Courtesy of Jay Mullen / Basketball-Planet.

com / Getty

The Lost, True Story Of The CIAs

Greatest Basketball Coach
How 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.

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, outrebounding, 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.

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 asking
if 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.

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 to
in 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.

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

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

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 War was in full effect when Mullen arrived in Kampala. In this post-Africanindependence 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 Mullen
spied 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

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 Soviet
ballers 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.

When he wasnt spying on the Soviets, Mullen spent time with his wife and kids, taught
classes 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

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 Alevels. 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

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

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, precoup period in Uganda the two teams
played for the national school
The St. Marys College Kisubi basketball team. Irene Tyaba

championship, with Kisubi coming away

with a one-point victory. The players

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.

Getty Images

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 that
included 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 diplomacybuilding 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,

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.

The CSKA team 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

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

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 his CIA 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.

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 to
forging 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,

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.

RIA Novosti / Igor Utkin

During the games opening ceremonies, the Ugandan army band played both the

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.

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 shouting
in 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 goodwill
game 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

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 Argus reported 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 CSKA game, 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

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

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

Courtesy of Jay Mullen

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

"

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 Magazine piece 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 thats how you get to know Russians.

Shaun Raviv / BuzzFeed News

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