America's Great Game (3 page)
Read America's Great Game Online
Authors: Hugh Wilford
The second surprise came as I began delving into the subject. Contrary to what I expected, given the CIA’s actions in Iran and diabolical reputation throughout much of the Arab world, the individuals responsible for the first US covert operations in the region were, I discovered, personally very sympathetic toward Arabs and Muslims. Indeed, Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt who headed the Agency’s Middle East division in its early years and commanded the 1953 operation in Iran, was a friend and supporter of the leading Arab nationalist of the day, Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Even more surprising, Roosevelt arranged secret CIA funding for an effort within the United States to foster American appreciation for Arab society and culture, and to counteract the pro-Israel influence of US Zionists on American foreign policy regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. In doing so, he was giving expression to a strong “Arabist” impulse in the early history of the CIA that was traceable to its predecessor organization, the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Particularly
influential in this regard was a group of Middle East–born OSS officers who, during the 1940s, had worked secretly to bring the United States and the Arab states closer together and to head off the partition of Palestine. Descended from nineteenth-century American missionaries in the Arab world, these men were anti-Zionist less because of any inherent prejudice against Jews and more because of a fierce—in some cases almost mystical—belief in the overriding importance of American-Arab, and Christian-Muslim, relations. I soon realized that writing a history of the CIA in the Cold War Middle East would involve reconstructing this now lost world of secret American Arabism.
It would also mean having to answer an obvious question: What changed? Why did the CIA go from being sympathetic toward Arabs and Muslims to being seen as their adversary? Certain factors long recognized as affecting US–Middle Eastern relations in general were clearly part of the explanation. There was the influence of the Cold War and the resulting tendency of such US officials as Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, to resort to covert operations in order to eliminate nationalist leaders perceived (usually incorrectly) as vulnerable to communist takeover. Washington’s determination to preserve Western access to Middle Eastern oil inevitably placed it at odds with local nationalists, who, after more than a century of French and British imperialism in the region, were equally determined to cast off Western influence, including meddling by secret agents. So too, of course, did growing US support for Israel, a phenomenon partly caused by the rise within the United States of the so-called Israel Lobby and the relative decline in power of the Anglo-American elites from whose ranks the CIA Arabists were overwhelmingly drawn. Finally, various third parties—including Arab conservatives who felt threatened by the nationalist movement and officials representing the old European powers in the Arab world, especially the British—proved adept at luring the United States into defending the region’s established imperial order, again to the detriment of friendly American relations with nationalists like Nasser.
All of these elements clearly contributed to the eventual eclipse of CIA Arabism and will therefore receive due attention in the narrative that follows. As I researched the subject, however, I became increasingly conscious of another set of pressures acting on Kim Roosevelt and his colleagues that had less to do with grand geopolitical and strategic considerations than with more individual, personal concerns. Like many senior CIA officers of their generation, Kim and his cousin Archie Roosevelt,
another chief of the Agency’s Middle East division in the early years of the Cold War, had been raised and educated in an elite environment that conditioned them, long before they ever directly experienced the region itself, to look upon the Middle East much as the British imperial agents of an earlier generation had: as a place for heroic individual adventure, where a handful of brave and resourceful Western spies could control the fate of nations. To a certain extent, this legacy of spy games and kingmaking was offset by the American missionary tradition conveyed to the early CIA by the OSS, which tended to emphasize instead the moral values of Arab self-determination and mutual cultural exchange. However, the adventurist tendency was also reinforced by the presence in the early CIA’s Middle East division of another distinct social type best exemplified by the southerner Miles Copeland: bright, ambitious young men from nonelite backgrounds who had gotten into the CIA thanks to the opportunities for social mobility opened up by World War II (usually via the Counter Intelligence Corps rather than the more aristocratic OSS) and who, while not possessing the same social origins as the Roosevelt cousins, did share their appetite for game playing. The story of CIA involvement in the Arab world during the early years of the Cold War is therefore, in part at least, one of an internal struggle between two contradictory influences: the British imperial legacy and the American missionary tradition. If the latter, more moralistic, idealistic impulse shaped the Agency’s earlier operations, it was the former—comparatively pragmatic, realistic, even cynical—that eventually came to dominate, with the Iran coup acting as a sort of tipping point.
My interest in these personal and sociocultural factors was prompted by several considerations. The academic field of American diplomatic history has recently followed the example of other historical subdisciplines by taking a “cultural turn,” and even an “emotional turn,” exploring the effect on US foreign policy of a range of issues not usually associated with the supposedly rational, hardheaded business of diplomacy.
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Second, I believe strongly that biography or group biography—foregrounding individuals and trying to depict their social and emotional lives in all their complexity—makes for a particularly rich and rewarding kind of historical writing.
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Finally, and most important, the evidence seemed to me to require such an approach. The playing of games, whether it was an American version of Britain’s “Great Game,” or the clash of personal wills that eventually arose between Kim Roosevelt and Gamal Nasser, or Miles Copeland’s abiding interest in game theory, was not merely a
metaphor. It was a crucial historical determinant in the formation and eventual demise of CIA Arabism.
LIKE MOST HISTORIANS WHO WRITE
about the history of the CIA, I have largely had to make do without access to the relevant Agency records, the great majority of which either have been destroyed or remain classified (although I was granted sight of the personnel files of Kim and Archie Roosevelt and of Miles Copeland). Fortunately, other official records available to researchers at the US National Archives and presidential libraries, especially those of the State Department, proved surprisingly revealing of US covert operations in the early Cold War era, while British government files in London helped illuminate joint Anglo-American undertakings. Moreover, many of the individuals concerned have left private collections of papers that, while not necessarily disclosing a great deal about their professional lives, provide extensive documentation of their personal attitudes and emotions. One area of CIA operation that
is
well documented in the archives is the program of the domestic Arabist, anti-Zionist citizen network covertly funded by Kim Roosevelt; it is described in detail here for the first time. Then there is the large corpus of published memoirs by CIA Arabists. Admittedly, these accounts present problems as historical sources, and I have been cautious in my use of them, cross-checking factual claims against other records and indicating where any doubts as to their reliability remain. Still, read less as transparent primary sources than as constructed literary texts, they constitute an invaluable, and in my view hitherto underused, body of evidence. Fiction is another important medium for understanding the CIA Arabists, whose perceptions and actions (including, I will argue, some of the major covert operations of the period) were strongly influenced by the adventure stories of a previous generation and who themselves inspired fictional portrayals by other writers. Finally, while the principal intelligence officers portrayed in the pages that follow are sadly all deceased, oral history interviews and personal correspondence with surviving family members, friends, and colleagues provide important insights into their personalities as well as the social and cultural worlds in which they moved.
Specific references to all these sources may be found in the notes at the end of the text.
OVER THE LONG COURSE OF
this project, I have incurred a number of debts of gratitude. I wish to thank the following for responding to my inquiries and sharing their memories with me in interviews and in writing: Lennie Copeland, Lorraine Copeland (who was especially helpful, and who passed away just as this book was going into production), Miles Copeland III, Graham Crippin, Lorraine Nye Eliot, Patrice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Ed Kane, James Noyes, Orin Parker, Jonathan Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt III, Selwa “Lucky” Roosevelt, and Anne Eichelberger Tazewell. So many friends and colleagues have provided expert advice, sources, letters of support, or simple encouragement along the way that I am in danger of forgetting names, but here are some I do remember: Richard Aldrich, Robert Amman, Nigel Ashton, Joe Ayella, David Blank, Nathan Citino, Robert Cook, Jerry Davis, Robert Dreyfuss, Mark Gasiorowski, Peter Hahn, Ann Heiss, Ali İğmen, Andy Jenks, Ian Johnson, Matthew Jones, Tim Keirn, Charles Stuart Kennedy, Matthew Kohlstedt, Arlene Lazarowitz, Nelson Lichtenstein, Eileen Luhr, Melani McAlister, Dan Morgenstern, John Palfrey, David Robarge, George Robb, Eugene Rogan, Emily Rosenberg, Dominic Sandbrook, Tony Shaw, R. Harris Smith, Sean Smith, Bill Streifer, Michael Thornhill, Steven Wagner, Jim Wallace, Michael Warner, Patrick White, and Jim Wolf. Amer Ghazal made some excellent translations of Arabic sources, and Houri Berberian gave invaluable advice about the transliteration of Arabic and Persian names. Brandon High, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Scott Lucas, and again Houri Berberian all went above and beyond the call of collegiality and friendship in agreeing to read the manuscript and provide feedback. Roland Popp and Salim Yaqub distinguished themselves with the generosity of their assistance during the research phase of this project and the thoroughness and insightfulness of their commentaries on the manuscript.
Family on both sides of the Atlantic provided hospitality as I trawled the archives: Carol Cleary-Schultz, Jeff Schultz, and their lovely daughters, Kelly and Keira; my mother, Jan Wilford; David and Cath Wilford; and Peter and Gilly Wilford (and my thanks also go to my polymath brother Peter for his comments on earlier drafts). At Groton, Tom Lamont put me up for the night and took time out from his busy day to show me around the school. In Washington, DC, Kim Kluge and Kathryn Vassar were gracious hosts, as were Steve and Anne Scobie in London. Later on in a sometimes grueling writing process, Kitty,
Larry, Meghan, and Allison Adamovic all lent a sympathetic ear and first-class child care. Brian Cleary and Shannon Foss were a constant source of expert and cheerful computing support.
My employer, California State University, Long Beach, granted me several assigned time and mini-grant awards as well as difference-in-pay leave in 2010–2011; I am hugely grateful for this ongoing support, not least as it came at a time of crippling financial crisis in California’s public higher education system. I particularly wish to acknowledge the heroic efforts of my outgoing dean, Gerry Riposa, and department chair, Nancy Quam-Wickham, to protect the research agendas of their liberal arts colleagues. The Friends of Princeton University Library awarded me a generous grant to enable me to consult the manuscript collections of the Mudd Library in 2009, and I greatly appreciated the warm welcome offered me there by Andrea Immel, Dan Linke, and Linda Oliveira. Archivists and librarians at a host of other institutions have also given crucial assistance along the way; particular thanks go to my library colleagues at CSULB, who have processed a mountain of my book requests through LinkPlus, an interlibrary lending system whose continued existence is essential to research such as my own.
My literary agents, Felicity Bryan and George Lucas, did a great job of placing my proposal with Basic Books and gave marvelously prompt and wise advice throughout the book’s gestation. At Basic, Lara Heimert edited my manuscript with a remarkable combination of skill, energy, and good humor. Her assistant, Katy O’Donnell, was a model of friendly, efficient support. Roger Labrie provided many helpful editorial suggestions later on. Project editor Rachel King and copyeditor Beth Wright of Trio Bookworks expertly shepherded the manuscript through the final stages of production.
My biggest debt, though, is to my wife and fellow historian, Patricia Cleary, who has had to endure several years of my pulling twelve-hour days and six-day weeks, not to mention incessant mealtime talk about the antics of my new imaginary friends, “Miles,” “Kim,” and “Archie.” Despite all this, she had the good grace to read several drafts of the resulting manuscript and provide her customarily invaluable feedback, including translation of unwitting lapses into UK English. She is my intellectual as well as emotional helpmate, and my debt to and love for her go on and on.
This book is dedicated to our baby boy, Jonathan Cleary Owain Wilford, in the hope that one day he might share his parents’ love of history. He already likes playing games.
