Pastorgate: Operation Ajax redux?

[dailykoff]

Many DU members are aware of Operation Ajax, CIA codename for the August 19, 1953 coup d'état that overthrew Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, orchestrated by British and American intelligence operatives:

Bribing Iranian officials, news media, and others with British and American funds, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), organized the covert operation. . . . The project to overthrow Iran's government was codenamed Operation Ajax (officially TP-AJAX).


Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq

link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

The CIA (with Eisenhower's approval) was acting at the behest of British Petroleum, which had failed in its attempts to prevent Mosaddeq from nationalizing Iranian oil operations:

Mossadeq was a nationalist and passionately opposed foreign intervention in Iran. He was also the architect of the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), today known as British Petroleum (BP).

link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadeq#Operatio...

What's less well known is how the coup was carried out. In a matter of three weeks, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, turned the popular Mosaddeq into a pariah largely by bribing the press into printing scurrilous stories calling him a homosexual, a Jew, a Communist (in fact, he hated Communists), and an atheist, leading to a "loss of support among clerics and the middle class:

The next thing Roosevelt did was start bribing newspaper editors, owners and columnists and reporters. Within a couple of weeks, he had 80% of the newspapers in Tehran on his payroll and they were grinding out every kind of lie attacking Mossadeq.

link: http://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/5/how_to_overthrow_a...

Let's see, a CIA-orchestrated character assassination to benefit oil boys ... sound familiar?

[2rth2pwr]

1. Pastor Wright is CIA?

holy shit.

[Prefer]

2. Careful

Outing operative CIA agents is not advisable, unless you're just such a gossip!

[dailykoff]

3. Ha.

I'd be surprised if Wright was on the CIA payroll but then you never know. I've only ever heard about him here so I'm guessing he's one of many rotten tomatoes they'll be throwing, some real, most not.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

4. ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!

[dailykoff]

5. Look into it.

It's not so funny.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

6. ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!

[dailykoff]

9. If you keep hanging around here

you might wind up learning something.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

15. ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!

[dailykoff]

16. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself

but that rapier wit needs a little sharpening.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

12. Bill Clinton

[dailykoff]

14. Now THAT deserves an rofl.

[boston bean]

10. could you add a few more lines, I laughed much longer than it took to scroll through them!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

7. ~*~...........

[dailykoff]

8. You'll be happy to know

that the term "conspiracy theory" was coined by the CIA.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

11. I know all about all the Shah's men

[dailykoff]

13. The Shah colluded with the CIA for his own benefit

just like a certain candidate.

[dailykoff]

17. CIA Disinformation in Action

from "CIA Disinformation in Action, Operation Mockingbird and the Washington Post"

This is an excerpt from an April 25, 1992 letter to Richard Harwood, Ombudsman of The Washington Post. I copied it from a website called "Educate-Yourself," which I found through Google. Although the document itself is apparently "borrowed" from WRH, it didn't originate there, so I hope that won't disqualify it from use on DU. Here are a few juicy paragraphs:

And it's not as if the Post were new to conspiracy work.

* Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice:the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82). More recently the Post provided cover for CIA personality Joseph Fernandez by "refusing to print his name for over a year up until the day his indictmen twas announced ...for crimes committed in his official capacity as CIA station chief in Costa Rica" (*83).

Of the meetings between Graham and his CIA acquaintances at which the availability and prices of journalists were discussed, a former CIA man recalls, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month" (*84). One may wish to consider Philip Graham's philosophy along with a more recent statement from his wife Katharine Graham, current Chairman of the Board of the Washington Post. In a lecture on terrorism and the news media, Mrs. Graham said: "A second challenge facing the media is how to prevent terrorists from using the media as a platform fortheir views. ... The point is that we generally know when we are being manipulated, and we've learned better how and where to draw the line, though the decisions are often difficult" (*85).

Today, the Post and its world of big business are apparently terrified that our elite and our high-level public officials may be exposed as conspirators behind Contra drug-smuggling, October Surprise, or the assassination of President Kennedy. This fear is truly remarkable in that, like most of us and like most institutions, the Post runs its business as a conspiracy of like-minded entrepreneurs a conspiracy "to act or work together toward the same result or goal" (*86). But where the Post really parts company from just plain people is when it pretends that conspiracies associated with big business or government are "coincidence". Post reporter Lardner vents the frustration inherent in having to maintain this dichotomy. He lashes out at Oliver Stone and suggests that Stone may actually believe that the Post's opposition to Stone's movie is a "conspiracy". Lardner assures us that Stone's complaints are "groundless and paranoid and smack of McCarthyism" (*87).

full letter at link: http://educate-yourself.org/cn/ciadisinfoinaction28mar0...

[dailykoff]

18. 'A former CIA man recalls, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl,

for a couple hundred dollars a month"' -- just in case anyone isn't aware of how easily the US press is bought.

[dailykoff]

19. dupe

[dailykoff]

20. Kick just in case anybody wonders who's doing the conspiring.

I guess it's easy to forget.