HELMS, THE SHAH AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 29, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

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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.
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