CIA in Iran CLANDESTINE SERVICE HISTORY About OVERTHROW OF PREMIER MOSSADEQ OF IRAN by United States of America Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) November 1952 - August 1953 Last Updated: 2006/06/20 06:12:17 Doc. Revision: 0.1 PAYK.NET Payk Publication Date: 10/20/2000 1 Contents 1 About This Document 3 2 Status and Origin of Files 3 3 What has Happened to Key Characters 3 4 Files List 3 5 Origin of the Files 3 6 Goals and Purpose 3 7 Payk.net's Role 3 8 Mailing List 3 9 New York Times Editor's Note 3 10 About the CIA files 4 11 The Objective of the Project 5 12 What We Have Done, And What Still Needs To Be Done 5 13 Time Line 6 2 1 About This Document 2 Status and Origin of Files 3 What has Happened to Key Char- acters 4 Files List 5 Origin of the Files 6 Goals and Purpose 7 Payk.net's Role 8 Mailing List 9 New York Times Editor's Note The "1979 Iranian takeover of the American Embassy" is directly linked to the "1953 American Coup D'Etat in Iran", the same way that "Hiroshima" is directly linked to "Pearl Harbor". While most Americans know a lot about the 1979- Hostage Crises, most Americans know nothing about the 1953-Coup. It is ridiculous for the mainstream US news media to discuss the "1979-US Hostage Crises" outside of its full context, the same way that it is ridiculous for anyone to analyze "Hiroshima" outside of its full context. The ramifications of covert actions such as the 1953- Coup are deep and long lasting. Yet, it has been easy for America to ignore its moral responsibility in that event. By simply "ignoring it", "forgetting it" and label it as "ancient history" America's responsibility for the harm brought to Iran and Iranians does not wash away. It is an inherent characteristic of super powers to confuse self- interest with morality. Therefore, it is imperative that events such as the 1953-Coup be given the attention that they truly deserve. 3 Naturally, it takes a long time for the details of covert actions to surface and be understood. Now, 45 years af- ter that event, most of the facts surrounding America's planning, engineering and execution of the 1953-Coup are known and understood. To that extent a great deal may be learned from the 1953-Coup. The 1953-Coup changed the course of life for the en- tire nation of Iran. Many Iranians were killed, many were unjustly imprisoned, many were tortured, many were un- justly harmed. Most Iranians hold America responsible for its role in the 1953-Coup. Many Iranians also hold America responsible for the actions of the installed Shah for the 25 years that followed the coup. These legitimate grievances of Iran have never even been acknowledged or addressed in any way in the past 45 years. The information in this repository could be a good starting point for those interested in really understanding the history of US/Iran relationship. 10 About the CIA files In April 2000 the New York Times put on its website a secret document in pdf form concerning an operation planned and carried out by the CIA and British SIS. The document was titled "Clandestine Service History, Over- throw of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953". (www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran- cia-index.html). In the documents were the names of individuals that took part in the operation. Due to the possiblilty of danger to the people still alive or to there families, the times de- cided to digitally blacken out the names. Later it was dis- covered by "cryptome" (www.cryptome.org) that when using a very slow machine it was possible to view the edited portions very briefly. The times soon found out about this flaw and took the files off the web. On June 16th 2000 the Times reposted the documents with a more secure edited version. This document was digitally' whitened out. Those files can still be read on the New York Times website. (www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran- cia-index.html). 4 11 The Objective of the Project What we're trying to do is create a document in latex and text format that is word for word exactly like the PDF files on the Times website. We also want to have the first and second PDF file versions that the New York Times posted up. 12 What We Have Done, And What Still Needs To Be Done We were able to obtain most of the documents from www.cryptome.org/cia- iran-all.html. We retrieved parts one through eight and appendix D in html format, and all the parts in the orig- inal PDF format (blackened out version). The parts in html format that we got are: 1. iran-cia-main.1 (Preliminary Steps) 2. iran-cia-main.2 (Drafting the Plan) 3. iran-cia-main.3 (Consolidating the Operational Plan) 4. iran-cia-main.4 (The Decisions are Made: Activity Begins) 5. iran-cia-main.5 (Mounting Pressure Against the Shah) 6. iran-cia-main.6 (The First Try) 7. iran-cia-main.7 (Apparent Failure) 8. iran-cia-main.8 (The Shah is Victorious) 9. iran-cia-appendix-d (Report on Military Planning Aspect of TPAJAX) The html files that we recieved from cryptome were originally in one large file. So we broke it down into separate parts, and renamed them with the same name as the PDF files on the New York Times Website. We then converted it into text format. The PDF parts that we scanned through OCR into text format are: 1. iran-cia-main.9.pdf (Report To London) 5 2. iran-cia-main.10.pdf (What Was Learned In The Operation) 3. iran-cia-appendix-a.pdf (Initial Operation Plan For TPAJAX) 4. iran-cia-appendix-b.pdf (London Draft Of The TPA- JAX Operational Plan) 5. iran-cia-appendix-c.pdf (Foreign Office Memoran- dum) 6. iran-cia-appendix-e.pdf (Military Critique) The location of the second version PDF files are from the Times site at (www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran- cia-index.html). 13 Time Line March 1954: Document written. October 1969: Document published inside of US Gov- ernment. Iranian Revolution: Deactivation of the Embassy: Release of Embassy personnel: yyy 1984: Freedom of information act expired. law suite for freedom of info act: NY Times Article: June 16, 2000 - First NY Times Release: The documents were published on the internet in PDF format by the NY Times. It was reported three years ago that all these said documents were lost. June 19, 2000 - Error Discovered: It was found that the documents published by the New York Times was only digitally censored. If one were to use a slow computer to read the file, the uncensored text would appear momentarily before the software had a chance to cover it. 6 June 20, 2000 - NY Times not to publish: Richard Meis- lin of the New York Times thanks Cryptome for finding error in their published document and re- moves the document from the web until they can "delete the names in a more secure fashion". Cryptome Publication Second NY Times Release Payk Work Begins First Payk Release Yearly Updates Final Payk Release 7