Except for two or three of them, and only because they wrote suspect books about their adventures, James Russell Barracks, Joe Goodwin, George Britt, William Bucley, Robert Anderson, Ed Applegate, Arthur Close, Reymond Close, Miles Copeland, James Critchfield, William Eddy, James Eichelberger, Joseph Ellender, Wilbur Crane Eveland, John Fistere, Robert Ransom Haig, Elmo Hutcheson, Harry Kern, William Lakeland, Armand Meyer, Archie Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt mean nothing to most people. In fact, this is a partial list of major CIA agents who determined and carried out American designs in the Arab world from the 1950s until now.

Unlike the diplomats - whom they circumvented and undermined on a fairly regular basis and replaced on others - this collection of operatives were very seldom held accountable for their performances and it is they who laid the foundations for the problems wracking today's Middle East. They must be judged as the true makers of  America's actions inside the Middle East for the past 50 years. The results of their work are with us to this day. They include most of the destructive regional ethnic and religious divisions such as the ones which bedevil Lebanon and Iraq. They also have the dubious honor of  sponsoring many of the Islamic fundamentalist movements which are behind the Muslim-West confrontation in progress.

Yet most of their operations were successful, and it was the policy makers in Washington who never had the wherewithal or the will to develop and capitalize on them. The CIA was responsible for getting things done to facilitate the American policies articulated by the State Department. This did not happen. Instead what followed was a division between a CIA-led  successful covert and semi-official operations and an unsuccessful diplomatic strategy. The US government failed to use the CIA successes because it had to please Israel and satisfy the greed of the oil companies. Whatever the CIA achieved was undone by the State Department, White House and Congress.

The CIA arrived in the Middle East in the early days of the cold war, when the 1948 Arab defeat by Israel led to Arab frustration and produced a major opportunity for the Soviets.   Because of America's commitment to Israel and subsequent effect on the Arabs and the overriding wish to guarantee the flow of oil at an acceptable price, the American agents dispatched to contain this situation were not able or allowed to face the task which confronted them. Their briefs stood in their way; they dealt with day-to-day problems and left the future or the bigger picture to the diplomats and their bosses in Washington. For example, they obeyed their chiefs' orders and changed the government of Syria several times, but they had little to say about what the changes might produce and the policies hatched in Washington negated what they had achieved.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now see them for what they were (or had to be), fun-loving, naïve romantics capable of one-shot projects - a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and David Sterling.  James Critchfield, the one-time chief of the CIA in the Arab countries, describes the first batch of CIA agents during the 1950s and 60s as "the cowboy era". Many of them operated so openly the wife of Archie Roosevelt, the first Beirut station chief, was endearingly called "Mrs. Spy," Miles Copeland was known as "the preacher" and James Barracks as the "CIA fruit".  Most of them did not speak Arabic or have the most basic appreciation for Arab culture and ways. The restrictions placed on them were half of the problem. They themselves represented the second half. The combination was a collection of loose cannons.     

But there was more to the situation than misguided policies and American openness and naiveté; they were flush with cash when their friendly British and French and unfriendly Russian competitors had little money to spend. This and a positive American outlook which elevated everything they did to an attempt to save the world from evil Communism allowed them to achieve important short-term successes which they trumpeted beyond their worth. They did not need to look far into the future and the consequences of their activities. Therefore, with American policy standing between diplomats and following up on these successes, their actions represented a first step towards nowhere. On occasions, CIA successes became a source of  embarrassment so instantaneously the State Department disowned them before their results could be judged.

Money allowed CIA operatives to "retain" kings, presidents and prime ministers, place indigenous army officers in "useful" posts, train future ministers and bureaucrats to operate under ethnic cover and befriend helpful bartenders and taxi drivers in the manner of Eric Ambler's fictional heroes. Rich America reigned supreme in the 1950s, 60s and most of the 70s and every CIA agent worth his bucket of sand wore his label flagrantly and, conniving with locals who misrepresented what was really happening and were willing to be bought, thought of becoming an American Lawrence of Arabia. This atmosphere made of money, brashness and bravado, prompted Time magazine correspondent Wilton Wynn to describe superspy Miles Copeland as "the only man who ever used the CIA for cover". Alabaman Copeland spoke like a southern preacher and was into noise-making. Funnily, many of his colleagues imitated him even when they came from the eastern seaboard and others over did it and wore sunglasses on rainy days.

Still there was no denying their occasional and important if short-lived successes. Miles Copeland helped Nasser attain power in Egypt. James Barracks and John Fistere protected King Hussein from the popular, anti-American forces in his country. Ray Close worked closely with ARAMCO and King Faisal to establish a Saudi secret service with an Islamic bent which opposed Communism and was successful against pro-Nasser Saudis. And Archie Roosevelt foiled an attempt to unite Syria and Iraq into one country capable of confronting Israel and posing a threat to Saudi Arabia. Their behavior during these momentous events was absurd, and often amusing. Copeland insisted on calling Nasser by his first name, Gamal; Barracks always greeted King Hussein with a loud "Hi, how're we doing?"; Fistere's wife told the Harrow-educated King Hussein that he spoke English well; Archie Roosevelt told one of his wife's lovers to be discreet as not to harm his position and Eveland, when invited to dinner, always telephoned the wife of Lebanese President Camille Chamoun to remind her of his favorite dish, taboule.

As impressive as these one-shot achievements were, turning them into lasting successes eluded America. The long-term, running or organizing of a country was not the responsibility of the CIA.  It was a complicated business which did not appeal to most operatives' sense of personal glory. Their briefs were to act and not to manage things, what was left to Washington-based planners few of whom knew the Middle East. Moreover the agency did a poor job of coordinating with Washington-based planners. These two elements turned most of their money-based temporary victories into serious defeats. Copeland and the agency eventually lost Nasser and later tried to assassinate him. Jordan remains a shaky country to this day. And stopping Syria and Iraq from uniting has created more problems, two neurotic countries,  than it has solved. Changing the governments of Syria and Iraq produced new ones which consistently turned anti-Ametrican because they could not live with what Washington expected from them.

Overall, the field CIA did not care for the welfare of the average Arab. That mattered as much as the failure of Washington planners to capitalize on field successes because of America's pro-Zionist policy and the interests of the oil companies. This produced an absence of accountability within the CIA. Given that their aim was to create  democracies but there was little chance of  what they produced surviving, they could do anything and they did. They gave money to Syrian army officers who took it and did nothing.  William Lakeland put the Ba'ath in power in Iraq then was declared persona non grata without suffering for it. The inevitability about the unhappy end to most CIA operations in the Arab world becomes clear when one examines the personalities of the people involved and the policy of the United States.

Miles Copeland was a pathological liar; many of his reports spoke of meetings with  important leaders, including Nasser, which never took place. But the contents of the reports did not matter because there was no one in Washington to act on them. James Barracks was not gay, he was a twisted, sick homosexual who, despite several official warnings and one suspension, frequented bars in search of handsome Lebanese lads. Eventually he was not taken seriously, had to move to Nigeria and died there in mysterious circumstances. Eveland was an alcoholic who needed a drink for breakfast-and he talked too much when drunk-most of the time. Fistere, a former Fortune magazine public relations executive was a hollow unwholesome expression of Madison Avenue and its buzz language. The Roosevelt cousins had serious problems with women which vitiated their effectiveness. (Archie's first wife bedded everyone including the butler and Kim couldn't speak to a pretty woman without becoming unglued.)   William Eddy was an old-fashioned missionary and self-aggrandizing fool whose mind belonged to the nineteenth century and the white man's burden. Harry Kern made it difficult for local people to cooperate with him; he spoke of his hate for the Arabs openly. There was a disturbing absence of common sense and competence. So much so, James Critchfield, for years the regional CIA chief, still sees former Saudi intelligence chief Kamal Adham, the man who had to pay the defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) $100 million in settlement as "one of the great men of the Middle East". To this day Critchfield knows very little about the Middle East.

Without CIA money and connivance we might have had a democratic Syria. Without CIA financial support there would be no Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Jamat Islalmia, Osama bin Laden or any of the uncharming groups which we now identify as enemies and many of whom we associate with terrorism. The CIA accepted old-fashioned Islam, the discredited ulemas of Al Azhar and the unpopular and unelected mufti of Jordan, as the way of keeping the Middle East down. It missed a chance of sponsoring modern, constructive Islam through working with modern constructive Islamic elements. It rejected democracy because it associated the people who advocated it with anti-Americanism, and by doing this it destroyed the secular forces in the Middle East. It ignored human rights to such an extent, in the 1970s and 80s it went out of its way to justify the crimes of Saddam Hussein and his use of chemical weapons.

© Said K Aburish