Egypt in the 1950s was a very different place.
The country was emerging from decades of British influence, with the 1952 Revolution ushering in a fiercely nationalist and anti-colonial era. At the center of this transformation was President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Nasser was a committed advocate of Pan-Arabism and anti-colonial movements across the region. One cause he strongly supported was Algeria’s struggle for independence from French colonial rule.
His government provided the Algerian National Liberation Front, or FLN, with political and military support, including weapons. U.S. diplomatic records from the period describe Egypt as a major source of arms for the Algerian rebels, with supplies moving through Libya and Tunisia before reaching Algeria.
It was at that time that the CIA took note and decided to give Abdel Nasser an incentive to stop supporting the FLN and steer his Arab nationalism towards a more Western-allied stance.
To do that, the CIA came up with a plan.
They would provide Abdel Nasser with a sum of money, reportedly as a “grant to support Egyptian infrastructure.”
According to former CIA officer Miles Copeland Jr., the CIA secretly offered Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser $3 million in the 1950s. A separate account alleged that CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, personally delivered $1 million in cash to Nasser’s confidant Hassan al-Tohami. Roosevelt’s family later denied that the cash handover ever took place.
Egyptian government documents reportedly reveal that Abdel Nasser was incensed by the attempt to buy his compliance.
However, what Nasser did next would stand as a monument for decades.
Instead of outright rejecting the money, Abdel Nasser decided to direct it towards building the Cairo Tower.
Relations between the United States and Egypt continued to worsen throughout the next couple of years as Abdel Nasser doubled down on his support for anti-colonialism and his alliance with the Soviet Union for economic and military aid.
That is, until relations broke down completely in 1956 with the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
Standing tall not only as a tribute to the Ancient Egyptians, but as a still-standing reminder of Abdel Nasser’s defiance, Cairo Tower took six years to construct and was eventually completed in 1961, standing at 187 meters tall.
The tower was designed by Egyptian architect Naoum Shebib and was designed to mimic a pharaonic lotus flower.
