I telephoned the family lawyer and went to see him in his office. He warmly received me but immediately turned hostile the moment I mentioned Ouko and the photograph.
“For what reason are you raising those matters now?” he barked, and added as he let me know I was no longer welcome in his office: “If I knew that is what you wanted to talk to me about, I wouldn’t have agreed to meet you. But get this carefully, there is no record of this meeting and I didn’t discuss anything on the late Ouko with you. If you write your own things, be sure we’re going to meet in court!”
Postscript:
Last year, US assistant foreign secretary Herman Cohen, at last, revealed in his memoirs that, indeed, Dr Ouko secretly met President Bush while on a visit to Washington with Moi. He says: “The White House breakfast had been arranged following a call by Ouko, a friend of the US President. President Moi didn’t know of the Bush-Ouko meeting in advance, and I could imagine his fury when he learnt of it.” End of the story.
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Sande omwami
Moi was too paranoid. I guess Ouko was tortured that much as they attempted to extract information from him. Probably Moi thought the Americans wanted to overthrow him.
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But the USA can also easily destroy lives and forget them. Why invite a subordinate member of an entourage secretly, and then not even notice that the meeting has fatal consequences for your ‘friend’?
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Yeah, I can see @Dimz Fala did an in depth earlier; https://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php?threads/the-ouko-mystery-fact-files-very-detailed.56561/
The link he references has been there for some time and in IMHO it’s one of the best analyses of what happened.
The mystery was never going to be solved OFFICIALLY and we all know why.
However, all factors considered and considering the KEY MOTIVE, this assassination easily solved by looking at Law # 1 of Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power:
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You do not go to Washington as part of the President’s entourage in your capacity as cabinet minister and then you start having covert meetings with the Big Man at White House without your boss’s knowledge or go-ahead.
Ouko’s fate was most definitely sealed even before the plane back landed at JKIA.
That’s just ow life is… NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER!
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I noticed they sent the White House photo long after Ouko had died which was quite baffling as to how with an embassy and Ambassador in Kenya, no one saw it fit to brief the White House that a Kenyan minister they had hosted had been found murdered in very questionable circumstances.
That was reckless.
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The dumbest part however remains the official govt. pathologist report.
“The deceased shot himself in the head & then proceeded to light his body on fire.”
dafuq is this sh*t ??
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I’m sure if he had more time he’d have stabbed himself and broken his legs as well. Probably even pulled out his own hair.
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There were compelling reasons why somebody was called ‘Total Man.’
I can bet my last shilling that Ouko’s ghost haunted him for 27 years.
Si Biwott had a titanium casket made because he was paranoid unto death?:D:D:D
That is a pretty good summation. Ouko’s demise had undertones of issues at the very top of the power structure. Ouko was stellar at his job and naturally that might elicit frowns from the top. The sheer difficulty with cracking the case in fact reinforced the notion that interference could only be that absolute if from a source than which there is no greater other politically speaking. However, to arrive at the conclusion of executive promulgation from the very top, if we follow Ouko’s path very closely it would have to be the case that whatever issues Moi might have had with Ouko must have started, or rather, swung into high gear following the conclusion of the 1988 elections. Why? Quite simply if Ouko was such a clear and imminent political threat he would never have been given an avenue as perfect to sell himself to the world as the very office of Foreign Affairs ministry. I got some reservations to the power motive though. For one it is debatable if he was the most potent political threat, brilliant and articulate as he might have been, to overshadow for example Kenneth Maitba, Mwai Kibaki and Jaramogi Odinga. From amongst that group came probably his greatest threat in the grand chessboard. Neither would I suppose that Moi would hold a grudge for merely outshining him in reality or perceptibly if there were no biting teeth that could inflict serious political injury to Moi’s power relatively speaking. At some level Ouko did indeed have quite an impact in improving the standing of Moi overseas, opposed to some of the maverick political power houses that had really started undertones of what would culminate in agitation towards a multiparty Kenya, and those would otherwise constitute better targets in a real politik sense, having no pros to their names. In other words Ouko would appear to be a less attractive target. Not the least of the symptoms that there were emergent whiffs of discordance was Kibaki’s removal from VP in 1988. A co-incidental confluence of events would indeed be implied pursuant to a plot to isolate and kill Ouko. Ouko happened to be given time off, and in turn he had given time off to his bodyguard and driver, and the abduction happened right on the very day they were due back. It might all be happenstance, or else that the plan was resilient and adaptive modulated by Ouko’s action of giving time off to his security etc. which gave the semblance of red hot iron which is advisably struck when hot and the conspirators pounced on it. I was really left puzzled about the subterfuge that was used on Ouko the night he disappeared. It almost appeared as though he was indeed expecting some company later in the night, from asking for the pedestrian gate keys late at night before his staff retired for bed, then somehow mysteriously he wakes up his staff to enable him to go take care of poultry in the middle of the night. Another significant point is the degree of unease which Ouko exhibited about his family row. Some would have it that his real fear was for his life but there’s no convincing proof of that inclination. Indeed it had gotten very serious over time. It appeared as though things were coming home to roost in the manifest tension that then punctuated Ouko’s personal life, and the list of the alleged executors were fairly closely more or less consistent with Ouko’s personal problems and to a larger extent local politics. Unless of course an invisible hand was molding events to fit that script, but whatever the case the tale reaches a climax in Ouko’s death. I would be more inclined to posit Ouko’s death as resultant from his personal problems of one nature or the other, in cohort with the injection of some rogue elements within the government, inhering the likes of such people as Oyugi, and that the ex post facto cover up by the government was more of a reactive measure that of course gyrated wildly and oft times with unanticipated outcomes.
JM Kariuki murder might have had an analogous equivalent depending on the veracity of the underlying precursors. It has been stated severally that the old and ailing Jomo Kenyatta seemed to love JM Kariuki much like a parent would a nonetheless spoilt kid, and he largely used to downplay the practically perennial attacks by JM, and that it is likely more than not he did in fact issue NO executive order for JM’s liquidation, but rather those in his bubble used the “implied” realization of Kenyatta’s interests, in reality driven by their own future ambitions, in the form of silencing a thorn in his side…If that were indeed the case then it would perfectly synchronize with the notion of lack of original culpability by Kenyatta but nonetheless a cover up to protect the newly realized interest ex post facto and he did effectively play into the cover up by having the names of his security personnel and close associates scrapped from the report that was presented following investigation of the JM murder mystery, without being culpable for the original act of JM liquidation. Tersely, that the end justified the means…The analogy finds company in a dopple ganger, if to personify, in the Ouko case insofar as there was probably no executive order against Ouko, but that rather his death from causation closer to his personal life had a beneficent bottom line, to justify a cover up operation…the reverberations of which many misinterpreted as affirmation of original culpability…
Thanks a lot for the insight …I will be sure to dig…homework time!
Wondering whether anyone directly asked Bush Snr. and his response…almost certain he’s heard it
I think if recollection serves me right…yes there were some elements who had started the spin suicide tale…but that much to their credit, and probably most crucially, Both Moi and Saitoti ruled it foul play right away…Detractors were trying to create the impression that suicide thing was from top leadership…
When I got time I will properly edit this entry and it is going to head to multiple locations.
=>This reads lika a rambling rant and indeed it is a 100% rant…
Point number 1: The very person who started this tale…Barrack Mbajah…a strong suspect in Ouko’s death!
This Bush-Ouko meeting thing from that note is highly convenient and sounds extremely fantastic if nominally supranatural… and it injects a staggering quantity of vacillation junctures to be untangled by any corporeal beings beaming with sentience that the holistic emergent tale might end up as a monster dreamt up by no lesser than Captain Kirk himself!..even more so than the other theories in circulation…the sheer number of entities that would be requisite to have synchronized to fit this tale is almost exclusively reserved for the “prescience of hindsight”-DOCTORING!
Those exchanges in my mind appear very far from irrefutable proof…this tale wrecks pungently of spin…
To get all the elements temporally and factually consistent without a miracle s perhaps the kind of mission only the supernatural likes of Angel Gabriel would be able to pull of that that rather tenuously. There is this one rubbish word that is coined for use by US kids for something complicated…akin to yadi yadi yada kind of inflection and is I believe an entry in Webster:
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
This sounds like the personnification of that very word…
Ok where do we start:
So Bush knows some white house officials, makes a phone call that triggers a secret meeting with Bush behind Moi’s back. Key word here is discretion but a photo Op is done at the entrance to White House?
Ouko for one would be damn to underestimate the sheer level of risk this kind of thing might pose for him. Perhaps we might cut about 2% slack from Ouko to assume he wasn’t aware of the Photo Op. If he indeed he was, then he is extremely eccentric or equally if not more flat out stupid! Hey guys I am Ouko and I am cool as hell that US President would invite me without my President’s knowledge with no invites for my President either…here I am say cheese…???
Secret meeting, tailored for discretion, but has a photo op of Ouko and Bush being introduced? If the White House found it prudent enough to organize the meeting behind Moi’s back sanitized it from the diaries…but left a record for whose consumption? Black mail? Dark Ops? I’m very sure US Intell was very much aware of the nature of Moi’s regime, yet they would proceed to set up Ouko nonetheless… Bush was a previous CIA Director for pits sake and understood darkness fully, and beihng such a good friend of Ouko that he would nonetheless set him up? In intel such Photo Ops are countermeasures for potential future leverage…
If it was no big deal the meeting wouldn’t be hidden.
The PHOTO
Has the photo been seen and authenticated outside of Ouko family and associates and the White House Correspondents for authenticity?
answer is likely No…its more of a rhetoric question.
It is simply too highly convenient, the picture is well kept, with a crucial element missing–Timestaps removed/absent
If the meeting was being “hidden from Moi” how does Moi learn about it so fast? CounterIntel?
The whole entrourage on the Washington Trip…the better part of perhaps 80 something…synchronously failed to perceive a row? Or they were all mortified of Biwott and telepathically appear to have transposed accounts… virtually identical flows to not invite the fury that sent Ouko to his grave?
Ouko is making entries in his journal of a very successful trip. Is he oblivious of the Row that was described as literally blood curdling…maybe we gave Ouko too much credit as far as intellectual capability…that kind of journal entry in the face of an “effectlively fatal fallout”…and he is still happy go lucky? Ouko had to have been better than the implication here.
OK. Entourage is back in Nairobi. So within that one week all of Ouko’s enemies and potential enemies have been synched up for Ouko’s imminent downfall in no more than 8 day to spare…Hezekiah Oyugi,Jonah Anguka…Barrack Mbajah…Joab Omino…etc etc…And Jonah Anguka seems to had been given a whole barrel of that Popeye Spinach for his wonderful feats of omnipresence and omniscience…BTW in the Jonah Anguka fall guy story…Jonah Anguka must indeed have been very naive and stupid to do all that he did…but one piece of evidence suggesting things WERE DEFINITELY NOT that synchronized is the simple observation that by Troon’s Final Report …Jonah Anguka hadn’t been touched at all…it was from Troon’s notes that they then followed up…so we are to accept the proposal well they would have come back to Anguka anyway yadi yadi yada which sounds rather implausible…or will we say the conspiracy was so convoluted Troon was part of it?? How did Jonah Anguka end up being part of the plot assuming an executive order? Money? Retribution? He knew some stuff about Ouko mainstream didn’t? Like they got the vibe he suspected Ouko was on minji things with the wife and ceased the opportunity or? … In fact Jonah Anguka’s actions are more indicative of someone who literally had an Ax To Grind…his sheer persistence and blatant self-incrimination…so what would the tale be? His benefit from Ouko’s liquidation? Or is it merely the case that they looked at Anguka, saw his wife’s position, blank blank blank action to have him in that plot? These entries look senseless but to fit that conspiracy from the very top all these questions have to be accounted for…And that was just on Jonah Anguka…There is probably a district worth of people and activities more to synchronize events to fit this tale!..In the world of burden of proof…The burden is hopelessly gargantuan proportionally.
Ouko given time off to “set him up”…By this point Ouko should probably be very mortified…and first thing he does is give time off to his driver and bodyguard? They were not withdrawn by anyone else. We might cut some slack and say the plan was dynamic and adaptable to evolve and with armaggedon modulated by Ouko’s activities…
So Ouko confides in Dorothy Randiak and leaves his wife in the dark…unless Mrs. Ouko was giving “moderated testimony”…
Mrs. Ouko speaks out about Ouko’s murder few years ago after very long silence. Bottomline she still wants the husbands killers to be found and that she has forgiven them. There is a strong implication here that Ouko was side stepping her on his quagmires while extensively confiding in the sister at depth Coz she spelt it out clearly just a few years ago that there was nothing suspicious with the husband apart from the family row and that as we all know was very real and deadly…so Ouko confided in her on the family row but neglected that fatal political one he was right in the middle of?..Well maybe…who knows with marriage? That If she knew of the Ouko/Biwott/Moi row… as is suggested by her casual mention of the photo…she is effectively lying to the face of the public about her curiosity for justice? Would it not be absolutely a certainty to her an executive order was by necessity used to wipe the husband out or is she engaged in self-deception? So Mrs. Ouko was essentially bullshitting Kenyans by speaking out because honestly there is no other inference that can otherwise be made? Reality indicates clear evidence of disturbances Ouko felt about the famiuly row, and relayed generously to the wife…while the political tsunami there appears to be null and void …so what is going on? Who is misleading who?
THE AMERICANS
So Ouko and Moi leave Washington from a farily eventful visit yadi yada…and one week later NEWS OF OUKO BREAKS…and the US diplomatic officials are oblivious of that fact resonated worldwide?? The stuff about the Bush Meeting was literally an International Story…So they don’t know about it, they have transluscent evidence of the meeting (With the dubious photos) and they remain CLUELESS through ommission or ignorance? let’s say "retain a sanitized reputation. That is an eggregious affront to anyone claiming to harbor common sensibilities unless common sensibilities are extinct!..
There is 0% doubt CIA didn’t have extensive cable traffic about the events surrounding Ouko’s death …they do compile information on almost all key events that happen in almost all parts of the world…THE EMPIRE…
A HUGE part of the case directly related to their government…and needless to reiterate Bush as Ex-CIA Director…and firmly with this knowledge and knowing that it is probably in their best interest the story is “hushed” coz it reflects very poorly on US…keep in mind that the US officially EMPHATICALLY denied any meeting between Ouko and Bush…but they happened to have slipoped up and mailed evidence of the same to no lesser than Ouko’s family? What are they? Retarded Morons? .It can NOT be stated their diplomatic officials(Read the LATENT ESPIONAGE branch). are precisely trained in interpretation of such events so they would fully appreciate the importatnce to keep a clean slate, while being averse to self-incrimination…but they go ahead and send proof of the meeting to Ouko’s family? Goal of that? Memorabilia of the fallen Ouko? Guilt conscience? Gratuitous malice?
Wow I was just floored by this tale…its a huge migraine to fathom the enormity of it…
I will clean this up later…and spin off a whole new thread on this very issue after I do more research…hope the 2 people who read through enjoyed the entropic gibberish in this rant in the meantime…