The C.I.A. has been slow to make available the Iran files. Two directors of central intelligence, Robert Gates and R. James Woolsey, vowed to declassify records of the agencys early covert actions, including the coup. But the agency said three years ago that a number of relevant documents had been destroyed in the early 1960s. A C.I.A. spokesman said Friday that the agency had retained about 1,000 pages of documents related to the coup, besides the history and an internal account written later. He said the papers destroyed in the early 1960s were duplicates and working files. The chief State Department historian said that his office received a copy of the history seven years ago but that no decision on declassifying it had yet been made. The secret history, along with operational assessments written by coup planners, was provided to The Times by a former official who kept a copy. It was written in March 1954 by Dr. Donald N. Wilber, an expert in Persian architecture, who as one of the leading planners believed that covert operatives had much to learn from history. In less expansive memoirs published in 1986, Dr. Wilber asserted that the Iran coup was different from later C.I.A. efforts. Its American planners, he said, had stirred up considerable unrest in Iran, giving Iranians a clear choice between instability and supporting the shah. The move to oust the prime minister, he wrote, thus gained substantial popular support. Dr. Wilbers memoirs were heavily censored by the agency, but he was allowed to refer to the existence of his secret history. If this history had been read by the planners of the Bay of Pigs, he wrote, there would have been no such operation. From time to time, he continued, I gave talks on the operation to various groups within the agency, and, in hindsight, one might wonder why no one from the Cuban desk ever came or read the history. The coup was a turning point in modern Iranian history and remains a persistent irritant in Tehran-Washington relations. It consolidated the power of the shah, who ruled with an iron hand for 26 more years in close contact with to the United States. He was toppled by militants in 1979. Later that year, marchers went to the American Embassy, took diplomats hostage and declared that they had unmasked a nest of spies who had been manipulating Iran for decades. The Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini supported terrorist attacks against American interests largely because of the long American history of supporting the shah. Even under more moderate rulers, many Iranians still resent the United States role in the coup and its support of the shah. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, in an address in March, acknowledged the coups pivotal role in the troubled relationship and came closer to apologizing than any American official ever has before. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, she said. But the coup was clearly a setback for Irans political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs. The history spells out the calculations to which Dr. Albright referred in her speech. Britain, it says, initiated the plot in 1952. The Truman administration rejected it, but President Eisenhower approved it shortly after taking office in 1953, because of fears about oil and Communism. The document pulls few punches, acknowledging at one point that the agency baldly lied to its British allies. Dr. Wilber reserves his most withering asides for the agencys local allies, referring to the recognized incapacity of Iranians to plan or act in a thoroughly logical manner. THE ROOTS Britain Fights Oil Nationalism The coup had its roots in a British showdown with Iran, restive under decades of near-colonial British domination. The prize was Irans oil fields. Britain occupied Iran in World War II to protect a supply route to its ally, the Soviet Union, and to prevent the oil from falling into the hands of the Nazis — ousting the shahs father, whom it regarded as unmanageable. It retained control over Irans oil after the war through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In 1951, Irans Parliament voted to nationalize the oil industry, and legislators backing the law elected its leading advocate, Dr. Mossadegh, as prime minister. Britain responded with threats and sanctions. Dr. Mossadegh, a European-educated lawyer then in his early 70s, prone to tears and outbursts, refused to back down. In meetings in November and December 1952, the secret history says, British intelligence officials startled their American counterparts with a plan for a joint operation to oust the nettlesome prime minister.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 04:47:13 +0000
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