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Miles Copeland, Jr.
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Miles Axe Copeland, Jr. (July 16, 1916 – January 14, 1991) was an American musician, businessman, and CIA officer who was closely involved in major foreign-policy operations from the 1950s to the 1980s. He was married to archaeologist Lorraine Copeland (née Adie) and was the father of record producer Miles Copeland III, booking agent Ian Copeland, writer/film producer Lorraine (Lennie) Copeland and Stewart Copeland, best known as the drummer for The Police.
Career
Copeland was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of a doctor.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
Miles Axe Copeland, Jr. (July 16, 1916 – January 14, 1991) was an American musician, businessman, and CIA officer who was closely involved in major foreign-policy operations from the 1950s to the 1980s. He was married to archaeologist Lorraine Copeland (née Adie) and was the father of record producer Miles Copeland III, booking agent Ian Copeland, writer/film producer Lorraine (Lennie) Copeland and Stewart Copeland, best known as the drummer for The Police.
Career
Copeland was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of a doctor. He did not graduate from college and became a trumpet player with bandleaders such as Erskine Hawkins, Charlie Barnet, Ray Noble, and Glenn Miller.
OSS founding
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 under William "Wild Bill" Donovan, serving in London, where 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 democratic Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh.
CIA career
In 1953, Copeland returned to private life at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, while remaining a non-official cover operative for the CIA. In this role he traveled to Cairo to offer Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had overthrown King Farouk and taken power in Egypt, U.S. technical assistance in their ongoing border conflicts. At the time, the U.S. considered regional instability surrounding the new state of Israel a threat to oil industry interests in the Middle East.
In 1958, Syria merged with Egypt in the United Arab Republic; and in 1955 Copeland returned to the CIA. During the Suez Crisis, the United States decided to block France and the United Kingdom, which had invaded, and back Egypt's independence and control of the Suez Canal, a move 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 on their side. Nevertheless, after the crisis Nasser moved closer to the USSR and accepted massive military technology and engineering assistance on the Aswan Dam. Copeland, allied with John and Allen Dulles, worked to reverse US diplomatic policy on Egypt at this time.
After 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, Hussein 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. Hussein 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, Hussein, 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 Bay of Pigs attempted 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 School.
He was later involved in the coup against Kwame Nkrumah, the elected President of Ghana.
Retirement
After retirement from the CIA, Copeland wrote foreign policy books and an autobiography, and articles for publications including the National Review. He was active in 1970s political efforts to defend the CIA against critics including the Church Committee. In 1988, Copeland wrote an article titled "Spooks for Bush" which asserted that the intelligence community overwhelmingly supported George H.W. Bush for President; Bush had run the CIA during the 1970s under Gerald Ford.
Copeland wrote later of his suspicions that a drug from the CIA MK-ULTRA program similar to LSD may have been slipped to Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie, causing his well-publicized emotional response to attacks on his wife, through either Howard Hunt or G. Gordon Liddy. He also claimed that CIA assertions to the Church Committee that MK-ULTRA had poor results were a smokescreen, and that the Senate only got "the barest glimpse" of the scope of the project.
Copeland would continue to make bold assertions about CIA operations, both in interviews and his own books, but was never prosecuted for these statements, unlike colleague Frank Snepp, implying that the CIA approved of his statements. He claimed that CIA contacts in Britain aided the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, and that CIA operatives had a hand in the founding of the Church of Scientology.
During the Iran hostage crisis, Copeland met with Israeli officials during the crisis to carry a "track two" diplomatic initiative to Tehran offering a compromise. Copeland also met with other CIA operatives to formulate a rescue plan, which would have involved undercover agents dressed as Iranian military attempting to take custody of the hostages from the student leaders occupying U.S. embassy grounds, then transport them to a suburban location where they would be met by American aircraft. He is also suspected of knowledge or participation in the Reagan campaign's alleged deal with Iran to prevent the release of the embassy hostages prior the November 1980 U.S. presidential contest, which many assert ensured the end of Jimmy Carter's administration. Specifics of these alleged covert machinations are detailed in various political histories entitled October Surprise. In a 1990 interview, Copeland intimated knowledge that the Iranian government had signalled to the Republican campaign that they would not release the hostages before the election. He died in February 1991.
Books
- The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970
- Without Cloak or Dagger: The Truth About the New Espionage, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974
- The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's Original Political Operative, London: Aurum Press, 1989
- Meyer, Karl E. and Shareen Blair Brysac, Kingmakers: the Invention of the Modern Middle East, New York, London: W.W. Norton, 2008, ISBN 978-0-393-06199-4
External links
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