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Suppression of Information or Publisher’s Error?: Kermit Roosevelt’s Memoir of the 1953 Iranian Countercoup

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Nancy E. Gallagher
Affiliation:
UC, Santa Barbara
Dunning S. Wilson
Affiliation:
UC, Los Angeles

Extract

In Iran, in 1953, CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, helped plan a coup d’état, which had been plotted and prearranged by British and American interests. According to Roosevelt, the objective, successfully achieved at a cost of only $75,000, was to force Prime Minister Mossadegh out of power and return the Shah, who had fled the country, to his throne. In a recent memoir, Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), Roosevelt details his Iranian escapades: the dinner parties, the political plotting sessions, the unobtrusive contacts with the Persian military, the manipulated mass appeal, and demonstrations. For such a serious matter, Roosevelt is surprisingly candid in his effort to recreate the feel of the times, the dialogue of the participants, the sequence of events, and the ease with which Great Powers, through their agents, could control events. It is a circus atmosphere in which the author himself is at the center of attention and power.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 1981

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