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Courtesy of Jay Mullen / Basketball-Planet.com / G


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From the stands,Jay Mullen didnt like what he saw. He didnt like that the Soviet

basketball team was humiliating its overmatched Ugandan opponents. He didnt like that

the visitors were bigger, stronger, faster, and more skilled than the amateurish Ugandan

army and prison guard teams. He didnt like that the Soviets were outscoring, out-

rebounding, and out-everythinging the home team, and didnt like that they were throwing

the ball off the backboard and dunking it. They were putting on a Harlem Globetrotters

type show and the Ugandans were the Generals.

The Soviets had arrived in Kampala a few days earlier, and now they were showing why

they had come: to dominate. Winning these two initial games by more than 60 points

apiece, they displayed the skills that made them the best team in the Soviet Union and in

Europe. They were also showing, Mullen thought, a complete lack of respect and humility.Next, they would be playing Mullens team, the best Uganda had to offer. As he watched

the Soviets pummel the locals, it made Mullen want to retaliate, to wound the visiting

teams estimable pride, and to regain it for the Ugandans. And if he could serve his own

country at the same time, then so be it. That idea, he liked.

In 1972, in the middle of the Cold War, the Soviet military sent a team of all-stars to

Kampala to compete in three goodwill basketball games against Ugandas top players. The

Soviets, who were hoping to curry favor with the leader of the new regime, Idi Amin, didnt

know that the best of the three squads, the Ugandan national team, was at that time being

coached by an American named Jay Mullen. And they definitely didnt know that Mullen

was an undercover CIA operative, sent to Uganda earlier that year to spy on the Soviets.

The space race was winding down, but the nuclear arms race was accelerating at a perilous

rate despite talks of limitations. U.S.-backed coups were happening all over the world.

Courting and deposing regional leaders was a global game being played by dangerous men.

At a moment when any shift in the balance of power could lead to Cold War escalation

between the USSR and U.S., the team from the USSR had been invited by the Ugandan

Ministry of Defence as a way to show solidarity between the militaries of this East African

country and the Eastern Bloc.

!

The Lost, True Story Of The CIAsGreatest Basketball CoachHow did a 1972 exhibition basketball game between Russia and Uganda become a

crucible for Cold War tensions at the dawn of Idi Amins brutal regime? Ask the former

CIA agent who tried to hit the Soviets where it would hurt them the most: on the court.

Shaun Raviv

BuzzFeed Contributor

posted on Sept. 7, 2015, at 10:15 p.m.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/shaunraviv


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A coup supported by the CIA was partially responsible for the series of events that led to

this athletic standoff an uncelebrated moment in the annals of Cold War sports that

includes the Miracle on Ice and boycotts at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics. For decades, the

Cold War was played on the field, the pitch, and the basketball court. Victories for

individual athletes were seen as triumphs for superpowers, for capitalist or communist

ways of life.

Mullen was the coach of the Ugandan national basketball team for six months under the

reign of Idi Amin. During that short time, he would turn a team of amateurs the first

generation of Ugandan basketball players into a proxy army against the USSRs

propaganda tour. Im a competitive guy and, number one, I wanted to win, he told me.

Number two, Im competing for the hearts and minds of the world, and if I could in some

microscopic way derail this thing of theirs, I wouldve enjoyed that, and I almost felt an

obligation to try. If the Soviets were trying to impress Ugandan leaders by winning a

basketball game, he would do everything in his power to make them lose.

In March,I visited Mullen in southern Oregon, where he has been living for almost 40

years. Ever since our first conversation in 2013, the tall, white-haired history professor had

not stopped asking me, Did you follow that? checking in as he breathlessly shared

stories from his travels and how they intertwined with historical events.

At home with Mullen, I could see how he would be the right person for the CIA job. His

46-year-old son, Tobey, told me that Mullen often speaks without words, pointing at

things he wants. I witnessed as much, but I also saw him initiate conversations with

strangers like it was nothing, breaking the ice with at least three different people by askingif they had Nordic ancestry. At dinner one night, without warning, he broke into the New

Zealand national anthem, not the last anthem he would sing during my visit. The guy can

listen, schmooze, or entertain as needed.

Before I arrived, he suggested that we talk while driving to and from the coast, where wed

be dropping off his teenage granddaughter at surf camp. Mullen spent nearly the entire

three-hour trip to Gold Beach explaining the genesis of World War II to his granddaughter

while she sat half-listening in the backseat of my rental car. Did you follow that? he

asked her, often, while listing the many types of people the Nazis hated.


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As the two of us drove back alone, Mullen began to tell me how the hell an academic

originally from southeastern Missour-uh ended up taking his young family to Uganda only

months after one of modern historys most notorious dictators took power.

In 1970, Mullen and his wife, Nancy Jo, were living in Kentucky, where he was teaching

history courses at Midway College. This was during the Vietnam War, which Mullen

staunchly opposed and protested against. The administration at his school told him he had

to shave his beard, considered a symbol of treason at the time, according to Mullen. I

told them to go fuck themselves, he said. And so I had to find a new job.

He and Nancy Jo had also just adopted a Native American son, and then had another child

who was born with severe and expensive health problems. Mullen sent form letters to all

sorts of places looking for work. I believe I have credentials that would be of interest to

you, he wrote to Xerox. I believe I have credentials that would be of interest to you, he

wrote to the Tennessee Valley Authority. I believe I have credentials that would be of

interest to you, he wrote to the CIA.

One night Mullen got a call from a guy who said he was with the agency. Mullen didnt

know if he meant the home loan agency or any of the other entities that hed sent letters toin search of employment. As it turned out, the CIA was interested in his credentials. Then

in his early thirties, Mullen was finishing up his dissertation on the influence of Indians on

British colonial policy in East Africa, and he had earned a fellowship to study Wolof, a

West African language, at Indiana University.

After doing a background check, the CIA

asked him to come to Washington, D.C.,

despite his antigovernment past. They

didnt care, he told me. As long as I

could be inserted there and provide

information, they didnt give a goddamn

if I worked for Che Guevara. It was

difficult to plausibly place operatives in

African nations outside of embassy jobs,

but with his academic bona fides, Mullen

was fit to work under non-official cover,

as a NOC.

With the approval of Nancy Jo, herself excited to try something new, Mullen joined the

CIA, and, in September 1971, after an accelerated eight-week training, he and his family

left for Ugandas capital, Kampala. He would be posing as a researcher on African history;

there were plenty of other Americans and Brits at Makerere University among whom

Mullen could blend in. But his real job would be to get to know the Kampala-based

Soviets.

At first, Mullen told me he was in Kampala as just another set of eyes and ears for the

CIA, but he quickly corrected himself. Thats probably a little too cute, he admitted. I

was actually managing a ring of assets, as we called them. Some people call them a spy

ring. His assets were mostly Ugandans recruited to help gather information on the

Jay Mullen and his kids Tobey and Molly in Uganda Courtesy of Umeeda

Switlo


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Russians living in Kampala in order to turn them into double agents. Not all of them

understood what they were doing or whom they were doing it for. In the agency, Mullen

said, you recruit all kinds of people who dont even know theyre recruited or why.

Getting to know Russians, who were themselves trying to find Americans to spy for their

side, meant going to social events once or twice a week, and drinking a whole lot. Hed

meet Soviets at parties and write reports describing every detail of their mostly mundane

conversations. Sometimes Nancy Jo would come along, to dance with (and gather

information on) the single Russian men. The reports, along with the contents of tapped

phone calls and other gathered intelligence, would be used by experts in D.C. to determine

which Soviets might be willing to turn and work for the Americans. Every one of them

was a candidate, Mullen said.

The Cold Warwas in full effect when Mullen arrived in Kampala. In this post-African-

independence period, both the Americans and the Soviets were trying to spread their

ideals to Africa, occasionally by hook and more often by crook. African leaders who

showed signs, or were thought to show signs, of moving to the left i.e., toward

communism and away from capitalism were strongly encouraged by American

agencies to step down.

Milton Obote, the president of Uganda starting in 1966, was one such leader who made

Americans wary. The CIA did not directly support the January 1971 military coup that took

Obote out of power, but declassified British government documents have shown that the

Israelis, and to a lesser extent the British, did, while the Americans cheered and eventually

provided weapons to the new man in charge the civilized worlds hope for Uganda, the

man destined to foster under his leadership a new era of capitalist Western-style

democracy, the despot known as Big Daddy: Idi Amin.

Amins coup happened only months

before Mullen arrived in the country, and

so it was under his regime that Mullenspied on the Russians. Amin had joined

the Kings African Rifles, a British

colonial unit, in 1946, and had trained in

the U.K. and Israel. He was a big,

charismatic man, a heavyweight boxing

champion, and he became a Western

symbol of African leadership for a short

while. Amin burst into the presidency,

like Obote before him, through the barrel


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of a gun, wrote historian Phares

Mutibwa, stumbling on to the pages of

history.

Amins reign has become famous for its

brutality, but at the time of the coup it

was greeted by many Ugandans with

great cheer. Obote had begun physically

eliminating or detaining his enemies.

Hed expelled Kenyan industrial workers

and used the military and police to

maintain shaky yet violent control of the

country. Change was welcome when

Amin came to power and immediately

released 55 political detainees. He spoke of halting widespread corruption, lowering taxes,

holding organized elections, and stemming bloodshed. The coup was supposed to mark a

new beginning for Uganda.

But Amins honeymoon period would not last long. As many as half a million Ugandans

were killed under his regime, including hundreds, if not thousands, of prominent civil

servants, academics, senior military officers, cabinet ministers, diplomats, educators,

church leaders, and doctors. Anyone who posed a threat to the control of the country was

eliminated. In a 1972 memo, one British ambassador described the situation in Uganda as

absolute hell.

As the risks of being stationed in Uganda became more and more apparent, foreign

governments began pulling out their personnel. The exodus from Uganda, said Mullen,

was like rats leaving a sinking ship. One of the people who fled Kampala after the coup

was the Ugandan national basketball teams coach, a Yugoslav. With the trials for the Pan

African Games a continental version of the Olympics coming up and a group of Sovietballers on their way, the Ugandan team needed a new coach. Amins coup and the ensuing

violence in Uganda had cleared the way for Mullen to step in.


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When he wasntspying on the Soviets, Mullen spent time with his wife and kids, taughtclasses at Makerere University, and played outdoor basketball at the YMCA. Basketball

had come to Uganda only a few years earlier, in the 1960s, through Peace Corps volunteers

and missionaries. Those playing in the early 1970s were true pioneers of the sport in

Uganda. Cyrus Muwanga was one of them.

I started playing basketball probably when the first Ugandans played the game,

Muwanga, now a 66-year-old retired hand surgeon in County Durham, England, told me.

As a young boy, he learned the sport from Americans who taught at his school. He and his

friends would play on a grassy field or packed dirt lot.

Jay Mullen refereeing a YMCA basketball game in Uganda. Courtesy of Jay Mullen


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It was so rough, at first we thought that were not supposed to bounce the ball, Muwanga

said. Wed just run. But learning to dribble on a rough surface, which they did for two or

three years before moving to a proper court, proved to be an advantage: When you

actually move to a smooth court, its quite easy.

Muwanga and his schoolmates also became good shooters because they were initially

playing on backboard-less netball hoops. Accuracy is key when only a swish gets you a

bucket.

When Muwanga finished high school, he had to choose which college to attend for his A-

levels. His father wanted him to go to the school that was the best academically. I chose

the school with a good basketball court, Muwanga told me, following with the long, deep

laugh that he attached to every basketball-related memory.

The Aga Khan School, where Muwanga

took his pre-university courses, would

compete against a Catholic school 15

miles down the road called St. Marys

College Kisubi, which had three proper

basketball courts. One of the St. Marys

players was a cocky, tall drink of water

named Hilary Onek.

As a younger kid, Onek had never even

heard of basketball. I didnt know

anything about it, he told me from his

office in Uganda, where he is a member

of parliament. But at Kisubi, he found out about this American game where you shoot a

ball through a metal hoop. His teachers singled him out for instruction because of his

height. Soon, he was dominating. I could outjump all of them, Onek said. I was

probably the strongest player on the team. Onek also had an older classmate named

James Okwera, a great athlete and basketball star despite the fact that he didnt start

playing until he was 16. With Cyrus Muwanga holding court at Aga Khan, competitions

between the schools were fierce. When Aga Khan played Kisubi, it was a war, Muwanga

said.

Aga Khan came second to us a lot of the

time, Okwera told me. But they had

some really good players, and my friend

Cyrus was one of them, so whenever we

were playing them, it was always a very

tense rivalry. In his last year at the

school during a somewhat more

relaxed, if still politically unstable, pre-

coup period in Uganda the two teams

played for the national school

championship, with Kisubi coming away

with a one-point victory. The players

Hilary Onek (left) at the opening of the St. Marys College Kisubibasketball court. Via visitugandaschools.blogspot.com

The St. Marys College Kisubi basketball team.Irene Tyaba
http://visitugandaschools.blogspot.com/2014/09/some-photo-images-of-st-marys-college.html?m=1


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from both schools pushed each other to improve, and by the time they were moving on to

university studies, Onek, Muwanga, Okwera, and their friends were taking the game

seriously.

Muwanga and his Aga Khan schoolmate Ivan Kyeyune were Baganda; Hilary Onek and

James Okwera were Acholi. At various times under Obote and Amin, members of each of

their tribes were being murdered and coming into and out of power. But they say politics

didnt matter when they were on the court, and especially when they all ended up on the

national team. I dont think that ever came across anybodys mind, Okwera told me. We

all trained as one, and played as one.

In the 1970s,playing ball at the courts in Kampala in his spare time, Mullen gained a

reputation as an athlete: for his pickup skills, but also because hed been a runner at the

University of Oregon, the same school as track star Steve Prefontaine. Mullen told me the

reputation was undeserved, since he was a middling track athlete at best and an average

basketball player. Merely knowing how to dribble made me a hot prospect in Uganda, he

said.

As a referee for Makerere Universitys intramural games, Mullen was known for his ability

to handle the raucous basketball crowds. He also played in a recreational league thatincluded men from the police and the army, along with students from the university. One

of the players in the league was the head of the basketball council, James Adoa a man

who Mullen and others describe as the father of Ugandan basketball.

Playing together sparked a friendship that would lead to Mullens coaching gig. One day,

Adoa invited him to a gathering of the basketball council at the YMCA. Adoa made

announcements about scheduled games with international teams, including an exhibition

game against the Russian team, meant to boost relations between the two countries. Then,

to the Americans surprise, he told the council that he wanted Mullen to be the new

national coach. It was the first I heard of it, Mullen told me. He was honored, but didnt

put much weight on the selection, at least at first. I thought it as much a social gesture of

appreciation as anything, he said. He knew his friends from the league could use someone

to set up proper offensive sets, so he accepted.

Only later would he realize his opportunity to throw a wrench in the Soviets diplomacy-

building plan.

Mullen and Adoa, who died a few years ago, had their choice of the countrys basketball

talent. They scouted pickup courts at the YMCA, Makerere University, the police barracks,

Getty Images


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and even Luzira Prison, where the guards played within a barbed-wire perimeter. But the

boys from Aga Khan and Kisubi had by then become men and university students, and

were the countrys best players.

In this era, when the first basketball tournaments were held in the region, the Ugandans

were champions in East and Central Africa. We were beating all the teams around us,

Onek told me. Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, even Congo. We were running down all of

them. They won despite the fact that they were all either in school or working full-time,

and could only get together on an ad hoc basis. If there was a game, the team would be

formed, and then it would dissolve until the minister of sports or someone said, Now we

got another [opponent], Mullen said. Then wed put the team together again and

practice for a while. For the Soviet game, they went into residential training for about

10 days, practicing at least twice a day and sleeping at the university.

One of the teams forwards, William Okalebo, was so talented that he had once dominated

a high school game while wearing only one shoe. (Mullen, who refereed that game, would

lend Okalebo his own sneakers when they faced the Soviets.) Onek was only a few inches

over 6 feet, but he could jump through the roof. Cyrus Muwanga could get the ball up the

court, and forward Okwera was a sharpshooter. Guard Ivan Kyeyune was as fast as

anything and could outleap most players.

But the Ugandans faced a huge deficit in age and experience compared with their Soviet

opponents. The Ugandans would be playing CSKA Moscow one of the best teams in

European history, and still a top team today. The visiting CSKA squad had won the

previous four USSR League championships and two of the past four Euroleague trophies.

It was an international basketball powerhouse, long affiliated with the Soviet army and a

feeder for the USSRs national team, including the one that would beat Americas best in

highly controversial fashion in the Olympics weeks later. The Ugandans would be playing

the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls of Europe. Neither the players nor coaches were prepared to see

their opponents in the flesh.


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The CSKAteam landed in Uganda to great fanfare on Aug. 19, 1972. Arriving with a

group of Soviet ambassadors that included some of the USSRs biggest soccer stars, the

players were greeted at Entebbe Airport by representatives from the Uganda Armed Forces

and the National Council of Sport. The people of Uganda have been waiting eagerly to see

them, announced a captain from the Ministry of Defence. You will like the way we play

basketball, the head of the Soviet athletic tour told a Ugandan reporter.

First were the warm-ups against the Ugandan prison and army teams the blowouts that

so enraged Mullen as he sat in the stands. The police and guards were roughed up and

thoroughly outclassed by the Soviets, who Mullen would later describe as playing like

maulers and sadists. The Russians were so far superior to those two teams that they

were putting on a kind of Harlem Globetrotters show and making fools out of the

Ugandans, Mullen said. Witnessing how little they cared about humiliating the Ugandan

players electrified Mullens desire to subvert their foreign relations effort, to show that the

Soviets werent all-powerful by beating them on the court. More importantly, he cared

about his players pride. He didnt want to see them torn to shreds like the other Ugandan


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teams.

But a similar fate felt inevitable for his

own team after he saw CSKAs Victor

Petrakov, who Mullen described as the

biggest human I have ever seen. As a

spectator and fan, Mullen had seen the

tallest players America and Africa had to

offer. But they were kinda gangly, he

told me. Petrakov was not gangly. He was

gigantic. He looked like the Incredible

Hulk, Mullen said. Mullen remembered

the first time his team saw Petrakov

the shock, the awe, the look on Cyrus

Muwangas face that said, We gotta try to guard that guy?

The Ugandans had to adjust their goal from beating the Russians to not getting run out of

their own gym in utter embarrassment. Because their opponents played such a physical

style of basketball, Mullen had to prepare his men to get pushed around. He changed the

teams routines, priming them for rough contact with bigger men than they were used to

seeing on the court. He had them hit each other as they shot layups, and take vicious

screens and hacks of all kinds. But practice was one thing. If Mullens players were going

to stand a chance against the Soviet military all-stars, they would need something more

than hard work. Theyd need subversion. Luckily, their coach had some experience with

that.

Prior to hisCIA days, Mullen studied African history because he was disturbed by the

racism he saw in the West. The arguments from everybody, from the British on down, he

said, was: These people cant govern themselves because theyre inferior. That didnt sit

well with Mullen, so as an academic he sought to see Africa with his own eyes. But as a CIA

operative, his morals were somewhat corrupted.

Viktor Petrakov while playing for CSKA (left), and on his 65th birthday(right).From Cska.in
http://cska.in/


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Mullen lied, cheated, and stole while working undercover in Uganda. He considered the

Russians and Chinese adversaries, and if he could help the U.S. government get

information on them, he was happy to do it. At the time, he believed that the U.S. was

advocating for national self-determination in Africa and on other continents. I thought I

was on the good side, he said. You gotta have an intelligence agency. I dont think theres

any question about that. I didnt have any problems being a part of it.

But over the course of our talks, it became clear that Mullen was torn about his own work

as a spy. In Uganda, he began to see the way the CIA treated locals as disposable. They

kept telling me, Dont do anything to hazard yourself if you can get an African to do it for

you. And for a while, thats exactly what he did. When the CIA needed a tunnel to run

wires for tapping phones, theyd hire a local, hand him a shovel, and tell him they were

digging for sewer rats. That way, Mullen wouldnt personally be at risk from Amins

soldiers. Back then, Mullen thought of his job as sort of a game, scoring points for the

agency, he said. I did think deeper about it as time went on, and I looked back on that,

and Im ashamed.

Mullen often worked with one particular Ugandan who had strong local connections and

helped with a number of covert missions, at great risk to his own life. In addition toforging a plan to bug the Chinese Embassy and posing as a telephone repairman to tap

Soviet phones, this asset also provided useful material about Ugandan governmental and

military operations.

At first, Mullen said, theyd meet at his home at irregular hours, so the asset could pass on

information and stolen documents. But when the Ugandan military police started parking

their unmarked Volkswagen right near the house a bit too often, they changed their

rendezvous to a neighborhood called Mengo, a popular area for European men to meet

prostitutes. The CIA paid the rent on an apartment there, and in exchange, Mullens man

made sure it was available when needed. To complete the cover, the asset sublet the

apartment on a night-by-night basis to sex workers, making a bit of cash on the side from

an apartment paid for by U.S. tax dollars. Mullen declined the offer to have a woman on

hand each time they met.

As the Uganda situation deteriorated, U.S. sights gradually shifted away from the Soviets

and toward Amin. He was very predictable in that he hated imperialism, and he went

after imperialist symbols, Mullen said. Amin publicly taunted President Nixon and

changed street names to honor African heroes rather than figures from the West. Many

Africans, in and outside of Uganda, appreciated that, Mullen contends. And you can do

that without endorsing his thuggishness and the murders. Phares Mutibwa mostly

agreed: Amins behaviour in the first few months after the coup, at least in the eyes of

Ugandan civilians and the international media, was that of the man of peace, the

historian wrote. Amin, Mutibwa said, was concerned above all with reconciliation and the

securing of national unity, peace and prosperity.

Mullen has a bit more insight into Amin than many who have written about him from afar.

I gotta be careful when I talk about this, Mullen said. When I met Amin, he was a warm

and charming individual. That was how he related to me; Im not saying that he was

across-the-board warm and charming. I know people that lost family members at the time,


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and they would have found nothing warm and charming about that.

Mullen and Nancy Jo often took their kids to a swimming pool at the International Hotel

in Kampala, and Amin showed up on occasion. Mullen and his young daughter would have

chicken fights with Amin in the pool, and she thought he was a lot of fun. Thats not to say

she therefore endorses the destruction of the Acholi tribe, Mullen told me. If he disliked

you, your ass could be grass, but if he didnt dislike you, he was capable of being a really

nice guy. Can you believe that?

Amin once challenged Mullen, along with a few other men, to a swimming race. Amin was

raised in semi-arid northwest Uganda. Hell, he grew up in the desert, Mullen said. He

couldnt swim worth a damn. Amin had trouble keeping a straight line, and he veered

diagonally into Mullens lane. Mullen didnt notice, and he whacked Amin in the face with

his backstroking hand, twice. Amin came in last, but rather than snapping at Mullen, he

showed no signs of having anything but an Aminian good time.

If Mullens relationship with Big Daddy was lighthearted at the pool, it was grave behind

closed doors. With the Americans quickly regretting their backing of Amin late in 1972,

Mullen witnessed a potential kiss of death for his swimming mate. An agency higher-up

visited Uganda, and Mullen and his chief met him in a safe house. After being apprised of

the quickly escalating Idi Amin situation, the pipe-puffing CIA bigwig said, Cant you get

rid of this guy?

I knew people were dying, Mullen told me. And I knew I could have shot the

sonofabitch or stabbed him or whatever, but then, Jesus, what would have happened to my

family? And then I thought, well, is my little Indian boy and my two little blonde girls

worth more than a thousand African kids? But Mullen also knew that if they were going to

take out Amin, they wouldnt send an American in, guns blazing. Theyd send a Ugandan

to do it.

History might have been written in that room. But before Mullen could say anything, his

boss had stood up, and was pointing directly at the visitor. You put that in writing, he

said. You put it in writing. The station chief wasnt going to let this guy fly in and casually

talk about assassinating one of the worlds most dangerous men.

The bigwig then said he was only kidding, of course. Amin would live to see another day,

and continue to rule Uganda until 1979.

During the gamesopening ceremonies, the Ugandan army band played both the

RIA Novosti / Igor Utkin


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Ugandan and Russian national anthems. Ugandan cabinet members and Soviet officials

shook hands with the players before retiring to the VIP section. As a gesture of

togetherness, when the teams lined up, the Soviet coach pinned a hammer and sickle on

Mullens chest, making him perhaps the only CIA operative to admit to being decorated by

the Soviets during the Cold War.

Lugogo Stadium, home to the countrys lone indoor court, was the size of a large American

high school gym, Mullen remembers, and shaped like an aircraft hangar, with dimly lit

incandescent bulbs for the night game. Most of the countrys Russian population was in

the stands, but Mullen hired a guy with a flatbed truck to bring students from the

university so the crowd at Lugogo Stadium would be for the Ugandans.

The floor must have shaken as the Soviet and Ugandan fans filled the elevated tiers of

seats on both sides of the maple wood court. The students trucked in by Mullen brought

half a dozen drums and were banging them with all their might. It was quite a big

atmosphere, Muwanga said.

Photographs from the game dont seem to exist, but James Okwera remembers the crowd

being in the thousands, and that, because it was early in Amins time, the military had a

particularly big presence. Okwera also remembers being intimidated by the noise while

getting ready in the locker room. Five-thousand people would make an awful racket, he

said. It was quite daunting.

When the ref blew the opening whistle, Mullen was relieved to find the Red Hulk sitting on

the bench. The Ugandans began the game playing way above their heads, invigorating the

crowd. A gap-toothed teenager named Teso stole rebounds from the stronger Soviets.

Okwera hit three jumpers in a row. The team was executing the plays Mullen and James

Adoa had drawn up, and they werent succumbing to the Soviets size or strength. At the

end of the first quarter, Uganda was up five points. Goddamn, thought Mullen. We might

win this thing.

It was quite embarrassing for the Russians, Muwanga told me. I think they thought they

were just going to get a walkover, just toss us down to nothing. They hadnt banked on the

fact that, while we didnt have the height, we had the speed and dribbling skills to

outmaneuver them.

The Ugandan team could switch from zone to man-to-man and matched up its best

dribblers with the Russians slowest guys to take away their size advantage. We all knew

what our limitations were, Okwera told me. We knew we were never going to be able to

properly compete with that caliber of team that was so well prepared and had all the

resources they needed.

The Ugandan lead didnt last long. A few minutes into the second quarter, the Soviets

started wearing out the locals, and Ugandan politics may have played a part. Both the

referees were Pakistani, and Mullen suspected they might have had a bias against his team

due to the infamous act Amin had just carried out against the local Asian community.

Earlier that month, Amin had announced that all non-citizen Asians would have to leave

the country in 90 days.


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There were roughly 80,000 to 100,000 Asians living in Uganda at the time, many of them

descendants of Indians who had come to East Africa in the late 1800s as laborers for the

British. Amin had called the Asians in Uganda bloodsuckers and said that they were

milking the cow but not feeding it. Nearly all of them would leave in the months

surrounding the game. Mullen would personally help two Indian-Ugandan teenagers,

whom he knew through his sons schooling, flee the country, even sending one to live with

his brother in Oregon. (He changed my life forever, she told me.)

Meanwhile, the Russians questioned every whistle against them. With both sides shoutingin their ears, the refs became intimidated and their calls inconsistent, and the game took a

nasty turn. It was the roughest game I ever saw, Mullen told me.

A crew-cut Soviet guard taunted a player named Willie Muganda by holding the ball out

for him to try to grab. But Muganda was super quick and slapped the ball out of his hands,

and both players tumbled across the floor. Muganda, whose shoulders had been built up

from years of pulling nets out of the lake as the son of a fisherman, flipped the Soviet

guard right over his hip and flat onto his back. He took offense at being tossed around and

took a swing at Muganda. The refs threw him out of the game. Another CSKA player was

ejected when he punched a Ugandan player while fighting for a rebound. The goodwillgame had turned into a violent battle.

By the end of the second quarter, the Russians has a 12-point lead, and the roughness

continued after halftime. Mullen had noticed that the Soviets best scorer was a bit of a

hothead, and assigned Muwanga to guard him and make him lose his temper. So during

one play, Muwanga plowed into him. The Ugandan fans were happy to see aggression from

their team, and the drums and cheers from the capacity crowd became deafening.

Thats when the tension came to a head, with the Soviet coach complaining that the game

was getting too rough. Of course it was, Mullen, clearly a biased witness, told me,

because his guys were beating the hell out of my guys. Standing nose to nose, the Soviet

coach and Mullen began yelling at each other through a bewildered translator. Eventually

the two coaches sat down, each feeling a bit foolish at screaming what was received as

gibberish by the other.

Perhaps Muwangas hard foul and the mutually incomprehensible shouting match had

been the last straws. Despite holding an insurmountable lead, in the fourth quarter, the

Russian coach finally called on his secret weapon; Petrakov was checking in. Kneeling at

the scorers table, he was still almost as tall as the referee.

A couple of possessions went by without incident. But then a Ugandan player made a bad

pass that was stolen by a CSKA player. The Soviet saw Petrakov waiting ahead of everyone

down the court and sent a lob pass to the great mass of man. He rose and slammed the ball

through the hoop with all the power drawn from his redwood-thick arms, and snapped the

rim right off the backboard.

It hung there by a bolt, Mullen said. Everybodys standing there just stunned.

We had no replacements, Muwanga told me, pulling out that laugh again. Lugogo


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Stadium only had one set of rims.

The drumming stopped. The cheering dissolved. The stadium was silent. Everybody was

wondering, What the hell happens now? Mullen said. It was more of a bewildered quiet

than anything.

Uganda is and was a poor country, and had become even poorer since Amins rule turned

the country upside-down. And now the only indoor sports arena in the country was one

hoop short. The game was over with time to spare. There would be no final buzzer. No

Russian victory dance.

The Ugandans didnt win. The Soviet team was too big, too polished, too experienced, and

the Ugandans too raw, getting by on 99% heart. When the rim came down, the score

reflected the difference in the teams skill levels. (The Uganda Argusreported that the

Soviets had 87 points, but the Ugandan score in the Library of Congresss archived edition

is too blurry to read. It looks closest to 33.)

But Mullen had done something even better than win. The game ended with two fistfights,

two ejected players, and the countrys only indoor basketball facilities destroyed. His team

hadnt been humiliated, and, though they had won, the Soviets didnt look like

untouchable superheroes. He couldnt pull off a miracle on the court, but he got a small

U.S. victory nonetheless.

After the CSKAgame, the national team would travel to Alexandria, Egypt, to play in

qualifying matches for the Pan African Games. The team didnt even have tracksuits when

they arrived. They were quarantined for two nights when it turned out two of the players

didnt have the proper vaccinations. The Ugandans were a group of amateurs, and were

surprised to hear that some of their far-superior opponents from Egypt and Somalia

played basketball as their jobs. They were creamed in Alexandria. But it was a proud

moment for us, Cyrus Muwanga said, representing our country.

In September 1972, an attempted invasion from Tanzania by Milton Obotes soldiers

sparked seven years of institutionalized violence in Uganda, pushing basketball further

toward the margins of the nations priorities.

Hilary Onek lost relatives and friends, including buddies from the basketball court, to


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Amins soldiers. It was a difficult time for our country, Onek said. Within that period,

the first three years of Amins rule, many of us left the country one way or the other. Onek

ended up going to Moscow not long after the game. He studied to be a civil engineer,

learned to speak Russian, and lived in the USSR for nearly seven years. He came back to

Uganda only in 1980, after a new coup, led by Obote, had exiled Amin to Saudi Arabia. In

2000, Onek went into politics and gained a seat in Ugandan parliament in 2001. He is now

in the prime ministers office in charge of disaster relief, looking after hundreds of

thousands of refugees from war-torn countries.

James Okwera left Uganda in 1975. After the police came for his father, it felt like a

different country from the one he grew up in. His father would live through it, but it

spooked Okwera and his family. I dont know whether it was imagined or if it was real,

but there was a perceived risk then for us, he told me. They moved to Nairobi, where he

continued the medical training hed begun at Makerere University. In Kenya, Okwera

played in a semi-professional basketball league as a paid ringer for the countrys best club

teams. He ended up in the U.K., where he is about to retire as the clinical lead for stroke in

a hospital in Yorkshire.

In 1978, Cyrus Muwanga went to the U.K. to take his medical exams. Things were pretty

bad in Uganda, so I just stayed, he said. I left to further my education as well, but the

situation was getting pretty ugly at home. He couldnt really find good games in his

adopted country, and took up squash and golf instead. But he still has a hoop at his house

in northern England, and the time he competed shot for shot with a team of pros still

brings a smile to Muwangas face. It was one of those highlights in ones life, games that

you remember, he said.

On Dec. 4, 1972,Mullens name appeared in an article in the Voice of Ugandathat

implied that he was plotting against the regime. It scared Mullen enough that he asked to

be taken out of Uganda. His chief said to hold off and see what happened. (Nothing did.)

Eventually, after the militant Palestinian Black September Organization murdered the U.S.

ambassador in Khartoum, Sudan, in March 1973, even Mullens lax chief felt he was at

great risk, since the PLO had by then formed a presence in Uganda. They would probably

love to kidnap someone like you if for no other reason than to beat whatever information

they could out of you, the chief told him.

Mullen left Uganda in June 1973. He worked for the CIA for two more years in Sudan

before taking his family back to the U.S. In 1979, prompted by a run for the state senate

the previous year and against the wishes of the CIA, which forced several redactions

Mullen wrote a tell-mostly-all for the now-defunct Oregon Magazine. The Church

Courtesy of Jay Mullen

SHARE"

#

$
http://www.buzzfeed.com/


19/21

Committee had by then revealed many illegal covert activities by government agencies,

including the CIA, so Mullen wanted to assure his would-be constituents that he wasnt an

assassin. They were asking if Id used shellfish toxin to poison people, he told me, so I

thought Id clear the air.

He lost the election by 88 votes and returned to teaching. He became a professor of

African history at Southern Oregon University, and mostly retired in 2010.

The Mullen house is filled with keepsakes from the familys time in Africa. Scattered

throughout the shelves are histories of Uganda and Amin, about whom Mullens been

working on a book for years. After his Oregon Magazinepiece came out, he landed some

radio interviews and an appearance on Tomorrow, the late-night NBC talk show. In 2005,

he gave a talk at a local library that aired on a cable access television show catering to the

Rogue Valley in southwestern Oregon. It was so intense in such a short period of time,

he told the SOU newspaper of his days in the CIA. I really dont care if anything that

interesting ever happens again.

Early on in our talks, I asked him if he was ever successful in recruiting a Russian agent. I

cant tell you that because I just cant, he said. If I did, I would say no, and if I didnt, I

would say no, so either way the answers gonna be no, even if its yes. And thats just the

way the game is played.

After our drive back from the coast, Mullen and I went to a steak restaurant for an early

dinner. While waiting to be seated, Mullen saw people dancing in another room down the

hall. Thats the Texas two-step, he said, and walked off. A minute later, I followed him to

the other room, where Mullen was already dancing with a stunning younger woman, his

jowls bouncing as he spun the stranger in circles. The song soon ended, and he walked

past me and said, Now thatshow you get to know Russians.


20/21

Shaun Raviv / BuzzFeed News

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