Tom Perriello could not stop it. Also, André Kapanga. Despite urgent emails, phone calls and personal pleas, they watched as a company backed by the Chinese government took ownership from the Americans of one of the world's largest cobalt mines.
The site, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was to be sold by the Arizona-based mining giant to China, which now controls the global supply of the metal. The metal is an essential raw material for the production of electric car batteries, and is now critical to retiring the combustion engine and leaving the world off climate-changing fossil fuels.
Mr. Perriello was a top U.S. diplomat in Africa at the time. Mr. Kapanga, the mine's general manager, begged the American ambassador to intervene.
The Americans were wasting generations of relationship building in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the source of more than two-thirds of the world's cobalt.
Eisenhower sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the nation. The relationship was maintained by the State Department under Hillary Clinton. Before it sold the mine to a Chinese company, the company had invested billions of its own.
During the final months of the Obama administration, the Chinese purchase of the mine, known as Tenke Fungurume, went through without a hitch, as did the purchase of an even more impressive reserve by the same Chinese company. China Molybdenum was the buyer.
China has a plan to dominate the auto industry in the United States and other countries and it is part of a disciplined approach.
An investigation by The New York Times revealed a hidden history of the United States surrendering resources to China in order to invest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The politics of the clean energy revolution have shifted due to the fact that countries rich in nickel,cobalt, and other raw materials used for batteries are suddenly playing the role of oil giants.
President Barack Obama was consumed with Afghanistan and the Islamic State while President Donald J. Trump was committed to fossil fuels and the electoral forces behind them. It had roots in the end of the Cold War according to previously classified documents and interviews with senior officials in the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.
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There is a mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The country produces more than two-thirds of the world's cobalt, a key ingredient in electric vehicles.
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A worker is at the Kisanfu mine. It was once owned by an American company.
The United States was worried that the Soviet Union would gain control of the materials used in defense manufacturing. Securing U.S. interests was a topic of presidential concern and involved extensive interventions by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The documents and interviews show that the Democratic and Republican administrations slashed generous financial aid that had helped American companies do business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The United States focused on human rights and good-governance issues in Africa. The War on Terror became a global preoccupation after 2001.
Mr. Perriello said he learned of the plan to sell Tenke Fungurume after visiting the mine. Mr. Perriello was skeptical of the owner's operations in other countries.
He believed that American ownership was good for the people of the country. Thousands of people were employed by the company and it provided fresh drinking water and health care clinics.
What can we do? Mr. Perriello asked Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who was then an assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Africa, about keeping the mine under American control. Mr. Perriello said he raised the issue with the National Security Council. A spokeswoman for Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said she remembered the sale of the mine but not the conversation with Mr. Perriello.
The consequences of standing by were clear, as Chinese companies were the only serious bidders. Kathleen L. Quirk said that they were able to move quicker than anyone else. We got the deal done.
The company was determined to sell. The company, one of the world's largest copper-mining outfits, made a terrible bet on the oil and gas industry just before oil prices tanked and the world began to shift to renewable energy. The company had no choice but to sell its operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Tom Perriello was a top US diplomat in Africa.
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The former general manager of the Tenke Fungurume mine was named.
The American response was nothing more than a straight financial transaction. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States reviews overseas investments in American companies for national security risks, but there is no oversight of transactions by American companies abroad.
According to previously unreported documents and emails and interviews with diplomats, mining executives, government officials and others in China, the crisis was just the kind of opportunity the Chinese government thrives on.
As the clean energy transition has accelerated, the U.S. government and the private sector have moved more rapidly to recover from past mistakes.
Chinese efforts to take over resources critical to a green future, including cobalt, are far short.
Mr. Perriello said that the State and Commerce Departments were helping U.S. businesses abroad. That is not a strategy.
A tool kit of options would have been required for a strategy to keep the mine in Western hands.
Congress and the Biden administration are working on that.
Tax incentives for buyers of electric vehicles and funding for charging stations were included in a bill that passed the House last week. The bipartisan legislation passed by the Senate in June would funnel nearly a quarter-trillion dollars into research and development to compete with China, but it wouldn't address supply-chain threats like the sale of the Congo mines.
The United States has been hurt by the lack of a formal industrial policy for minerals and metals.
The U.S. is not organized like China is to approach this in a systematic way, according to an assistant secretary of state during the Trump administration. Those of us who really see the potential of Africa are frustrated by that.
Mr. Biden wants to make electric vehicles a central pillar of his climate change agenda. Mr. Biden said that China was going to change its position in the race.
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President Richard Nixon was with President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire in 1970.
One morning in August 1970, Nixon stood outside the White House with the first lady, who was holding an enormous bouquet of roses. President Mobutu Sese Seko was going to visit.
It had been a decade since the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo from Belgium, and Mobutu was the leader of a country with abundant natural resources.
He was a key player in the United States' efforts to keep the Soviet Union out of Africa.
Since World War II, access to minerals and metals has been a top priority for the United States. In 1939 Albert Einstein wrote to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, urging him to store the first atomic bombs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The United States only has very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities, according to Mr. Einstein.
The United States has very poor ores of the radioactive substance. The most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo, while there are some good resources in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia.
The ores from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are prized for their purity. Most active mines in the world contain less copper and more cobalt than waste piles from old mines.
The C.I.A. covertly bankrolled a small army of mercenaries and Congolese troops in the mid-1960s. The agency ran missions with the help of the U.S.
The secretary of state warned Nixon that the Soviet Union would be the wave of the future if Zaire went.
Coffee, cocoa, chrome, iron Ore, diamonds, and many other products come from Africa, and the figures are higher for our European allies.
Corporate America saw the U.S. intervention as an opportunity to make money. Multinational companies set up manufacturing outposts or offices in the country. Pan Am built one of the first luxury hotels in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1971 with financial support from the U.S. government.
Mobutu, a charismatic former army sergeant who would become a corrupt, luxury-loving dictator, saw the Americans as an ideal partner in his bid to grow the country's mining wealth.
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President Mobutu ruled until he was ousted three decades later.
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Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, left, and Mobutu, right, met in 1976.
According to a series of now declassified cables, he reached out to a New York diamond merchant named Maurice Tempelsman to discuss giving him mining rights in the area.
In August 1970, Mobutu made a surprise announcement that he had decided to contract a Belgian company to develop the mine. Washington was in crisis mode as it tried to wrestle back the concession.
Nixon told his administration to give Mobutu whatever he wanted, according to Herman J. Cohen.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid had already been sent to Mobutu. Nixon agreed to give Mobutu several giant C-130 transport planes, including one that would later be loaded with Coca-Cola, at Mobutu's insistence. The pilot seats on the presidential plane were lined with leopard skin.
The Department of Defense will have to give me a letter of authorization by 9:00 tomorrow morning. Mobutu said five times, "Je suis prepar acheter."
The United States committed $130 million in loan guarantees and other financing to help develop Tenke Fungurume. The project that cost more than $800 million brought electricity to the remote area.
Mr. Cohen said that the campaign reached a tipping point at a black-tie dinner for Mobutu.
Mr. Tempelsman took Mobutu for a ride on a boat. There was speculation about what the two men had discussed after word came that the Americans were getting the mining concession.
The World Bank official wrote that no one would dare to say what personal profits General Mobutu made out of the deal concluded with Mr. Tempelsman.
The United States won the international competition at the moment.
The Belgians were acting a little childish over the fact that they were beaten.
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The Tenke Fungurume mine produces twice as much of the metal as any other country in the world.
A mining engineer from New York City climbed into a Toyota Land cruiser in southeastern Congo to visit Tenke Fungurume. It was an abandoned construction site that had a reputation for being rich.
Mr. Mollison was amazed. There were bald spots where copper and cobalt poked through the surface. The grass was killed off by the concentrated metals.
The Ore was 10 times more rich than what we were mining in Arizona. It was amazing.
There were also ruins from decades ago, such as the concrete foundation for an Ore crushing plant and the employee golf course.
The Tempelsman group had left a trail of destruction in the late 1990s, and a new wave of mining executives had arrived to pick up the pieces.
The group pulled out when it ran into a number of obstacles, including anti-government rebels who shut down a railroad needed to ship the copper and cobalt to the sea.
In January 1976, Mr. Kissinger helped craft a cable to apologize to the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, explaining that the United States regrettedmothballing the project.
After Mobutu was overthrown, interest came back. The leader of the rebel group, known as the Kabila group, used the land near Tenke and Fungurume to launch his insurgency.
Mr. Mollison said that everyone thought that this was the grand reopening of the country.
Western mining executives and their Wall Street bankers arrived in the rebel region by charter planes to find armed teenagers using rubber stamps with Disney characters to process their passports.
The investors gathered on the terrace of a hotel that had been covered in green slime as Mr. Kabila's representatives secured financial commitments for mining access. A memo written by a bank teller summed up Mr. Kabila's perspective: "Rules of the game: you give and I give."
Lundin Group agreed to give the rebels $50 million in order to seal a deal. An adviser to Mr. Kabila told reporters that the cash would be used to buy weapons for the rebels.
Mr. Tempelsman had started at Tenke Fungurume and Mr. Mollison was going to evaluate if his company should partner with Lundin. The biggest private investment in the country was announced by the company.
What is this place going to need? Mr. Mollison wondered. Electric power. Lots of it. There are roads. There is a lot of water. How difficult will it be to operate in a place like this?
Lundin got 24.75 percent of the mine, while Freeport-McMoRan got 58.25 percent. The state mining enterprise in the country kept a large amount of money.
After another civil war in the country, the project got started. It took an entire day to drive 100 miles from the nearest major city to the mine. The executives used airplanes to commute.
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The school was built by the American mining company as part of a social responsibility program.
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The central market in Fungurume was built by the company that sold its mining sites in the country.
There was a building spree. It helped build a highway that would allow copper and cobalt to be exported. The company spent $215 million to make sure it had enough power.
Pierrot Kitobo Sambisaya worked as a metallurgist at the mine for a decade. I call it American style.
Concerns that the mine wouldn't benefit the Congolese were sensitive to, and that's why they drilled wells to provide water to 64 villages, built schools to serve more than 12,000 students, and constructed a town called Fungurume. They paid for a brickmaking business, an anti-malaria project and a series of gardens to preserve rare plants that were being destroyed by activity at the mine.
The Obama-era special envoy to the region, Mr. Perriello, said that the training of the workers was not just for menial tasks but for advanced degrees. He began to question his view of the large mine in Indonesia, which had drawn international protest for harm to the environment and had local residents clashing with it.
Conflicts are still emerging. The entire villages of Amoni, Kiboko and Mulumbu were leveled to make room for the mining complex. Security forces fought with protesters who were ejected from the land.
This part of the country had never seen a private-sector project of this size.
The company developed one of the most modern and productive mines in the world, and before long, the company was being pressured by the government to give it a bigger share of the profits.
The company turned to the U.S. government to help push back, and the State Department dispatched the American ambassador to the mine.
The ambassador told the officials that the company had a long-term vision of its operations in the country.
The country agreed to increase its ownership stake to 20 percent from 17 percent.
In signing off on the new arrangement in 2010, Richard Adkerson, the company's chief executive, said the company was committed to continuing its positive partnership with the Congolese for decades to come.
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There was a drilling hole made years ago near the Kisanfu site.
When oil prices fell, the company found itself in debt. Hundreds of workers were laid off when the company shut down the offshore oil rigs. The oil and gas division was losing money and it fired the president and other top executives.
Mr. Adkerson liked to tell a story about how he made a bad snap on his high school football team in Mississippi and they lost a big game.
He had done it again. The game needed a last-second pass to stay alive.
Mr. Adkerson told Wall Street analysts in May 2016 that it was hard to sell Tenke Fungurume.
China was the only bidder that wanted all of the company's stake. Chinese mining companies had been waiting for this kind of opportunity and were backed by billions of dollars in government loans.
China Molybdenum offered a total of $2.65 billion. Mr. Adkerson said that the company had the money and it allowed them to move quickly.
The general manager at the mine, Mr. Kapanga, had worked as a presidential adviser and diplomat. He called the American ambassador.
Mr. Kapanga told Mr. Swan that the United States was letting go of its biggest private investment in the country. When contacted by The Times, Mr. Swan refused to speak.
In Washington, the Obama administration was aware of how dependent the Americans were on overseas sources and how important it was to the global economy.
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The Tenke Fungurume mine was sold by Richard Adkerson, the chief executive of the company.
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A portrait of Joseph Kabila, the former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Top scientists and officials in seven federal agencies spent two years interviewing industry experts, academics and researchers to identify essential raw materials that were vulnerable to shortages or interruption.
A White House report said that Cobalt was one of the most worrisome. The demand for it was growing because of its use. Domestic supply was not significant. The report pointed out that China was starting to corner the market and that most of the cobalt was mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
There is a growing demand for clean energy metals and minerals.
Demand is expected to double by the year 2040. If countries meet their goals under the Paris Agreement, it could triple. The projected growth by sector is shown in the chart.
In millions of metric tons.
It's compatible with Paris.
scenario
There are electric vehicles and battery storage.
There is a growing demand for clean energy metals and minerals.
Demand is expected to double by the year 2040. If countries meet their goals under the Paris Agreement, it could triple. The projected growth by sector is shown in the chart.
The vehicles are electric.
There is battery storage.
Paris-
compatible
scenario
There is a growing demand for energy transition minerals.
The demand for minerals is expected to double by the year 2040. If countries meet their goals under the Paris Agreement, it could triple.
The vehicles are electric.
There is battery storage.
Paris-
compatible
scenario
The Paris-compatible scenario assumes countries meet their emissions-reduction goals under the Paris Agreement in full, including net-zero targets as of mid-2020. It also assumes that countries meet other UN goals.
By The New York Times.
The group was concerned about China's trade-distorting export restrictions on metals and minerals and wanted to add cobalt to a list of critical minerals.
The White House decided to create an early warning system to make sure the United States was aware of threats to this supply.
No one in Washington seemed to be listening to the alarms.
Rick Gittleman, a mining executive and lawyer who had worked at Freeport-McMoRan in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, notified Gen. James L. Jones Jr., who had left the Obama administration as a national security adviser.
He was not moved. Mr. Gittleman said there was no one who would be interested in that. The general told The Times about it.
The American diplomats in the country focused on trying to get President Kabila to step down. After his father was killed in 2001, he took over and spent the next 15 years plundering the public treasury.
Mr. Perriello was seated next to an executive of the company that had announced the sale. He asked if there was anything the American government could do.
Mr. Perriello said that there was a single-minded determination to close the deal. The company's executives acknowledged that the company was not focused on the consequences of its choice.
Mr. Perriello said that they don't currently have a way to handle that discrepancy.
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The sale of Kisanfu was one of two major deals in recent years that marked a changing of the guard in the country as the U.S. abandoned its mining interests there.
The sale of Tenke Fungurume happened a few weeks after Donald Trump was elected president. Outside of the financial news media, it drew little attention.
Early in his administration, Mr. Trump said that he might focus on challenging China's efforts to dominate mineral supplies. The administration issued reports on the potential for supply shortfalls and the Tenke Fungurume sale.
The Obama administration proposed a list of metals and minerals that were deemed critical to the nation's security and economic prosperity.
History repeated itself.
One of the world's most important undiscovered sources of cobalt was still owned by the company that is now known as Freeport-McMoRan, according to the Trump administration's document listing the element as a critical resource.
The company indicated late last year that it intended to sell Kisanfu, but there was no response from the U.S. government.
State Department and Commerce officials said there was no high-level discussion about it.
Nazak Nikakhtar was the Commerce Department assistant secretary in charge of tracking critical mineral supplies. It is terrible. This is really unfortunate.
The sale to China Molybdenum was announced a month before Mr. Trump left office. The last major U.S. investment in the country was done with it.
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The Kisanfu concession is one of the largest unexplored reserves in the world.
Dionne Searcey reported from Washington. Michael was in New York.
