HELMS, THE SHAH AND THE CIA

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Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010002-4
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RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
November 16, 2016
Document Release Date: 
April 24, 2000
Sequence Number: 
2
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
December 29, 1972
Content Type: 
NSPR
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PDF icon CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010002-4.pdf150.92 KB
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ii ii~Jl.-i~='ialUl~ .J Ctaliii.erAp' roU@&,FMRelease 2000/09/ b1AZ tDP75-00( CPYR Helms, the Shah. an ~ the CIS fact that Richard Helms will go to Iran as the American ambassador 20 years after the agency he now heads organ- ized and directed the overthrow of the t/ regime then in power in Teheran. The tale is worth rccountinn if. only be- cattse of th_e changes in two decades which have affected the Central Intel- ligence Agency as well as American foreign policy. Helms first went to work at the CIA in, 1947 and he came up to his present post as director through what is goner- ally called the "department of dirty tricks." However, there is nothing on the public record to show that lie per- sonally had a hand in the overt'trow of the Communist backed and/or ori- ented regime of Premier Mohammed Mossa(legh in 1933, an action tnat re- turned the Shah to his throne, (''ne can 'only guess at the wry smile twat must have come to the Slhalh's face \.'hen he first heard that President 1i:-:un .vas proposing to send the CIA's top pan to be the American envoy. The Iranian affair, and a sinlilar CIA action in Guatemala the following year, are looked upon by old hands at 1953: Teheran rioting that over- threw th.e government left the Unit- ed States Poin-t Four office with gaping holes for windows and doors. ui o crisis munist party, to bolster his hand. Th to go and picked Gen. I'azollah Zaihed to renlace him. The man who stage mit "Kim" Roosevelt (who also had t hand in some fancy goings-on it Egypt), grandson of T.R. and seventl tonian in private business. Roosevelt managed to get to Tehcra during the Lindbergh baby kidnapin case. Schwarzkopf had reorganized tlr volt joined in the 1953 operation. Ti rested the officer who hrou?ht the bac news. The Teheran streets filled witl rioters and a scared Shah Lied first t Baghdad and then to Rorue. Dulles sevelt ordered the Shah's ba ckers int by the army and the Shah returned i time a new international oil censor oocrates to this day,though- the Shal has squeezed more and more revenu from the Westerners. Dulles wrote that. when in both Ira "support h om outside was given t loyal anti-Coiunuurist elements." In 1965 IBC; television documentary of "The Science of Spying" Dulles said I will not deny." Miles Copeland, ai ex-CIA operative in the .Middle East wrote in his book. "The Gagne o Nations," that tu: Iranian derring-d the agency as high points of a sort in ited Roosevelt with ';alnlost single Thomas 13. floss have told the Iranian on to the streets of Teheran" and su story in their hook, "The Invisible Gov- pel'visinc( "their riots so as to oust' Verlrrnent," and the CIA boss at the -Mossadegh. thee, Allen Dulles, conceded in public, after he left. the government that the TODAY 'I'Ill' I IIAN to which Helm. United St h a i-_--_, --- will go al er lie leaves the CIA i a c+., a es ad had IRAN IS NEXT DOUR to the Soviet which leas mended its fences with \los Union, In 1951 \Iosr:adc h, who con. cow without hurting its close relation , fused Westerners with his habits of ship with W1'a.shin ,,ton. '.I'he t 1iah leas weepier?' in public and running; govern- taken full advantage of the cban-'es in meat hus,iners fronh his hod, national- fast-West ralaiious i'rom the Cold War Oil C:o. and sa Feli ?r~'Iudativi~c111GIGQJGli Iron aIn CIatcinalaIvere the cry. The West boycotted Iranian oil )nigh Iloints of covert CIA Cold War a c- rvi y, were were p en y o o wer sue- cesstut enterprises that fell short of changing government regimes, Today the CIA. humiliated by the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco it planned and ran, has withdrawn from such large scale af- i'airs as Iran, save for its continuing major role in the no longer "secret , war in Laos." The climate of today v would not permit the United States to repeat the Iranian operation, or so one a surges with the reservation that residet:t. Nixon (who was Vice Presi- dent at tine time of Iran) loves sur- prises. The climate of 1953, however, was very different and must be taken into account in any judgment. Moscow then was fishing in a great many troubled waters and among them was Iran. It was probably true, as Allen Dulles said on that 1965 TV show, that "at no time has the CIA engaged in any political activity or any intelli- gence that was not approved at the highest level." It was all part of a deadly "game of nations." Richard Bis- . sell, who ran the U-2 program and the Bay of Pigs, was asked oil that TV show about the morality of CIA activi- ties. "I think," he replied, that "tile morality of . . . shall we call it for short, cold war . , . is so infinitely eas- ier than the morality of almost any kind of hot war that I never encoun- tered this as a serious problem." PERIIAPS the' philosophy of the Cold War years and the CIA role were best put by Dulles in a letter that he wrote me in 1961. Excerpts from his then forthcoming book had appeared IIarper's and I had suwcested to him some further revelations lie might in- clude in the book. He wrote about ad- ditions lie was makinug: "This includes more on Iran and Guatemala and the problems of policy in action when there begins to be evidence that a country is slipping and Communist take-over is threatened. We can't wait for an engraved invitation to come and give aid," There is a story, too, that Winston Churchill was so pleased by the opera- tion in Iran that lie preferred the George Cross to Kim Roosevelt. But the CiA wouldn't let- him accept the decoration. So Churchill commented to Roosevelt: "I would be proud to have served under you" in such air opera- tion. 'That remark, Roosevelt is said to have replied, was better than the deco- ration. helms doubtless would be the last to say so out loud but I can imacgine his reflecting( that, if it hadn't been for Meat Dulles, Kim Roosevelt and the others did in 1953, he world not have the chalice to present his credentials to a Sliah still on the peacock throne in 1973. FOIAb3b FOIAb3b