Introduction: From 1954 to 1956, I disappeared from a strong, active professional life to go to live in Baghdad. Introduction: From 1954 to 1956, I disappeared from a strong, active professional life to go to live in Baghdad.

I finished my Ph.D. summa cum laude in Clinical Psychology in 1951. This professional field grew out of the shortage of personnel during WWII. I already had published several professional papers and a book. I was a computer user and started teaching computer programming. By 1954 I had completed three short psychology internships, directed the psychological services in two institutions, and worked in a VA psychiatric  hospital. In the midst of this success and rosy future, I quit my job as a forensic psychologist for the Baltimore City Courts, and went overseas. I went off the "professional radar" for two years. Many people wondered what happened to me and for whom I was working. Baghdad gossip had a ready explanation-- I was a homosexual American spy.

Recently, my friend, Anne, asked me if I really was a spy. Then it occurred to me that it might be fun to play around with half-truths and suppositions, rather than give a definitive answer. So I decided to present a collection of facts about those "two years" in such a way that the reader will be forced to string them together so they make sense. I intend to present those facts so that they will encourage "romantic" speculations about the dashing, young, American spy. Thus, I am creating here, a skeleton of true data that very well could serve as an outline for a new spy novel by John LeCarre. Why not weave  a mysterious drama instead of simply list my dull, everyday activities? Fiction is more interesting than fact and it's only for fun, anyway.

So here is the premise: If I tell you lies, you won't believe me. And then, like any other spy story, these days, "If I tell you the truth I'll have to kill you." OK. I will take a chance and tell you nothing but the truth. However, to protect both of us and to maintain the awe of mystery I will give only selected data and will not elaborate or answer any questions. You will get what it is safe for you to know but not so much that you will have to keep looking over your shoulder.

Several Baghdadi student friends of mine and I went to Washington, DC  for a fun trip and to conduct a little business at the same time. Though young, these friends were from important Iraqi families. Both the Cultural Attaché and the Ambassador welcomed us. While enjoying a convivial visit, we started talking about my going to Baghdad with those students, who were finishing up their degrees. From there, it progressed to concretizing these exciting dreams with a two-year contract with the Iraqi Ministry of Education. My only contact with the Iraqi government, at the time, was with these two gentlemen in the embassy. They were both very kind to me and I was very grateful to them for their help. Sadly, they were both assassinated a couple of years later during turbulent political times. But that was later. In the meantime, my closest friend, whom I called "brother," was going to buy a car in Germany on the way to Baghdad. I flew overseas alone to meet him in Europe. We drove together to Istanbul after stops in Germany and France. Then we went by boat, to Beirut, where we partied for a week.

I was well accepted into my brother's family in Baghdad and lived with them for half a year. When I arrived in Baghdad I followed instructions to contact the dean of one of the colleges to make work arrangements. I met with the dean but received no teaching assignments for that term. My responsibility was to sign pay vouchers and pick up my monthly salary. I did manage to  teach a single course for one term during the two years I was under contract. I never did meet anybody from the Ministry above the level of dean of a college until I went to get my termination papers, which were required to leave Baghdad.

I visited some of the Iraqi cities. I went with my friends to Erbil, Mosul, Sulaymaniya and Kirkuk in the Kurdish north, and met the Shiite leaders in Southern Iraq. I made several pleasure trips to Beirut with Baghdadi companions. It's a great place, although my favorite city today is Istanbul. I did not get to know either city well until much later. Since then I have visited Istanbul about 15 times. Once I went there twice in the same year. During my two contract years, I made all my travel arrangements with cash. No government agency bought my tickets or had any record of my movements except for travel when I used my passport. I have been to most Middle Eastern countries: Lebanon, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta,  Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Kuwait, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and Morocco.

After my first year in Baghdad,  I met and married my wife Azza, who came from an elite family. Her father was a deactivated Nationalist leader, who had been a political prisoner for two years, and her mother was from  rich Palestinian families. Saddam Hussein awarded my sister-in-law a large posthumous grant for her husband's service to the country. Her brother, my brother-in-law, made his fortune in construction in the Arabian Gulf, where he lived for seven years with his American wife.

My mother-in-law devoted her whole life to teaching and nurturing the young teachers entrusted to her for their education. My father-in-law took all the family while he was working on his Ph.D. in Political Geography. He served as President of Baghdad University for a short while under Saddam's government although he was never a Ba'ath Party member. My best friend during those two years was an Iraqi Kurd, whose brother was in political prison the first year I was there. My friend and I were closer than brothers. I even went incognito to visit him once in jail, when the government did a roundup of political suspects. Later, we took a train trip to Basra together for a few days. I was constantly worried about him-- that he might be regarded with suspicion because of our closeness. I had the same concern for my in-laws. Association with me was dangerous politically. I was seriously endangered only twice in Baghdad-- the rest of the time I went about unarmed. I was shot at only once and there were no consequences, hence there is no record of that incident.

My original teacher and leader was an American-Syrian from Dearborn. I recorded my declaration of religion as Muslim in a Shiite civil court after the first month of my stay in Iraq. A year later I married my wife in the same court, without the knowledge of her family.

We eloped to Beirut and thence to Europe. We purchased a car in Munich and drove to Barcelona for our honeymoon. While we were in Barcelona, the war of Algeria broke out and the French would not give my wife a transit visit to drive along the Riviera to Greece. They claimed that she might be involved in French sabotage committed on the French mainland. After several formal visa applications were refused, I went to the American embassy for help. They talked the French embassy into issuing a visa to my wife. It pays to know somebody! We drove back to Baghdad without incident so that I could serve my second contract year. My wife's father loved his daughter enough to accept her back into the family He accepted me begrudgingly, as well.-- an incredibly charitable act, in that society of almost 60 years ago!

I don't remember ever talking or reading English during those two years. I never had formal Arabic instruction but picked up the colloquial Iraqi from total immersion with my Baghdadi friends. Likewise, I never went to any American embassy function at any time during the two years. I did not register with them and so they had no official knowledge of my presence there. If they knew about me it was through rumor or incidental to their gathering other intelligence. Nor was I in touch with family and friends in the U.S. I never knowingly met spies in Baghdad, only later, in Egypt and Cyprus. Like any other James Bond, I was a licensed airplane pilot and radio operator

After my two-year contract expired, my family and I went to Iowa where I worked at a VA hospital for several years. I had very limited contact with Arabs anywhere after this time abroad. A few months after my return I visited the Iraqi Embassy in Washington. I wanted to thank the Ambassador and Cultural Attaché for their role in securing my government employment. While visiting the Embassy I experienced the thrill of being with a group of Iraqi military cadets and translating English broadcasts of the details of the ongoing revolution that terminated the monarchy.

After Iowa, we moved for a faculty appointment at the University of Florida. The only other contact I had with the Iraqi government was when Saddam Hussein's cousin came for a visit to the University of Florida. He prepared a dinner in my honor and urged my wife and me to return to teach in Iraq again.

At some point I fulfilled my Muslim duty of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. I went alone via London on that trip. On the return I tried to secure entry into Iraq to Visit my in-laws, but I was refused. Subsequently, I accepted a Senior Fulbright Lectureship at the national university of Egypt, Gammat Ein Shams. I taught one course, on the side, at the American University of Cairo. I was on a year's leave from the University of Florida and played with the idea of accepting a job at the Jordanian University. Later, I toyed for a while with the offer of a Fulbright appointment to Ethiopia but realized that living in that social-political situation would be too difficult for us, as Muslims.

I have always been cautious about being publicly identified with a government organization or a political party. Until 1967 I avoided all contact with the U.S. State Department. However, I had to make an exception to be able to accept a Fulbright appointment, which was administered by the State Department. I remained as independent of the U.S. government as possible when on assignment in Egypt. When I did a two-week tour of duty in Cyprus, the American Ambassador hosted me at a formal dinner. When I returned from Egypt a government investigator from Miami attempted to debrief me but found me rather unhelpful. Aside from these few incidents, I returned to my academic world untouched.

I dropped out again after teaching many more years, but that time, to retire from academia.

Conclusions: After reading the above, you may think that I was an agent provocateur (double agent) for the Americans. Continued foreign domination requires information such as "Who the sub-rosa leaders of the resistance movements  really are.  From where do they obtain their support?" You cannot expect me to acknowledge that I was assigned to infiltrate the underbelly of a rebellious society that the West feared would rise up against foreign control. But you would be right if you thought it looked that way. You would have to think that my public dedication to Arabic and Moslem causes was all pretense-- a sham to fool others. My family knows me too well to believe me capable of such deceit.

Or you may conclude that I was working for the Iraqi government to pick up valuable bits of intelligence from overt and covert American contacts.  In that case, my connections with the Americans must have always been well- disguised and hidden. Lastly, you may conclude that I was just a crazy American out for adventure, doing what I felt like doing. Perhaps I was a  wanderer with no plan-- just to live in Baghdad with my friends. Relationships like those are hard to find in the West, so I wanted to live out my life in Baghdad society. In any case, please believe what you like and thank you for joining me in this little game. Think of this exercise as you would think about the TV episode from which it was adapted. Enjoy it and live, laugh, love, and be happy! Movie rights are still available.