The declassified documents originated from an interim report, called “The Battle for Iran,” prepared by a CIA in-house historian in the mid-1970s. The historian wrote: “[T]he military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy.” The report also mentions that the US establishment feared that Iran could be “open to Soviet aggression,” and therefore initiated Operation TPAJAX, which eventually became the American part of the joint US-British ‘Operation Ajax’ that brought the Shah to power.
The National Security Archive said it that while it “applauds the CIA’s decision to make these materials available, today’s posting shows clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of damage to national security.”
Though at least two US Presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have publicly acknowledged the US role in the Iranian coup, the intelligence services in Washington have always been reluctant to admit direct involvement in the 1953 coup.
After the collapse of the USSR, the CIA proclaimed a “policy of openness” and made a commitment to declassify some documents regarding Cold War covert operations, including the coup in Iran, by US intelligence.
Three successive CIA directors – Robert M. Gates, R. James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch – promised to publish documents, but none delivered.
Archive deputy director Malcolm Byrne appealed to the US intelligence community “to make fully available the remaining records on the coup period.”
“There is no longer good reason to keep secrets about such a critical episode in our recent past. The basic facts are widely known to every schoolchild in Iran. Suppressing the details only distorts history, and feeds into myth-making on all sides,” Byrne said.
https:// www.rt.com/usa/iran-coup-cia-operation-647/
Published time: 19 Aug, 2013 11:30