The 1966 Ghanaian coup d'état (codenamed Operation Cold Chop)[1] was a military overthrow of President Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966, while he was visiting China.

The swift and bloodless coup led to the establishment of an eight-member National Liberation Council (NLC), comprising four army and four police officers.

"[4] General Afrifa later commented, regarding Radio Ghana: "From early morning till late at night there poured forth a sickening stream of Stalinist adulation and abject flattery.

[14] To take over the country, however, the Police Force had to work with the military—not only because they had been disarmed, but also because, as the primary executors of repression and brutality under the CPP, they did not enjoy a good reputation with the general public.

[15] Coup planners from the military identified mistreatment of the armed forces, and preferential treatment of the President's Own Guard Regiment, as sources of their dissatisfaction.

[19] Harlley and Deku were accused of involvement in a newly exposed scheme to illicitly sell diamonds to a European dealer—according to rumour, Nkrumah would have arrested them upon return to the country.

A significant number came from the Ewe group, which had been divided by the border with Togo and felt it had received unfair treatment under Nkrumah and the CPP.

[22] The Ewe officers, who formed the inner circle of the coup, all grew up in the same area, and Harlley and Emmanuel Kotoka (the most prominent members from each of the forces) both attended Anloga Presbyterian School.

[23][24] The coup planners had all received training in Britain, either at Metropolitan Police College or at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and were widely perceived as "pro-Western".

[28][29] Air Marshal Otu would write in June 1968 that Ghana "had become a single party totalitarian dictatorship; it had also abregated personal liberties; it had thrown to the winds [the] sacred principle of the rule of law, reduced elections to a farce and much worse, spurned all its traditional ties with the West in favour of dubious advantages of association with strange friends from the east.

"[30] Some of the first allegations about United States involvement in the coup came from retired CIA officer John Stockwell in his 1978 book, In Search of Enemies.

So close was the station's involvement that it was able to coordinate the recovery of some classified Soviet military equipment by the United States as the coup took place.

The station even proposed to headquarters through back channels that a squad be on hand at the moment of the coup to storm the Chinese embassy, kill everyone inside, steal their secret records, and blow up the building to cover the fact.

This proposal was quashed, but inside CIA headquarters the Accra station was given full, if unofficial credit for the eventual coup, in which eight Soviet advisors were killed.

[33]Historian John Prados has written that it has not been verified that the CIA had any role in directing the coup, though they were aware of the tensions which were rising between the Ghana military and the Nkrumah government.

[34] CIA operative Howard Bane even claimed in February 1966 that a string of coups which had occurred in other African nations were also motivating the Ghana military to topple Nkrumah.

"[43] A U.S. National Security Council memo from Robert Komer to McGeorge Bundy appraised the situation:[44] McGB— FYI, we may have a pro-Western coup in Ghana soon.

While we’re not directly involved (I’m told), we and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah’s pleas for economic aid.

[46] Diplomatic relations with the West seemed to deteriorate, with Nkrumah's publication of Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism and his criticism of Britain's response to the secession of White Rhodesia.

[48] A group of 600 soldiers stationed in the northern part of the country was ordered to start moving south to Accra, a distance of 435 miles (700 km).

With the Chief of Defense Staff being at an OAU meeting, the ranking officer was General Charles Barwah, reportedly shot to death when he refused to cooperate with the coup.