IRAN/U.S.)RATHER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301470009-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: November 29, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301470009-6
CBS EVENING NEWS '
29 November 1984
IRAN/U.S.>RATHER: When the Ayatollah Khomeini held dozens
>DOCUMENTS>Americans hostage for X44 days, he justified it by
claiming the U.S. Embassy had been an espionage nest
filled with spies trying to overthrow him. Ever since
then, he and Iran have been trying to back that claim with
hard evidence. CBS News correspondent Doug Tunnell was in
Iran recently and took a look at what the ayatollah now
says is new proof.
.TUNNELL: Agile Persian fingers, which in different
circumstances might have woven and knotted the world's
finest carpets, have for the past five years been piecing
together strips of shredded American embassy documents.
Today in Tehran, you can buy modern shredders that reduce
a document to a series of useless filaments, each one
narrower than a single character on the average
typewriter. But the American embassy shredders left wider
strips on which ':hole columns of letters could be read.
The students charge the documents confirm that in the
months before the hostages were taken the American embassy
was as center for covert operations against Ayatollah
Khomeini's regime. For. Iran's revolutionaries, they paint
a .picture of American spies posing as diplomats and CIA
dirty tricks. Their evidence: bribery. Target:
Abolhassan Banc-Sadr. He later became president of the
republic. CIA men set in motion an elaborate scheme,
offering him $1,000 a month for cooperation. Smuggling,
objective: illegally imported foreign currency for large,
unspecified payments by the defense intelligence agency.
Forgery, ob,7ective: the falsification of passports by the
CIA, using forged immigration stamps from Europe and Iran.
Conspiracy, target: Kurdish rebels More than a dozen
CIA agents were in contact with Kurdish groups Many
Irans now believe that operation was waited at tearing
their country apart with the help of the Kurds.
MILES COPELAND (former CIA officer): Bribing and paying
people off, well, that's the way yo~t do business in Iran
or you don't do business. Iran is a seamy place. That's
the way things are done there and have been done that way
for centuries.
TUNNELL~: Documents released only last month detail
regular luncheon meetings between American and Soviet
diplomats in Tehran. The secluded *Shiraze Nights
Restaurant was. the scene of one encounter in 1976. The
Russian warned his American counterpart of an underground
power struggle between the shah and Iran's clergy. Tx~~
and a half years later, it became a revolution that denied
America it's favorite position in Southwest Asia. Named
are scores of embassy agents and contacts, addresses,
Conti
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 Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301470009-6
telephone numbers and other nations' secrets too, the
organization of Israel's spy networks and confidential CIA
biographies of senior Soviet politicians on the way up.
(picture of Chernenko shown) COPELAND: Security loss is
enormous. The fact that that kind of thing could happen
in Iran makes the, our friends in Egypt, our friends in,??
and i say. this advisedly, our friends in Syria and Iraq
and these other places, where believe it or not we do have
friends, they?worry about the fact that it could happen in
their country as well.
TUNNELL:?. This is the students' next project, microscopic
particles of paper and microfilm. Photographically
enlarged, .the militants believe these secrets may be the?
most sensitive yet, more of the vast puzzle that: Iran
claims is an indictment of the~United States, more reasons
for their hatred, more secrets for sale. Doug Tunnell,
CBS News, Tehran. <
Z
Approved For Release 2010/01/14 :CIA-RDP88-010708000301470009-6