Preface Introduction
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Notes Preface 1. William Roger Louis, ‘Britain and the Overthrow of the Mosaddeq Govern- ment’, in Mark Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne (eds), Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004), p. 126. 2. Kermit was the grandson of President Theodor Roosevelt; his account of the events was narrated in his book, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1979). 3. This CIA internal report, entitled ‘Clandestine Service History; Overthrow of Pre- mier Mossadeq [sic] of Iran, November 1952–August 1953’ (hereinafter referred to as Overthrow). The author is Donald Wilber who, as Iran point-man at CIA headquarters in Washington, had a hand in the drafting of the coup plot against Mosaddeq codenamed TPAJAX. He was not, however, in Iran at the time of the events in August 1953. Introduction 1. On 13 March 1983, commemorating the twenty-first anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Kashani, Iran’s parliamentary Speaker, later President, Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani made the following statement: ‘We honour the memory of the exalted Ayatollah Kashani and request the Iranian nation to participate in the commemoration ceremonies that will be held tomor- row and in the following days; on the same occasion we should express indignation over the injustice done to him and to the Islamic movement by the nationalists [i.e., the Mosaddeq supporters] and the blow inflicted by them on the Islamic movement in one episode in Iran’s history. On this historical day, we express our sorrow to his honourable family and to the Iranian nation and celebrate the life of this great man.’ See, Hashemi- Rafsanjani and Sara Lahooti, Omid va Delvapasi¯ , karnameh¯ va khater¯ at’e¯ Hashemi Rafsanjani, sal’e¯ 1364 (Hope and Preoccupation, the Balance-Sheet and Memoirs of Hashemi-Rafsanjani, year 1364/1985), (Tehran: Daftar’e Nashr’e Ma’aref’e¯ Eslami publishers, 2008), p. 446 fn. 2. The Doctrine enunciated in Guam on 25 July 1969 by Richard Nixon stated that the United States, while respecting its security commitments would henceforth expect its allies to take care of their own military defence. The Doctrine argued for pursuit of peace through a partnership with American allies. The doctrine permitted the Shah to pursue a highly ambitious arma- ment procurement programme and to expand his power and influence, notably in the Persian Gulf region. 3. In James Bill’s The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Rela- tions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), we read: ‘This direct 176 Notes to pages 2–7 177 covert operation left a running wound that bled for twenty-five years and contaminated America’s relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran following the revolution of 1978–79’, p. 86. 4. A case in point is Stephen Kinzer’s All the Shah’s Men (Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley & Son, 2003). 5. A Tom Seligson and Susan Werbe CBS News production for History Channel cable TV, 2000, hosted by Arthur Kent. 6. For the full text, see <http://www.fas.org/news/iran/2000/000317.htm>, retrieved in May 2007. 7. Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1979), ch. 12. 8. ‘Moscow Says U. S. Aided Shah’s Coup’, The New York Times, 20 August 1953. 9. Foreign Relations of the United States, [FRUS] 1952–54, vol. X, Iran, docu- ment 351, p. 759. 10. Woodhouse wrote in his autobiography (Something Ventured, p. 122) that in 1954 the CIA took active steps publicizing its role in the August 1953 events in Iran. 11. Richard Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1964), ch. XIII. Richard Cottam (1925–1997) had studied in Tehran as a Fulbright scholar before a stint at the American Embassy in Tehran (probably with the CIA station) in the mid-1950s. He subsequently joined the faculty of Pittsburgh University and in 1964 published his mag- num opus ‘Nationalism in Iran’. Thenceforth he was recognized not just as an Iran expert, but as a beacon in American academia speaking on behalf of the pro-Mosaddeq opposition. He became a vocal critic of the American foreign policy that had cast its lot with the Shah. He befriended some of the exiled activists including two of the icons of the Islamic Revolution, Sadeq Qotb’zadeh and Ibrahim Yazdi; see his obituaries in <http://www.pitt.edu/utimes/issues/30/091197/04.html>. 12. Reference to this article, entitled ‘Imperial Regime in Iran: Why it Collapsed’ in l’Iran d’Hier et Demain, is taken from a citation by Nikkie Keddie in Roots of Revolution (Yale University press, New Haven, 1981), p. 289. In the article referred to by Keddie (as in his subsequent works, Khomeini: The Future and U.S. Options in 1987 and Iran and the United States: A Cold War Case Study in 1988), Cottam reversed his earlier assessment of the events in August 1953. The extent to which he might have been influenced by Roosevelt’s Counter- coup published in 1979 and/or by his own image as a leading advocate in American academia of Iran’s nationalist aspirations is hard to assess. 13. The Invisible Government (New York: Random House, 1964). 14. Roosevelt first hinted at his project in a handwritten letter to the Shah when he was in Tehran in February 1976 in connection with his business lob- bying for Northrop. He had not obtained an audience from the Shah, but was received by Court-Minister Alam through whom he submitted a letter to the Shah. Characteristically, he was less than candid when he casually raised the subject of his memoirs. He linked it to his wartime experiences with the Office of Strategic Services (CIA’s precursor), adding, that he had been asked by ‘several publishers’ to write about his ‘various post-war activi- ties in related fields’. Roosevelt added he did not want to make any decision before ‘discussing it with, and receiving guidance from, Your Majesty’. In August, 178 Notes to pages 7–9 Alam reported to the Shah that Roosevelt was trying to get his memoirs, which he characterized as a ‘complete load of nonsense’, published. Alam entered the following words in his 18 August log, ‘HIM was amused, instruct- ingmetodoasIseefit’. It was only when Alam read the manuscript in May 1977 and reported that Roosevelt was portraying the Shah as a ‘waverer forced into various crucial decisions’ that the Shah agreed with his minis- ter that they should try to prevent its publication. See, Alinaghi Alikhani, (ed.) The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran’s Royal Court, 1969–97 Asadollah Alam (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991), pp. 502 and 540. For a reproduc- tion of Roosevelt’s handwritten letter of 11 February 1976 to the Shah, see Volume 5 of Alam’s diaries in the Persian language, edited by Alikhani, pub- lished by IBEX in the US and Ketabsara in Tehran; pp. 496–97 in the latter edition. 15. Roosevelt, Countercoup, see the (unnumbered) Foreword. 16. Ibid., 207; Wilber, Overthrow, ch. IX, p. 81. 17. Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. II, The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 129 n. 73, p. 685. The Eisenhower biographer says that the president was reluctant about seeing Roosevelt publicly. Roosevelt puts the date of his White House debriefing as 4 September, contradicted by Ambrose. What’s more to the point is that Eisenhower appears to have assessed Roosevelt as a fabulist. 18. For the way Major-General Sir Alexander Sinclair greeted Roosevelt’s debrief- ing, see the CIA internal history in Wilber, Overthrow, ch. IX ‘Report to London’, pp. 78–85. For the Foreign Office attitude towards MI6, see several references in Woodhouse’s autobiography, Something Ventured (pp. 106–23) and Chapter 4, section ‘The link-up: TPAJAX and the internal cabal’ as well as Chapter 6 in this volume. 19. The four broad tasks assigned to the Agency under its 1947 statute were: To advise the NSC on matters related to national security; to make recom- mendations to the NSC regarding the coordination of intelligence activities of the Departments of State and Defense; to correlate and evaluate intelli- gence; and provide for its appropriate dissemination. Finally, the agency was to perform such other functions as the NSC will from time to time direct it to undertake. In spite of some improvement in 1952, inter-departmental rivalries continued to impede the CIA from playing a direct role in intelli- gence gathering and clandestine operations. This was the main reason why the CIA needed to show gains to boost its clandestine action potential. It is not farfetched to assume that material in articles and books published on the CIA in the USA was being deliberately leaked by Agency officials for this purpose. See also note 23 below. 20. Woodhouse, 1982: 122. For his part, Richard Helms reportedly admitted in an interview with the BBC that in the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, the CIA exaggerated its role in the overthrow of Mosaddeq because it needed feathers in its cap. Quoted by Ardeshir Zahedi, Khater¯ at’e¯ Ardeshir Zahedi (Ardeshir Zahedi’s Memoirs), Vol. I (Maryland: IBEX, 2006), p. 269. 21. The National Security Archive filed a lawsuit in 1999. 22. See the National Archive Electronic Briefing Book no. 28 at the following link: <http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/>. Notes to pages 9–13 179 23. According to an account given to this author by a credible source, the report may have been found among personal belongings of its author Donald Wilber who died in 1997.