Podcasts

Interview

Coups, lies, dirty tricks: The Police's

Stewart Copeland on his CIA agent father
Dorian Lynskey
The drummer was brought up in the Middle East – not realising
that his father Miles was a spy sent to destabilise the region. But,
he says, it was Miles’s claim that the Police were a psy-ops outfit
that upset Sting

Psy-ops? … Stewart Copeland, Sting and Andy Summers of the Police. Photograph: Gijsbert
Psy
Hanekroot/Redferns

Wed 5 Aug 2020 06.00 BST

I
n 1986, a 69-year-old Miles Axe Copeland Jr gave a memorable
interview to Rolling Stone magazine. His three sons were all music
industry powerhouses – Stewart played drums in the Police, Miles
III was their manager and Ian their booking agent – and Miles
himself had been a jazz trumpet-player in his youth. But the interview
wasn’t about music. The subject was his days as the CIA’s man in the
Middle East between 1947 and 1957, during which time he dined with
President Nasser of Egypt, partied with the Soviet spy Kim Philby and, as a
pioneer of “dirty tricks”, played a part in removing the leaders of Syria and
Iran. Inconveniently for his youngest son, he concluded the interview by
implying that the Police were a psy
psy-ops outfit who played shows to
“70,000 young minds open to whatever the Police decide to put into
them”.

“You know it got old Sting on a bad day,” Stewart says, tickled by the
memory. “He knew my father very well, and he regrets it now but he took
adversely the suggestion that he was a CIA pawn.”

A spy, and something of a wag … Miles Copeland Jr (right) in 1970 with Winston Churchill
MP, a grandson of the wartime leader. Photograph: ANL/Rex/Shutterstock

Stewart calls his dad, who died in 1991, “something of a wag – a bomb-
thrower”. He was the kind of man the BBC would book for a late-night talk
show to exasperate Tony Benn with an unapologetic defence of US
realpolitik: “There were those under whose skin he could successfully
crawl.” On a video call from his home in California, where he now writes
operas after two decades of post-Police film scoring, Stewart appears to be
his father’s son. Surrounded by books and an exotic array of musical
instruments, he’s a natural storyteller with a love of funny voices, florid
vocabulary and wry asides, all delivered at high velocity and top volume
as he bobs and weaves before the camera like a debonair boxer. He tried to
turn his father’s CIA years into a movie, but investors wanted to
emphasise the Police connection and he didn’t, so it has mutated into a
very entertaining nine-part podcast for Audible.

I remember
hanging out with
Rage Against the
Machine and Zack
de la Rocha was
looking at me pretty
funny. His main
problem was that I
played polo

Miles Copeland Jr was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1916. During the

second world war he was a US agent stationed in London, where he was
involved in the disinformation campaign preceding D-day, and married a
Scottish intelligence agent called Lorraine Adie, who later became an
archaeologist. When the war ended, Miles became one of the CIA’s first
recruits and was posted to Syria. Though born in Virginia in 1952, the
youngest of four, Stewart spent his entire childhood and adolescence in
Beirut and Cairo, and attributes his drumming style to his immersion in
Arabic rhythms. “We felt underprivileged,” he says, “like we were missing
out on this unattainable land of perfection where everything was shiny
and modern and cool. It wasn’t until we grew up that we realised, actually,
the place that we lived had a lot of cultural advantages.”

After leaving the agency in 1957, Miles became a well-paid consultant and
conservative journalist. Not until 1969, when he published his bestseller
The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics, did Miles’s
offspring finally discover what he’d been up to. His children had been as
oblivious to his clandestine activities as he had to Kim Philby’s.

Were they never bothered by the

fact that their father had lied to
them? “He didn’t lie to us,”
Stewart corrects me sharply. “He
 just didn’t tell us the whole story.
But we never asked.”

And you never guessed?

“It may surprise you to know –

and it surprises me to recall – that
we didn’t think about it that
much.”

Stewart thinks Miles would have

disliked the title of My Dad the
Spy (“He was kind of a snob in
that regard – ‘spy’ was somehow
déclassé”) but I don’t imagine he
would have any other complaints.
While many musicians have
unresolved issues with their
fathers, Stewart, whose teenage
rebellion lasted “about 20
minutes”, doesn’t have a bad
A bit awkward? … Stewart Copeland of the
Police on the Amnesty International benefit
word to say about his. In the
tour in Chicago in 1986. Photograph: Paul podcast’s dramatised recreations,
Natkin/WireImage actor Kerry Shale captures the sly
southern charm that served Miles
well as an agent and a parent. For a man who led a double life, he was a
remarkably consistent character.

“Everything I learned at his knee in the family home was confirmed by the
historians,” says Stewart. “Not only was his nature described exactly as I
remember him – a very jocular, cheerful, witty, charming man – but also
the stories.”

When The Game of Nations came out, Stewart was a college student in the
US and the CIA’s reputation was mud due to a slew of ugly revelations.
Nonetheless, he thought his dad’s old job was “cool” and has never
revised that opinion. When he was in the Police, he says, it was never a
major issue. “I think behind our backs people did write the Copeland
brothers off as rightwing monsters, but I got on pretty well with
everybody. Decades later I remember hanging out with Rage Against the
Machine and Zack [de la Rocha] was looking at me pretty funny but the
other guys were friendly. His main problem was that I played polo.”
 Reunion … Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers of the Police perform in Hyde Park,
London, in 2008. Photograph: Pete Still/Redferns

Still, it must have been uncomfortable sometimes. In that 1986 interview

Miles said: “My complaint has been that the CIA isn’t overthrowing
enough anti-American governments or assassinating enough anti-
American leaders, but I guess I’m getting old.” Given that the Police were
about to headline Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope tour,
wasn’t that a bit awkward?

“Oh, that’s right, my father’s gag,” Stewart laughs before stopping himself.
“Now I can sympathise with people from those countries who would not
be amused by my father’s puckish sense of humour and would have every
right to look askance at this messing with the destiny of their nations.”

The tone of the podcast, too, oscillates between playful and earnest. The
first few episodes present Miles as an Ian Fleming character in a Graham
Greene world, buccaneering his way through the Levant. Only later does
Stewart confront the geopolitical implications and talk to Middle Eastern
historians who blame his father for what later unfolded in Iran: no coup
against prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, no tyrannical
Shah, no Islamic revolution in 1979. Stewart hotly disagrees.

“Guys, 70 years have gone by! The current regime of Iran was not chosen
by the CIA. It’s what happened when the Iranians chose their system of
governance. For right or wrong, it’s theirs.”
But does he really think he can be impartial about his father’s role in the
region?

“When it comes to my father, you’re right, I cannot be objective. But I am

interested in that region. I’d say that 80 million Iranians are more in
charge of their own country than three Americans.”

Stewart describes his father,

approvingly, as Machiavellian.
Unlike his intellectual mentor
James Burnham, Miles was less a
fanatical cold warrior than a good
soldier who took great pride, and
no little pleasure, in serving US
interests by any means necessary.
A good agent, he maintained, was
amoral. So, too, despite the lofty
public rhetoric, was US foreign
policy.

The Observer newspaper dated 26 May

1985, with a report on how MI6 and CIA joined
forces to plot the 1953 Iran coup. Photograph:
The Observer

“My father’s view was that democracy was like two wolves and a sheep
voting on what’s for dinner,” says Stewart, “and indeed in the Arab world
it’s very much like that. My father wasn’t in the business of exporting
democracy. He was in the business of getting the oil to the west by hook or
by crook.”

Miles thought the CIA went downhill after Dwight Eisenhower left the
White House. “Although engaged in the same skulduggery it was much
less successful,” says Stewart. “Kennedy, Nixon, they all fucked it up.
Kennedy didn’t understand the military jargon. He didn’t understand that
‘a fair possibility of success’ means ‘you’re fucked’.” Things only got
worse. “Instead of my father going in there and pulling some strings – a
little bit of bribery here, a little bit of disinformation there, and hey, we’ve
got a new guy in there who’s much more copacetic with our oil needs –
decades later they went in and killed 100,000 Iraqis. That’s. Fucked. Up.”

Of course, not everybody will condemn a war while absolving a coup, or

make distinctions between different eras of CIA meddling. My Dad the Spy
features the voices of historians, including Iranians and Syrians, who
cannot forgive Miles Copeland Jr’s machinations and you can hear the
filial loyalty in Stewart’s voice when he pushes back. Miles apparently had
no regrets and Stewart has none on his behalf. Can he see his father’s
legacy clearly? Can any loving son or daughter? I’m not sure. Our family
histories are complicated enough without having to factor in the
byzantine intricacies of the cold war.

Before he goes, Stewart says he hopes that Philby’s children will see this
interview and get back in touch. Having been childhood friends in Beirut
until their father’s defection to the USSR in 1963, he’s a little hurt that one
of them ghosted him a few years ago. Then again, he adds, “I appreciate
that for that family it was not a matter of amusement as it is for me.”

My Dad the Spy, an Audible Original Podcast, is available to download

from Audible.co.uk

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