Former CIA agent Graham Fuller has been living the quiet life in British Columbia for the last number of years.

He’s eighty years old, American, and has for 15 years been living a quiet life in British Columbia, teaching sporadically at Simon Fraser and Quest University. He likes mountain biking and is a member of a writers' group in his tight-knit community just outside of Vancouver. He is also a former agent and vice chairman of CIA National Intelligence Council, a position from which he retired 30 years ago.

Despite what looks like a relaxed life for the retiree, Turkish authorities have added Graham Fuller’s name to the list of July 15, 2016 coup-plotters when dissident members of the military attempted to overthrow the country’s Islamist-leaning, elected government. A businessman close to the Turkish government has even promised to give 3 million Turkish Lira (about 1 million Canadian dollars) to whomever helps to arrest Fuller, according to Turkish media reports. Ankara accuses Fethullah Gulen, a cleric in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, of orchestrating the coup, and has been pushing to have the preacher extradited from the U.S.

Fuller has denied any involvement in the failed putsch, and says it’s improbable that the CIA had anything to do with it. Two events are thought to have attracted the ire of Turkey’s government: in 2006, Fuller wrote a letter as a private citizen supporting Fethullah Gulen’s Green Card application in the U.S. And shortly after the coup, Fuller wrote in the Huffington Post, that "it is unlikely that Gulen was the mastermind behind the dramatic failed coup attempt against Erdogan last week."

Fuller’s friends in B.C. are puzzled by the accusations. “Graham is an important contributor to our community,” said Riun Blackwell, one of Fuller’s friends.

Eric Gorham from Quest University adds: “he speaks in a lot of events, is involved in a lot of local concerns, like development issues, ecology, the rainforest, pollution streams and the environment.”

Fuller, for his part, told VICE News: “I have said I was not in Istanbul (the night of the coup attempt).”

“From the Turkish government perspective none of this matters one bit. They are propagating the big lie,” Fuller said in an email after declining a phone interview.

Fuller, the coup, and the CIA

Riun Blackwell still remembers the first time he met Graham Fuller at a book club meeting in Squamish, a city of about 20,000 people just outside of Vancouver. He says Fuller was wearing a blue shirt that day.

“I asked him,” Blackwell recounts, “‘are you a Federalist?’ I feel like only federalists wear blue shirts like these,” Blackwell told VICE News referring to U.S. political movement in the 1800s which wanted closer relations with Britain. “He said ‘no, I, was in the CIA.’” Blackwell laughs, “ I thought, oh boy.”

Blackwell describes Fuller as a very “civic guy”, and believes the arrest warrant is “political.”

The Turkish arrest warrant states that Fuller attended a meeting on Istanbul’s Büyükada Island to coordinate the coup attempt on July 15, 2016. Fuller says that he was at a friend’s book launch at his local Golf club on that day. “He addressed the crowd on behalf of the Squamish Writers Group,” one fellow writer told VICE News on the condition of anonymity. The Golf club confirmed the event took place on its premises.

Turkish authorities say Fuller fled the country after he determined the coup was going to fail, according to a report in Hurriyet Daily. After issuing a statement and rebuttal of the Turkish charges, Fuller declined further interviews on the subject to avoid escalating the issue. He said he does not wish to continue “jumping through hoops to endlessly counter the big lie propagated by the Turkish government. In the end, (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan’s ultimate targets are his own uncritical public supporters who will believe what they want to believe."

History of spy-craft

Fuller was born in 1937 in the United States, and obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University in Russian and Middle Eastern Studies. In the 1960s, he received his first assignment with the CIA in Turkey.

"My very first tour of duty abroad was as a very junior officer in Istanbul in the late 1960s,” Fuller wrote in a statement last week, “although the Turkish press likes to promote me to having been 'CIA Station Chief in Ankara' (...) I never returned to Turkey as a CIA officer after that tour."

Since the failed putsch, the Turkish government has launched a large purge on alleged followers of Gulen, and as Fuller has written positively about the movement, worked in Turkey and has met Gulen once, he fit the bill. According to Human Rights Watch, Ankara has dismissed or suspended over 100,000 public officials and civil servants, and jailed thousands for coup-related allegations. Gulen’s movement runs hundreds of international schools and was once close to Erdogan’s populist, religious government but the two groups have become bitter rivals in the past five years.

As Fuller was a CIA agent stationed in Turkey when Gulen’s movement was born, he has been the favorite target of conspiracy theories in Turkey regarding alleged cooperation between Gulen and the CIA.

Canadian lawyer Robert Amsterdam believes there could be a link between the cleric and the CIA. His Washington-based firm has been hired by the Republic of Turkey to conduct an investigation of Gulen’s activities in the United States. He told VICE News that “there is a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence that tie Gulen with the CIA,” adding that the agency has been involved in prior coups.

The Turkish Embassy in Ottawa refused to comment on “a matter which appears to be before juridical authorities at the moment.”

'Something out of Kafka'

Dani Rodrik, Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School who studies international political economy, believes it’s unlikely the CIA was behind the coup or the Gulen movement, but it is possible American spies are protecting Gulen due to foreign policy interests. “I don’t think Graham Fuller has anything whatsoever to do with the coup,” Rodrik told VICE News in an email. “The charges in the Turkish media and by the government seem to me to be ridiculous, as in so many other cases. What is going on in Turkey right now is a mix of paranoia and finger-pointing to foreigners designed to hold Erdogan’s base together.”

After his posting in Turkey, Fuller was assigned to Germany, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. He climbed up the ladder to become Vice Chairman of the former National Intelligence Council at the CIA. The New York Times revealed that he was instrumental in convincing top-ranking Reagan administration officials to pursue arm deals with Tehran in the 1980s, leading to the Iran-Contra affairs where arms were then sold in Nicaragua to anti-Sandinista guerrilla fighters.

Fuller resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency after three decades in 1987, and went on to work for the RAND Corporation, a think-tank based in California linked to the U.S. military. RAND has confirmed that Fuller was a full-time employee from December 1987 until November of 1997, and “remained a RAND adjunct employee until October 2001.”

'Fabricated reports'

Fuller then moved to Canada in 2004, and acted as an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser’s University in Burnaby and more recently as a professor and guest lecturer at Quest University in Squamish. He has written numerous novels about the Middle East, foreign policy, Turkey, and Islam. His Canadian life consists of giving talks in B.C., and volunteering in different community groups. Blackwell says he often sees Fuller at the United Church on Sundays.

“He’s always very helpful with young writers,” Blackwell said, “he’s very encouraging for them and helps them to publish.”

The Canadian Ministry of Justice refused to confirm that an extradition request for Fuller was made by Turkey.

Graham Fuller says he has informed Canadian authorities of the situation. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, is under investigation for being involved in a plot to kidnap Gulen and send him back to Turkey. Despite numerous requests by Erdogan, however, the cleric remains in Pennsylvania. As Gulen’s extradition request is still pending in the United States, it is unclear what will the Canadian government do regarding Fuller’s case.