Recently Declassified: U.S., Britain Developed Plans to Disable or Destroy Middle Eastern Oil Facilities in Event of a Soviet Invasion
Recently discovered British documents posted today by the National Security Archive provide a new and revealing account of the CIA’s role in a top-secret plan to ravage the Middle East oil industry. It’s been 67 years since President Harry Truman approved NSC 26/2 to keep the Soviet military from using Middle East petroleum if it invaded the region. This denial policy called for American and British oil companies in the Middle East to disable or destroy oil facilities and equipment, and plug the region’s oil wells. The policy evolved during Eisenhower’s presidency and lingered at least into the Kennedy administration.
Documents stashed at Britain’s National Archives show for the first time the CIA’s dominant role in turning the oil companies into a paramilitary force ready to execute the denial policy. (This posting’s author has written a separate article on these materials published today by Politico.) The intelligence agency’s oversight included inserting undercover operatives into oil-company jobs to spy on some of the companies.
The CIA created – with an American oil company’s assistance – an ambitious denial plan for Saudi Arabia and exported similar plans to Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar where Britain was the governing authority. The CIA also assisted British denial plans in Iran and Iraq.
British documents also reveal discussions about using nuclear weapons in Iran and Iraq. State-controlled refineries emerged in both countries and were not covered by existing denial plans which depended on cooperating oil companies. British military officials believed nuclear bombs were an option to destroy these facilities until a plan using ground demolitions with conventional explosives was possible.
The denial policy has grudgingly given up its secrets. NSC 26/2 was mistakenly declassified in 1985 by an archivist at the Truman Presidential Library which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration. A library official in a legal deposition deemed it the worst security breach in the National Archives’ history. A furious CIA demanded the archivist be fired, but he remained a library employee after losing his top-secret clearance. NSC 26/2 was reclassified top secret, but by this time Research Publications, a Connecticut company, had sent it along with other microfiched documents to libraries across the country. The microfiche weren’t recalled after a government decision – it’s not clear by whom – that it would arouse attention. NSC 26/2 became public in 1996 in a story by this writer and Charles Crumpley in The Kansas City Star.
This account goes beyond revelations about the CIA and nuclear weapons to show a determined effort – replete with successes and setbacks – to organize the denial policy while keeping it secret from targeted countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq.
US UK Mid-East Oil Sabotage Plans - Full Set
- National Security Council, NSC 26 report, “Removal and Demolition of Oil Facilities, Equipment and Supplies in the Middle East,” Top Secret
... Anglo-Iranian Oil, later renamed British Petroleum, believed it would be subject to economic blackmail or worse if Iran’s government learned of the policy. Aramco, the Arabian American Oil Company, jointly owned by a number of American oil concerns, eventually believed that not consulting Saudi Arabia about the denial policy risked the company’s economic survival.
... American and British oil companies would provide the manpower and expertise to plan and execute the denial policy.
... details of the denial plan for Saudi Arabia. It relied on 45 senior Aramco managers and another 600 company employees. (The 200 employees figure in the document was later clarified to mean for each of Aramco’s three administrative districts in Saudi Arabia.) The number of employees involved was deemed sufficient to allow for successful execution of the denial plan even if some employees were absent. And to avoid a security leak of the denial plan, most Aramco employees were told only the part they would execute. The CIA also inserted five undercover operatives into Aramco jobs ranging from a storekeeper to assistant to the general manager. They would brief the intelligence agency about any developments affecting the denial plan.
... NSC 26/2 ordered a study of radiological weapons, which would spread radioactivity without destroying the wells, to keep the Soviets out of the oil fields. The CIA later rejected their use since the Soviets would probably send Arabs deemed “expendable” to keep the wells flowing.
... British Joint Chiefs of Staff received ministerial approval to ask the United States to accept responsibility for Iran since it had a nuclear arsenal that could be used.
