Page 36 - Begrave Thesis_Neat

United States’ (US) intelligence services came in contact early with some of the

members of the Free Officers even before the King’s deposition. It included a

meeting conducted between Kermit Roosevelt the Central Intelligence Agency’s

(CIA) Head of Middle East Operations and Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the principal

55
mastermind of the Movement. Jefferson Caffery, the US Ambassador to Egypt,

56
referred to the officers as ‘his “boys”’. Initially the officers’ selected Major-General
Mohammed Naguib as the Movement’s figurehead. Nasser and Naguib would later
57

quarrel over power, as outlined in this thesis, and Bahrainis followed with interest

the outcome of the Egyptian struggle.

Further, confessions on the nature of the ties between the two sides were

revealed through the published work of former American intelligence operatives

58
like Miles Copeland, Wilbur Eveland, and Archie Roosevelt. As Egypt experienced
political instability following the Second World War and the 1948-49 First Arab-

Israeli War, the coup’s goals, inter alia, were to stabilise Egypt, reduce the landlords’

influence, reduce the influence of the Parliament that featured candidates supported

by the US, Britain, and the Soviets, and to reduce the influence of radical elements

from Egyptian society that included the theocratic Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

Movement and Communists. Furthermore, Copeland added that the Americans

55 R. McNamara, Britain, Nasser and the Balance of Power in the Middle East 1952-1967 (London:
2003), 24.
56 Quoted in P.F. Dur, Ambassador of Revolutions an Outline of His Career (Louisiana: 1998), 71.
57 ‘Gen. Neguib Mohammed’s Coup d’état’, The Times, 24 July 1952, 6; and D.D. Eisenhower, Mandate
for Change 1953-1956 (London: 1963), 150.
58 These confessions were documented by American operatives published through their memoirs, for
example see M. Copeland, The Game of Nations (New York: 1969); M. Copeland, The Game Player:
Confessions of the CIA’s Original Political Operative (London: 1989), hereafter The Game Player; W.C.
Eveland, Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East (London: 1980), hereafter Ropes of Sand;
and A. Roosevelt, For Lust of Knowing: Memoirs of an Intelligence Officer (London: 1988), hereafter
For Lust of Knowing.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 15