America's Great Game (40 page)

The final piece in the GAMMA jigsaw was Kim Roosevelt’s domestic state-private network. The deteriorating US position in the Middle
East and, in particular, the September 1955 arms deal had, it seems, produced a bout of introspection in the American Friends of the Middle East. “AFME Takes a New Look,” announced the organization’s 1955–56 annual report, echoing the famous phrase adopted by the Eisenhower administration to describe its high-tech, low-cost strategy for waging the Cold War. “Should we continue as before, believing that the kind of human relations program we had built up for four years would, in the long run, meet the needs we wished to serve?” asked the report, summarizing the policy choices that now faced the organization. Or “should we scrap our basic program and expend all our energies in a frontal attack on those who were subverting America’s interests in the Middle East?” In the end, the AFME board decided to soft-pedal on its Arabist, cultural diplomacy mission in the Middle East for the time being and adopt “a more positive approach” to the task of “combating special interests’ propaganda”—in other words, to ramp up its anti-Zionist campaign within the United States.
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This new militancy, which coincided precisely with the CIA’s assumption of responsibility for the implementation of the Eisenhower peace plan, found its most outspoken exponent in Garland Evans Hopkins. Returning home from a three-and-a-half-month tour of the Middle East in October 1955, Hopkins told a New York press conference that “it was the ‘height of cynicism’ to criticize Egypt for buying Communist weapons while saying nothing about alleged Israeli arms purchases from both Western and Iron Curtain countries.” He went on to predict “a wave of anti-Semitism in this country” if Zionist pressures continued to jeopardize “America’s best interests” in the Middle East. Following Hopkins’s example, in early January 1956, Mather Eliot, just returned from Syria for his annual consultation at AFME headquarters, convened another press conference and, specifically addressing the prospects for an Arab-Israeli settlement, stated his belief “that what chances existed for peace in the Near East would have to be based on substantial concessions by Israel.” Like Elmer Berger before them, both Hopkins and Eliot also made a point of seeking meetings with State Department officials, ostensibly to pass on their firsthand impressions of the Middle East but in fact to urge the adoption of a more pro-Arab, anti-Zionist US foreign policy. Eliot (lest it be forgotten, not just a member of Kim Roosevelt’s state-private network but himself a CIA officer) was “in Washington for a week, ‘lobbying’ with members of Congress, labor officials, newspaper men and others.” In short, all evidence indicates that
the “New Look” taken by AFME in the winter of 1955–56 was closely linked to the new GAMMA peace initiative in the Middle East.
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With the main elements of GAMMA in place by the New Year, all the operation’s principal players had to do now was wait. Hank Byroade was at last informed about GAMMA on January 6. (“He seemed to take it all right,” Foster told Allen Dulles.) On January 11, Robert Anderson and Foster Dulles met with the president, who made clear his absolute confidence in his special envoy. “He is one of the most capable men I know,” Ike wrote in his diary that night. After a brief delay caused by a cabinet reshuffle in Cairo, the day of departure at last arrived. Boarding a flight to Cairo on January 15, 1956, the GAMMA team joined the growing line of hopeful American peacemakers in the Middle East.
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THE PROBLEMS STARTED ALMOST AS
soon as the plane touched down in Egypt. Mindful of the fate of Jordan’s King ‘Abdullah, gunned down in 1951 by a Palestinian who feared he was about to betray the Arab cause to the Israelis, Nasser demanded that the talks take place in absolute secrecy. The GAMMA team had already taken steps to conceal its mission, planning to shuttle Anderson between Cairo and Tel Aviv via Rome or Athens on disguised flights and to communicate with Washington in coded messages using CIA transmission channels. For his part, Nasser insisted on meeting only at night, so that he could be seen during the day carrying out his normal duties, and employed no support staff whatsoever—hardly ideal conditions for detailed negotiations. The only other Egyptians included in the talks were Interior Minister Zakaria Mohieddin and Director of the Prime Minister’s Office ‘Ali Sabri. Despite all these precautions, security lapses occurred. When the names of two non-CIA members of the GAMMA team, State Department experts on Palestine, appeared on the passenger list of a Pan Am flight from Rome, they were told not to board the plane and to await further orders. On another occasion, sources in New York and Washington informed some Cairo newspapers that the United States and Egypt were working toward a settlement with Israel. Nasser was furious.
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In addition to GAMMA’s security woes, it soon grew obvious that, despite his president’s faith in him, Robert Anderson was not particularly well-suited to the role of Arab-Israeli go-between. The first meeting between him and Nasser took place during the evening of Tuesday, January 17, in the Zamalek apartment of Zakaria Mohieddin. As usual
on these occasions, the atmosphere was cordial, with the Egyptian leader nodding amiably as the American envoy described his hopes for a settlement. As the meeting broke up, however, and Kim Roosevelt talked on his own with Nasser, it emerged that the prime minister had been nodding in bafflement rather than agreement. Anderson’s “Texas drawl was so thick that Nasser couldn’t understand a thing he said,” Kim explained later.
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At follow-up meetings between Anderson and Nasser, Kim acted as a kind of interpreter, “translating” the Texan’s utterances for the Egyptian (Roosevelt’s accent was closer to the upper-class English tones Nasser was used to hearing). The resulting discussions, combined with Anderson’s opening talks the following week in Tel Aviv, revealed the true gulf that still separated the Arabs and Israelis. Nasser wanted a return to the UN partition lines and Palestinian refugees offered a choice between repatriation or compensation; the Israelis were prepared to offer some restitution but refused to recognize a Palestinian right of return and rejected talk of territorial concessions except for some minor border readjustments. As ever, the main sticking point was the Negev, the contested desert region between Egypt and Israel whose acquisition by the Israelis following the 1948 war had severed land contact between African and Asiatic Arabs. According to Haikal, Nasser scornfully dismissed American proposals to solve the problem by building a two-level highway linking Egypt to Jordan. What, asked the Egyptian prime minister, if an Arab on the overpass decided to relieve himself on Israeli traffic using the lower level? Might this not lead to war? Anderson discovered that the two sides could not even agree on what form negotiations should take, with the Israelis demanding a promise of face-to-face talks, and Nasser arguing it would be suicidal for him to make such an undertaking. The Texan Methodist was starting to learn the limits of American goodwill.
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But there were some glimmers of hope, including a suggestion from Nasser that, rather than merely “working with a Presidential representative for a ‘few days,’” he lead an effort to create “a ‘Secret Committee’ of Egyptians and Americans” to discuss the Palestine conflict and other problems affecting the Middle East over a longer time period. The author of the CIA cable that reported this proposal—most likely Kim Roosevelt, judging by his obvious familiarity with the Egyptian leader and confident, assertive tone—endorsed this proposal enthusiastically. “We have a chance of solving the Palestine problem provided we are
able to give Nas[se]r the capability of doing so,” he told Washington. “If we are not able to work on this basis, . . . the Palestine problem will not be solved for many years to come.” Mindful of the approaching US elections, and fearing that Israel might try to launch a preemptive attack on Egypt before Nasser’s army had been able to absorb the Soviet arms, John Foster Dulles balked at the request for extra time. Nevertheless, on his return to Cairo at the end of January, Anderson did establish something that looked very like Nasser’s secret committee: a working group made up of his CIA associates and ‘Ali Sabri, tasked with agreeing on a package of negotiating points to put to the Israelis.
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Meanwhile, back home in the United States, the American Friends of the Middle East was preparing its boldest gesture yet in support of the Eisenhower administration’s Middle Eastern policy. The previous October, Foster Dulles had spoken with senior officials about his desire to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict “on a bipartisan basis” and “keep the matter out of politics . . . during the coming campaign.” On January 25, 1956, AFME published “An Open Letter to Every American Citizen” in the
New York Times
and several other leading newspapers, demanding, “Take the Middle East Out of Domestic Politics!” The day after the statement appeared, the organization’s annual conference opened at New York’s Delmonico Hotel. The program had been revised at the last moment to address the controversy swirling around the issue of a possible Israel arms deal, and several speakers urged candidates for political office to rise above the partisan fray. “What we need in this issue, as in all others, is a disinterested American foreign policy,” declared Dorothy Thompson.
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At the same time AFME was cranking up its New Look, Kim Roosevelt was fighting another fire in Cairo. Talks between Nasser and the president of the World Bank, Eugene R. Black, about the terms of the Aswan dam loan had stalled. Foster Dulles and Herbert Hoover Jr. were dismayed by this news, as it threatened to remove the major incentive for Egyptian cooperation with their peace plan, and on January 31 they cabled Black, urging him not to present Nasser with “a take it or leave it proposition.” Shortly afterward, Kim was recalled to Cairo from Athens, where he had retreated with Anderson, with instructions to get the dam negotiations back on track. “The assignment put quite a strain on my persuasive powers,” he remembered later, but on February 2 he was able to report that the “dam talks have taken [a] turn for [the] better,
with both sides giving ground.” The loan was quickly finalized, and announced on February 9.
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With one blaze damped down, the CIA’s crypto-diplomats now returned their attention to extinguishing the Arab-Israeli conflict. Reinforced by the arrival from Athens of the chief American ALPHA negotiator, Francis Russell, the secret CIA-Egyptian working group knuckled down to its task. With no recent leaks to worry Nasser, and Sabri appearing “unusually interested and cooperative,” the omens for once appeared auspicious. By February 8, Kim and Miles had produced a lengthy memorandum identifying the causes of Arab-Israeli tensions, suggesting measures for building up mutual confidence (including improved “Border Control” and “Positive Propaganda Measures”), and proposing an eight-step timetable culminating in meetings between heads of state and the announcement of a settlement. It was an ambitious yet pragmatic—even hardheaded—plan, as befitted the CIA men’s self-professed Machiavellianism. “It appears almost certain that no formula for change can ever come as a result of resolving the problem of guilt and responsibility for the past,” the document stated. “The alternative is a solution on grounds of self-interest and convenience.” Although Sabri was “gloomy” about the prospects for specific elements of the plan, the memo nonetheless served as the basis for all the working party’s subsequent discussions. On February 20, in a “business-like meeting,” the Egyptian indicated his agreement to measures for easing Arab-Israeli tension and reducing area frictions generally—in other words, to the first three steps of Kim and Miles’s plan. A corner, it seemed, had been turned.
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As ever, though, events elsewhere were conspiring against the CIA Arabists. In the United States, public calls for the government to supply arms to Israel were gaining in volume, partly because the president had just lifted an embargo on a shipment of tanks to Saudi Arabia. In their most blatantly political intervention to date, AFME representatives gamely tried to defend Ike’s decision, Dorothy Thompson pointing out the strategic importance of the Arabian peninsula and Garland Hopkins insisting that criticism of the shipment showed “the extent to which partisans of Israel in this country [would] go in putting Israel’s interests ahead of those of America and the free world.” CIA officer Mather Eliot, meanwhile, was carrying on his campaign to sway American opinion, securing introductions from Thompson to various publishers
and editors, and submitting an article to the
Christian Century
, “Arab-Israeli Peace Still Is Possible,” in which he called on the US government to “pressure Israel into a reasonable compromise” or “risk delivering the whole of the Muslim and ex-colonial world into the Russian orbit.” Despite these efforts to relieve the Zionist pressure on the Eisenhower administration, Foster Dulles was starting to buckle, asking his team in Cairo whether GAMMA could survive the fall-out from a US arms deal with Israel.
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The response from Egypt was unambiguous. Word had reached Nasser that an American deal with Israel was imminent, and during a meeting with the CIA team and Interior Minister Mohieddin on February 21, he blew up. Such a move “would put an end not only to the Anderson operation but to ‘Everything,’” he exclaimed. The author of the CIA report on the meeting, most probably Kim Roosevelt, had “never seen Nas[se]r and Zacharia [
sic
] so upset about anything.” An arms grant to Israel would, he predicted, “produce a fearsome reaction” that would be impossible “to avert or soften.” At the end of the meeting, as the CIA man was preparing to leave, the Egyptian leader grasped his sleeve, imploring him to prevent a “catastrophe” that would “shatter all the hope we have been nursing along over the past three years.”
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