Qasim was overthrown by the Ba'athist coup of 8 February 1963 known as the Ramadan Revolution. While there have been persistent rumours that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated the coup, declassified documents and the testimony of former CIA officers indicate there was no direct American involvement, although the CIA was actively seeking to find a suitable replacement for Qasim within the Iraqi military and had been informed of an earlier Ba'athist coup plot by a high-ranking informant within the Party. Despite evidence that the CIA had been closely tracking the Ba'ath Party's coup planning since "at least 1961", the CIA official working with Archie Roosevelt Jr. on a separate plan to instigate a military coup against Qasim, and who later became the head of the CIA's operations in Iraq and Syria, has "denied any involvement in the Ba'ath Party's actions", stating instead that the CIA's efforts against Qasim were still in the planning stages at the time.