America's Great Game (60 page)

3
. See, for example, David W. Lesch,
The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 178–179. There is a substantial literature on ALPHA. The most comprehensive single treatment is Neil Caplan,
Futile Diplomacy
, vol. 4,
Operation Alpha and the Failure of Anglo-American Coercive Diplomacy in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1954–1956
(London: Frank Cass, 1997). None of the existing works pay much attention to the domestic US ramifications of ALPHA, the subject of this chapter.

4
. Eveland,
Ropes of Sand
, 182.

5
. Levison, “Notes on a Meeting Held April 8, 1953,” 75.3, ACJP; Dulles quoted in Kolsky,
Jews Against Zionism
, 192;
AFME Annual Report, 1953–54
. The new policy was encoded in NSC Directive 155/1, which sought a “reversal of the anti-American trends of Arab opinion” and an end to the “preferential treatment” of Israel (quoted in Little,
American Orientalism
, 89).

6
. Berger,
Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew
, 41; Berger, notes, June 23, 1953, 7, Government—Henry A. Byroade 1953, Addition M68–068, ACJP; Berger to Levison, July 14, 1952, 75.2, ACJP.

7
. Berger to Levison, March 11, 1952, 75.2, ACJP; Berger to Levison, May 20, 1953, 75.3, ACJP; Berger to Polly Roosevelt, June 8, 1953, 106.1, ACJP; on possible CIA support for ACJ projects, see, for example, Berger to KR, May 18, 1954, 4, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. 1954, Addition M67–130, ACJP; Byroade quoted in Henry Byroade, interview by Neil M. Johnson, September 19, 1988, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project (hereafter FAOHP).

8
. “Views of Three American Editors Regarding Middle East Problems,” January 8, 1954, 611.80/1–854, RG 59, NA; “Arab-Israel Issue in Campaign Scored,”
New York Times
, October 30, 1954, 9; “Edward L. R. Elson Dies at 86; Influential Cleric in Washington,”
New York Times
, August 28, 1993, 26.

9
. Leonard Ware to [Richard H.] Sanger, “Suggestions from Damascus Concerning the American Friends of the Middle East,” December 1, 1952, 511.80/12–152, RG 59, NA; Edward Elson,
interview by Paul Hopper, Washington, DC, September 22, 1968,
Columbia Oral History
, 230, 14.3–4, Edward L. R. Elson Papers, Presbyterian Historical Society Archives, Philadelphia; Elson to Eisenhower, February 24, 1957, 1.3, Elson Papers; Elson to John Foster Dulles, January 3, 1958, 128, Elson, Edward L., 1958, JFDP, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Elson, “Observations and Comments Concerning Cairo,” no date [1957], 59.1, JNP; Elson to Eisenhower, August 4, 1958, 1.3a, Elson Papers; on Elson at the Eisenhower family home, see Berger to Clarence L. Coleman Jr., November 29, 1955, 8, Berger, Dr. Elmer 1955, Addition M68–068, ACJP.

10
.
Kolsky, Jews Against Zionism
, 192–194; Eliot to his parents, April 27, 1954, 1.7, Eliot Papers; Elson to Eisenhower, July 24, 1958, 1.3a, Elson Papers; Eisenhower to Elson, July 28, 1958, 1.3a, Elson Papers. On People-to-People diplomacy, see Osgood,
Total Cold War
, and Christina Klein,
Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

11
.
AFME Annual Report, 1953–54;
Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington, January 27, 1955,
FRUS 1955–57, Vol. 14
, 28; Evelyn Shuckburgh diary, January 27, 1955, MS191/1/2/4, Evelyn Shuckburgh Papers, Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham, UK. “American efforts to ‘deflate the Jews’ over the last two years will not be sustainable much longer, when elections draw near,” Dulles told Shuckburgh.

12
. References to KR, Byroade, and Elson in Jon B. Alterman, “American Aid to Egypt in the 1950s: From Hope to Hostility,”
Middle East Journal
52, no. 1 (1998): 58, 60; for Nasser on Kim and Hussein, see Nutting,
Nasser
, 119–120; “K” and Tuhami quoted in Tawil,
La‘bat al-umam
, 399, 153.

13
. Berger to Lazaron, December 20, 1954, 3, Dr. Morris S. Lazaron 1954, Addition M67–130, ACJP; Eveland,
Ropes of Sand
, 92; John Foster Dulles to Eisenhower, December 23, 1954, 2, Strictly Confidential-A-B (4), General Correspondence and Memoranda Series, JFDP, DDEL; Elson interview, 257–258; Thompson to Jenner, January 6, 1955, 39.19, DTP; Byroade to Thompson, January 17, 1955, 3.9, DTP.

14
. Elmo Hutchison to Eddy, November 28, 1955; Eddy to Devin A. Garrity, September 21, 1955; Eddy to James T. Duce, December 4, 1955, 8.8, WAEP. Besides Devin-Adair, Henry Regnery stands out as a publisher who was friendly to the AFME-ACJ network. See Nuveen to Eddy, July 29, 1955, 8.8, WAEP.

15
. Nasser,
Egypt’s Liberation
, 5, 9.

16
. See Berger,
Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew
, 68–70.

17
. “Egypt: The Revolutionary,”
Time
, September 26, 1955, 25–28; William Zukerman, “U.S. Jews Hysterical Over the Middle East,”
Time
, November 28, 1955, 28.

18
. Mark Glickman, “One Voice Against Many: A Biographical Study of Elmer Berger, 1948–” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1990), 112; Ruth Berger, “The Israelis Gave Us Reason to Criticize,” 1955, 8.8, WAEP; Blake Cochran to State/USIA, “Visit of Elmer Berger to Jordan,” June 13, 1955, 032 Berger, Elmer/6–1355, RG 59, NA; Elmer Berger,
Who Knows Better Must Say So!
(New York: American Council for Judaism, 1955). Berger was also the spark plug for an effort to create a “Citizens’ Committee to Support an American Policy of Sympathetic Impartiality in the Middle East,” drawing on much the same pool of individuals as the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land in the late 1940s, among them Virginia Gildersleeve. Despite support from Henry Byroade, the committee failed to take off, apparently the victim of dithering by the proposed chair, the now-retired ambassador Caffery. Hopkins to Berger, December 21, 1956; Berger to Hopkins, January 21, 1955; Byroade to Hopkins, February 5, 1955, 6, American Friends of the Middle East 1955, Addition M67–130, ACJP.

19
. State to Tel Aviv, etc., “Dr. Berger’s Visit to the Arab States and Israel,” August 1, 1955, 032 Berger, Elmer (Dr.)/8–155, RG 59, NA; Berger,
Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew
, 58. Edward Lansdale, who was now coaching South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem the way he had earlier coached the Filipino Magsaysay, was reputed to be in the background of the American Friends of Vietnam, much as Kim Roosevelt was behind the American Friends of the Middle East. For more on this organization, see Joseph G. Morgan,
The Vietnam Lobby: The American Friends of Vietnam, 1955–1975
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

20
. Isaac Alteras,
Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1953–1960
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 106; Thompson to Jacob Blaustein, February 23, 1954, 39.8, DTP; Elson to Jennie C. Loewenthal, July 1955, 14.7, Elson Papers; Lilliam Levy, “State Dept. Official in Brazen Attack on Jews, Orthodoxy,”
National Jewish Post
, November 9, 1956, 1.18, Elson
Papers; “Propaganda Pressures,”
Near East Report
, June 3, 1957, 24. How much influence Elson exercised personally on Eisenhower is unclear. While some sources suggest a close relationship between the two, the president’s secretary, Ann C. Whitman, claimed that her boss regarded his pastor as a “phony” (quoted in Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
[New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013], 172).

21
. Ben-Gurion quoted in Alteras,
Eisenhower and Israel
, 35;
hasbara
officials quoted in Peter L. Hahn, “The United States and Israel in the Eisenhower Era: The ‘Special Relationship’ Revisited,” in
The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War
, ed. Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 227.

22
. Malcolm Kerr,
The Arab Cold War, 1958–1967: A Study of Ideology in Politics
, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Royal Institute of International Affairs / Oxford University Press, 1967).

Fourteen: Crypto-Diplomacy

1
. ‘Amer quoted in “Egypt: The Revolutionary,” 28.

2
. MC,
Game Player
, 196.

3
. MC to KR, November 29, 1954, quoted in Tawil,
La‘bat al-umam
, 398. See MC,
Game of Nations
, 123–126; Eveland,
Ropes of Sand
, 99–102; Patrick Tyler,
A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East—from the Cold War to the War on Terror
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), 42–44.

4
. KR to MC, January 2, [1955], quoted in Tawil,
La‘bat al-umam
, 392–393.

5
. KR to MC, January 2, [1955], quoted in ibid., 394. See MC,
Game of Nations
, 150; Samir Rafaat, “The Cairo Tower,”
Cairo Times
, October 16, 1997,
http://www.egy.com/zamalek/97-10-16.php
; Lorraine Copeland e-mail, November 29, 2010.

6
. [MC to KR], November 29, 1954, quoted in Tawil,
La‘bat al-umam
, 398; MC,
Game of Nations
, 179–180; Nasser quoted in Neff,
Warriors at Suez
, 67.

7
. Byroade to John Foster Dulles, May 11, 1955, 1, 320 Egypt-USA 1955, Egypt, Cairo Embassy, Classified General Records, 1953–55, RG 84, NA.

8
. Nasser quoted in Neff,
Warriors at Suez
, 76; MC,
Game of Nations
, 129.

9
. For an excellent discussion of this issue based partly on Russian and Czech archives, see Guy Laron, “Cutting the Gordian Knot: The Post-World War II Egyptian Quest for Arms and the 1955 Czechoslovak Arms Deal,” Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No. 55, Washington, DC, 2007.

10
. MC,
Game Player
, 199; Alterman, “American Aid to Egypt,” 60; Tawil,
La‘bat al-umam
, 153–155, 420–423; Lucas and Morey, “Hidden Alliance,” 100; Laron, “Cutting the Gordian Knot,” 28–30; KR, “The Ghost of Suez,” unpublished ms., 6, 5, Roosevelt, Kermit, Love Papers; Byroade to John Foster Dulles, September 21, 1955,
FRUS 1955–57, Vol. 14
, 492–493.

11
. Telephone Call to Mr. Hoover in Washington, September 20, 1955, 4, Telephone Conv.–General September 1, 1955–December 30, 1955 (5), General Correspondence and Memoranda Series, JFDP, DDEL; KR, interview by Kennett Love, Washington, DC, February 24, 1964, 5, Roosevelt, Kermit, Love Papers.

12
. MC,
Game of Nations
, 133; Haikal,
Cairo Documents
, 51–52; Haikal,
Cutting the Lion’s Tail
, 77;
FRUS 1955–57, Vol. 14
, 520.

13
. MC,
Game of Nations
, 135; Lucas,
Divided We Stand
, 340; Trevelyan quoted in ibid., 60.

14
. James N. Cortada, interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy, September 1, 1992, FAOHP; MC,
Game of Nations
, 137; Byroade and Nasser quoted in Haikal,
Cairo Documents
, 53.

15
. KR and Johnston quoted in Neff,
Warriors at Suez
, 92; Eveland,
Ropes of Sand
, 148; Byroade quoted in Neff,
Warriors at Suez
, 92; Haikal,
Cutting the Lion’s Tail
, 77.

16
. Evelyn Shuckburgh diary, September 26, 1955, MS191/1/2/4, Shuckburgh Papers; Macmillan quoted in Memorandum of a Conversation, New York, September 26, 1955,
FRUS 1955–57, Vol. 14
, 518; CIA cable in
FRUS 1955–57, Vol. 14
, 521; George Allen, interview by Kennett Love, Arlington, VA, July 6, 1966, 4, Allen, George, Love Papers.

17
. Haikal,
Cairo Documents
, 54; Telephone Call from Allen Dulles, September 29, 1955, 4, Telephone Conv.–General September 1, 1955–December 30, 1955 (5), General Correspondence and Memoranda Series, JFDP, DDEL; Byroade quoted in Neff,
Warriors at Suez
, 95; Allen interview; Neff,
Warriors at Suez
, 95.

18
. Allen and Roosevelt interviews by Love; MC,
Game of Nations
, 142.

19
. Embassy in Egypt to Department of State, October 1, 1955,
FRUS 1955–57, Vol. 14
, 539; MC,
Game of Nations
, 143.

20
. MC,
Game Player
, 197; MC,
Game of Nations
, 136.

21
. MC,
Game of Nations
, 143. The practice of crypto-diplomacy did not die out with the Eisenhower administration. In February 2011, foreign service veteran Frank G. Wisner II, son of the first head of CIA covert operations, visited Cairo as a special envoy of the Obama administration to talk the aging Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak into giving up power. The mission backfired when Wisner declared publicly that Mubarak should stay in charge so that he could oversee an orderly transition to democracy, thereby contradicting the calls for more urgent action coming from the White House and Obama’s ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey.

Fifteen: Peacemakers

1
. Edward R. F. Sheehan,
Kingdom of Illusion
(New York: Random House, 1964), 80, 57, 149, 145, 182, 153, 56, 221.

2
. Leonard Mosley,
Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network
(New York: Dial, 1978), 348. On the tensions over Buraimi, see Tore T. Petersen, “Anglo-American Rivalry in the Middle East: The Struggle for the Buraimi Oasis, 1953–1957,”
International History Review
14, no. 3 (1992): 71–91.