America's Great Game (26 page)

With his various British associations, Kim Roosevelt proved, at least at this stage, something of an exception to this attitude; the principal targets for British attack were instead the “sentimental” William Lakeland and the “dreadful” Jefferson Caffery. Yet, in truth, if any one individual cemented the growing alliance between the United States and the new Egyptian government, it was Kim. His first trip to Cairo after the revolution came in October 1952, when Caffery introduced him to both Naguib and Nasser at the Mena House Hotel, looking out to the pyramids. Thereafter, while the ambassador continued to conduct formal diplomatic business with the “handsome front man” Naguib, the CIA officer and Nasser would meet independently of the embassy, sometimes at the latter’s suburban home, at other times in various secret locations, where they would discuss more substantial yet sensitive matters, such as US military assistance for the new government. The clandestine nature of these meetings was not a problem for the Egyptian, who had spent years concealing the existence of the Free Officers’ association from Farouk’s regime. Shortly after the July Revolution, Nasser was asked whether he was a “leftist” or a “rightist.” Neither, he replied. “I’m a conspirator.”
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Beyond their shared love of subterfuge, how are we to explain the rapport that developed between these two men, one the descendant of a US president and archetypal Washington insider, the other the son of a provincial post office clerk who dedicated his life to nationalist struggle? Nasser, it seems, quickly realized that Kim could be useful to him politically, providing a top-level back channel to Washington whose secrecy would protect him against accusations from fellow Egyptian nationalists that he was currying favor with the Americans. But he likely also preferred the personal company of this soft-spoken, unostentatious thirty-six-year-old to that of the rather grand, elderly Caffery. One senses an element of genuine personal sympathy in this relationship missing from Nasser’s dealings with other Western officials.
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For his part, Kim was thrilled with Nasser. Like Husni Za‘im in Syria, the Egyptian combined an idealistic commitment to modernizing reform with a realistic understanding of the need for short-term authoritarian measures, but unlike the Syrian he was personally clever and charismatic enough—Western observers commented frequently on his tall,
powerful frame, impressive profile, and meltingly dark eyes—to stand a chance of actually remaining in power. Not only that, Nasser was also showing signs that he could take on a leadership role beyond Egypt, in the wider Arab world. “Col. Nas[se]r is the one man I have met who has impressed me with the feeling that he possesses the capabilities to lead the Near East—not only Egypt but through Egypt her Arab friends and neighbors—out of the barren wilderness,” Kim wrote Miles Copeland. “I am sure that provided with inspiring leadership the Near Eastern peoples are capable of a great Renaissance,” Kim continued. “Without it, present weaknesses and unreasoning national passions and despairs will further ravage the area.”
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There were, perhaps, some unfortunate echoes here of earlier would-be kingmakers, imperial agents who had also searched for a strong leader capable of uniting the supposedly chaotic Arab race. T. E. Lawrence, for example, had come to Arabia to “consider its great men” for the role of “necessary leader,” a mission that eventually yielded the Hashemite prince Faisal. In one sense, then, Kim Roosevelt was merely repeating Lawrence’s quest for “a force transcending tribe,” a “master-spirit” who “would set the desert on fire” and “bring the Arab Revolt to full glory.”
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In fairness to Kim, though, he was not the only one consciously thinking about casting the part of Arab hero. As Nasser would explain a couple of years later in his
Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution
, he himself believed that “within the Arab circle there is a role, wandering aimlessly in search of a hero,” and that “this role . . . has at last settled down, tired and weary, near the borders of our country and is beckoning to us to move, to take up its lines, to put on its costume, since no one else is qualified to play it.”
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For the time being, at least, Kim Roosevelt and Gamal Nasser were reading from the same script.

THINGS WERE MOVING KIM’S WAY
closer to home as well. In late 1952, as part of Beetle Smith’s reorganization campaign, the OPC was removed from the direction of the State and Defense Departments and folded into the command structure of the CIA, uniting covert action and espionage in a single overseas secret service. Kim took over the combined Near East/Africa divisions, edging out Archie Roosevelt’s
old nemesis, Mike Mitchell (who, according to Miles Copeland, was sent “off to a minor job in Registry”). This put Kim in charge, to quote Miles again, “not only over intelligence operations in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa but also over our budding political action, psychological warfare, economic warfare and paramilitary operations in those areas.”
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Even domestic electoral politics were playing out to Kim’s advantage. In November 1952, with Harry Truman declining to run for reelection, Republican presidential contender Dwight D. Eisenhower handily defeated the Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson. Although outgoing secretary of state Dean Acheson had shared Kim’s broad vision of Middle Eastern development and, in particular, his perception of Egypt as the region’s leading power, the Truman White House’s support for Israel had conflicted with another major component of Kim’s Arabist program, his anti-Zionism. Ike, however, had achieved victory without having to court the so-called Jewish vote, and his administration appeared set to adopt a more even-handed approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict than its predecessor. Moreover, the new president’s pick to succeed Acheson was none other than Allen Dulles’s elder brother, John Foster. With Allen himself taking over from Beetle Smith as director of Central Intelligence in early 1953, Kim now stood a reasonable chance of seeing
all
, not just part, of his Arabist vision translated into practice.

Sensing that change was in the Washington air, Kim’s state-private network of Arabists and anti-Zionists rallied around in a concerted effort to secure his appointment as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, thereby moving him from a covert position of influence in the CIA to an overt one in the State Department. Kim was “highly intelligent, well-informed, energetic and personally agreeable,” so Virginia Gildersleeve assured the new secretary of state. Appealing to Foster Dulles “as a writer of history to a maker of history,” AFME director Harold Lamb stated his belief that “the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt” could “hold to the line of American interest . . . in the troubled Middle East.” And so on. Dulles’s papers contain a sheaf of commendations for Kim from the private citizens in the AFME circle, testifying to the collaborative, reciprocal nature of the relations that bound the CIA to its Arabist front group.
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As it turned out, AFME’s representations were in vain. After reportedly offering the position to Kim’s former OSS boss, Stephen Penrose,
who turned it down in order to carry on as president of the American University of Beirut, Foster Dulles decided to retain the services of Henry A. Byroade, the assistant secretary he had inherited from the Truman administration. The reasons for Kim losing out in this fashion are not altogether clear. Later, a story developed that he was secretly offered the post but rejected it after receiving advice from senior officials that he should stay at the CIA, “‘where the action is.’” However, there are contemporary indications that his candidacy was derailed by other factors, including his youth and an equally concerted-looking campaign of protest from his old Zionist enemies.
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Still, AFME’s supporters could take heart in the fact that the job had been offered to Penrose, suggesting as it did that the new administration was basically friendly to the values they espoused. As for Kim Roosevelt himself, with the distraction of the abortive assistant secretary campaign out of the way, he was now free to focus his considerable clandestine powers on a cause that had grown personally dear to him: supporting his new friend Gamal Nasser as he consolidated his hold on power in Egypt. The year 1953 would prove a busy one in the life of the young Arabist—his own, TR-like “crowded hour.”

ELEVEN

Mad Men on the Nile

IN MAY 1953, JOHN FOSTER DULLES
became the first US secretary of state to visit the Middle East. A tall, somber Presbyterian who lacked the naughty twinkle of his brother Allen, Foster Dulles was preoccupied with what he perceived as the existential threat of the Soviet Union to the Christian West. Nonetheless, he grasped that the focus of the Cold War was moving away from Europe toward the postcolonial Third World, where communists were already trying to harness the growing power of revolutionary nationalism. His decision to go on a three-week tour of twelve countries in the Near East and South Asia reflected “the strategic location of these lands,” so he explained to the American press, and their bearing on “the freedom and the security of the entire free world.”
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The secretary was especially keen to see Egypt, a country he regarded as “the key to development of our strength in the Middle East,” and made it the first stop on his itinerary, arriving in Cairo on May 11. After a pleasant meeting with the titular head of the revolutionary government, Muhammad Naguib, Foster Dulles spent most of the next day closeted at the US embassy with Naguib’s deputy—and power behind the throne—Gamal Nasser. The secretary used the opportunity to express his “real enthusiasm for the new regime in Egypt” and confidence
that it would “set an example to the other Arab states,” adding, rather casually, “that it was interesting to note that the Republican Administration does not owe the same degree of political debt as did the Democrats to Jewish groups.” Nasser, responding in English so quietly that the Americans present had difficulty catching all that he said, observed simply that “the objectives of the U.S. and Egypt are the same.” The only area of disagreement appeared to be Dulles’s plans for a regional defense pact to repel possible Soviet expansion into the Middle East. As Nasser pointed out, a far more pressing concern for Egyptians was ridding their country of the last traces of British colonialism, in particular the troops occupying the Suez Canal base.
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Despite this and some other misunderstandings—Dulles was mystified by Nasser’s constant allusions to previous conversations with “Bill” until he was introduced to the embassy’s young political officer, William Lakeland—both sides considered the meetings a success. The secretary returned to Washington more convinced than ever of the need to carry on courting Arab nationalists in general and Nasser in particular. As National Security Council directive 155/1 of July 14, 1953, explained, the Eisenhower administration aimed “to guide the revolutionary and nationalistic pressures throughout the area into orderly channels not antagonistic to the West, rather than attempt merely to preserve the status quo.” In the case of Egypt, this meant seeking a resolution to the Arab-Israeli dispute that would be acceptable in Cairo as well as in Tel Aviv. The first priority, however, was the same as the Egyptian government’s: bringing about the orderly departure of the British.
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Hence it was that Kim Roosevelt at last achieved a goal that had eluded the OSS Arabists a decade earlier: dislodging the British from their position of dominance in Egypt, dumping “Kipling and all that” for distinctly American techniques of covert power borrowed, like so many new ideas of the 1950s, from Madison Avenue. To understand how he did this, it is necessary to reintroduce the man who, having already invented one new identity for himself—that of Arabist spy—was now about to return to the Middle East disguised as a Mad Man.

THE DECADE HAD NOT BEGUN
promisingly for Miles Copeland. After his assignment to Syria ended in 1950, he found himself back in Arlington, Virginia, living in cramped quarters with his growing brood of children (Stewart, the future Police drummer, arrived in 1952) and a
large number of unruly dogs, all a far cry from his palatial surroundings in Damascus. His new position as Kim Roosevelt’s deputy assistant had its moments of fun—helping Kim select young women operatives for a “honey-trap” program known informally as Mrs. McMurty’s Charm School, for example—but none of it quite measured up to the glamor and intrigue of Syria. The merger between the Office of Policy Coordination and the CIA was yet to take place, and Miles’s post was based, as he put it later, on “the wrong side of the house”: the Agency’s espionage branch, the Office of Special Operations (OSO). Compared with the Ivy League-ish, dashing OPC, where Kim and other regional barons ran covert operations, the intelligence-gathering OSO had a rather humdrum feel to it that belied its exciting-sounding name. Moreover, while Kim was in many respects an excellent boss, his patronage had more than a hint of aristocratic condescension about it. “It would be to his own advantage if he could curb his impetuousness,” Kim wrote in a 1953 personnel evaluation of Miles. “In Headquarters he is most effective while working under the tempering influence of one in whom he has confidence.”
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