Miles Copeland Junior

Miles Ax Copeland junior (born July 16, 1913 in Birmingham, Alabama , † January 14, 1991 ) was an American musician , businessman and CIA agent who was involved in major foreign policy operations between 1950 and 1980.

Career before the CIA

Copeland was born in Birmingham in 1913, the son of an academic. He didn't graduate from college. He played the trumpet with band leaders like Ray Noble and Glenn Miller and founded the Glenn Miller Orchestra with Miller .

At the outbreak of World War II, Miles Copeland jun. joined the National Guard , but failed to be recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) through good relationships . Instead, he joined the Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP), which was restructured to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) in January 1942 . Copeland was stationed in London and reportedly took part in the top-secret Bigot Purge and took part in the discussions on Operation Overlord .

During the restructuring of the OSS to the Strategic Services Unit , Copeland joined her on October 1, 1945, this should become part of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Still stationed in London, he married the renowned Scottish archaeologist Lorraine Copeland Adie , whom he met in the Special Operations Executive during the war . They have four children together: music producer Miles Copeland III , music agent Ian Copeland , Stewart Copeland , founder and drummer of The Police , and Lorraine (Lennie) Copeland, who works as a writer and film producer.

CIA career

His long career in the Middle East began with one of his first posts in Damascus in September 1947. Together with Stephen Meade, he was involved in the Syrian coup in March 1949. In close cooperation with Archibald Roosevelt , son of Theodore Roosevelt , and his nephew Kermit Roosevelt junior , CIA agent, he was instrumental in Operation Ajax , in the 1953 technical coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh .

Furthermore, Kermit Roosevelt junior and Copeland, who was then the head of the CIA department in Cairo, initiated the Fat Fucker project to overthrow the King of Egypt, Faruq I.

In 1953, Copeland made a temporary return to private life and started working for the management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton , but carried out an unofficial covert operation for the CIA. After Gamal Abdel Nasser had overthrown King Faruq I and ousted him, Copeland advised him on the development of the General Intelligence Service (GIS), also known as Muchabarat, and established a relationship with him as the closest Western advisor. In this role, he provided economic development assistance and technical military assistance from the United States.

Copeland returned to the CIA in 1955. During the Suez Crisis , the United States blocked the conquest agreements between France, Great Britain and Israel with the support of Egypt and control of the Suez Canal . Allegedly, Copeland is said to have intended to end British control of regional oil resources and Soviet influence over regional governments. However, after the crisis, Nasser tended closer to the Soviet Union and accepted their advanced military technology and technical assistance in the construction of the Aswan High Dam . Copeland, along with John Foster Dulles and Allen Welsh Dulles , tried to reverse this trend and plan the Nasser murder.

In 1958, Egypt and Syria merged to form the United Arab Republic , and the Iraqi King Faisal II was ousted by the Iraqi nationalists. Copeland monitored contacts with the Iraqi regime and with internal opponents, including Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party.

Copeland defended his major CIA paramilitary operations, such as the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, on the grounds that they could not be kept secret because of their scale.

From 1957 to 1968, Copeland was stationed with his family in Beirut , where his children grew up and attended the American Community School at Beirut. In the late 1960s, they settled back in England.

retirement

After Copeland left the CIA, he wrote foreign policy books and an autobiography for publications such as National Review . In the 1970s, he actively represented the CIA against criticisms, including the Church Committee . In 1988 Copeland wrote the article Spooks for Bush , in which he claimed that the intelligence services overwhelmingly supported George HW Bush in the election of US president . In the foreword to his book Enemy Within , Guardian journalist Seumas Milne wrote that Copeland warned British mountain union leaders Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield in the spring of 1990 that the CIA and MI5 were involved in a media campaign against them and that they were helping to bring about corrupt allegations against them to design.

In retirement, Copeland created the board game Game of Nations .

Works

• The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics . Simon & Schuster, New York 1970.
• Without Cloak or Dagger: The Truth About the New Espionage . Simon & Schuster, New York 1974.
• Beyond cloak and dagger: inside the CIA . Pinnacle, New York 1975.
• Real Spy World . Sphere, London 1978.
• The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's Original Political Operative . Aurum, London 1989, ISBN 0-948149-87-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d e} Priscilla L. Buckley: Miles Copeland, RIP - former CIA official - obituary . In: National review . ISSN  0028-0038 ( Online ( Memento of December 11, 2005 in the Internet Archive )). Miles Copeland, RIP - former CIA official - obituary ( Memento of the original from December 11, 2005 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ ^{A b} Joan Cook: Miles Copeland, 74, Expert on Mideast, Writer and Ex-Spy . In: The New York Times . ISSN  0362-4331 ( online ).
3. ^ ^{A b} Karl Ernest Meyer, S. Blair Brysac: Kingmakers . The invention of the modern Middle East . Norton, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-393-06199-4 , pp. 353-358 .
4. ↑ Geoffrey Wawro: Quicksand . America's pursuit of power in the Middle East . Penguin, New York 2010, ISBN 978-1-59420-241-4 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ephraim Kahana, M. Suwaed: Historical dictionary of Middle Eastern intelligence . Scarecrow, Lanham 2009, ISBN 978-0-8108-5953-1 , pp. 65 .
6. ↑ Scott Anderson: Playing Both Sides . 'America's Great Game,' by Hugh Wilford . In: The New York Times . ISSN  0362-4331 ( online ).