The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's original political operative

by Miles Copeland Jr.

Genres: Middle East, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Miles Axe Copeland, Jr. was an American intelligence officer, businessman and musician who was closely involved in major foreign-policy operations from the 1950s to the 1980s.

At the outbreak of World War II, Copeland contacted Rep. John Sparkman of Alabama, who got him a job with Army Intelligence. Showing promise, he was one of the founding members of the OSS and later the CIA under William "Wild Bill" Donovan; serving in London, he became a lifelong Anglophile and married Lorraine Adie, a Scot then serving in the Special Operations Executive. He remained with the office as it was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency. Among his first postings was Damascus, Syria, beginning a long career in the Middle East. Working closely with Archibald Roosevelt (son of Theodore), and his nephew Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., he was instrumental in arranging Operation Ajax, the 1953 technical coup d'état against the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq.

In 1953, Copeland returned to private life at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, while remaining a non-official cover operative for the CIA. He traveled to Cairo to meet Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had overthrown King Farouk and taken power in Egypt. In this role he offered U.S. economic development and technical military assistance. At the time, the U.S. considered regional instability adverse to U.S. interests. T he “new postwar era witnessed an intensive involvement of the United States in the political and economic affairs of the Middle East, in contrast to the hands-off attitude characteristic of the prewar period.... The United States had to face and define its policy in all three sectors that provided the root causes of American interests in the region: the Soviet threat, the birth of Israel, and petroleum.”

In 1955 Copeland returned to the CIA. During the Suez Crisis, in which the United States blocked the collusion of France, the United Kingdom and Israel to invade, the US backed Egypt's independence and control of the Suez Canal. The move is said to have been advocated by Copeland with the goal of ending British control of the region's oil resources, and forestalling the influence of the Soviet Union on regional governments by placing the US behind their legitimate national interests. After the crisis Nasser, nevertheless, moved closer to the USSR and accepted massive military technology and engineering assistance on the Aswan Dam, which the US had earlier offered, but with strings Nasser could not accept. Copeland, allied with John and Allen Dulles, worked to reverse this trend at the time.

In 1958, Syria merged with Egypt in the United Arab Republic and King Faisal II was deposed by Iraqi nationalists. Copeland admittedly oversaw CIA contacts with the regime and internal opponents including Saddam Hussein and others in the Ba'ath Party. With Egyptian assistance, Saddam was aided in the failed assassination of Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim, who had blocked union with the United Arab Republic, a goal of the Ba'athists. Saddam fled to Cairo and bided his time under Egyptian protection until a coup against Qassim — which blindsided American officials — occurred in 1963. Seizing the moment, Saddam, said to have been provided with U.S. weapons, took part in massacres of suspected Communists as the new regime consolidated power, and rose in the Ba'ath power structure.

Copeland opposed some major CIA operations such as the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, believing that they were impossible to keep secret due to size. For many years he was based in Beirut, where his children grew up attending the American Community School.

He was later involved in the coup against Kwame Nkrumah, the elected President of Ghana.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A CIA autobiography written by a guy on good terms with the org, that's how you know it's gonna be dodgy.

A few remarks:

+ Copeland himself is very witty and writes in a very high-octane way, if that's your thing. Lots of anecdotes, put-downs and self-aggrandizing comments.

+ This thing was written to make the downright evil stuff seem okay and unintentional. Conversely, everything US/CIA-critical that remains, you can be certain it's at least that bad. For instance, the full throated defence of the US-Israel special relation is followed by an acknowledgment that the nakba was real and illegal, the Palestinians have every right to seek redress and the 'peace plans' pushed by the international community are only a smoke screen. Bonus for including info on operation paperclip.

- very difficult to know what to believe. Copeland's spin is that underlings act while the brass has basically no idea what's going on - he develops an entire concept of 'bureaucracy' to explain this. In other words, the top really can't be held responsible. Other dubious frames: the CIA just selects political groups that are already on a course conducive to both US and their own interests, and then watch over them/communicate with them to make sure they're alright. Very little planning or coordinating. That seems highly implausible. In one epidode, Copeland details his presence in a general's limousine the week before his coup, remarking that all the buildings targeted for occupation coincide with the CIA's own analysis and hence he doesn't need to give guidance. Convenient.

- the focus is purely psychological. Copeland is a career man who went into the agency to make money and network with interesting people. No political or even structural analysis. This makes the narrative difficult to follow: everything is the result of ego's clashing and internal debate, as if ad hoc measures were the only ones taken.

-- ridiculous redbaiting. 'The CIA did some nasty things, but we could only WISH we could be as nasty as the pinkos, who have infiltrated the US even up into the highest echelons! If only those liberals in congress let us'. For sure dude.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant, extremely interesting and also quite amusing at various points. It took very nearly three decades for me to finally obtain a copy, and all those years of (admittedly intermittent) effort were most definitely worth it in the end.

It is probably a good thing that it took so long. If I had read this around the same time that I first read William E. Colby's memoirs (late 1980s/early 1990s), I might have been tempted to make some sort of serious attempt at having a career in the Central Intelligence Agency. I can hardly even begin to imagine the amount of trouble I might have gotten into as a C.I.A. officer, especially back in those days when I was both young and reckless- happily, that particular type of potential disaster was averted!!!

[JL · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very entertaining book. The author has a great sense of humor but has you sometimes questioning the accuracy of his book since he seems like someone who doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

[منيب عبد المؤمن · Rating 2 out of 5]

قرأت منه 60صفحة غير ذات فائدة ولم يذكر فيها شيء عن العالم العربي بل كانت حول توضيفه في الاستخبارات وتوضيفه كمخبر ثم بعض القصص له مع المستهدفين ورجال الامن الاخرين وقيادات الامن