CIA Activities in Iraq - Iraq 1963

Iraq 1963

In 1963, the United States backed the Ramadan Revolution against the government of Iraq headed by Qasim, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The plot was carried out by a coalition of Nasserists, Iraqi nationalists, Ba'athists, members of the Arab Socialist Union, and anti-Communist members of the Iraqi armed services. Of the 16 members of Qasim's cabinet, 12 of them were Ba'ath Party members; however, the party turned against Qasim due to his refusal to join Gamel Abdel Nasser's United Arab Republic.

Writing in his memoirs of the 1963 coup, long time OSS and CIA intelligence analyst Harry Rositzke presented it as an example of one on which they had good intelligence in contrast to others that caught the agency by surprise. The overthrow "was forecast in exact detail by CIA agents." "Agents in the Ba’th Party headquarters in Baghdad had for years kept Washington au courant on the party’s personnel and organization, its secret communications and sources of funds, and its penetrations of military and civilian hierarchies in several countries....CIA sources were in a perfect position to follow each step of Ba’th preparations for the Iraqi coup, which focused on making contacts with military and civilian leaders in Baghdad. The CIA’s major source, in an ideal catbird seat, reported the exact time of the coup and provided a list of the new cabinet members....To call an upcoming coup requires the CIA to have sources within the group of plotters. Yet, from a diplomatic point of view, having secret contacts with plotters implies at least unofficial complicity in the plot."

Qasim was aware of U.S. complicity in the plot and continually denounced the U.S. in public. The Department of State was worried that Qasim would harass American diplomats in Iraq because of this.

The best direct evidence that the U.S. was complicit is the memo from NSC staff member Bob Komer to President John F. Kennedy on the night of the coup, February 8, 1963. The last paragraph reads:

"We will make informal friendly noises as soon as we can find out whom to talk with, and ought to recognize as soon as we’re sure these guys are firmly in the saddle. CIA had excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it.

Documents show that the CIA was well aware of many plots within Iraq throughout 1962, not just the Ba'athist one.

The new government used lists, allegedly provided by the CIA, to systematically murder unknown numbers of suspected communists.

According to former CIA Near East Division Chief James Chritchfield, the CIA took interest in the Ba'ath Party around 1961-2, and "was better informed on the 1963 coup in Baghdad than on any other major event or change of government that took place in the whole region in those years;" however, it did not "actively support" the coup. "Several months later," the Ba'ath "staged a kind of counter-coup," which led Arif to purge the party in the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état. The CIA "did not identify a radical movement within the Ba'ath," and was "surprised" by the power struggles that followed the Ramadan Revolution. After al-Bakr and Vice President Saddam Hussein seized power in 1968, "America slowly developed, not a hostility, but enormous reservations about the ability of the Ba'ath to constructively bring Iraq along."