page_title: CIA activities in Iraq
section_title: 1963
hierarchical_section_title: CIA activities in Iraq / 1963
caption_attribution_description: Abd al-Karim's corpse.
context_page_description: The United States Central Intelligence Agency has had a long history of its involvement in Iraq. Although the CIA was not directly involved in the 1963 Ba'athist coup that ousted Abd al-Karim Qasim, it had been plotting to remove Qasim from mid-1962 until his overthrow, developing contacts with Iraqi opposition groups including the Ba'ath Party and planning to "incapacitate" a high-ranking member of Qasim's government with a poisoned handkerchief. 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. 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 Persian 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.
context_section_description: On February 7, 1963 State Department executive secretary William Brubeck wrote that Iraq had become "one of the more useful spots for acquiring technical information on Soviet military and industrial equipment and on Soviet methods of operation in nonaligned areas." U.S. officials were instructed not to respond to Qasim's false claims that the U.S. was supporting Kurdish rebels out of a desire to preserve the U.S. presence in Iraq. With access to an "intelligence bonanza" hanging in the balance, U.S. officials were showing "great reluctance about aggravating Qasim."
  The Iraqi Ba'ath Party overthrew and executed Qasim in a violent coup on February 8, 1963. Mahdawi was executed along with Qasim: "Their bodies were then exhibited on state television in a gruesome, five-minute film called The End of the Criminals that aired immediately following prayers and a Felix the Cat cartoon." While there have been persistent rumors that the CIA orchestrated the coup, declassified documents and the testimony of former CIA officers indicate there was no direct American involvement, although the U.S. had been notified of two aborted Ba'athist coup plots in July and December 1962 and its post-coup actions suggested that "at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed." 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 Roosevelt 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: "I was still engaged in contacting people who could play a role in a coup attempt against [him]." Qasim's former deputy Arif (who was not a Ba'athist) was given the largely ceremonial title of President, while prominent Ba'athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was named Prime Minister. The most powerful leader of the new government was the secretary of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, Ali Salih al-Sa'di, who controlled the National Guard militia and organized a massacre of hundreds—if not thousands—of suspected communists and other dissidents in the days following the coup. The Kennedy administration viewed the prospect of an Iraqi shift in the Cold War with cautious optimism, ultimately approving a $55 million arms deal for Iraq. It is widely believed that the CIA provided al-Sa'di's National Guard with lists of communists and other leftists, who were then arrested or killed. This claim originated in a September 27, 1963 Al-Ahram interview with King Hussein of Jordan, who—seeking to dispel reports that he was on the CIA's payroll—declared:
  You tell me that American Intelligence was behind the 1957 events in Jordan. Permit me to tell you that I know for a certainty that what happened in Iraq on 8 February had the support of American Intelligence. Some of those who now rule in Baghdad do not know of this thing but I am aware of the truth. Numerous meetings were held between the Ba'ath party and American Intelligence, the more important in Kuwait. Do you know that ... on 8 February a secret radio beamed to Iraq was supplying the men who pulled the coup with the names and addresses of the Communists there so that they could be arrested and executed? ... Yet I am the one accused of being an agent of America and imperialism!
  According to Hanna Batatu, however, "the Ba'athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years—1957-1958—when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels." In addition, "the lists in question proved to be in part out of date," which could be taken as evidence they were compiled well before 1963. Batatu's explanation is supported by Bureau of Intelligence and Research reports stating that "[Communist] party members [are being] rounded up on the basis of lists prepared by the now-dominant Ba'th
caption: Qasim after execution
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