Miles Copeland Jr.

Miles Copeland, Jr.

Miles Copeland
Born Miles Axe Copeland, Jr.
(1916-07-16)July 16, 1916
Birmingham, Alabama
Died January 14, 1991(1991-01-14) (aged 74)
Nationality American
Occupation Musician, businessman, and CIA officer
Spouse(s) Lorraine Copeland
Children Miles Copeland III, Ian Copeland, Lorraine (Lennie) Copeland, Stewart Copeland

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.

Background and family life

Copeland was born in Birmingham, Alabama,[1] the son of a doctor. He did not graduate from college. He became a trumpet player with bandleaders such as Ray Noble and Glenn Miller,[2] and was an arranger and trumpet player for the Glenn Miller Orchestra.[1]

Copeland was married to archaeologist Lorraine Copeland (née Adie) and was the father of music manager Miles Copeland III, booking agent Ian Copeland, writer/film producer Lorraine (Lennie) Copeland and composer Stewart Copeland, best known as the drummer for The Police.[1]

Career

CIA founding

At the outbreak of World War II, Copeland joined the National Guard, and contacted Rep. John Sparkman of Alabama, who arranged a meeting with William "Wild Bill" Donovan.[3] The two hit it off immediately, but Copeland nonetheless was not recruited to Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and instead joined the Corps of Intelligence Police, which became the Counterintelligence Corps in January 1942.[3] Copeland was stationed in London and reportedly gained the top-secret "Bigot" clearance and took part in discussions about Operation Overlord.[3]

After the conversion of the OSS into the Strategic Services Unit on 1 October 1945, Copeland joined what would become part of the Central Intelligence Agency.[3][4] Serving in London, he became a lifelong Anglophile and married Lorraine Adie, a Scot he had met during the war when she was serving in the Special Operations Executive.[5]

CIA career

Among Copeland's first postings was Damascus, Syria (September 1947)[3] beginning a long career in the Middle East. Together with Stephen Meade he played a role in supporting the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état.[3] 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 Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh.[2]

In 1953, Copeland returned to private life at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, while remaining a non-official cover operative for the CIA. He traveled to Cairo to meet Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had overthrown King Farouk and taken power in Egypt, advising Nasser on the development of the Mukhabarat and becoming Nasser's closest Western advisor. In this role he offered U.S. economic development and technical military assistance. At the time, the U.S. considered regional instability adverse to U.S. interests. The “new postwar era witnessed an intensive involvement of the United States in the political and economic affairs of the Middle East, in contrast to the hands-off attitude characteristic of the prewar period.... The United States had to face and define its policy in all three sectors that provided the root causes of American interests in the region: the Soviet threat, the birth of Israel, and petroleum.”[6]

In 1955 Copeland returned to the CIA. During the Suez Crisis, in which the United States blocked the collusion of France, the United Kingdom and Israel to invade, the US backed Egypt's independence and control of the Suez Canal. The move is 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 behind their legitimate national interests. After the crisis Nasser, nevertheless, 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 this trend at the time, which included "Copeland's involvement in schemes to assassinate Nasser..."[7]

In 1958, Syria merged with Egypt in the United Arab Republic and King Faisal II was deposed by Iraqi nationalists.[8]

Copeland opposed major paramilitary CIA operations such as the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, on the grounds that they were impossible to keep secret due to size.[2]

From 1957 to 1968 Copeland was stationed with his family in Beirut, where his children grew up attending the American Community School.

Retirement

After retirement from the CIA, Copeland wrote foreign policy books and an autobiography, and articles for publications including the National Review.[2] 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 US President;[2] Bush had run the CIA during the 1970s under Gerald Ford. In the introduction to his book 'Enemy Within', Guardian journalist Seumas Milne wrote that in the Spring of 1990, Copeland warned British miners union leaders Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield that the CIA and MI5 had been involved in kickstarting a media campaign against them and helped to frame corrupt allegations against them.[9]

Also in retirement he created the board game "Game of Nations."[10]

Books

References

  1. 1 2 3 Cook, Joan, The New York Times, January 19, 1991, "Miles Copeland, 74, Expert on Mideast, Writer and Ex-Spy."
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Priscilla L. Buckley, February 11, 1991, National Review, Miles Copeland, R I P - former CIA official - obituary
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Shareen Blair Brysac and Karl E. Meyer (2009), Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East, W. W. Norton & Company, p353-8
  4. ↑ Miles Copeland: "...(Later, I was one of the 200 employees who were on the original list of career members when the CIA became official in July 1974)" The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's Original Political Operative, London: Aurum Press, 1989
  5. ↑ http://www.milescopeland.com/
  6. ↑ Lenczowski, George (1990). American Presidents and the Middle East. Duke University Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-8223-0972-6.
  7. ↑ Anderson, Scott (15 December 2013). "Playing Both Sides". The New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 23 December 2013.
  8. ↑ Copeland, Miles, The Game of Nations, Simon and Schuster, 1970, pg17.
  9. ↑ Google Books: "Enemy Within by Seumas Milne"
  10. ↑ "'Game of Nations' Board Game: Vintage Strategy Board Game by Waddington's (1973)". Vintage Toys & Games. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2014.

External links

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