The CIA and the British in East Africa

How the CIA and MI5 became embroiled in the transition to independence

The transition in Tanzania: Lady Turnbull; Julius Nyerere, first leader of independent Tanganyika, and subsequently Tanzania; Mrs Macleod; Sir John Fletcher-Cooke, Deputy Governor (behind); Sir Richard Turnbull, last Governor of Tanganyika; Iain Macleod, MP, Colonial Secretary (Wikimedia Commons/National Archives). Nyerere expelled the CIA later that year.

In my last piece, I wrote that the archives of one country can be useful for illuminating the intelligence services of another. I’ve since obtained a file which proves that in spades. Produced in the final years of British colonial rule in East Africa, it details the early history of the CIA presence in Kenya, Uganda and modern Tanzania.¹

The Colonial Office was initially wary of the CIA, turning down a request for representation in Nairobi in March 1955.² The British had a lot to be wary about. Kenya had been in a state of emergency since 1952 as the so-called Mau-Mau revolt prompted a counterinsurgency response encompassing mass detention, torture and executions.³

The CIA was not deterred by the British rebuff. Later in 1955, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Charles P. Cabell, visited Kenya during an African tour. Shortly afterwards, the British discovered that a CIA officer was already in residence when American diplomat William Bavis approached the Kenyan Director of Intelligence and Security for an exchange of information.⁴

It was not only intelligence officers the British had to worry about. By 1957, the authorities became concerned about the activities of Maida Springer, an African American representative of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), who had widespread contacts with pro-independence leaders.⁵ The Colonial Secretary hoped for US Government intercession to speed Springer’s departure from East Africa.

In fact, Springer’s boss at the AFL International Department, Jay Lovestone was an agent of the CIA’s James Angleton. Although Springer always denied any agency role, Lovestone’s biographer reports that his intelligence work included back-channel contacts with independence movements that were deniable to European governments.⁶

The replacement of Bavis by Deric O’Bryan in 1958 provided the opportunity to put the CIA presence on a formal liaison basis, although O’Bryan arrived before agreement had been reached, as did the first CIA officer in Uganda, William Godson.⁷

By the time the US consul had declared Godson’s intelligence role to the Governor arrangements were already in hand to put him under Special Branch surveillance, in order to ‘find out if he has done anything of a CIA nature, as that would help in having him chucked out if we failed to come to an agreement.’⁸

After talks with the US Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles in January 1959, MI5 Director General Roger Hollis told the governors of Kenya and Uganda:

..the American Security Services had been heavily criticised during their war for not operating their own agents and having to rely on other than their own sources of intelligence. Congress would not stand for such tight terms of reference as we had proposed. If the Americans, through CIA, did not get some information about Africa in co-operation with us, they would go for it secretly with undeclared agents.⁹

Agreement was reached after the British proposed new terms which included:

(i) No political interference or support of political parties;

(ii) A designated Government contact;

(iii) The agent to be briefed by the Americans not to do anything that would embarrass the Governor;

(iv) The promise to hand over anything bearing on the security of the Colony or the protectorate to this Government.¹⁰

There was some doubt about whether liaison should go through local Special Branches or MI5 security liaison officers (SLOs), who included Duncan Waugh in Nairobi and Ian Carrel in Dar-es-Salaam. Eventually, it was agreed that O’Bryan’s contacts should be the Director of Intelligence and Security in Kenya, and Carrel in Tanganyika.¹¹

British enthusiasm for liaison grew in part because of the Americans’ better access to Egypt with which Britain was effectively fighting its own private Cold War. In September, the Colonial Secretary wrote to governments in Africa and Aden with guidance on the CIA.

When the arrangements for local liaison in Colonial territories were being negotiated, it was I think, the general impression, not only in colonial territories, but also in London, that the exchange of intelligence in dependencies was likely to be a one-sided affair and that while the CIA would be provided with a lot of local information little would flow in the reverse direction. Experience during the last few months has shown that this assumption was not entirely justified. In fact I am advised by the Security Service that the Americans have been providing valuable intelligence on such subjects as activities in Cairo affecting colonial territories which it would have been difficult or impossible to obtain through any other available source…¹²

The Secretary of State’s comment that ‘there has been a marked change for the better in the attitude of officials in the State Department and indeed in the American Government itself towards British colonial policy’ suggests a degree of post-Suez rationalization.¹³

Despite such optimism, some material was still to be withheld from the Americans:

Matters which closely concern the policy of Her Majesty’s Government in Colonial territories and which should, therefore remain domestic to British eyes; there would appear, however, to be no grave difficulty in passing material concerning the general activities of local political parties.¹⁴

One problem was whether to show the CIA intelligence reports that were not given to the local politicians who were belatedly forming a growing contingent in East African governments. Ugandan officials feared that ‘in a small community like this, someone from the Consulate would, in an unguarded moment, reveal to one of the Ministers that they have access to graded material emanating from the Protectorate Government, which the Ministers themselves do not see.’¹⁵

British officials also continued to fret about what the CIA were doing on their own account. The Ugandan Special Branch complained that they got little liaison intelligence from Godson’s diplomatic contacts with Ugandan leaders, including the country’s most powerful traditional king, the Kabaka of Buganda.¹⁶

In February 1960, Special Branch surveilled Godson as he flew across the border and met members of the main pro-independence party in Tanganyika, Julius Nyerere’s TANU. Hollis would later raise this with the CIA station chief in London, suggesting that ‘on the face of it, the visit could have had a political intelligence reason.’¹⁷

The spat overshadowed the appointment of Michael F. Stern, the first official CIA representative in Tanganyika, in April.¹⁸ However, the CIA’s first Africa Division Chief, Bronson Tweedy was well placed to smooth feathers during a tour of the continent in May.¹⁹

The Colonial Office told the Ugandan Government:

Tweedy was for some time stationed in London, and we came to know him quite well in the JIC context. He is an anglophile to the extent that he plays cricket (I cannot say how well.) Since his return to Washington last year he has been placed in charge of the new CIA headquarters division which deals with African Affairs, and he will, I am sure, exert a useful influence in our favour there.²⁰

If anything, London understated Tweedy’s anglophile credentials. The intelligence writer David Wise described him as ‘the perfect specimen of an upper-echelon officer.’²¹ He was born in England, to an American banker father, and educated at Stowe, an English public school whose other alumni included Prince Rainier of Monaco and the actor David Niven.²²

The Chief Secretary of Uganda found Tweedy ‘an agreeable sort of chap’ although noting he did not provide any new information.²³ Later that year, the CIA analysts got in on the act when Kenya and Uganda formed part of an African tour by Wayne Jackson of the Office of National Estimates.²⁴

In the early 1960s, however, the Anglo-American relationship became something of a double-edged sword as both governments sought to establish security liaison with post-independence leaders. In December 1961, the Governor of Tanganyika reported that Julius Nyerere was refusing to allow the CIA representative to remain, because of the precedent it would create for intelligence officers from other countries.²⁵ This was an early sign of the non-aligned foreign policy Tanzania would adopt, breaking with MI5’s aspirations for a Commonwealth security network.²⁶

In Uganda, this episode prompted reconsideration of the previous plan to introduce the post-independence government to CIA representative William D. Carey at the same time as the MI5 SLO.²⁷ Continuity seems to have been strongest in Kenya, where within a few years of independence, CIA activity was on a sufficient scale to become a concern to MI5 in its own right.²⁸

Variants of similar dynamics must have played out across anglophone Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1959, when British officials in the Gambia were due to meet the CIA representative in Dakar, Frank Jeton, the Colonial Office told them that ‘the CIA are at present represented by officers in Nigeria, Kenya (where the representative holds also a watching brief for Tanganyika), Uganda, and the Central African Federation.’²⁹

The last-named representative would have had a ring-side seat to observe events not only in Rhodesia, but also in Congo, where the urbane Tweedy was tasked to procure the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1960.³⁰ The Congolese Prime Minister’s aspirations were arguably not so different from Julius Nyerere’s. The fatal difference may have been that Congo was afflicted with a resource curse that Tanzania did not have.

1. UK National Archives FCO 141/18445 Uganda: United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 1958 Jan 01 - 1962 Dec 31.

2. Colonial Secretary to Governor, Nairobi, 21 January 1956, FCO141/18445.

3. Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire, William Collins, 2013, pp.25-251.

4. Governor of Kenya to Colonial Secretary, 25 January 1956, FCO41/18445.

5. UK National Archives FCO 141/17746 Tanganyika: Maida Springer, special representative of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Date: 1957 Jan 01 - 1960 Dec 31. See also my State-Private Networks and Intelligence Theory: From Cold War Liberalism to Neoconservatism, Routledge 2022, pp.76-77.

6. Ted Morgan, A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster, Random House, 1999, pp.284-285.

7. UK National Archives FCO 141/18445.

8. W.J. Marquand to D.S. Le Poidevin, 4 December 1958, FCO41/18445.

9. Governor of Uganda, CIA Representation in Uganda and Kenya, 29 January 1959, FCO41/18445.

10. C.H. Hartwell to N.D. Watson, 10 February 1959, FCO41/18445.

11. UK National Archives FCO 141/18445.

12. Colonial Secretary, Supply of Information to the US Central Intelligence Agency, 22 September 1959, FCO41/18445.

13. Colonial Secretary, Supply of Information to the US Central Intelligence Agency, 22 September 1959, FCO41/18445.

14. Colonial Secretary, Supply of Information to the US Central Intelligence Agency, 22 September 1959, FCO41/18445.

15. C.P.S. Allen to N.D. Watson, 15 February 1960, FCO41/18445.

16. ‘G.1.’, 5 February 1960, FCO41/18445.

17. R.N. Posnett to W. Wood, 20 April 1960, FCO41/18445.

18. Colonial Secretary, CIA Representation in Dar es Salaam, 12 April 1960, FCO41/18445.

19. C.Y. Carstairs to Charles Hartwell, 26 April 1960, FCO41/18445.

20. C.Y. Carstairs to Charles Hartwell, 26 April 1960, FCO41/18445.

21. David Wise, Molehunt: How the Search for a Phantom Traitor Shattered the CIA, Avon Books, 1992, p.285.

22. Mrs Bronson Tweedy, New York Times, 5 January 1940.

23. C.H. Hartwell to C.Y. Carstairs, 3 June 1960, FCO41/18445.

24. C.Y. Carstairs to Crawford, 7 October 1960, FCO41/18445.

25. Governor of Tanganyika to Colonial Secretary, 2 December 1961, FCO41/18445.

26. Thomas J. Maguire & Hannah Franklin (2021) Creating a Commonwealth Security Culture? State-Building and the International Politics of Security Assistance in Tanzania, The International History Review, 43:1, 12-33, DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2020.1748681

27. Colonial Secretary to Governor of Uganda, Kellar’s Visit: Declaration of CIA, 3 May 1962, FCO41/18445.

28. Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire, William Collins, 2013, p.273.

29. Colonial Secretary to Gambia, 4 May 1959, FCO141/4858.

30. Anthony Lewis, How Fantasies Became Policy, Out of Control, New York Times, 23 November 1975.