-Caveat Lector-
CIA Documents Seized in Iran Continue to be Published
from: Secrecy & Government Bulletin, Issue No. 70, Sept. 1997
The CIA's destruction of records concerning the 1953 covert
action in Iran, first reported in the New York Times on May 29,
1997, provides an occasion in the following three articles to
recall a forgotten episode in the history of the CIA collection;
to report on a surprising documentary resource for students of
US-Iran relations; and to discuss the disputed interpretation of
the 1953 covert action itself.
Files for Hostages
The CIA's collection of records on Iran was once the subject
of what must be the most extreme declassification proposal ever
conceived.
When Iranian revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy in
Teheran in 1979, they seized dozens of hostages whom they wanted
to exchange for the departed Shah, so that they could place him
on trial. Philip Agee, the former CIA officer who became
notorious for his efforts to expose CIA officers under cover,
came up with a counter-proposal:
"What other solution would the Iranians accept [besides
return of the Shah]? What about the CIA's files on its operations
in Iran? Would the Iranians accept a 'files for hostages' deal
instead of 'Shah for hostages'?
"Those files are their history, all the details on how the
Agency set up the SAVAK [secret police], trained its officers,
supported that murderous institution in every way possible," Agee
wrote. ("On the Run," pp. 315-24). "If the Iranians made a 'files
for hostages' proposal, the pressure on [President] Carter [to
release the CIA files] might be strong and grow. And if he did
give up the files, that would be the end for the CIA."
In the midst of the hostage crisis, Agee telephoned the
embassy in Iran and made his proposal, which was in fact
submitted to the Revolutionary Council for consideration.
Fortunately-- since CIA had already destroyed many of the early
documents-- the proposal was rejected after a few days.
The Iranians thanked Mr. Agee for his comradely concern, but
pointed out that "People in Iran know what the CIA did." Besides,
"we already have a collection of the CIA's documents. We don't
need any more to learn what the CIA was doing here."
"Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den"
Many people will recall that when Iranian revolutionaries
seized the U.S. embassy in Teheran in 1979, they acquired a large
cache of classified U.S. government documents, some of which had
been shredded and painstakingly reassembled, which they proceeded
to publish. What no one seems to have noticed, however, is that
they never stopped publishing!
By 1995, an amazing 77 volumes of "Documents from the U.S.
Espionage Den" (Asnad-i lanih-'i Jasusi) had been collected and
published by the "Muslim Students Following the Line of the
Imam"; (Center for the Publication of the U.S. Espionage Den's
Documents, P.O. Box 15815-3489, Teheran, Islamic Republic of
Iran, tel. 824005). Each volume contains original documents along
with Farsi translations and, for no extra charge, an inflammatory
introductory essay.
"The seizure of the embassy meant that the radicals gained
access to a veritable treasury of secret and confidential
documents covering some thirty years of Iranian history," wrote
Amir Taheri in "Nest of Spies" (Pantheon Books, 1988). "They
reveal the techniques of superpower diplomacy first hand and on a
day-to-day basis." Although Taheri's book was not particularly
well-received by reviewers, it seems to be the only book-length
study to exploit the Iranian collection, or at least the 58
volumes that had been published as of 1987. The documents were
also rather superficially examined by Edward Jay Epstein in an
article titled "Secrets from the CIA Archive in Teheran" and
published in Orbis (Spring 1987).
Ironically (not to say Iranically), publication of the
documents represents an extraordinary service to scholars and to
the interested public, particularly in light of the CIA's
destruction of portions of the historical record on Iran.
Although there are a handful of obvious gems, the Iranians'
criteria for publication are weak or nonexistent -- they seem
intent on publishing everything that they recovered from the
embassy, from detailed CIA procedures for handling defectors to a
discussion of whether the Boy Scouts of America should plan on
attending the 1979 Boy Scout Jamboree in Iran. The indiscriminate
nature of the collection is both its weakness and its strength.
Along with voluminous embassy cable traffic, CIA
intelligence assessments and estimates that remain classified in
the U.S., some of the documents in the Iranian collection are of
a sort that would never be released by the CIA, since they
contain detailed information on sensitive sources. Indeed, at
least one execution of a CIA source is directly attributable to
the capture of these records.
But since the documents have already been disclosed, all
possible damage has already been done, and the collection offers
American readers a unique window on diplomatic and intelligence
activity that is completely unobscured by classification
constraints.
The Iranian records cannot replace the CIA records of the
1953 coup in Iran that have been destroyed, since they originate
overwhelmingly from the late 1970s. But they could add
considerably to the history of that later period.
Professor Warren Kimball, chairman of the State Department
Historical Advisory Committee, told S&GB that "These documents
may be worth considering as a source for reconstructing American
foreign policy toward that region, particularly if other records
remain classified or do not exist."
Some, though not all, of the volumes are available at the
excellent Iranbooks in Bethesda, Maryland.
Reconsidering the 1953 "Coup" in Iran
History abhors a vacuum, and so the void created by the
classification (and later destruction) of CIA records concerning
the 1953 crisis in Iran has been filled with partial truths and
fabrications that have endured despite persuasive scholarly
rebuttal.
Thus, for example, "In 1953 Kermit [Roosevelt] and a few
fellows manipulated that crowd which toppled [Iranian Prime
Minister Muhammad] Mossadegh without any trouble at all,"
according to former CIA officer David Atlee Phillips' book "The
Night Watch."
American covert action in Iran during the 1950s is
"something the whole world already knew about," according to a
Washington Post editorial (8/17/97). The CIA's destruction of
documents concerning its role in the 1953 coup in Iran is "a
self-accusation," wrote Theodore Draper in the New York Review of
Books (8/14/97). "The CIA had much to hide and decided to do it
in the most effective way -- by destroying the official record."
But what the whole world already knew may be mistaken, and
what the destroyed CIA records might have shown in this case is
not how much the Agency had to hide, but just how little the CIA
actually had to do with the removal of Iranian Prime Minister
Mossadegh from power in 1953 and the restoration of the Shah to
his throne.
The CIA and the enemies of the Shah both had an interest in
exaggerating the role of the Agency in the 1953 crisis. Asserting
a "victory" in Iran helped the CIA to establish its competence,
and to demonstrate its apparent ability to shape events in
foreign lands. At the same time, by portraying the Shah as a
American puppet who was returned to power by CIA dirty tricks,
the Shah's enemies sought to undermine his legitimacy.
In reality, however, by 1953 the Mossadegh regime was
already unstable, having lost the support of many elements of
Iranian society, from the military to the mullahs. "Overthrowing
Mossadegh had been like pushing on an already-opened door,"
wrote Barry Rubin in "Paved With Good Intentions: The American
Experience and Iran" (p. 89).
Nevertheless, "the belief that the United States had
single-handedly imposed a harsh tyrant on a reluctant populace
became one of the central myths of the relationship, particularly
as viewed from Iran," observed Gary Sick in his definitive work
"All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran" (1985, p.
7). "According to the yarns woven by the CIA on the one hand and
anti-shah elements on the other, the entire August [1953]
uprising had been an American enterprise whose success was solely
due to CIA money and intrigue," wrote Amir Taheri, who was editor
of Iran's largest daily newspaper from 1973 to 1979.
"What actually happened was not the successful conclusion of
a conspiracy but a genuine popular uprising provoked by economic
hardship, political fear and religious prejudice," Taheri wrote
in his 1988 book "Nest of Spies" (p. 36). He goes so far as to
argue that "[E]xamination of the mass of evidence now available
proves that the CIA and its former agents deliberately
exaggerated their role in those events." He notes that out of
the $1 million allocated for the CIA's Operation AJAX (supposedly
"to wash the Red out of Iran"), no more than $75,000 was actually
used for the purpose of mobilizing crowds in Teheran.
In any case, distorted history can easily overwhelm a secret
truth, and the myth of the CIA's overthrow of Mossadegh,
propagated notably by CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt in his 1979
book "Countercoup," is no less consequential for having been, in
important respects, inaccurate and misleading. (Intelligence
scholar Hayden B. Peake told S&GB that the first edition of
Roosevelt's book was modified under British pressure and reissued
to exclude certain references to British intelligence.)
The perceived success of the CIA in toppling Mossadegh
inaugurated a fascination with covert action that continues to
this day, with the Senate Intelligence Committee boasting of "new
investments" and "aggressive efforts" in covert action for fiscal
year 1998.
The (suppressed) truth of the historical record about Iran
and the grotesque failures of covert action --from the Bay of
Pigs to the latest fiasco in Iraq-- have been unable to dislodge
the belief in its efficacy that originated with the Iran coup.
Though Roosevelt's "Countercoup" is pompous and self-
congratulatory ("You owe me nothing at all," he says he told the
Shah, "except ... thanks"), and filled with unlikely detail, he
himself recognized that the Iran action was a special case, and
not a model that could be readily adopted elsewhere.
"If we, the CIA, are ever going to try something like this
again, we must be absolutely sure that the people and the army
want what we want. If not, you had better give the job to the
Marines," he warned government officials. Writing 25 years later,
he lamented that his warning had not been heeded.
More harshly, Amir Taheri argues that "The extravagant
claims made by the CIA about Operation AJAX in later years were
to have disastrous effects for future relations between Iran and
the United States ... Besides casting doubt on the shah's
legitimacy, the CIA claims ... helped create an anti-American
sentiment that had not previously existed in Iran ... The
super-spies who some years later went around claiming medals for
their supposedly heroic role in Operation AJAX deserved no such
rewards. Unknowingly, they did a great disservice both to Iran
and to the United States."
The most measured assessment appears to be that offered by
Barry Rubin: "It cannot be said that the United States overthrew
Mossadegh and replaced him with the shah. The CIA merely provided
minimal financial and logistical aid for Iranians to do so."
Y: Israel's "High Priest of Secrecy"
"He has extraordinary power, for someone who is so little
known," said one Israeli.
Yechiel Horev is the head of the most secretive branch of
Israel's intelligence and security apparatus, called by the
unwieldy name of Memuneh al habitachon beMaarechet haBitachon
(MLMB) or, approximately, "the office in charge of security in
the security system."
The MLMB has diverse responsibilities that extend throughout
Israel's sizable military establishment, including information
security, physical security, industrial security,
counterintelligence, and more. Though the MLMB is practically
unknown to the general public in Israel, its name "instills fear"
within Israel's military-industrial-nuclear complex, according to
a detailed article by Yossi Melman entitled "The High Priest of
Secrecy" that appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz
(7/25/97).
Yechiel Horev "is kind of a 'square', with stubborn
principles," said a former official of the Shin Bet security
service quoted by Melman. "Despite his relatively young age, he
belongs to the old generation of those for whom the security
discipline became their total philosophy."
But, notes Mr. Melman, at a time when the names and pictures
of the head of Israel's Mossad (foreign intelligence), Shin Bet
(internal security), and Aman (military intelligence) are all
published routinely, the identity of Yechiel Horev remains a
state secret in Israel. Under Israel's system of military
censorship, the press can refer to Mr. Horev, whose name is
published here for the first time, only by his first initial Y.
This practice now seems anachronistic to some Israelis. "The
situation is absurd and intolerable," Knesset member Ran Cohen, a
former chairman of the Knesset subcommittee on the clandestine
services, told Haaretz. Mr. Cohen wrote to the Israeli Minister
of Defense in July urging disclosure of Mr. Horev's name. He
argued that the continued secrecy surrounding the MLMB is
inappropriate, and that greater public scrutiny should be
permitted. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," he wrote,
paraphrasing Justice Brandeis. But the Ministry of Defense was
not impressed and the request was rejected.
New Releases
Even though "progress [on declassification] throughout the
executive branch has been uneven and, in some agencies, very slow
to get started," a staggering 196 million pages were declassified
last year under the provisions of executive order 12958,
according to the 1996 annual report of the Information Security
Oversight Office. On the other hand, several volumes of official
U.S. history "now stand in never-never land" because of the
unwillingness of CIA to declassify its historical records,
according to the 1996 annual report of the State Department
Historical Advisory Committee.
Secrecy & Government Bulletin is written by Steven Aftergood and
published by the Federation of American Scientists.
The FAS Project on Government Secrecy is supported by grants
from the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Greenville Foundation, the
Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust, and the John S. and James L.
Knight Foundation.
Copyright (c) 1998 TOTSE
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