CIA activities in Iraq

It has long been suspected that the CIA collaborated with the Ba'ath Party in planning and carrying out its 1963 coup against Qasim, supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence and testimony from both contemporary Ba'athists and some U.S. government officials.

In April, the United States National Security Council (NSC) established a Special Committee on Iraq (SCI) to reexamine the situation, propose various contingencies for preventing a communist takeover of the country,[9] and "soon developed a detailed plan for assisting nationalist elements committed to the overthrow of Qasim.

"[10] That same day, the SCI would also prepare a study titled "Preventing a Communist Takeover in Iraq" which called for "covert assistance to Egyptian efforts to topple Qasim," and for "grooming political leadership for a successor government.

The Division sought the Committee's advice on a technique, "which while not likely to result in total disablement would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months," adding: "We do not consciously seek subject's permanent removal from the scene; we also do not object should this complication develop." ...

[James] Scheider [Science Advisor to Bissell] testified that, while he did not now recall the name of the recipient, he did remember mailing from the Asian country, during the period in question, a handkerchief "treated with some kind of material for the purpose of harassing that person who received it." ...

"[38] In mid-1962, alarmed by Qasim's threats to invade Kuwait and his government's expropriation of 99.5% of the British- and American-owned Iraq Petroleum Company's (IPC) concessionary holdings, President John F. Kennedy ordered the CIA to make preparations for a military coup that would remove him from power.

"[43] U.S. officials were instructed not to respond to Qasim's claims that the U.S. was supporting Kurdish rebels out of a desire to preserve the remaining U.S. presence in Iraq, following an earlier downgrade in relations to the chargé d'affaires level caused by the U.S. accepting the credentials of a new Kuwaiti ambassador in June 1962.

[47] Pertinent contemporary documents relating to the CIA's operations in Iraq have remained classified[48][49] and as of 2021, "[s]cholars are only beginning to uncover the extent to which the United States was involved in organizing the coup,"[50] but are "divided in their interpretations of American foreign policy.

[56] Eric Jacobsen, citing the testimony of contemporary prominent Ba'athists and U.S. government officials, states that "[t]here is ample evidence that the CIA not only had contacts with the Iraqi Ba'th in the early sixties, but also assisted in the planning of the coup.

"[57] Nathan J. Citino writes that "Washington backed the movement by military officers linked to the pan-Arab Ba‘th Party that overthrew Qasim," but that "the extent of U.S. responsibility cannot be fully established on the basis of available documents," and that "[a]lthough the United States did not initiate the 14 Ramadan coup, at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed.

Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James E. Akins, who worked in the Baghdad Embassy's political section from 1961 to 1964, would state that he personally witnessed contacts between Ba'ath Party members and CIA officials,[57] and that:The [1963 Ba'athist] revolution was of course supported by the U.S. in money and equipment as well.

"[72] On the other hand, Wolfe-Hunnicutt, citing contemporary U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, notes that assertions of CIA involvement in the Ba'athist purge campaign "would be consistent with American special warfare doctrine" regarding U.S. covert support to anti-communist "Hunter-Killer" teams "seeking the violent overthrow of a communist dominated and supported government",[73] and "speaks to a larger pattern in American foreign policy," drawing parallels to other instances where the CIA compiled lists of suspected communists targeted for execution, such as Guatemala in 1954 and Indonesia in 1965-66.

"[70] Lakeland, a former SCI participant, "personally maintained contact following the coup with a National Guard interrogator," and may have been influenced by his prior interaction with then-Major Hasan Mustafa al-Naqib, the Iraqi military attaché in the U.S. who defected to the Ba'ath Party after Qasim "upheld Mahdawi's death sentences" against nationalists involved in the 1959 Mosul uprising.

[82][83] The Lyndon B. Johnson administration favorably perceived Arif's willingness to partially reverse Qasim's expropriation of the IPC's concessionary holding in July 1965 (although the resignation of six cabinet members and widespread disapproval among the Iraqi public forced him to abandon this plan), as well as pro-Western lawyer Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz's brief tenure as prime minister (which straddled the presidencies of both Arif brothers); Bazzaz attempted to implement a peace agreement with the Kurdish rebels following a decisive Kurdish victory at the Battle of Mount Handren in May 1966.

"[87] According to Johnson's National Security Adviser, Walt Whitman Rostow, the NSC even contemplated welcoming Arif on a state visit to the U.S., although this proposal was ultimately rejected due to concerns about the stability of his government.

In May 1968, the CIA produced a report titled "The Stagnant Revolution," stating that radicals in the Iraqi military posed a threat to the Arif government, and while "the balance of forces is such that no group feels power enough to take decisive steps," the ensuing gridlock had created "a situation in which many important political and economic matters are simply ignored.

Remembering the collapse of the short-lived coalition government in 1963, Bakr quickly ordered Naif and Dawud to be removed from their posts and exiled on July 30, cementing the Ba'ath Party's control over Iraq until the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

As the Arif government had recently signed a major oil deal with the Soviets, the Ba'ath Party's rapid attempts to improve relations with Moscow were not a complete shock to U.S. policymakers, but they "provided a glimpse at a strategic alliance that would soon emerge.

"[99] Behind the scenes, Tikriti (now Iraqi minister of defence) attempted to open a discreet line of communication with the U.S. government through a representative of the American oil company Mobil, but this overture was rebuffed by the Johnson administration as it had come to perceive the Ba'ath Party, in both Iraq and Syria, as too closely associated with the Soviet Union.

[119][120] On April 9, 1972, Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin signed "a 15-year treaty of friendship and cooperation" with Bakr, but U.S. officials were not "outwardly perturbed" by this development, because, according to the NSC staff, it was not "surprising or sudden but rather a culmination of existing relationships.

"[134][135] After a failed coup attempt on June 30, 1973, Saddam consolidated control over Iraq and made a number of positive gestures towards the U.S. and the West, such as refusing to participate in the Saudi-led oil embargo following the Yom Kippur War, but these actions were largely ignored in Washington.

[144] A leaked Congressional investigation led by Otis G. Pike and a February 4, 1976 The New York Times article written by William Safire[145] have heavily influenced subsequent scholarship regarding the conduct of the Kurdish intervention.

[154] According to Gibson, "The Pike Report ignored inconvenient truths; misattributed quotes; falsely accused the United States of not providing the Kurds with any humanitarian assistance; and, finally, claimed that Kissinger had not responded to Barzani's tragic plea, when in fact he had ...

Richard Kerr, a 32-year CIA veteran who served three years as deputy director for intelligence, was commissioned to lead a review of agency analysis of Iraqi WMD claims, and produced a series of reports, one of which is unclassified.

"[177] Evidence against Iraq having a WMD program included information from CIA officer Valerie Plame, who, in a July 14, 2003 The Washington Post newspaper column by Robert Novak, was identified publicly as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, who generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein,[178] told Seymour Hersh that what the Bush administration did was "... dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information.

Despite warnings to CIA from the German Federal Intelligence Service regarding the authenticity of his claims, they were incorporated into President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address and Colin Powell's subsequent presentation to the UN Security Council.

"[182] The lack of finding WMD, the continuing armed resistance against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, and the widely perceived need for a systematic review of the respective roles of the CIA, the FBI, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of "ghost detainees" (6–8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team.

[186] Tyler Drumheller, a 26-year CIA veteran and former head of covert operations in Europe, told CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley in an April 23, 2006 interview that there was widespread disbelief within the agency about the Bush administration's public claims regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.