For example, on January 15, 1959, Foster Dulles called it "essential to keep our hands off Iraq" because the U.S. was not "sufficiently sophisticated to mix into this complicated situation."[6] On March 24, Iraq—to the consternation of U.S. officials—withdrew from an anti-Soviet alliance, the Baghdad Pact. In April, the United States National Security Council (NSC) established a Special Committee on Iraq (SCI) to reexamine the situation and propose various contingencies for preventing a communist takeover of the country.[7] Both covert and military intervention was contemplated, but this "horrified" the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, John Jernegan, who "eventually persuaded the administration to instead press Nasser into modifying his propaganda against Iraq to focus not on Qasim but the communists." Nasser agreed, and Qasim soon undertook numerous repressive measures against the communists, effectively rendering fears that Iraq was "going red" moot.[8][1] A U.S. official opined at the time that "Nasser's recent attacks on Communism had done more to stay the advance of Communism in the Middle East than anything that the Western Powers could have achieved in years of work."[9] Bryan R. Gibson writes that "there is no documentation that ties the United States directly to any of Nasser's many covert attempts to overthrow the Qasim regime, though there is evidence that the CIA had helped Jordan and the UAR infiltrate Iraqis back into the country."[10] The SCI was finally shut down in January 1961.[11]