This paper tracks the circulation of a group of US imperial administrators—and the stories told about them—between the Congo, Southeast Asia, and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 1960s and 70s. At the dawn of 1974, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s choice for the new US ambassador to Lebanon prompted anxiety across the political spectrum in Lebanon. The popular Beirut political weekly al-Usbūʿa al-ʿArabī broke the story of George McMurtrie Godley’s appointment to Lebanon on New Year’s Eve. Godley’s diplomatic CV was weighted with experience in counterinsurgency warfare. As ambassador to the Congo after the assassination of Lumumba, he managed the undeclared US war that assisted Mobutu’s rise to power in 1965. Building on this experience, he served as ambassador to Laos, where he directed the “secret war” between 1969–73. This record drew deep suspicion even from within Washington. In July 1973, Godley earned the dubious honor of being the first ever presidential nomination for a key foreign policy post to be rejected by the US Senate, a result Kissinger called “a God damned disgrace.” Was Lebanon his consolation prize? One year later, Lebanon was ripped asunder in a war that would last fifteen years. Moving beyond comparison, this paper connects the histories of these disparate sites of revolutionary struggle by uncovering a network I call Kissinger’s “Congo Men.” I show how techniques of imperial pacification of revolutionary movements using minority or identity-based militias moved from colony to colony and evolved over time. In doing so, it considers the intersections of race, religion, and identity with counterrevolutionary politics at the frontiers of US empire.