Four years ago,Cyrus Copeland sat in the living room with his mother when she asked him to fetch his father’s will from the library to answer a question about land rights.
He returned with a box he thought held the document, but he found something even more interesting – 35-year-old papers from the family’s time in Iran in 1979.
“At the bottom of the box was a file called ‘Max’s Radar Affair’,” Copeland told KGOU’s World Views. “The pages were very delicate and crisped by time in that way that they are. And it contained all of the details of what happened to my father in Iran.”
Copeland’s pursuit of this mystery took him around the world – from Tehran to Norman, Oklahoma – where his father attended the University of Oklahoma in the 1950s. He tells the story of this journey in his 2015 bookOff the Radar: A Father’s Secret, a Mother’s Heroism, and a Son’s Quest.
In the 1970s before the Islamic Revolution, Max Copeland worked as a so-called “cleanup man” – shutting down the warehouse operations of Westinghouse (think George Clooney’s character in the 2007 film Michael Clayton). Cyrus Copeland says Westinghouse sold sensitive equipment to the Iranian air force. The Copelands had been in Iran since 1974, and many of their American friends left as clerics seized control of the government during the revolution. The Copelands stayed through the start of the hostage crisis in early November 1979.
One night a few weeks later, his father didn’t come home.
Read An Excerpt Of Cyrus Copeland's Book Off the Radar: A Father's Secret, a Mother's Heroism, and a Son's Quest
“It turned out that he had been arrested, and was soon going to be tried as a CIA agent,” Copeland said. “I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ How could my book-loving, very quiet, academic father be confused with anything like a CIA agent?”
For the 16-year-old, that moment in November 1979 began what he described as “the darkest chapter of our lives.” His Iranian mother tried to find a lawyer for her husband, and when she couldn’t, she decided to defend him herself.
“She actually ended up becoming the very first female attorney in the Islamic Republic,” Copeland said. “In any court in Iran, a woman’s word is technically worth that of half of a man. And generally this is not a very female-friendly regime.”
Copeland toldThe Diane Rehm Show in July 2015 his mother spent hours studying religious texts in the evening in order to "out-Quran" the state prosecutor of the new Islamic Republic. Shahin Copeland took her two children to Philadelphia in January 1980 to shield them from their father’s unfolding legal dilemma.
Cyrus Copeland’s mother tells him, “You know, of course, your father was a CIA agent,” in the book’s opening pages. Max Copeland passed away in 1992, and Cyrus Copeland writes if his father were alive today, he would dismiss the topic, "said in a voice that left little room for discussion."
But Copeland also says his family has a story to tell, one the publication Library Journal calls a "brilliant, touching tale of espionage, discovering family, and balancing cultures."
The younger Copeland made a life for himself in the United States, but described the past three decades watching his two homelands as being like the child of divorce.
“You’re kind of left in the middle doing, in my case, geopolitical therapy,” Copeland said. “So this recent breakthrough with Iran over the nuclear negotiations has been very heartening for me. I think it’s tremendous that after years of so much rancor between two very different countries and cultures, we’re able to kind of come together in an uncertain way.”
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
REBECCA CRUISE, HOST: Cyrus Copeland, welcome to World Views.
CYRUS COPELAND: Thank you.
CRUISE: You have a very interesting, very personal story to share with us which I think is just fascinating. And this really kind of is a story about your parents. And as I understand it, your father was arrested for espionage in Iran right around the time of the revolution there. And then your mother went and got a legal degree to help him with his defense. So maybe give us a little bit of the background and tell us how things evolved, and then I love your part of the story as well. Your search to understand what happened there.
COPELAND: So I'm half Iranian. My mother's Iranian. My father is an OU grad from Grove, Oklahoma, actually. He met my mother after he had taken around the world with a professor of OU named Percy Buchanan. And they met on the very first day of their arrival in Washington, D.C. And eventually getting married and raising a family in Iran. We moved to Iran in 1974. It was lovely until the revolution happened and things fell apart very quickly. Most of the Americans and most of the family and friends that we had there left, but we stayed on. And my father assumed a role shutting down Westinghouse's warehouse operations. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie Michael Clayton. Have you ever seen that?
CRUISE: I haven't.
COPELAND: Okay. It's about a cleanup man. And my father was essentially that cleanup man. He played the George Clooney role in this. And he was shutting down Westinghouse's warehouse operations. They had sold some very sensitive equipment to the Iranian air force. So he was in charge of shutting that down. And one night he didn't come home. And it turned out that he had been arrested, and was soon going to be tried as a CIA agent. And as you had kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, my mother tried to find a lawyer for him. And she could not. And she ended up doing something very improbable which was she decided she was going to become his lawyer.
CRUISE: Remarkable either way, but also remarkable in the context of being in Iran, this espionage charge, and your mother deciding to do this. This is just remarkable.
COPELAND: Right. Think about this, Rebecca, so she's a woman in revolutionary Iran. She actually ended up becoming the very first female attorney in the Islamic Republic. And she represented my father in a military court. Now, remember, this is a military court - and in any court in Iran - where a woman's word is technically worth that of half of a man. And generally this is not a very female-friendly regime which has taken place. The age of marriage has just been lowered to nine. So yeah, my mother ended up doing this remarkable thing, and I don't want to give you too much information about how it all turns out because that's part of the draw for the book. But yes, she was the very first female attorney in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
CRUISE: And you were a young child when all of this was happening, is that correct?
COPELAND: 16.
CRUISE: Oh, well slightly older than a young child. What was your perception? What do you remember about this time?
COPELAND: 16. Wow. Well, first of all, here's what I'll tell you about that. I remember reading or hearing about the newspaper article that appeared in the Tehran Times. And the headline was something like the CIA agent smuggling radar equipment caught. And it was about my dad. And I thought, that's ridiculous. How could my book-loving, very quiet, academic father be confused with anything like a CIA agent? But that essentially was the beginning of what turned out to be the darkest chapter in our lives. I was 16 at the time. And yes, this was going on, and yes it was very concerning, but I was also a teenager. And I would kind of go and listen to ABBA music and I was concerned with the things teenagers were concerned with. My mother, to her credit, did a very good job of kind of shielding us in a way from the difficulty of the truth that was unfolding. So I was worried. I saw what was happening. But I wasn't as worried as I should've been.
CRUISE: But you were still in Iran at this time. So you were also seeing the revolution happen. The new regime take place. That must've been interesting even from a 16-year-old's eyes, or perhaps exciting.
COPELAND: You know, this is the thing. You're 16 and you don't really realize that you're living at the nexus of one of the most iconic disruptions of our time. Because you're in it. All of a sudden this is happening, and life is changing. And you know it's changing. But I don't have enough perspective to realize how remarkable of an experience it actually was. Until of course you have that perspective.
CRUISE: Of course. And I'm sure though that life may have changed a little bit from before, and after, but so remarkable. And I don't want to give away the crux of the book, but how long were you in Iran afterwards? And what was your life later on in Iran, or how did things...?
COPELAND: I will tell you this. The hostages were taken in November of 1979. My father was arrested and tried the following month. In January, my mother took my sister and I out of the country and put us in a school in the Philadelphia suburbs, and went back to see if she could wrest my father from the unfolding predicament. So I ended up kind of making an American life for myself here. My mother is still with us right now, as is my sister. And my father is now deceased for many years.
CRUISE: So you mention that the hostages were taken around the same time. Was there a lot in the news about what was happening with this story? The hostage situation, obviously, was a major international story. Some say led to Jimmy Carter not being reelected. A lot was going on. But was this story known?
COPELAND: This story appeared on page 2 of the Tehran Times. Which gives you an idea of how it kind of placed. It didn't get any traction at all with the western media because of the hostage crisis. Which is why in a very real way my father was off the radar. He was really figuratively off the radar as well. The White House, the State Department, and the CIA were all very preoccupied with what was happening at the embassy.
CRUISE: And obviously this affected you personally, and you have now written this book, as you mentioned, and the full title is Off the Radar: A Father's Secret, a Mother's Heroism, and a Son's Quest. Maybe talk a little bit about the quest. You have now gone back and have kind of tried to piece together exactly what happened. But what was this quest for you, and has this been kind of a cathartic process in writing this all down, and telling this story? Putting him on the radar, if you will.
COPELAND: You know, the quest for me began a couple of years ago. I was sitting in the living room with my mom and she had asked me to go into the library to retrieve my father's will. It had something to do with land rights. There was a question about that. And I went into the library and I came back with a box that I thought contained his will. It didn't end up containing his will, but at the bottom of the box was a file called 'Max's Radar Affair.' And this file was a 35-year-old file. Pages kind of were very delicate and crisped by time in that way that they are.
CRUISE: Sure.
COPELAND: And it contained all of the details of what had happened to my father abroad. And that afternoon my mother and I were kind of going through this file. And always there'd been the questions of well was he a CIA agent or wasn't he a CIA agent? My mother believes that he was a CIA agent. But I didn't believe that. For me, he seemed to...he just didn't fit the profile, right? He's a quiet man. He's academic. His Farsi isn't that good...
CRUISE: And he never said…
COPELAND: ...he's tall, so he sticks out in a crowd. But that afternoon I thought, 'I'm going to find out once and for all whether or not my dad was CIA.' And that was the quest. That was the question that launched me on the quest. And the question - the answer to which ended up becoming the book that I've written.
CRUISE: Now, in the process of writing this, the research. How did people take your quest? Did you get a lot of answers that you were looking for? Did you run into roadblocks? What was this process?
COPELAND: So here's the thing: This period of relations with Iran is not a very good one. It doesn't really reflect well on either government, really. And the CIA was every bit as tight-lipped about this as you would expect them to be. So I filed a FOIA with them. That's a Freedom of Information Act request. Technically they're supposed to get back to me within, I think it's like six weeks or three months, something like that. A year and a half later I still hadn't heard from them or the State Department. President Carter ended up writing me a little note on a letter that I had written to him. And I later found out that he had written that note on the letter instead of responding by email because he himself was concerned with being tracked by intelligence. I mean, can you imagine that? A U.S. president is himself very wary of being followed by the intelligence community.
CRUISE: Right. And 30 years or so after the fact.
COPELAND: 35 years later. So I didn't find the answer in the way that I thought I was going to find the answers in the way that I thought I was going to find the answers. Interestingly, it happened in another way. I was having dinner with a friend of mine, and it was the anniversary of my father's death, and I was feeling a little bit guilty about not having known him as well as I wish I had known him when he was alive. And I was compensating for that by telling stories about my dad. And I got to the middle of a story where my father had converted to Islam to marry my mother. And my friend said, 'Well what did he convert from?' And I said my dad was a Christian. And he goes, 'Yeah, but what kind of Christian? What sect? Was he Catholic, Presbyterian?' And I realized I didn't know the answer to that. And my friend looked at me in astonishment, and he said, 'You really have to go to Oklahoma.' I said that's ridiculous. Why do have to go to Oklahoma. And he said, 'You need to find out who your father was before he was the man who became your dad.' Now my friend is very wise about these things. He's got a strain of empathy inside of him which is proven to be remarkable in the past. So I booked myself a ticket, and I came to Oklahoma. I ended up staying with his oldest friend from childhood. Owen Butler. And I heard a lot of stories about my dad, and I saw where he had gone to school, and the ranch where he had grown up and herded sheep. But it wasn't until I dove into the collegiate chapter of his life that things got really interesting. And I found out my father had kept a diary of his time while he was at OU. And it turns out that there was a professor here in the 1950s. His name was Percy Buchanan. Handsome man. He had the kind of face who belonged on money. And Percy, it wasn't known at the time, but he was actually a recruiter for the CIA. And he was on campus specifically to find out and source which students he thought would be good material for the CIA to recruit. He led a number of trips abroad. Student-led trips into communist countries, and remember, this is the 50s, so this is the middle of the Red Scare. My father went on one of those trips, and I read the diary of this. And reading the diary and putting together these pieces and I ended up actually contacting Percy Buchanan's son, who was still alive, and who himself was a CIA agent, that I was able to answer the question that had launched this whole quest.
CRUISE: And kind of connect the dots there...and your brilliant friend that told you to go to Oklahoma. He knew.
COPELAND: Yeah, God bless him.
CRUISE: Wow. That is an incredible, incredible story. Well, we're getting close on time, but I did want to just kind of ask you as a part American, part Iranian, the relationship that you mentioned. The time that you're writing about was very tense. And here recently we've been looking at more positive relations. I'm just kind of curious. Your take on that as someone who's connected to both countries.
COPELAND: Yeah, I love that. You know for me, I will say this. The past 35 years - it's been very difficult watching my two homelands - both of which I love dearly - duke it out a little bit like being the child of a divorce, right? Your dad demonizes your mom, your mom says terrible things about your dad. And you're kind of left in the middle doing, in my case, geopolitical therapy. And so this recent breakthrough with Iran over the nuclear negotiations has been very heartening for me. I think it's tremendous that after years of so much rancor between two very different countries and cultures, we're able to kind of come together in an uncertain way. But diplomacy is messy. And achieve a workable solution. So I'm heartened. I'm thrilled actually.
CRUISE: Well wonderful. Well we will definitely continue to keep an eye on that. And we just so appreciate coming back to your dad's alma mater to talk with us and share a little bit of his story, and then in your book account your mother's role in all of this, which is just sounds fascinating, and then your quest. So thank you so much.
COPELAND: It's been my pleasure. Thank you Rebecca.
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