intimate biographical information, were of some 200 leading Social Democrats (including Zinn himself!, 15 Communists, and various others, all of whom were deemed politically untrustworthy and opponents of West German militarization. Apparently, support for peaceful coexistence and detente with the Soviet bloc was sufficient to qualify one for inclusion on the hit-list, for one man was killed at the training site, charged with being an East-West bridge builder . It was this murder that led to the exposure of the entire operation.

The United States admitted its role in the creation and training of the guerrilla army, but denied any involvement in the illegal, internal, and political activities of the organization. But Zinn reported that the Americans had learned of the plotting in May and had not actually dissolved the group until September, the same month that German Security Police arrested a number of the groups leaders. At some point, the American who directed the training courses. Sterling Garwood, had been supplied with carbon copies of the card-index entries . It appears that at no time did US authorities communicate anything of this matter to the West German Government.

As the affair turned out, those who had been attested were quickly released and the United States thwarted any further investigation in this the American Zone of occupied Germany. Commented Herr Zinn: The only legal explanation for these releases can be that the people in Karlsruhe [the Federal Court] declared that they acted upon American direction. 9

To add to the furor, the national leader of the Social Democrats accused the United States of financing an opposition group to infiltrate and undermine his party. Erich Ollenhauer, whose name had also appeared on the Technical Services list, implied that American clandestine agencies were behind the plot despite the disapproval of high-ranking US officials.10

The revelations about the secret army and its hit-list resulted in a storm of ridicule and denunciation falling upon the United States from many quarters in West Germany. In particular, the delicious irony of the Americans working hand-in-glove with ex -Nazis did nor escape the much-castigated German people.

This operation in Germany, it was revealed many years later, was part of a much wider network-called Operation Gladio -created by the CIA and other European intelligence services, with similar secret armies all over Western Europe. (See Western Europe chapter.)

9. Iran 1953

Making it safe for the King of Kings

So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh, announced John Foster Dulles to a group of top Washington policy makers one day in June 1953.1 The Secretary of State held in his hand a plan of operation to overthrow the prime minister of Iran prepared by Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt of the CIA. There was scarcely any discussion amongst the high-powered men in the room, no probing questions, no legal or ethical issues raised.

This was a grave decision to have made, Roosevelt later wrote. It involved tremendous risk. Surely it deserved thorough examination, the closest consideration, somewhere at the very highest level. It had not received such thought at this meeting. In

fact, I was morally certain that almost half of those present, if they had felt free or had the courage to speak, would have opposed the undertaking. 2

Roosevelt, the grandson of Theodore and distant cousin of Franklin, was expressing surprise more than disappointment at glimpsing American foreign-policy-making undressed. The original initiative to oust Mossadegh had come from the British, for the elderly Iranian leader had spearheaded the parliamentary movement to nationalize the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), the sole oil company operating in Iran, In March 1951, the bill for nationalization was passed, and at the end of April Mossadegh was elected prime minister by a large majority of Parliament, On 1 May, nationalization went into effect. The Iranian people, Mossadegh declared, were opening a hidden Treasure upon which lies a dragon .3

As the prime minister had anticipated, the British did not take the national Nation grace-fully, though it was supported unanimously by the Iranian parliament and by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people for reasons of both economic justice and national pride. The Mossadegh government tried to do all the right things to placate the British: It offered to set aside 25 percent of the net profits of the oil operation as compensation; it guaranteed the safety and the jobs of the British employees; it was willing to sell its oil without disturbance to the tidy control system so dear to the hearts of the international oil giants. But the British would have none of it. What they wanted was their oil company back. And they wanted Mossadeghs head. A servant does not affront his lord with impunity.

A military show of force by the British navy was followed by a ruthless international economic blockade and boycott, and a freezing of Iranian assets which brought Irans oil exports and foreign trade to a virtual standstill, plunged the already impoverished country into near destitution, and made payment of any compensation impossible. Nonetheless, and long after they had moved to oust Mossadegh, the British demanded compensation not only for the physical assets of the AIOC, but for the value of their enterprise in developing the oil fields; a request impossible to meet, and, in the eyes of Iranian nationalists, something which decades of huge British profits had paid for many times over.

The British attempt at economic strangulation of Iran could not have gotten off the ground without the active co-operation and support of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and American oil companies. At the same time, the Truman administration argued with the British that Mossadeghs collapse could open the door to the proverbial communist takeover.4 When the British were later expelled from Iran, however, they had no alternative but to turn to the United States for assistance in toppling Mossadegh. In November 1952, the Churchill government approached Roosevelt, the de facto head of the CIAs Middle East division, who told the British that he felt that there was no chance to win approval from the outgoing administration of Truman and Acheson. The new Republicans, however, might be quite different. 5

John Foster Dulles was certainly different. The apocalyptic anti-communist saw in Mossadegh the epitome of all that he detested in the Third World: unequivocal neutralism in the cold war, tolerance of Communists, and disrespect for free enterprise, as demonstrated by the oil nationalization. (Ironically, in recent years Great Britain had nationalized several of its own basic industries, and the government was the majority owner of the AIOC.) To the likes of John Foster Dulles, the eccentric Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was indeed a madman. And when the Secretary of State considered further that Iran was a nation exceedingly rich in the liquid gold, and that it shared a border with the Soviet Union more than 1,000 miles long, he was not unduly plagued by indecision as to whether the Iranian prime minister should finally retire from public life.

As matters turned out, the overthrow of Mossadegh in August 1953 was much more an American operation than a British one. Twenty-six years later, Kermit Roosevelt took the unusual step of writing a book about how he and the CIA carried out the operation. He called his book Countercoup to press home the idea that the CIA coup was staged only to prevent a takeover of power by the Iranian Communist Party (The Tudeh) closely backed by the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was thus arguing that Mossadegh had to be removed to prevent a Communist takeover, whereas the Truman administration had felt that Mossadegh had to be kept in power to prevent one.

It would be incorrect to state that Roosevelt offers little evidence to support his thesis of the Communist danger. It would be more precise to say that he offers no evidence at all. Instead, the reader is subjected to mere assertions of the thesis which are stated over and over, apparently in the belief that enough repetition will convince even the most skeptical. Thus are we treated to variations on the theme such as the following:

The Soviet threat [was] indeed genuine, dangerous and imminent ...

Mossadegh had formed an alliance with the Soviet Union to oust the Shah ... the

obvious threat of Russian takeover ... the alliance between [Mossadegh] and the

Russian-dominated Tudeh was taking on a threatening shape ... Mossadeghs

increasing dependence on the Soviet Union ... the hand of the Tudeh, and behind

them the Russians, is showing more openly every day ... Russian backing of the

Tudeh and Tudeh backing of [Mossadegh] became ever more obvious ... the Soviet

Union was ever more active in Iran. Their control over Tudeh leadership was growing

stronger all the time. It was exercised often and, to our eyes, with deliberate ostentation ... 6

But none of this subversive and threatening activity was, apparently, ever open, obvious, or ostentatious enough to provide Roosevelt with a single example he could impart to a curious reader.

In actuality, although the Tudeh Party more or less faithfully followed the fluctuating Moscow line on Iran, the relation of the party to Mossadegh was much mote complex than Roosevelt and other cold-war chroniclers have made it out to be. The Tudeh felt very ambiguous about the wealthy, eccentric, land-owning prime minister who, nonetheless, was standing up to imperialism. Dean Acheson, Trumans Secretary of State, described Mossadegh as essentially a rich, reactionary, feudal-minded Persian ,7 hardly your typical Communist Party fellow-traveler.

On occasion the Tudeh had supported Mossadeghs policies; more often it had attacked them bitterly, and in one instance, on 15 July 1951, a Tudeh-sponsored demonstration was brutally suppressed by Mossadegh, resulting in some 100 deaths and 500 injured. The Iranian leader, moreover, had campaigned successfully against lingering Soviet occupation of northern Iran after World War II, and in October 1947 had led Parliament in its rejection of a government proposal that a joint Irano-Soviet oil company be set up to exploit the oil of northern Iran.8

What, indeed, did Mossadegh have to gain by relinquishing any of his power to the Tudeh and/or the Soviet Union? The idea that the Russians even desired the Tudeh to take power is no more than speculation. There was just as much evidence, or as little, to conclude that the Russians, once again, were more concerned about their relationship with Western governments than with the fate of a local Communist Party in a country outside the socialist bloc of Eastern Europe.

A secret State Department intelligence report, dated 9 January 1953, in the closing days of the Truman administration, stated that Mossadegh had not sought any alliance with the Tudeh, and that The major opposition to the National Front