America's Great Game (31 page)

So what exactly did the CIA do to strengthen the Nasser regime during this initial period of American-Egyptian harmony? First, it set about schooling Egypt’s new rulers in Western political theory. It was Jim Eichelberger, described by Lorraine Copeland as the “academically educated philosopher of our group,” who took over this task, writing a series of theoretical papers that were translated into Arabic for circulation within the Revolutionary Command Council. In the course of follow-up conversations with Nasser, Muhammad Haikal, and others, Eichelberger formed the impression, as reported to Ambassador Caffery, that the Free Officers were “embarked on a policy of drift and compromise,” overly concerned with their “popularity” and lacking “confidence in the efficacy of their repressive powers.” In response, Eichelberger produced a new essay, “Power Problems of a Revolutionary Government,” which Miles Copeland later included as an appendix to his
Game of Nations
. Rather than seeking “mere popularity,” Eichelberger advised, revolutionary leaders should concern themselves with the more serious business of building a “constructive base” for their power, using the instruments of government to win the people’s support “by
appealing to their self-interest
as well as to their emotions.” This task, however, was not the most pressing order of business. The revolutionary government’s first priority was survival, and that meant securing its “repressive base,” quelling counterrevolutionary threats by outlawing opposition movements, and strengthening the state police and intelligence service. History was littered with examples of revolutions that had reversed these steps, relying excessively on constructive means
at first and then, when those failed, resorting to intense repression, or terror, to cling to power. “This is a disease of revolutions,” warned Eichelberger, echoing Crane Brinton, “and one that can be fatal.”
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If Eichelberger supplied the theory for the CIA’s Egyptian “coup-proofing,” Miles Copeland provided the practice. While other members of the BA&H office in Cairo dealt with identity cards “and other ‘home office’ problems” for the Egyptian interior ministry, Miles busied himself drawing up organizational charts and outlining new courses for the national police school. To help him with the latter task, he flew in two former FBI agents and a New York policeman who had managed security for VIPs visiting Manhattan. Realizing that the existing intelligence apparatus was inadequate, the Free Officers created a new General Investigations Directorate (GID) modeled partly on the CIA. Miles arranged US training for senior GID officers, instruction from the CIA’s Office of National Estimates in the writing of daily intelligence summaries for the head of state, and provision of “the complete range of electronic equipment then being developed by American industrial espionage and counter-espionage organizations” (to quote
The Game of Nations)
. Miles even spent hours sequestered with his liaison Hassan Tuhami, gaming out possible attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition elements to overthrow Nasser. Quite what all this added up to is still a matter of debate. In
The Game of Nations
, after implying that the CIA invented much of the modern Egyptian security state, Miles suddenly grew modest, declaring that “despite all their foreign advisers,” Nasser and Interior Minister Zakaria Mohieddin “built the intelligence and security services with remarkably little outside help.” A veteran Egyptian intelligence officer, Abu al-Fadl, concurs in this judgment. Yet the former intelligence analyst Owen L. Sirrs, having recently reviewed all the available evidence, writes of the “CIA’s ascendancy” in this period, “the heyday of [its] early involvement in Egypt.”
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There is another, even more controversial claim in
The Game of Nations
: that the CIA helped import Nazi war criminals to Egypt to assist with the construction of Nasser’s “repressive base.” Here, the continuing controversy about Miles Copeland’s reliability takes on an almost surreal quality, as the man himself voluntarily confesses to past behavior of spectacular moral questionability—and later writers point to evidence that contradicts his confession. According to
The Game of Nations
, the key figure in this operation was Otto Skorzeny, a former SS-Sturmbannführer who in 1943 had led a daring raid to rescue Mussolini from Allied
captivity. Captured at the end of the war, Skorzeny befriended several Counter Intelligence Corps officers before escaping from prison in 1948 and setting up in business in Madrid. Some time in 1953 or 1954, so Miles claimed, the CIA brought Skorzeny to Cairo to advise Nasser about training the Egyptian army and to recruit former Gestapo officers to help build up the new GID. Eventually, several hundred ex-Nazis made the journey to Egypt, where, according to Miles (now characteristically pouring a little cold water on his earlier inflammatory statements), they were generally ignored and underpaid.
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There is indeed considerable proof in contemporary diplomatic records of an extensive German presence in Egypt at this time, including that of some egregious war criminals, such as Alois Brunner, a former assistant of Adolf Eichmann with a particular reputation for cruelty to Jewish children. One unofficial British observer told Conservative MP Julian Amery that a Munich restaurant had been physically transplanted to Cairo to cater to these expatriates, who also enjoyed such perks as access to untaxed German goods. “This is the revenge of the Africa Corps on Alamein,” an ex-Nazi gloatingly told the dismayed Briton.
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Whether this was all the work of the CIA, though, is debatable. Ties between Egyptians and Germans dated back to World War II, when they had shared a common enemy in the British, and the Free Officers clearly had their own links with the West German intelligence chief, former Wehrmacht general Reinhard Gehlen. Indeed, the business of spiriting ex-Nazis into Egypt actually began while Farouk was still on the throne, with Wilhelm Voss, a former SS officer and close associate of Heinrich Himmler, blazing the trail later followed by Skorzeny. US records from the late 1950s, recently declassified in compliance with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998, reveal CIA officials as ignorant of key aspects of the German penetration of Egypt.
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On the other hand, the same records also show that in 1959 a CIA officer based in Madrid requested that a visa be issued to Skorzeny so he could enter the United States on official business; there is plentiful evidence of the CIA collaborating with Reinhard Gehlen’s “Organization” on other Cold War operations; and, like many former Counter Intelligence Corps officers, Miles Copeland did have experience of working with “useful” Nazis immediately after the war. At the very least, it seems likely that, as Owen Sirrs has concluded, “the CIA knew of and condoned the Egyptian-West German intelligence liaison relationship”—
hardly a record to boast about and one that would undoubtedly have incurred the moral disapproval of the OSS Arabists.
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In addition to these repressive actions, CIA officers also had a hand in building Nasser’s (as Eichelberger put it) “constructive base,” meaning principally that they helped him to wage psychological warfare. In part, this was a matter of defaming enemies of the RCC with either half true (“grey”) or entirely made-up (“black”) allegations of misconduct, usually of a sexual or religious nature. Although the powerful pro-Nasser publishers Mustafa and ‘Ali Amin (old friends of Kim Roosevelt’s) had made a good start on this front, flooding their newspapers with stories denouncing the old regime, the CIA decided that more was needed and called in one of its foremost psy-war consultants, Paul M. A. Linebarger. An army colonel and professor of Asiatic politics at Johns Hopkins University, Linebarger was the author of the seminal 1948 text
Psychological Warfare
(and, under the pen name Cordwainer Smith, a series of influential science fiction stories). During the early 1950s, he was a frequent presence in the Far and Middle East as, in his own words, “a visitor to small wars”; Edward Lansdale’s counterinsurgency campaign in the Philippines benefited from his input. Traveling as Lawrence W. Teed, Linebarger arrived in Cairo in December 1954 for “operational appointments” in Maadi and Zamalek. While in Egypt, he provided the Free Officers with guidance about black and grey propaganda, including the technique of publicizing apparently positive information about individuals and groups that actually did long-term damage to their reputations. He also drew on the latest US communications research to coach the Ministry of National Guidance in public opinion surveying, the aim being to mobilize positive popular support for the revolutionary government.
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There was always the danger, of course, that such methods might not work, or even backfire, in a Third World environment. BA&H efforts to rationalize the Egyptian civil service, for example, foundered in the face of an entrenched culture of political patronage, while the CIA’s decision to provide broadcasting equipment and training to Nasser’s radio station, the Voice of the Arabs, would return to haunt it a few years later, when Cairo became the Arab world’s main purveyor of anti-American propaganda. Miles and the others had to tread carefully in Cairo as, for all the shiny modernity of their principles and methods, their role as technical assistants to the revolutionary government harked back to the earlier
colonial practice, particularly associated with the much hated proconsul, Lord Cromer, of posting British advisers to native ministers. For that matter, there were also similarities between the consultancy work Miles was doing for the Nasser regime and T. E. Lawrence’s relationship with the Hashemites, or Jack Philby’s with the House of Saud. Still, for all these echoes of earlier empires, the Free Officers do seem, at least between 1953 and 1955, to have been genuinely receptive to the newfangled ideas being touted by the American ad men and psy-warriors.

THE FINAL SERVICE PROVIDED TO
Egypt’s revolutionary government by the CIA was definitely evocative of an older era, involving as it did Kim Roosevelt acting like an eighteenth-or nineteenth-century court envoy. After his May 1953 meeting with the Free Officers, John Foster Dulles had realized that his first priority with regard to Egypt was solving its disruptive dispute with Britain over the Suez Canal. It soon became clear that all the main parties involved wanted a settlement, even the British, who had begun to feel the economic pinch of defending the canal base. The prospects for negotiation were blighted by several factors, though, including the potential for Nasser’s internal enemies to make mischief if he were seen publicly dealing with the detested British. It did not help in this regard that Muhammad Naguib was becoming fed up with his role as figurehead for the Revolutionary Command Council, demanding a greater say in policy decisions and building bridges to the Muslim Brotherhood. Another problem was that John Foster Dulles had failed to hit it off with his British opposite number, the aristocratic, languid foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, who discomforted Americans with his habit of addressing men as “My dear.” The British, likewise, did not much care for the dour Dulles; after meeting him for the first time in January 1953, Prime Minister Winston Churchill retired to bed muttering about his “great slab of a face.”
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The solution was worked out, according to Miles Copeland, in a meeting between himself and Nasser in August 1953: the enlistment of Kim Roosevelt as a secret Anglo-Egyptian mediator. Kim readily agreed to this role, as it appealed to his taste for intrigue, and he was in any case already spending a lot of time with the British for reasons that were just about to be revealed. Within a few weeks of Miles and Nasser’s conversation, he was shuttling between Washington, London, and Cairo, leaving an unusually wide documentary wash in his wake. On January 25, 1954,
the
New York Times
reported, with a surprising lack of discretion, his appearance in Cairo for a conference at the RCC headquarters with Naguib and Nasser. In March, the British ambassador in Washington, Roger Makins, informed London that Nasser had just sent Kim a message “through secure channels” urging a quick resolution of the dispute before Naguib began “a competition in anti-British declarations which would make a settlement impossible.” Later in the spring, with London signaling it was ready to withdraw all UK troops from Suez within twenty months in return for the right of reentry should war break out in the region, it was Kim’s turn to tell Nasser that Washington would not pressure the British to make any more concessions. The young Arabist was clearly enjoying his secret access to the highest levels of government in three world capitals. When he was asked by President Eisenhower, in the hearing of White House press secretary James C. Hagerty, “if he had the right to make decisions on subjects that should properly be in the [Anglo-Egyptian] treaty,” Kim “replied, rather annoyed, ‘Why yes—eh, yes.’”
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Heads of Agreement between Britain and Egypt were initialed in Cairo at the end of July and the treaty itself signed in October 1954, paving the way for final British withdrawal from Suez by June 1956. While the Eisenhower administration congratulated itself on having defused one major threat to regional stability and prepared to tackle another, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Nasser’s supporters rejoiced at the prospect of the British occupation ending after so many years. Later in October, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which saw the Anglo-Egyptian settlement as a capitulation to Western imperialism, shot at Nasser while he was giving a speech in Alexandria. The would-be assassin missed his intended victim, who immediately declared in a voice that rang out above the roar of the crowd, “Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser is of you and from you and he is willing to sacrifice his life for the nation.” Whether or not the incident was staged—Hassan Tuhami later claimed that the CIA equipped Nasser with a bulletproof vest before the event—it provided the RCC with the pretext it needed for a savage crackdown on the Brotherhood. The following month, President Naguib himself was arrested and sentenced to house arrest.
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