HELMS, THE SHAH AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210035-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 20, 2014
• Sequence Number: 35
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2014/02/21 : CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210035-9
Chalmers M. Roberts
Helms, the Shah and the CIA
THERE IS A CERTAIN irony in the
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
regime then in power in Teheran. The
tale is worth recounting if only be-
cause of the 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 gener-
ally called the "department of dirty
tricks." However, there is nothing on
the public record to show that he Per-
sonally had a hand in the overthrow of
the Communist backed and/or ori-
ented regime of Premier Mohammed
Mossadegh in 1933, an action that re-
turned the Shah to his throne. One can
only guess at the wry smile that must
have come to the Shah's face when he
first heard that President Nixon was
proposing to send the CIA's top man
to be the American envoy.
The Iranian affair, and a similar
CIA action in Guatemala the following
year, are looked upon by old hands at
1953: Teheran rioting that over-
threw the government left the Unit-
ed States Point Four office with
gaping holes for windows and doors.
the agency as high points of a sort in
the Cold War years. David Wise and
Thomas B. Ross have told the Iranian
story in their book, "The Invisible Gov-
ernment," and the CIA boss at the
time, Allen Dulles, conceded in public
after he left the government that the
United States had had a hand in what
occurred.
IRAN IS NEXT DOOR to the Soviet
Union. In 1951 Mossadegh, who con-
fused Westerners with his habits of
weeping in public and running govern-
ment business from his bed, national-
hod the British-owned Anglo-lranian
Oil 'Co. and seized the Abadan refin-
ery. The West boycotted Iranian oil
and the country was thrown into crisis.
Mossadegh "connived," as Wise and
Ross put it, with Tudeh, Iran's Com-
munist party, to bolster his hand. The
British and Americans decided he had
to go and picked Gen. Fazollah Zahedi
to replace him. The man who stage-
managed the job on the spot was Ker-
mit "Kim" Roosevelt (who also had a
hand in some fancy goings-on in
Egypt), grandson of T.R. and seventh
cousin of F.D.R., and now a Washing-
tonian in private business.
Roosevelt managed to get to Teheran
and set up underground headquarters.
A chief aide was Brig. Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf, who, as head of the New
Jersey state police, had become famous
during the Lindbergh baby kidnaping
case. Schwarzkopf had reorganized the
Shah's,police force and he and Roose-
velt joined in the 1953 operation. The
Shah dismissed Mossadegh and named
Zaheldi as Premier but Mossadegh ar-
rested the officer who brought the had
news. The Teheran streets filled with
rioters and a scared Shah fled first to
Baghdad and then to Rome. Dulles
flew to Rome to confer with him. Roo.
sevelt ordered the Shah's backers into
the streets, the leftists were arrested
by the army and the Shah returned in
triumph. Mossadegh went to jail. In
time a new international oil consor-
tium took over Anglo-Iranian which
operates to this day,though the Shah
1:17.;/_-",-xafir
has squeezed more and more revenue
from the Westerners.
In his 1963 book, "The Craft of Intel-
ligence," published after he left CIA,
Dulles wrote that, when in both Iran
and Guatemala it "became clear" that
a Communist state was in the making,
"support from outside was given to
loyal anti-Communist elements." In a
1965 NBC television documentary on
"The Science of Spying" Dulles said:
"The government of Mossadegh, if you
recall history, was overthrown by the
action of the Shah. Now, that we en-
couraged the Shah to take that action
I will not deny." Miles Copeland, an
ex-CIA operative in the Middle East,
wrote in his book, "The Game of
Nations," that the Iranian derring-do
was called "Operation Ajax." He cred-
ited Roosevelt with "almost single-
handedly" calling the "pro-Shah forces
on to the streets of Teheran" and su-
pervising "their riots so as to oust"
Mossadegh.
TODAY THE IRAN to which Helms
will go after he leaves the CIA is a sta-
ble, well armed and well oil-financed
regime under the Shah's command
which has mended its fences with Mos-
cow without hurting its close relation-
ship with Washington. The Shah has
taken full advantage of the changet in
East-West relations from the Cold War
to today's milder climate. ?
While Iran and Guatemala were the
high points of covert CIA Cold War ac-
tivity, there were plenty of other suc-
cessful 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-
fairs as Iran, save for its continuing
major role in the no longer "secret
war in Laos." The climate of today
would not permit the United States to
repeat the Iranian operation, or so one
assumes with the reservation that
President Nixon (who was Vice Presi-
dent at the 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 on that TV
show about the morality of CIA activi-
ties. "I think," he replied, that "the
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."
PERHAPS 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
in Harper's and I had suggested to him
some further revelations he ?might in-
clude in the book. He wrote about ad-
ditions he was making: "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 pleated by the opera-
tion in Iran that he proferred the
George ?Cross to Kilt Roosevelt. But
the CIA wouldn't let 1,him accept the
decoration. So Churchill commented to
Roosevelt: "I would be',proud to have
served under you" in such an 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 imagine his
reflecting that, if it hadn't been for
what Dulles, Kim Roosevelt and the
others did in 1953, he would not have
the chance to present his credentials
to a Shah still on the peacock throne
in 1973.
a
Declassified and Approved For Release @50-Yr 2014/02/21 : CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210035-9