‘Cloak Without Dagger’:¹How the Information Research Department Fought Britain's Cold War in the Middle East, 1948–56

Abstract

In 1948, the Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) embarked upon a global anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda war. Drawing upon recently declassified records, this article investigates IRD's Middle Eastern Cold War. Outlining IRD's operational methods and the activities in which it engaged, it concludes that although IRD's Middle Eastern operation before the 1956 Suez Crisis must ultimately be regarded as a failure, the frequently employed caricature of IRD as a group of doctrinaire Cold Warriors is misplaced and that, by the eve of the Suez Crisis, IRD had evolved into a flexible instrument of psychological warfare which, in the Middle East, was to be primarily employed against anti-British nationalist movements.

Notes

  1. The term is taken from a 1957 British espionage film directed by Michael Anderson and Joseph Sterling and was also the title of the 1955 autobiography of Sir Percy Sillitoe, director general of MI5 between 1946 and 1953.

  2. P.M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind. A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Present Day (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p.250.

  3. G.D. Rawnsley, ‘Introduction’, in G.D. Rawnsley (ed.), Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1999), p.1.

  4. M.J. Medhurst, Eisenhower's War of Words. Rhetoric and Leadership (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 1994), p.1.

  5. See, for example: W. Hixson, Parting the Curtain (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1997); R. Wagnleiter, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); M. Nelson, War of the Black Heavens (London: Brassey's, 1997); F. Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? (London: Granta Publications, 1999); Rawnsley (ed.), Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s; S. Lucas, Freedom's War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999); Robert Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty. Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999); Stephen Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America. Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).

  6. Scott Lucas has provided perhaps the most eloquent warning against ‘the stale and unrewarding evaluation of policy as an adjunct to policy’. Scott Lucas, ‘Beyond Diplomacy: Propaganda and the History of the Cold War’, in Rawnsley (ed.), Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s, p.21.

  7. President Eisenhower's special assistant for psychological warfare. For an interesting essay on Jackson's role within the Eisenhower administration, see H.W. Brands, Cold Warriors. Eisenhower's Generation and American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), chapter 6.

  8. Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas [hereafter DDE], C.D. Jackson Papers, Box 68, Log – 1954 (3), 11 Aug. 1954

  9. R.H.K. Marett, Through the Back Door: An Inside View of Britain's Overseas Information Services (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968), p.173.

 10. Public Record Office [PRO], FO 953/385/PME40/40/965, Gathorne-Hardy memorandum, Monthly Return: Ikhwan Al Hurriya, 28 June 1948.

 11. PRO, FO 1110/11/PR476G, Troutbeck to Warner, 15 June 1948.

 12. PRO, FO 1110/460/PR126/5G, Memorandum by J. Peck, ‘Anti-Communist Propaganda Operations’, 27 July 1951.

 13. For an excellent exposition of the argument that Anglo-Soviet rivalries in North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean played a key role in the collapse of the wartime Grand Alliance and the onset of the Cold War, see John Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993).

 14. PRO, FO 1110/11/PR533/G, Warner minute, 17 June 1948, enclosing minutes of a meeting of the Russia Committee held on 10 June 1948.

 15. PRO, FO 1110/616/PRG104/49/G, Peck to Glass, 16 July 1953.

 16. PRO, FO 1110/585/PRG44/8/G, Chancery (Ankara) to IRD, 29 June 1953.

 17. PRO, FO 1110/227/PR3295, Riley minute, 13 Sept. 1949, enclosing ‘Draft Notes for discussion with Mr. Haigh’, undated.

 18. PRO, FO 1110/565/PRG16/13, James Murray to Peck, 6 July 1953.

 19. PRO, FO 1110/776/PR1016/2/G, Rennie to Glass, 10 Feb. 1955.

 20. PRO, FO 1100/600/PRG80/5/G, Chancery, Amman, to IRD, 13 July 1956.

 21. PRO, FO 1110/676/PR1034/5/G, Residency, Bahrain, to IRD, 29 Nov. 1954.

 22. PRO, FO 1110/823/PR1093/6, Kellas to Grey, 22 July 1955.

 23. PRO, CAB 159/16, J.I.C. (54) 67th Meeting, Minutes of Meeting held on 29 July 1954.

 24. PRO, FO 371/110846/V2191/4, Chapman Andrews to Eden, 26 Oct. 1954.

 25. PRO, FO 1110/821/PR1089/6/G, Gardener to Grey, 3 May 1955.

 26. J. Vaughan, ‘”Propaganda by Proxy”: Britain, America and Arab Radio Broadcasting, 1953–1957’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 22/2 (June 2002), pp.157–72.

 27. PRO, FO 1110/600/PRG80/5/G, Chancery, Amman, to IRD, 13 July 1953.

 28. PRO, FO 953/1652/PB1041/77G, Stephenson to Rennie, 27 July 1956. The bid to boost the propaganda capabilities of Nuri al-Said's Iraq was a project that took on increasing significance after British recognition that their position in the Suez Canal Zone base was no longer tenable and the rapid deterioration in relations with Egypt through 1955. The strategic decision to reestablish Britain's Middle Eastern position upon a pro-Western ‘Iraqi–Jordanian axis’ (see Scott Lucas, Divided We Stand. Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), pp.31–2) had important implications for British information policy in the Middle East. The Americans also came round to the idea of building up Iraq at Nasser's expense and incorporated it within the psychological aspects of the ‘Omega’ project jointly formulated by British and American officials in early 1956.

 29. PRO, FO 1110/820/PR1088/2/G, Gauntlett to Rennie, 19 April 1955.

 30. PRO, FO 1110/706/PR10104/145/G, Myers to Glass, 29 Oct. 1954 and Glass to Myers, 15 Nov. 1954.

 31. PRO, FO 1110/565/PRG16/11, J. Murray to IRD, 19 June 1953.

 32. PRO, FO 1110/697/PR1089/17, Press Attaché, Damascus, to Foreign Office, [received] 16 Dec. 1954.

 33. PRO, FO 1110/694/PR1080/1, Information Division, Beirut, to IRD, 11 Jan. 1953.

 34. PRO, FO 1110/700/PR1093/6, Information Department, Baghdad, to IRD, 2 March 1954.

 35. PRO, FO 1110/616/PRG104/49/G, Peck to Glass, 16 July 1953.

 36. PRO, FO 1110/700/PR1093/1/G, Information Department, Baghdad, to IRD, 12 Jan. 1954.

 37. PRO, INF 12/231, Harrison minute, 7 Dec. 1954. ‘The Digest’ was a weekly compendium of IRD articles and features issued to overseas posts.

 38. W. Laqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Limited, 1956), p.272.

 39. Ibid. p.6. Doubts as to the effectiveness of ‘Islamic’ resistance to Soviet penetration of the region were also expressed within official American circles. As early as 1946, Phillip Ireland (first secretary at the US embassy in Cairo) had informed the State Department that ‘The Soviet attitude towards Islam … has been so cleverly presented in recent years by Soviet propaganda that, in many areas, Islam can no longer be counted upon as a bulwark against the doctrines of Soviet Russia’. (United States National Archive, College Park, MD [USNA], RG 84, 2410, Egypt, Cairo Embassy 1936–1955, Box 150, Folder 800 1946, Lyon to Secretary of State, 20 July 1946.

 40. Adorning the dust jacket of the British edition of Laqueur's The Soviet Union and the Middle East (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959) is a glowing review of Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East by Guy Wint. Wint was a leader writer for the Manchester Guardian and, according to Lashmar and Oliver, ‘an authorized client of IRD with access to IRD's research desks’ (P. Lashmar and J. Oliver, Britain's Secret Propaganda War (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1998) p.101).

 41. PRO, CAB 158/18 (Part I), JIC (54) 72 (Final), ‘Political Developments in the Middle East and their Impact upon Western Interests’, Report by the Joint Intelligence Committee, 11 Nov. 1954.

 42. Ibid.

 43. PRO, FO 1110/662/PR1016/17/G, Chancery, Cairo, to IRD, 23 July 1954.

 44. PRO, FO 975/25, Communism and Islam, IRD Research Report, 31 May 1949.

 45. PRO, FO 1110/697/PR1089/2, British Embassy, Damascus, to IRD [received] 22 Jan. 1954.

 46. PRO, FO 1110/833/PR10104/80/G, Glass to Rennie [received] 11 July 1955.

 47. PRO, FO 1110/316/PR43/81G, Information Department, Cairo, to IRD, 20 March 1950, enclosed memorandum, ‘Anti-Communist Propaganda in Egypt’, 18 Feb. 1950.

 48. Ibid.

 49. PRO, FO 1110/609/PRG93/8/G, Mackenzie to IRD, 22 June 1953.

 50. Ibid., Horn to Mackenzie, 31 July 1953.

 51. PRO, FO 1110/316/PR43/8/G, Information Department, Cairo to IRD, 20 March 1950, ‘Anti-Communist Propaganda in Egypt’, 18 Feb. 1950.

 52. PRO, FO 1110/776/PR1016/10/G, Ralph Murray to Grey, 18 July 1955.

 53. Ibid.

 54. A reference to the relationship established with Dr Jokhodar, the official dealing with social policy at the Ministry of National Economy, and with Subhi Khatib, president of the National Federation of Trade Unions.

 55. PRO, FO 1110/821/PR1089/6/G, Gardener to Grey, 3 May 1955.

 56. An article entitled ‘WFTU: A Subversive Organisation’ was produced by IRD and RIO Beirut and appeared in the Jordanian press in March 1956 (PRO, FO 1110/926, RIO Beirut to IRD, 9 April 1956).

 57. PRO, FO 953/1481/P10416/2/G, Information Office, Beirut to IRD, 26 April 1954, and accompanying Foreign Office minutes.

 58. PRO, FO 1110/821/ PR1089/6/G, Goodison minute, 9 June 1955.

 59. PRO, FO 953/1481/P10416/2/G, Information Office, Beirut to IRD, 26 April 1954, and accompanying Foreign Office minutes, and FO 1110/821/PR1089/6/G, Kemp minute, 6 June 1955.

 60. Chapman Andrews was shrewd enough to recognize that any cultivation of relations with Jumblatt would need to be carefully handled, stating that any indication that he was ‘taking Jumblatt up’ would place an ‘intolerable strain upon my relations with the President and Lebanese Government’ (PRO, FO 1110/820/PR1088/3/G, Chapman Andrews to Grey, 2 May 1955).

 61. PRO, FO 1110/821/PR1089/6/G, Gardener to Grey, 3 May 1955.

 62. PRO, FO 1110/776/PR1016/10/G, Murray to Grey, 18 July 1955. IRD's response to this suggestion was not enthusiastic, with Grey doubting that a left-wing British journalist could be found to take the job on (‘they are unlikely to do it to please us’) and expressing concern about what a journalist might publish upon his return to Britain (FO 1110/776/PR1016/10/G, Grey to Murray, 19 Sept. 1955).

 63. PRO, FO 1110/821/PR1089/6/G, Gardener to Grey, 3 May 1955.

 64. For lucid enquiries into the complex history of Western defence strategy in the Middle East in the post-war decade see Nigel Ashton, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the Problem of Nasser (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1996), chapter 3; David Devereux, The Formulation of British Defence Policy towards the Middle East 1948–56 (Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1991); Peter Hahn, The United States, Great Britain and Egypt, 1945–1956 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); and W. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

 65. PRO, FO 1110/823/PR1093/6, Kellas to Grey, 27 July 1955.

 66. Mohamed Heikal, Cutting the Lion's Tail. Suez through Egyptian Eyes (London: André Deutsch, 1986), p.53.

 67. PRO, FO 1110/823/PR1093/6, Glass to IRD, 30 July 1955.

 68. USNA, RG 59, Lot File 66D148, Box 128, Folder: Psychological Operations, Psychological Aspects of US Strategy Panel Report, Nov. 1955, chapter II, ‘Strategic Framework for US Action’, p.11.

 69. PRO, PREM 11/1079, Makins to Foreign Office, No. 2489, 14 Oct. 1955.

 70. Ibid. Millard minute, 18 Oct. 1955.

 71. PRO, FO 1110/591/PRG53/1, Information Division, Beirut to Information Office, Tel Aviv, 10 June 1953. British propaganda was in this regard, completely complementary to USIA's anti-Soviet output. Indeed, USIA dispatched what it called a ‘feature packet’ to its overseas posts on precisely this theme (USNA, RG 306, 250/67/26/06, USIA Feature Packets, Non-Recurring Subjects 1953–58, Box 1, Kit No. 14, ‘Words and Deeds’, undated).

 72. PRO, FO 953/1629/P1041/2, RIO Beirut to IPD, (D), 20 Jan. 1956. Kolarz was a Czechoslovakian émigré recommended to IRD by Denis Healey.

 73. PRO, FO 1110/715/PR10111/31/G, IRD to All Heads of Missions, 6 June 1955.

 74. PRO, FO 1110/688/PR1053/2, Evans to IRD, 12 March 1954 (and accompanying correspondence).

 75. PRO, INF 12/734, Central Office of Information memorandum, ‘Al Aalam’, 12 Oct. 1957.

 76. PRO, FO 953/1629/P1041/2, RIO Beirut to IPD, (B), 13 Jan. 1956.

 77. PRO, FO 953/1476/P1041/20, Gathorne-Hardy to Marett, 6 Aug. 1954, enclosed Central Office of Information Feature Article No. 9633, ‘The Dangers of Neutrality – And the Advantages of a Defensive Alliance’.

 78. An Arabic translation of Russell's essay, ‘Who Can Be Neutral?’ was distributed in the Middle East in early 1953.

 79. PRO, FO 953/1476/P1041/20, Gathorne-Hardy to Marett, 6 Aug. 1954, and attached minutes.

 80. PRO, FO 1110/660/PR1013/5, Fay to IRD, 5 Nov. 1954.

 81. PRO, FO 1110/826/PR1098/1, McGregor to Grey, 7 July 1955.

 82. USNA, RG 306, 250/64/04-05/07-1, USIA Foreign Service Dispatches, 1954–65, Box 1, Ordway to USIA, 7 July 1954.

 83. PRO, FO 1110/PR10104/143/G, Lewen to Glass, 1 Nov. 1954. Lewis' unofficial influence upon the United States Information Agency in their efforts to tailor propaganda material for Middle Eastern audiences is suggested in USNA, RG 306, 250/67/18-06-07, USIA Intelligence Memoranda of the Office of Research 1954–56, Box 3, IM-122-55, ‘Middle East reactions to Soviet Pressures’, Notes on talk by Bernard Lewis, 19 Dec. 1955.

 84. PRO, FO 1110/316/PR43/8/G, ‘Anti-Communist Propaganda in Egypt’, 18 Feb. 1950.

 85. PRO, FO 953/1552/P1041/70, Baghdad to IPD, 4 May 1955. Similar messages reached IRD from Syria, where information officers concluded that ‘most Syrians, even those who are well educated, have not acquired the reading habit’ (PRO, FO 1110/ 821/PR1089/14, Gallagher to Grey, 20 July 1955). A counter-argument might well be based on the apparent success of United States Information Service reading rooms in the 1940s and 1950s.

 86. PRO, FO 1110/PRG104/75/G, Chapman Andrews to Bowker, 23 Sept. 1953. Chapman Andrews' preferred project for shaping opinion in the Lebanon was the establishment of a public school in order to provide the qualities of leadership and character that he considered to be lacking in Arab society.

 87. PRO, FO 1110/942/PR10104/91/G, Tripp to Gault, 29 June 1956.

 88. PRO, FO 1110/716, IRD Note, ‘Collation of Intelligence’, undated [1955].

 89. Diplomatic historians have, for various reasons, tended to shy away from engagement with the concept of ‘Orientalism’ and there are relatively few surveys of its influence upon the formulation and execution of Western policy towards the Middle East in the Cold War era (see Andrew J. Rotter, ‘Saidism without Said: Orientalism and U.S. Diplomatic History’, The American Historical Review 105/4 (Oct. 2000), pp.1205–17). For two notable recent exceptions see Mary Ann Heiss, ‘Real Men Don't Wear Pajamas: Anglo-American Cultural Perceptions of Mohammed Mossadeq and the Iranian Nationalization Dispute’, in Peter L. Hahn and Mary Ann Heiss (eds.), Empire and Revolution: The United States and the Third World since 1945 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 2000), pp.178–94; and Douglas Little, American Orientalism. The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

 90. PRO, FO 1110/791/PR1034/3/G, Stevens to Grey, 6 July 1955.

 91. Lashmar and Oliver, Britain's Secret Propaganda War, pp.167–8.

 92. PRO, FO 1110/873/PR10111/144/G, A.E. Davidson minute, 24 Oct. 1956.

 93. PRO, CAB 134/1297, Official Committee on the Middle East, ME(O)(56) 3rd meeting, 13 April 1956.

 94. PRO, FO 1110/942/PR10704/54/G, Grey to Adams, 3 May 1956.

 95. PRO, FO 371/121252/V1073/135/G, ‘Baghdad Pact Council. Report of Counter-Subversion Committee. Brief for United Kingdom Delegation’, 11 April 1956.

 96. PRO, FO 371/121262/V1073/321, Record of 24th meeting of the Deputies held on 23 Aug. 1956.

 97. DDE, John Foster Dulles Papers, Subject Series, Box 5, Folder: File received from Mr. Herbert Hoover Jr.'s office (1), Memorandum by William Rountree, ‘United States Policy in the Near East’, 28 March 1956.

 98. R.F. Holland, ‘The Imperial Factor in British Strategies from Attlee to Macmillan, 1945–63’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 12/2 (Jan. 1984), p.177.

 99. PRO, CAB 158/26, JIC (56) (123) (Revise), ‘Soviet Policy in the Light of the Situation in the Middle East and the Satellites’, 6 Dec. 1956.

100. PRO, CAB 158/26, JIC (56) 117 (Final), ‘Soviet Designs in the Middle East’, Report by the Joint Intelligence Committee, 11 Nov. 1956.

101. DDE, White House Office, Staff Research Group Records 1956–61, Box 21, Folder: United States Information Agency 1-350, Stephens to Toner, 23 Oct. 1957.

102. Watson established a mechanism for the exchange of IRD and State Department research material in 1950 and a number of consultative arrangements and collaborative projects eventually emerged from this connection (see PRO, FO 1110/586/PRG45/8, Watson to Hobson, 12 Jan. 1953).

103. DDE, White House Office, Staff Research Group Records 1956–61, Box 21, Folder: United States Information Agency 1-350, Stephens to Toner, 16 April 1958.

104. DDE, OCB: Subject Subseries, Box 4, Folder: Near East – Radio Broadcasting (1), Draft memorandum, untitled, 22 July 1958. See also Gary D. Rawnsley, ‘Overt and Covert: The Voice of Britain and Black Radio Broadcasting in the Suez Crisis, 1956’, Intelligence and National Security 11/3 (July 1996), p.515.

105. See Lashmar and Oliver, Britain's Secret Propaganda War, p.73.

106. Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p.184.

107. Marett, Through the Back Door, p.177.