Bryan R. Gibson
During the period between the October War in 1973 and the Algiers Accord in March 1975, Secretary Kissinger, who was also a national security adviser, and his deputy, Brent Scowcroft, took on a significant role in directing and managing the CIA’s Kurdish intervention, often acting outside of normal diplomatic channels. Throughout this time, Kissinger continued to show a strong commitment to the Kurdish intervention, often ignoring the CIA’s numerous warnings about the operation by ordering further US assistance, including finding ways to transfer to the Kurds Soviet-made arms captured by the Israelis during the October War. After President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, Kissinger stayed in his dual roles, and kept the new president, Gerald R. Ford, apprised of the Kurdish intervention on a “need-to-know” basis.1 At the same time, Kissinger hid details of the operation from the State Department, which was hoping to build upon Iraq’s positive gestures toward the United States during 1973.2 This meant that a small, secretive group of US officials—Kissinger, Helms, the CIA station chief in Tehran (Arthur Callahan), and his deputy station chief—ran the Kurdish intervention. When the Kurdish War resumed in March 1974, three separate dynamics—the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran-Iraq rivalry, and Cold War interventionism—all coalesced to ensure that it would have a violent conclusion. Of these, the Ford administration’s policy continued to be driven by the Cold War thinking. The United States was backing the Kurds in a war against the Soviet-supported Iraqi regime. As with 1963, the Kurdish War once again took on Cold War dimensions; only this time the superpowers had switched sides. [1]

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