The United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in covert actions and contingency planning in Iraq ever since the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, although the historiography of Iraq–United States relations prior to the 1980s is considered relatively underdeveloped, with the first in-depth academic studies being published in the 2010s.
The CIA is alleged to have sponsored an unsuccessful Ba'athist assassination plot against Iraqi leader Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, although several scholars have disputed this. The CIA is documented to have planned to "incapacitate" a high-ranking member of Qasim's government with a poisoned handkerchief in 1960, and began plotting to remove Qasim from power since mid-1962, cultivating supportive relationships with Iraqi opposition groups including the Ba'ath Party.
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. Scholars have only begun to understand the extent of the CIA's role in the 1963 coup, however they remain divided in their interpretations of U.S. foreign policy, specifically regarding the extent of direct CIA involvement. After the 1968 Ba'athist coup appeared to draw Iraq into the Soviet sphere of influence, the CIA colluded with the then-monarchial government of Iran to destabilize Iraq by arming Kurdish rebels, who suffered a total defeat after Iran and Iraq resolved their border dispute. Beginning in 1982, the CIA began providing Iraq intelligence during the Iran–Iraq War. The CIA was also involved in the failed 1996 coup against Saddam Hussein.
Intelligence played an important and generally effective role in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, but was much more controversial with respect to justifying and planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003. See the appropriate chronological entries below.
1958: Intelligence analysis: 14 July Revolution
Relations between the United States (U.S.) and Iraq became strained following the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy on July 14, 1958, which resulted in the declaration of a republican government led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim. Qasim planned the operation, but it was led on the ground by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif. Longtime Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Harry Rositzke recounted that "rumors of army plotting had been circulating for months in Baghdad," but "neither CIA agents nor the Iraqi plotters could tell when the coup would take place, for the timing depended on a fluke." In addition, a subsequent State Department investigation noted that "while Iraqi and U.S. intelligence agencies knew of Qasim, he was never believed to be a cause for concern." Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles told President Dwight D. Eisenhower the CIA "lacked hard evidence implicating" Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser in the coup, though it was Nasser-inspired. On July 15, Eisenhower responded to the upheaval in Iraq by sending U.S. marines to Lebanon at the request of Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, with the goal of helping Chamoun's pro-Western government restore order after months of civil unrest. The Eisenhower administration initially worried about "Ba'athist or Communist exploitation of the situation," but recognized the new Iraqi government on July 30. cf.
Qasim styled himself the "sole leader" of Iraq and rejected any association with Nasser, whereas Arif publicly advocated that Iraq join the United Arab Republic (UAR)—a short-lived union of Egypt and Syria. On September 30, Qasim attempted to neutralize Arif by sending him to West Germany as an ambassador; yet on October 2, Dulles predicted: "In all probability, we have not heard the last of [him]." Egyptian agents in Bonn worked with Arif on a conspiracy to depose Qasim, but Arif was arrested not long after he returned to Baghdad on November 4. The United Kingdom (U.K.), which "hoped ... [to] cultivate him as an Iraqi alternative to Nasser," alerted Qasim to another failed Egyptian coup attempt in December. "Nasser's meddling soon forced Qasim to turn to the communists to secure a base of support to protect his regime from the nationalists."
1959: Special Committee on Iraq; Egyptian covert actions Concerned about the influence of Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) members in Qasim's administration, Eisenhower began questioning if "it might be good policy to help [Nasser] take over in Iraq," recommending that Nasser be provided with "money and support." Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, warned against this, stating that it was "essential to keep our hands off Iraq" because the U.S. was not "sufficiently sophisticated to mix into this complicated situation," ultimately however, the U.S. "moved into increasingly close alignment with Egypt with regard to Qasim and Iraq." On March 24, Iraq—to the consternation of U.S. officials—withdrew from an anti-Soviet alliance, the Baghdad Pact. 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, and "soon developed a detailed plan for assisting nationalist elements committed to the overthrow of Qasim." The U.S. also "approached Nasser to discuss 'parallel measures' that could be taken by the two countries against Iraq." Both covert and military intervention was contemplated, but this "horrified" the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, John Jernegan, who "eventually persuaded the administration to instead press Nasser into modifying his propaganda against Iraq to focus not on Qasim but the communists." Nasser agreed, and Qasim soon undertook numerous repressive measures against the communists, temporarily leading some U.S. officials to believe that communist influence in Iraq was diminishing by August 1959.
U.S. perturbation was renewed shortly thereafter on August 25, after an Iraqi court sentenced to death nationalist conspirators involved in the unsuccessful 1959 Mosul coup, and climaxed on September 20 when "Qasim approved the executions of a senior Free Officer and 12 other nationalist officers involved" in the attempted coup, "in addition to 4 civilian members of the monarchy." U.S. intelligence also asserted that although Qasim limited the activities of the ICP, he "continued and even expanded" his ties to the Soviet Union. These events lead the SCI to meet on September 24 to assess the situation. During this meeting, two representatives from the State Department urged a cautious approach, while the other twelve representatives, namely from the CIA and Department of Defense, "strong[ly] pitch[ed] for a more active policy toward Iraq." One CIA representative noted that there is a "small stockpile [of weapons] in the area," and that the CIA "could support elements in Jordan and the UAR to help Iraqis filter back to Iraq." 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."
Bryan R. Gibson writes that "there is no documentation that ties the United States directly to any of Nasser's many covert attempts to overthrow the Qasim regime." On the other hand, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt states that the U.S. issued its "tacit support for Egyptian efforts to bring [Qasim's government] down." The SCI was finally shut down in January 1961.
UPI report Richard Sale of United Press International (UPI), citing former U.S. diplomat and intelligence officials, Adel Darwish, and other experts, reported that the unsuccessful October 7, 1959 assassination attempt on Qasim involving a young Saddam Hussein and other Ba'athist conspirators was a collaboration between the CIA and Egyptian intelligence. Pertinent contemporary records relating to CIA operations in Iraq have remained classified or heavily redacted, thus "allow[ing] for plausible deniability." Gibson has disputed Sale and Darwish's account, citing available declassified documents which Gibson states indicate that the NSC "had just reaffirmed [its] nonintervention policy" on October 1, while Dulles predicted six days prior to the incident that an attempt on Qasim's life might be made "in the next two months," which Gibson suggests is indicative of "a lack of concrete intelligence." Considering that U.S. officials sought to dissuade Jordan and Iran from militarily intervening in Iraq during Qasim's hospitalization, Gibson surmised that "while the United States was aware of several plots against Qasim, it had still adhered to its nonintervention policy." Wolfe-Hunnicutt observes: "I am unaware of any evidence of covert relations between the CIA and the Ba'ath prior to the October 7 [assassination attempt]. ... It seems more likely that it was October 7 that brought the Ba'ath to the attention of the US government." However, Kenneth Osgood—while acknowledging that there is "little direct documentary proof" of American participation in the plot—comments that because it is widely accepted that Egypt "was involved on some level" and that "The United States was working with Nasser on some level ... the circumstantial evidence is such that the possibility of US–UAR collaboration with Ba'ath Party activists cannot be ruled out." Moreover, the CIA was engaged in contingency planning against Qasim's government during the time period in question: "Whatever the validity of [Sale's] charges, at the very least currently declassified documents reveal that US officials were actively considering various plots against Qasim and that the CIA was building up assets for covert operations in Iraq."
Eisenhower publicly expressed hope that Qasim quickly recover from his injuries, although privately U.S. officials "expressed growing interest in the Ba'th and its effort to topple Qasim." The assassins, including Saddam, escaped to Cairo, Egypt "where they enjoyed Nasser's protection for the remainder of Qasim's tenure in power." Hazim Jawad—one of the conspirators involved in the assassination attempt, who would also later become minister of state in the Ba'athist regime that overthrew and executed Qasim in 1963—"received training from the UAR intelligence service in clandestine wireless telegraphy," before returning to Iraq in 1960 to coordinate "clandestine radio operations for the UAR." Wolfe-Hunnicutt writes that in the 1959-1960 period—during the "peak of US-UAR intelligence collaboration"—that "[i]t is quite possible that Jawad became familiar to US intelligence," as a 1963 State Department cable described Jawad as "one of our boys."
The assassination attempt failed after Saddam (who was only supposed to provide cover) opened fire on Qasim, it led to widespread exposure for Saddam and the Ba'ath within Iraq, where both had previously languished in obscurity, and later became a crucial part of Saddam's public image during his tenure as president of Iraq. It is possible that Saddam visited the U.S. embassy in Cairo during his exile, and some evidence suggests that he was "in frequent contact with US officials and intelligence agents." A former high-ranking U.S. official told Marion Farouk–Sluglett and Peter Sluglett that Iraqi Ba'athists, including Saddam, "had made contact with the American authorities in the late 1950s and early 1960s." Saddam would remain exiled from Iraq until 1963, after Qasim's overthrowal and execution by the Ba'athists, becoming a key organizer within the Iraqi Ba'ath Party's civilian wing upon his return.
1960: "Incapacitation" plot considered According to the Church Committee report: