In October 1952, the Iranian government closed down the British embassy, claiming – correctly – that certain intrigues were taking place there, and thus removing the cover for British covert activities. An MI6 and Foreign Office team met with the CIA in November and proposed the joint overthrow of the Iranian government based on Britain’s well-laid plans. British agents in Iran had been provided with a radio transmitter to maintain contact with MI6, while the head of the MI6 operation put the CIA in touch with other useful allies in the country.
British pay-offs had already secured the cooperation of senior officers of the army and police, deputies and senators, mullahs, merchants, newspaper editors and elder statesmen, as well as mob leaders. “These forces”, explained the MI6 agent in charge of the British end of the operation, “were to seize control of Tehran, preferably with the support of the Shah but if necessary without it, and to arrest Musaddiq and his ministers”.
On 3 February 1953 a British delegation met the CIA director and the US Secretary of State while the head of the CIA’s operation, Kermit Roosevelt, was dispatched to Iran to investigate the situation. On 18 March “the CIA was ready to discuss tactics in detail with us for the overthrow of Musaddiq” and it was formally agreed in April that General Zahidi was the acceptable candidate to replace him. By then, British and US agents were also involved in plans to kidnap key officials and political personalities. In one incident the Chief of Police was abducted, tortured and murdered.
The CIA is conventionally regarded as the prime mover behind the 1953 coup. Yet the declassified British files show not only that Britain was the major instigator but also that British resources contributed significantly to it. Churchill once told the CIA agent responsible for the operation that he “would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture”.
The coup in Iran, 1953
The coup in Iran, 1953
By Mark Curtis
An edited extract from Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World
“Our policy was to get rid of Mossadeq as soon as possible.” (Sir Donald Logan, British embassy, Iran)
In August 1953 a coup covertly organised by MI6 and the CIA overthrew Iran’s popular, nationalist government under Mohamed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture to institute a dictatorship that lasted until the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Shah’s regime was given full political and economic backing by Britain and the US, including its most brutal component, the Savak secret police. The new Islamic leaders turned on the US and Britain, partly for their role in installing and propping up the previous regime for a quarter of a century.
The CIA is conventionally regarded as the prime mover behind the 1953 coup. Yet the declassified British files show not only that Britain was the major instigator but also that British resources contributed significantly to it. Churchill once told the CIA agent responsible for the operation that he “would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture”.
Prelude to covert action
In the early 1950s the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) – later renamed British Petroleum – which was managed from London and owned by the British government and British private citizens, controlled Iran’s main source of income: oil. According to one British official, the AIOC “has become in effect an imperium in imperio in Persia”. The AIOC was recognised as “a great foreign organisation controlling Persia’s economic life and destiny”.
Iranian nationalists objected to the fact that the AIOC’s revenues from Iranian oil were greater than the Iranian government’s, with profits amounting to £170 million in 1950 alone. The Iranian government was being paid royalties of l0-12 per cent of the company’s net proceeds, while the British government received as much as 30 per cent of these in taxes alone.
The British Minister of Fuel and Power explained that Iranians “are of course morally entitled to a royalty” for oil extraction but to say “that morally they are entitled to 50%, or…even more of the profits of enterprises to which they have made no contribution whatever, is bunk, and ought to be shown to be bunk”. Britain’s ambassador in Tehran commented: “It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue…by trying to run it themselves…The need for Persia is not to run the oil industry for herself (which she cannot do) but to profit from the technical ability of the West.”
Iranians could also point to the AIOC’s low wage rates and its effectively autonomous rule in the parts of the country where the oilhelds lay. Shown the overcrowded housing of some of the AIOC workers, a British official commented, “well, this is just the way all Iranians live”. The AIOC regarded Iranians as “merely wogs”.
Britain’s priority was to support political “stability” by aiding Iranian parliamentarians “to preserve the existing social order from which they profit so greatly” – as did British oil interests. One difference with the National Front (led by Musaddiq) was that its members were “comparatively free from the taint of having amassed wealth and influence through the improper use of official positions”, Britain’s ambassador in Iran privately admitted. Musaddiq had the support of the nationalists against the rich and corrupt. As prime minister he managed to break the grip over Iranian affairs exercised by the large landowners, wealthy merchants, the army and the civil service. Despite British public propaganda, Musaddiq’s government was generally democratic, popular, nationalist and anti-communist. British planners noted that, unfortunately, Musaddiq is “regarded by many of the ignorant as a messiah”.
But Musaddiq overstepped the mark, as far as Britain was concerned, in nationalising oil operations in May 1951. The following month the Attlee Labour government began plans to overthrow him, dispatching to Iran an Oxford lecturer provided with considerable sums of money.
In the dispute that followed, Musaddiq offered to compensate the AIOC but Britain demanded either a new oil concession or a settlement that would include compensation for loss of future profits. “In other words”, according to Iran scholar Homa Katouzian, “the Iranians would have had either to give up the spirit of the nationalisation or to compensate the AIOC not just for its investment but for all the oil which it would have produced in the next 40 years”.
Iran’s nationalisation and offer of compensation were perfectly legitimate in international law, but this was irrelevant to British planners. Britain did “not consider that a deal on acceptable terms can ever be made with” Musaddiq. Instead, the Foreign Office noted that “there is hope of a change which would bring moderate elements into control”.
The first step taken to remove the threat of independent development was stopping the production and export of oil, which deprived Iran of its main source of income until the 1953 coup. This was done in the knowledge that “the effect might be to bankrupt Persia thus possibly leading to revolution”. Other, mainly US, oil companies leant their support by refusing to handle Iranian oil, to prevent other oil-exporting countries learning a “bad” lesson from Iran’s example.
The second step was to begin covert planning. “It has been our objective for some time to get Sayyid Zia appointed Prime Minister”, the Foreign Office noted in September 195l. Zia had “no popular support” and his appointment “was likely to provoke a strong public reaction”, according to Iranian academic Fakhreddin Azimi. But to the Foreign Office Zia was “the one man who would be able and anxious to get a reasonable oil settlement with us” and promote Iran’s “future stability”.
A third option was direct military intervention, especially military occupation of the area around Abadan, the world’s largest oil refinery and centre of AIOC’s operations. According to the Foreign Secretary, this: “would demonstrate once and for all to the Persians British determination not to allow the…AIOC to be evicted from Persia and might well result in the downfall of the Mussadiq regime and its replacement by more reasonable elements prepared to negotiate a settlement…it might be expected to produce a salutary effect throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, as evidence that United Kingdom interests could not be recklessly molested with impunity”.
Plans were laid for war against Iran. But in the end the option was viewed by the Foreign Office as “quite impracticable” because it was believed that Iran would be able to resist the comparatively small number of troops that Britain could deploy. The US was also opposed to the British use of force, and President Truman sent a personal message to this effect to Attlee. Both the British Foreign Secretary and the Defence Minister favoured the use of military force to seize the oil installations. The option of military intervention was kept open until September 1951, when London finally decided to evacuate British personnel, and continue covert action, instead.
After winning the general election the following month, Churchill berated his predecessors “who had scuttled and run from Abadan when a splutter of musketry would have ended the matter”. “If we had fired the volley you were responsible for at Ismaila at Abadan” Churchill explained to his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, “none of these difficulties …would have occurred”. (The reference was to the British action at Ismaila, Egypt in January 1952. After Egyptian rebels assaulted a British military base, British soldiers occupied the town, surrounded the police headquarters, and proceeded to engage in a turkey shoot, killing fifty people and wounding a hundred before the surrender.)
A few months into his term, however, Churchill noted that “by sitting still on the safety valve and showing no weariness we are gradually getting them into submission”.
Preference for a dictator
Britain’s aim was to install “a more reasonable government”, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden explained. “Our policy”, a British official later recalled, “was to get rid of Mossadeq as soon as possible”. An adviser at the British embassy, Colonel Wheeler, explained that “a change of government could almost certainly be effected without difficulty or disturbance”. So by November, a Foreign Office official could report that the “unofficial efforts to undermine Dr Mussadiq are making good progress”.
After the failure of the oil negotiations, the main British negotiator advised the Shah that the “only solution” was “a strong government under martial law and the bad boys in prison for two years or so”. Britain’s ambassador in Tehran agreed, noting that “if only the Shah can be induced to take a strong line there is a good chance that Musaddiq may be got rid of”. The new government should then “take drastic action against individual extremists”.
With 1952 came Britain’s preference for “a non-communist coup d’etat preferably in the name of the Shah”. It was clearly understood by the British embassy in Tehran that “this would mean an authoritarian regime”.
British planners had no illusions about the Shah. They noted that “the chief complaint of his political critics [is] that he wishes to monopolise power for himself”. Neither did he “sufficiently check the members of his family and their entourage from interference in politics and their profitable incursions into business”.
As with the secret planning in Indonesia in 1965, Britain supported the establishment of a strong-arm dictatorship in the face of popular, nationalist alternatives. A coup could be successful, planners noted, “provided always a strong man can be found equal to the task”. This “strong man” would “rule in the name of the Shah”. The files show that the ambassador in Tehran preferred “a dictator”, who “would carry out the necessary administrative and economic reforms and settle the oil question on reasonable terms”.
The Foreign Office stated who such a reasonable new strongman might be: General Zahidi, who was to become Prime Minister after the coup. Zahedi had spent much of the war in prison in Palestine after being arrested for pro-Nazi activities by the British authorities. He was known as ruthless and manipulative and had twice been chief of police in Tehran. British officials now began to talk to him about providing £10-20 million to the Iranian treasury on his taking power.
By March 1952, the British embassy was lamenting that the Iranian army was “unlikely to take overt action against Musadiq” but that its attitude might become “more positive”. The Shah was also reported to be resisting British pressures to act but the British “made it abundantly clear that we desire the fall of Musaddiq as soon as possible”.
British embassy official Sam Falle met Zahidi on 6 August and recorded the latter to be prepared to take on the premiership. Falle suggested that Zahidi make this known to the US. The ambassador confirmed that Zahidi “will make his own contacts with [the] American embassy and does not wish to appear to be our candidate”.
In October 1952, the Iranian government closed down the British embassy, claiming – correctly – that certain intrigues were taking place there, and thus removing the cover for British covert activities. An MI6 and Foreign Office team met with the CIA in November and proposed the joint overthrow of the Iranian government based on Britain’s well-laid plans. British agents in Iran had been provided with a radio transmitter to maintain contact with MI6, while the head of the MI6 operation put the CIA in touch with other useful allies in the country.
British pay-offs had already secured the cooperation of senior officers of the army and police, deputies and senators, mullahs, merchants, newspaper editors and elder statesmen, as well as mob leaders. “These forces”, explained the MI6 agent in charge of the British end of the operation, “were to seize control of Tehran, preferably with the support of the Shah but if necessary without it, and to arrest Musaddiq and his ministers”.
On 3 February 1953 a British delegation met the CIA director and the US Secretary of State while the head of the CIA’s operation, Kermit Roosevelt, was dispatched to Iran to investigate the situation. On 18 March “the CIA was ready to discuss tactics in detail with us for the overthrow of Musaddiq” and it was formally agreed in April that General Zahidi was the acceptable candidate to replace him. By then, British and US agents were also involved in plans to kidnap key officials and political personalities. In one incident the Chief of Police was abducted, tortured and murdered.
The final go-ahead for the coup was given by the US in late June. Britain had by then already presented a “complete plan” to the CIA. Churchill’s authorisation soon followed and the date was set for mid-August. That month, Kermit Roosevelt met the Shah, the CIA director visited some members of the Shah’s family in Switzerland, and a US army general arrived in Tehran to meet the Shah and General Zahidi.
The signal for the coup scenario to begin had been arranged with the BBC; the latter agreed to begin its Persian language news broadcast not with the usual “it is now midnight in London”, but instead with “it is now exactly midnight”. On hearing these broadcasts the Shah fled the country and signed two blank decrees to be filled in at the right time, one dismissing Musaddiq, the other appointing Zahedi as prime minister.
Huge demonstrations took place in the streets of Tehran, funded by CIA and MI6 money; $1 million was in a safe in the US embassy and £1.5 million had been delivered by Britain to its agents in Iran, according to the MI6 officer responsible. According to then CIA agent Richard Cottam, “that mob that came into north Tehran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob. It had no ideology. That mob was paid for by American dollars and the amount of money that was used has to have been very large”.
One key aspect of the plot was to portray the demonstrating mobs as supporters of the Iranian Communist Party – Tudeh – to provide a suitable pretext for the coup and the Shah’s taking control in the name of anti-communism. Agents working for the British posed as Tudeh supporters, engaging in activities such as throwing rocks at mosques and priests.
Roosevelt, the head of the CIA operation, sent envoys to the commanders of some provincial armies, encouraging them to move on to Tehran. In the fighting in the capital, 300 people were killed before Musaddiq’s supporters were defeated by the Shah’s forces. A US general later testified that “the guns they had in their hands, the trucks they rode in, the armoured cars that they drove through the streets, and the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through the [US] military defence assistance program”.
The British input, however, had also been significant. One agent of the British – Shahpour Reporter, who subsequently served as adviser to the Shah – was rewarded with a knighthood, before becoming a chief middleman for British arms sales to Iran, in particular for the manufacturers of Chieftain tanks and Rapier missiles. Two years after the coup, the head of the MI6 end of the operation became director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, one of Britain’s leading research institutes.
As in every other British and US military intervention until the collapse of the USSR, the “communist threat” scenario was deployed as the Official Story. Much subsequent academic work and media commentary plays to the same tune. The real threat of nationalism (and dirtier aims like protecting oil profits) were downplayed or removed from the picture presented to the public. In the words of a secret Foreign Office telegram to the embassy in Washington: “It is essential at all costs that His Majesty’s Government should avoid getting into a position where they could be represented as a capitalist power attacking a Nationalist Persia.”
There are two variants to the Official Story. The first is that the coup was a response to an impending takeover by the Communist Party, Tudeh – which had close contacts with the Soviet Union – and therefore prevented the establishment of a Soviet-backed regime. The second is that Tudeh was in the ascendancy within Musaddiq’s government. Both variants are plainly false.
In September 1952 the British ambassador recognised that the Tudeh “have played a largely passive role, content to let matters take their course with only general encouragement from the sidelines…they have not been a major factor in the development of the Mussadiq brand of nationalism”. The US embassy stated three months before the coup that “there was little evidence that in recent months the Tudeh had gained in popular strength, although its steady infiltration of the Iranian government and other institutions [had] continued”.
As for Tudeh attempting a coup, a State Department intelligence report noted that an open Tudeh move for power “would probably unite independents and non-communists of all political leanings and would result…in energetic efforts to destroy the Tudeh by force”. As Iranian scholar Fakhreddin Azimi has pointed out, the seizure of power by means of a coup was not part of Tudeh strategy, and it was also unlikely that the Russians would anyway have endorsed such a move. The deliberate funding of demonstrators posing as Tudeh supporters also gives the game away as to how seriously the communist threat was actually feared.
In their secret planning, the British deliberately played up the communist threat scenario to the Americans to persuade them to help overthrow Musaddiq. One file notes that, in proposing the overthrow of Musaddiq to the Americans, “we could say that, although we naturally wish to reach an oil settlement eventually, we appreciate that the first and most important objective is to prevent Persia going communist”. The MI6 agent believed “the Americans would be more likely to work with us if they saw the problem as one of containing communism rather than restoring the position of the AIOC”.
“I owe my throne to God, my people, my army – and to you”, the Shah told the head of the CIA operation responsible for installing him; by “you” he meant the US and Britain.
Now that a “dictator” had been installed in line with Foreign Office wishes, stability could be restored, initially under the favoured candidate prime minister, General Zahidi. An agreement the following year established a new oil consortium that controlled the production, pricing and export of Iranian oil. This provided Britain and the US with a 40 per cent interest each. Indeed, the 40 per cent figure for the US was the price Britain secretly (and grudgingly) agreed to pay the US in exchange for US help in overthrowing Musaddiq. Britain’s share was thus reduced from the complete control it had prior to Musaddiq; but it had prevented the danger that Iranians might use oil primarily to benefit themselves. The US gain of a significant stake in Iranian oil showed the new relative power of the partners in the special relationsh
Have the British Been Meddling with the FRUS Retrospective Volume on 1953?
Foreign Office Worried over “Very Embarrassing” Revelations, Documents Show
The United Kingdom sought to expunge "very embarrassing" information about its role in the 1953 coup in Iran from the official U.S. history of the period, British documents confirm. The Foreign Office feared that a planned State Department publication would undermine U.K. standing in Iran, according to declassified records posted on the National Security Archive's Web site today.
The British censorship attempt happened in 1978, but London's concerns may play a role even today in holding up the State Department's long-awaited history - even though U.S. law required its publication years ago.
The declassified documents, from the Foreign Office (Foreign and Commonwealth Office since 1968), shed light on a protracted controversy over crucial gaps in the State Department's authoritative Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The blank spots on Iran involve the CIA- and MI6-backed plot to overthrow the country's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. Six decades after his ouster, some signs point to the CIA as the culprit for refusing to allow basic details about the event to be incorporated into the FRUS compilation.[1]
Recently, the CIA has declassified a number of records relating to the 1953 coup, including a version of an internal history that specifically states the agency planned and helped implement the coup. (The National Security Archive obtained the documents through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.) This suggests that ongoing CIA inflexibility over the FRUS volume is not so much a function of the agency's worries about its own role being exposed as a function of its desire to protect lingering British sensitivities about 1953 - especially regarding the activities of U.K. intelligence services. There is also evidence that State Department officials have been just as anxious to shield British interests over the years.
Regardless of the reasons for this continued secrecy, an unfortunate consequence of withholding these materials is to guarantee that American (and world) public understanding of this pivotal episode will remain distorted. Another effect is to keep the issue alive in the political arena, where it is regularly exploited by circles in Iran opposed to constructive ties with the United States.
Background on FRUS and the Mosaddeq Period
By statute, the FRUS series is required to present "a thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record" of American foreign policy.[2] That law came about partly as a consequence of the failure of the original volume covering the Mosaddeq period (published in 1989) to mention the U.S. role in his overthrow. The reaction of the scholarly community and interested public was outrage. Prominent historian Bruce Kuniholm, a former member of State's Policy Planning Staff, called the volume "a fraud."[3]
The full story of the scandal has been detailed elsewhere,[4] but most observers blamed the omission on the intelligence community (IC) for refusing to open its relevant files. In fact, the IC was not alone. Senior Department officials joined in opposing requests for access to particular classified records by the Historical Advisory Committee (HAC), the group of independent scholars charged with advising the Department's own Office of the Historian.[5] The head of the HAC, Warren Cohen, resigned in protest in 1990 citing his inability to ensure the integrity of the FRUS series. Congress became involved and, in a display of bipartisanship that would be stunning today (Democratic Senator Daniel P. Moynihan getting Republican Jesse Helms to collaborate), lawmakers passed a bill to prevent similar historical distortions. As Cohen and others pointed out, while Moscow was disgorging its scandalous Cold War secrets, Washington was taking a distinctly Soviet approach to its own history.[6]
By 1998, State's historians and the HAC had decided to produce a "retrospective" volume on the Iran coup that would help to correct the record. They planned other volumes to cover additional previously airbrushed covert activities (in Guatemala, the Congo, etc.). It was a promising step, yet 15 years later, while a couple of publications have materialized, several others have not - including the Iran volume.[7]
Institutional Delays
A review of the available minutes of HAC meetings makes it apparent that over the past decade multiple policy, bureaucratic, and logistical hurdles have interfered with progress. Some of these are routine, even inevitable - from the complications of multi-agency coordination to frequent personnel changes. Others are more specific to the realm of intelligence, notably a deep-seated uneasiness in parts of the CIA over the notion of unveiling putative secrets.
In the Fall of 2001, an ominous development for the HO gave a sense of where much of the power lay in its relationship with the CIA. According to notes of a public HAC meeting in October 2001, the CIA, on instructions from the Director of Central Intelligence, decided unilaterally "that there could be no new business" regarding FRUS until the two sides signed an MOU. Agency officials said the document would address legitimate IC concerns; HAC members worried it would mainly boost CIA control over the series. The agency specifically held up action on four volumes to make its point, while HAC historians countered that the volumes were being "held hostage" and the HO was being forced to work "under the threat of 'blackmail'."[8]
The CIA held firm and an agreement emerged in May 2002 that, at least from available information, appears to bend over backwards to give the IC extraordinary safeguards without offering much reassurance about key HO interests. For instance, the MOU states that the CIA must "meet HO's statutory requirement" - hardly something that seems necessary to spell out. At the same time, it allows the CIA to review materials not once, but again even after a manuscript has passed through formal declassification, and once more after it is otherwise in final form and ready for printing. In the context of the disputed Iran volume, HAC members worried about the "random" nature of these provisions which gave the agency "a second bite at the apple."[9] The implication is that the CIA will feel little obligation to help meet the HO's legal requirement if it believes its own "equities" are at stake. (This of course may still affect the Iran volume, currently scheduled for 2014 publication.)
Is It the British?
As mentioned, the CIA has begun to release documentation in recent years making explicit its connection to the Mosaddeq overthrow. Even earlier, by 2002, the State Department and CIA jointly began compiling an Iran retrospective volume. These are not signs of a fundamental institutional unwillingness to publish American materials on the coup (although parts of the CIA continued to resist the notion). The HO even tried at least twice previously to organize a joint project with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Iran, but the idea evidently went nowhere.[10]
In 2004, two years later, the State Department's designated historian finished compiling the volume. According to that historian, he included a number of records obtained from research at the then-Public Record Office in London. Among his findings was "material that documents the British role." He added that he had also located State Department records "that illustrate the British role."[11] By no later than June 2006, the Iran volume had entered the declassification queue. At the June 2006 HAC session, CIA representatives said "they believed the committee would be satisfied with the [declassification] reviews."
Up to that point, the agency's signals seemed generally positive about the prospects of making public previously closed materials. But in the six years since, no Iran volume has emerged. Even State's committee of historians apparently has never gotten a satisfactory explanation as to why.[12]
When the IC withholds records, "sources and methods" are often the excuse. The CIA is loath to release anything it believes would reveal how the agency conducts its activities. (For many years, the CIA kept secret the fact that it used balloons to drop leaflets over Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and would not confirm or deny whether it compiled biographical sketches of Communist leaders.) On the other hand, clandestine operations have been named in more than 20 other FRUS publications.[13] One of these was the retrospective volume on PBSUCCESS, the controversial overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Furthermore, the agency has released troubling materials such as assassination manuals that demonstrate how to murder political opponents using anything from "edge weapons" to "bare hands." In 2007, in response to a 15-year-old National Security Archive FOIA request, the CIA finally released its file of "family jewels" detailing an assortment of infamous activities. from planning to poison foreign leaders to conducting illegal surveillance on American journalists.
If the agency felt it could part with such high-profile sources and methods information, along with deeply embarrassing revelations about itself, why not in the Iran case? Perhaps the British are just saying no, and their American counterparts are quietly going along.
State Department Early Warning - 1978
The FCO documents in this posting (Documents 22-35) strongly support this conclusion. Theytell a fascinating story of transatlantic cooperation and diplomatic concern at a turbulent time. It was a State Department official who first alerted the FCO to plans by the Department's historians to publish an official account of the 1953 coup period. The Department's Iran expert warned that the records could have "possibly damaging consequences" not only for London but for the Shah of Iran, who was fighting for survival as he had 25 years earlier (Document 22). Two days later, FCO officials began to pass the message up the line that "very embarrassing things about the British" were likely to be in the upcoming FRUS compilation (Document 23). FCO officials reported that officers on both the Iran and Britain desks at State were prepared to help keep those materials out of the public domain, at least for the time being (Document 33). Almost 35 years later, those records are still inaccessible.
The British government's apparent unwillingness to acknowledge what the world already knows is difficult for most outsiders to understand. It becomes positively baffling when senior public figures who are fully aware of the history have already acknowledged London's role. In 2009, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw publicly remarked on Britain's part in toppling Mosaddeq, which he categorized as one of many outside "interferences" in Iranian affairs in the last century.[14] Yet, present indications are that the U.K. government is not prepared to release either its own files or evidently to approve the opening of American records that might help bring some degree of closure to this protracted historic - and historiographical - episode.
(Jump to the British documents)
NOTES
[1] A recent article drawing attention to the controversy is Stephen R. Weissman, "Why is U.S. Withholding Old Documents on Covert Ops in Congo, Iran?" The Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 2011. (http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0325/Why-is-US-withholding-old-documents-on-covert-ops-in-Congo-Iran )
[2] Section 198, Public Law 102-138.
[3] Bruce Kuniholm, "Foreign Relations, Public Relations, Accountability, and Understanding," American Historical Association, Perspectives, May-June 1990.
[4] In addition to the Kuniholm and Weissman items cited above, see also Stephen R. Weissman, "Censoring American Diplomatic History," American Historical Association, Perspectives on History, September 2011.
[5] Joshua Botts, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, "'A Burden for the Department'?: To The 1991 FRUS Statute," February 6, 2012, http://history.state.gov/frus150/research/to-the-1991-frus-statute.
[6] Editorial, "History Bleached at State," The New York Times, May 16, 1990.
[7] Retrospective compilations on Guatemala (2003) and the intelligence community (2007) during the 1950s have appeared; collections on the Congo and Chile are among those that have not.
[8] HAC minutes, October 15-16, 2001, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/october-2001.
[9] HAC minutes, July 22-23, 2002, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2002; and December 14-15, 2009, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/december-2009.
[10] HAC minutes, July 22-23, 2002, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2002.
[11]HAC minutes, March 6-7, 2006, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/march-2006.
[12] See HAC minutes for July 12-13, 2004, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/july-2004; September 20-21, 2004, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/september-2004; September 8-9, 2008, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/september-2008; for example.
[13] Comments of then-FRUS series editor Edward Keefer at the February 26-27, 2007, HAC meeting, http://history.state.gov/about/hac/february-2007.
[14] Quoted in Souren Melikian, "Show Ignores Essential Questions about Iranian King's Role," The International Herald Tribune, February 21, 2009.
