resrrained by the Soviet Embassy because the Kremlin, in the first post-Stalin year, was not willing to take on such consequences as might have resulted from the establishment of a communist-controlled regime in Teheran.

Loves views, contained in a paper he wrote in 1960, may well have been inspired by information received from the CIA. By his own admission, he was in close contact with the Agency in Teheran and even aided them in their operation.25

Earlier in the year, the New York Times had noted that prevailing opinion among detached observers in Teheran was that Mossadegh is the most popular politician in the country . During a period of more than 40 years in public life, Mossadegh had acquired a reputation as an honest patriot .26

In July, the State Department Director of Iranian Affairs had testified that Mossadegh has such tremendous control over the masses of people that it would be very difficult to throw him out. 27

A few days later, at least 100,000 people filled the streets of Teheran to express strong anti-US and anti-Shah sentiments. Though sponsored by the Tudeh, the turnout far exceeded any estimate of party adherents.28

But popularity and masses, of the unarmed kind, counted for little, for in the final analysis what Teheran witnessed was a military showdown carried out on both sides by soldiers obediently following the orders of a handful of officers, some of whom were staking their careers and ambitions on choosing the winning side: some had a more ideological commitment. The New York Times characterized the sudden reversal of Mossadeghs fortunes as nothing mote than a mutiny ... against pro-Mossadegh officers by the lower ranks who revered the Shah, had brutally quelled the demonstrations the day before, but refused to do the same on 19 August, and instead turned against their officers.29

What connection Roosevelt and his agents had with any of the pro-Shah officers beforehand is not clear. In an interview given at about the same time that he finished his book, Roosevelt stated that a number of pro-Shah officers were given refuge in the CIA compound adjoining the US Embassy at the time the Shah fled to Rome.30 But inasmuch as Roosevelt mentions not a word of this rather important and interesting development in his book, it must be regarded as yet another of his assertions to be approached with caution.

In any event, it may be that the 19 August demonstration organized by Roosevelts team was just the encoutagement and spark these officers were waiting for. Yet, if so, it further illustrates how much Roosevelt had left to chance.

In light of all the questionable, contradictory, and devious statements which emanated at times from John Foster Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, Loy Henderson and other American officials, what conclusions can be drawn about American motivation in the toppling of Mossadegh? The consequences of the coup may offer the best guide.

For the next 25 years, the Shah of Iran stood fast as the United States closest ally in the Third World, to a degree that would have shocked the independent and neutral Mossadegh. The Shah literally placed his country at the disposal of US military and intelligence organizations to be used as a cold-war weapon, a window and a door to the Soviet Union-electronic listening and radar posts were set up near the Soviet border; American aircraft used Iran as a base to launch surveillance flights over the Soviet Union; espionage agents were infiltrated across the border; various American military installations dotted the Iranian landscape. Iran was viewed as a vital link in the chain being forged by the United States to contain the Soviet Union. In a telegram to the British Acting Foreign Secretary in September, Dulles said: I think if we can in

coordination move quickly and effectively in Iran we would close the most dangerous gap in the line from Europe to South Asia. 31 In February 1955, Iran became a member of the Baghdad Pact, set up by the United States, in Dulless words, to create a solid band of resistance against the Soviet Union .32

One year after the coup, the Iranian government completed a contract with an international consortium of oil companies. Amongst Irans new foreign partners, the British lost the exclusive rights they had enjoyed previously, being reduced now to 40 percent. Another 40 percent now went to American oil firms, the remainder to other countries. The British, however, received an extremely generous compensation for their former property.33

In 1958, Kermit Roosevelt left the CIA and presently went to work for Gulf Oil Co., one of the American oil firms in the consortium. In this position, Roosevelt was director of Gulfs relations with the US government and foreign governments, and had occasion to deal with the Shah. In 1960, Gulf appointed him a vice president. Subsequently, Roosevelt formed a consulting firm, Downs and Roosevelt, which, between 1967 and 1970, reportedly received $116,000 a year above expenses for its efforts on behalf of the Iranian government. Another client, the Northrop Corporation, a Los Angeles-based aerospace company, paid Roosevelt $75,000 a year to aid in its sales to Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries.34 (See the Middle East chapter for Roosevelts CIA connection with King Saud of Saudi Arabia.)

Another American member of the new consortium was Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey (now Exxon), a client of Sullivan and Cromwell, the New York law firm of which John Foster Dulles had long been the senior member. Brother Allen, Director of the CIA, had also been a member of the firm.35 Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported some years later that the Rockefeller family, who controlled Standard Oil and Chase Manhattan Bank, had helped arrange the CIA coup that brought down Mossadegh . Anderson listed a number of ways in which the Shah demonstrated his gratitude to the Rockefellers, including heavy deposits of his personal fortune in Chase Manhattan, and housing developments in Iran built by a Rockefeller family company.36

The standard textbook account of what took place in Iran in 1953 is that- whatever else one might say for or against the operation-the United States saved Iran from a Soviet/Communist takeover. Yet, during the two years of American and British subversion of a bordering country, the Soviet Union did nothing that would support such a premise. When the British Navy staged the largest concentration of its forces since World War II in Iranian waters, the Soviets took no belligerent steps; nor when Great Britain instituted draconian international sanctions which left Iran in a deep economic crisis and extremely vulnerable, did the oil fields fall hostage to the Bolshevik Menace; this, despite the whole of the Tudeh Party at its disposal as agents, as Roosevelt put it.37 Not even in the face of the coup, with its imprint of foreign hands, did Moscow make a threatening move; neither did Mossadegh at any point ask for Russian help.

One year later, however, the New York Times could editorialize that Moscow ... counted its chickens before they were hatched and thought that Iran would be the next Peoples Democracy. At the same time, the newspaper warned, with surprising arrogance, that underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. 38

A decade later, Allen Dulles solemnly stared that communism had achieved control of the governmental apparatus in Iran.39 And a decade after that, Fortune magazine, to cite one of many examples, kept the story alive by writing that Mossadegh

plotted with the Communist party of Iran, the Tudeh, to overthrow Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi and hook up with the Soviet Union. 40

And what of the Iranian people? What did being saved from communism do for them? For the preponderance of the population, life under the Shah was a grim tableau of grinding poverty, police terror, and torture. Thousands were executed in the name of fighting communism. Dissent was crushed from the outset of the new regime with American assistance. Kennett Love wrote that he believed that CIA officer George Carroll, whom he knew personally, worked with General Farhat Dadsetan, the new military governor of Teheran, on preparations for the very efficient smothering of a potentially dangerous dissident movement emanating from the bazaar area and the Tudeh in the first two weeks of November, 1953 .41

The notorious Iranian secret police, SAVAK, created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel,42 spread its tentacles all over the world to punish Iranian dissidents. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency.43 Amnesty International summed up the situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran. 44

When to this is added a level of corruption that startled even the most hardened observers of Middle Eastern thievery ,45 it is understandable that the Shah needed his huge military and police force, maintained by unusually large US aid and training programs,46 to keep the lid down for as long as he did. Said Senator Hubert Humphrey, apparently with some surprise:

Do you know what the head of the Iranian Army told one of our people? He said the Army was in good shape, thanks to U.S. aid-it was now capable of coping with the civilian population. That Army isnt going to fight the Russians. Its planning to fight the Iranian people.47

Where force might fail, the CIA turned to its most trusted weapon-money. To insure support for the Shah, or at least the absence of dissent, the Agency began making payments to Iranian religious leaders, always a capricious bunch. The payments to the ayatollahs and mullahs began in 1953 and continued regularly until 1977 when President Carter abruptly halted them. One informed intelligence source estimated that the amount paid reached as much as $400 million a year; others thought that figure too high, which it certainly seems to be. The cut-off of funds to the holy men, it is believed, was one of the elements which precipitated the beginning of the end for the King of Kings.48

10. Guatemala 1953-1954

While the world watched

To whom do you turn for help when the police are assaulting you? The old question.

To whom does a poor banana republic turn when a CIA army is advancing upon its territory and CIA planes are overhead bombing the country?