HELMS, THE SHAH AND THE CIA

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CIA-RDP84-00161R000400210035-9
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RIFPUB
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K
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1
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December 23, 2016
Document Release Date: 
February 20, 2014
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35
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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