President John Dramani Mahama recently disclosed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States (US) was responsible for the removal of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
Speaking at the 68th Independence Day celebration at the Jubilee House on March 6, 2025, the president disclosed that declassified US intelligence documents show that the CIA was behind the coup that removed Nkrumah while he was out of the country.
“The verdict of history is now loud and clear. Declassified documents from the United States archives reveal that this was a coup inspired and engineered by the CIA,” he said.
GhanaWeb’s search of the CIA’s archives has revealed two documents that mention Dr Nkrumah’s foreign minister, Dr Alex Quaison-Sackey, who has been accused of being the one who betrayed Ghana’s first president to the agency.
Dr Quaison-Sackey was allegedly paid by the CIA and promised the presidency for his role in removing Dr Nkrumah.
It is unclear whether the documents from the CIA archives are the same documents President Mahama was referring to, but one of them indicated that Nkrumah’s foreign affairs minister was now in the camp of the military leaders who had taken over power.
“THE RECORD Morning Meeting of 3 March 1966 reported that in the wake of anti-Sukarno student demonstrations in Djakarta, Sukarno had closed the schools.
“Reported Nkrumah’s arrival in Guinea. There is some possibility that Nkrumah may be so detached from reality as to try to return to Accra. Ex-Foreign Minister Qualson-Sackey has thrown in with the new regime,” parts of the first document read.
It is in the second document that insinuations were given about Quaison-Sackey being a CIA agent.
“Maybe we’re being too hasty. Maybe Alex Quaison-Sackey, the right-hand man of the late and unlamented left-wing regime of Kwame Nkrumah, was really a secret CIA agent who worked his way up to be president of the United Nations General Assembly and foreign minister of Ghana and then, at a prearranged signal, hustled Nkrumah off to Peking and engineered the coup which overthrew him,” parts of the document read.
It also showed some of the actions the later minister took after the coup, including failing to adhere to Nkrumah’s order to go and defend him at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU).
“But lacking any such evidence, we find Mr Quaison-Sackey’s behaviour most remarkable. When Nkrumah rushed from Peking to Moscow and thence to Guinea to try to salvage what he could of his dignity, he ordered his foreign minister to man the defences at the Organisation of African States in Addis Ababa. Instead, Mr Quaison-Sackey hied himself to London and then back home to Ghana, where he extolled the new regime as a breath of freedom and warned that sneaky old Nkrumah would try to worm his way back into power with Russian and Chinese help.”
The document also showed details of some of the supposed actions Dr Quaison-Sackey took as the head of the United Nations General Assembly, suggesting that he might have been pretending to support Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
“Well. In fact, well, well. Has it taken Mr Quaison-Sackey this long to see the light? Or has he seen it all along and simply preferred to keep his job and his gold robes and his beaded cane [which the affable gentleman said represented authority] by advancing the cause of a regime which he secretly despised? As president of the General Assembly, Mr Quaison-Sackey protected the Soviet Union from censure for its delinquency in assessments; he pleaded the cause of communist China; he blamed the United States for the atrocities at Stanleyville; he urged an invasion of Rhodesia; and in general, he served as spokesman and defender of a regime where freedom was nothing but a word on postage stamps,” part of the document reads.
Read more details from the document below:
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