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Banned
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
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A little history is in order, here.....
The background for the "youtube" "feature", is that the CIA, in 1953, conducted a coup in Iran that replaced the Iranian leader and Time's 1951, "Man of the Year", Mossadeq, with the unpopular and repressive Shah. The brutal and repressive Iranian secret police agency, Savak, was then set up by the Shah, with the aid of the CIA and Mossad, and was responsible for the torture and muder of many thousands of innocent Iranians.
It can be argued that the emergence of "sharia law" in Iran....that results in the "Execution of a Teenage Girl", is "blowback" from past, misguided US government intervention in the M.E. region and sepcifically, in Iran.
My question is, how many more will have to die as a result of further US intervention to "fine tune" US techniques to make the world over to our warped, christ-o-centric POV? How many more "black or white" solutions that result in the avoidable deaths of Americans and Iranians, will be required before the "conservatives" in the US, slake their thirst for blood?
Quote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1830835,00.html
Death of a teenager
Last year producer Monica Garnsey travelled undercover to Iran to investigate the execution of teenager Atefah Sahaaleh
Thursday July 27, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
.....Day 17 - interview Shadi Sadr, lawyer
Judge Haji Rezai made, from my notes, the following procedural errors in Iranian law:
·He got Atefah's age wrong - she was 16, not 22 as he described her. (This meant that he conveniently sidestepped the freeze in place on executions of those under 18)
· He convicted Atefah for "adultery" though she was not married.
·He failed to give Atefah a chance of a second appeal
· He failed to give the family notice of Atefah's execution date
· He executed Atefah himself though the judge is meant merely to preside, with the killing being done by a separate official.
In Britain, the standard of proof needed for conviction is "beyond reasonable doubt". In sharia law it is "the knowledge of the judge".
Day 18 - Khomenei's tomb
We have now heard from five sources that Judge Haji Rezai was involved in the political purges of 1983. We sit with A as he tells us what happened to his brothers, fairly typical of the leftwing students who were initially swept up in the revolution then witnessed their friends being killed as the Islamists turned on any opposition. Mohammad Hoshi's fiancee, aged 17, was arrested for having a flyer for a political party in her bag. He never saw her again. She was executed in prison.
Judge X famously flew from place to place in a helicopter, issuing mass execution orders. Another one ordered his own son to be executed. S tells us that Haji Rezai was one of 95 judges hand-picked by the Ayatollah Khomenei to preside over the revolutionary courts in Tehran, and to orchestrate the clean-up.
If Judge Haji Rezai is indeed one of these 1983 judges, a lot falls into place. They are seen by many as virtually untouchable. Either because the revolution is grateful to them for its survival, or, more cynically, because they know where the bodies are buried and would bring others down with them.
We go back to J's to continue backing up the rushes. Brain dead, we watch Seinfeld and Friends on his illegal cable.
Day 19 - the embassy
We have seven tapes of interviews, five tapes of locations and countless transcripts of off-the-record recorded interviews.
I feel I have a very clear, if heartbreaking, idea of the chain of events in the last two years of Atefah's life. Though sadly it will be very difficult to substantiate much of what we've been told on one hand, and on the other hand we cannot reveal the identify of many of our sources, I think we can say enough to get the message through loud and clear.
I am very sad that we haven't heard from Atefah's boyfriend. But I don't blame him.
As far as everything else goes, I don't know if things have gone well because of all the careful planning, or if we've been lucky. There are lots of things I'd love to do still but the very strong and sensible message from above is - get back safely and soon, nothing else matters.
But all we have achieved so far is meaningless unless we get the tapes out.
P leaves, a couple of days earlier than me as planned, as the days when we try to get the tapes out are high risk. His girlfriend has apparently lost almost a stone in three weeks from worry about him as it is.
Day 21
The most horrible scramble imaginable. J and I are stuck for four hours at X as we pass on the tapes. The passengers have already had their last call by the time I arrive at departures. I feel sick with nerves but it absolutely must not show in front of the officials. There's another last-minute delay while J and I are questioned closely about our relationship - some official saw us hug the other day as we waved Arash off, he was understandably upset as he doesn't know when he will see him again. It is now 10.45. The plane was meant to leave at 10.15.
But bless British Airways; the plane is either late or, just possibly, waits for me. As I scramble on board, a steward says: "They didn't want to let you go, did they!"
Five tense days later, Paul Hamann breathes a huge sigh of relief as he receives the last of the rushes, which all got through safely.
· Monica Garnsey is the producer/director of Execution of a Teenage Girl, which will be shown at 9pm on Thursday July 27 on BBC2.
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Quote:
https://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no2/article10.html
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (U)
By Stephen Kinzer. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2003. 258 pages.
Reviewed by David S. Robarge
At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said "it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us."1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah's Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA's covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah's power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.........
The CIA's immediate target was Mossadeq, whom the Shah had picked to run the government just before the parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC.......
,,,,,,,,, The CIA's immediate target was Mossadeq, whom the Shah had picked to run the government just before the parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC. A royal-blooded eccentric given to melodrama and hypochondria, Mossadeq often wept during speeches, had fits and swoons, and conducted affairs of state from bed wearing wool pajamas. During his visit to the United States in October 1951, Newsweek labeled him the "Fainting Fanatic" but also observed that, although most Westerners at first dismissed him as "feeble, senile, and probably a lunatic," many came to regard him as "an immensely shrewd old man with an iron will and a flair for self-dramatization."7 <h3>Time recognized his impact on world events by naming him its "Man of the Year" in 1951.</h3>
Mossadeq is Kinzer's paladin—in contrast to the schemers he finds in the White House and Whitehall—but the author does subject him to sharp criticism.,,,,,,,,,,
......... Kinzer is at his journalistic best when—drawing on published sources, declassified documents, interviews, and a bootleg copy of a secret Agency history of the operation9—he reconstructs the day-to-day running of TPAJAX. The plan comprised propaganda, provocations, demonstrations, and bribery, and employed agents of influence, "false flag" operatives, dissident military leaders, and paid protestors. The measure of success seemed easy enough to gauge—"[a]ll that really mattered was that Tehran be in turmoil," writes Kinzer. The design, which looked good on paper, failed on its first try, however, and succeeded largely through happenstance and Roosevelt's nimble improvisations. No matter how meticulously scripted a covert action may be, the "fog of war" affects it as readily as military forces on a battlefield. Roosevelt may have known that already—he and his confreres chose as the project's unofficial anthem a song from the musical Guys and Dolls: "Luck Be a Lady Tonight."10
TPAJAX had its surreal and offbeat moments. Kinzer describes Roosevelt calmly lunching at a colleague's house in the embassy compound while "[o]utside, Tehran was in upheaval. Cheers and rhythmic chants echoed through the air, punctuated by the sound of gunfire and exploding mortar shells. Squads of soldiers and police surged past the embassy gate every few minutes. Yet Roosevelt's host and his wife were paragons of discretion, asking not a single question about what was happening." To set the right mood just before Washington's chosen coup leader, a senior army general named Fazlollah Zahedi, spoke to the nation on the radio, US officials decided to broadcast some military music. Someone found an appropriate-looking record in the embassy library and put on the first song; to everyone's embarrassment, it was "The Star-Spangled Banner." A less politically discordant tune was quickly played, and then Zahedi took the microphone to declare himself "the lawful prime minister by the Shah's order." Mossadeq was sentenced to prison and then lifetime internal exile.11
The Shah—who reluctantly signed the decrees removing Mossadeq from office and installing Zahedi, thereby giving the coup a constitutional patina—had fled Iran during the crucial latter days of the operation. When he heard of the successful outcome from his refuge in Rome, he leapt to his feet and cried out, "I knew it! They love me!"12 That serious misreading of his subjects' feeling toward him showed that he was out of touch already. Seated again on the Peacock Throne, the insecure and vain Shah forsook the opportunity to introduce constitutional reforms that had been on the Iranian people's minds for decades. Instead, he became a staunch pro-Western satrap with grandiose pretensions. He forced the country into the 20th century economically and socially but ruled like a pre-modern despot, leaving the mosques as the only outlet for dissent. Although the next 25 years of stability that he imposed brought the United States an intelligence payoff the price was dependence on local liaison for information about internal developments. The intelligence gap steadily widened, and Washington was caught by surprise when the Khomeini-inspired Islamist revolution occurred in February 1979.
That takeover, according to Kinzer, links the 51-year-old coup with recent and current terrorism.
With their devotion to radical Islam and their eagerness to embrace even the most horrific kinds of violence, Iran's revolutionary leaders became heroes to fanatics in many countries. Among those who were inspired by their example were Afghans who founded the Taliban, led it to power in Kabul, and gave Osama bin-Laden the base from which he launched devastating terror attacks. It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.13
This conclusion, however, requires too many historical jumps, exculpates several presidents who might have pressured the Shah to institute reforms, and overlooks conflicts between the Shia theocracy in Tehran and Sunni extremists in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Kinzer would have been better off making a less sweeping judgment: that TPAJAX got the CIA into the regime-change business for good—similar efforts would soon follow in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Cuba—but that the Agency has had little success at that enterprise, while bringing itself and the United States more political ill will, and breeding more untoward results, than any other of its activities.14 Most of the CIA's acknowledged efforts of this sort have shown that Washington has been more interested in strongman rule in the Middle East and elsewhere than in encouraging democracy. The result is a credibility problem that accompanied American troops into Iraq and continues to plague them as the United States prepares to hand over sovereignty to local authorities. All the Shah's Men helps clarify why, when many Iraqis heard President George Bush concede that "[s]ixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe,"15 they may have reacted with more than a little skepticism.....
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Quote:
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iran/savak/
Ministry of Security SAVAK
Shah-an-Shah [King of Kings] Mohammad Reza Pahlevi was restored to the Peacock Throne of Iran with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953. CIA mounted a coup against the left-leaning government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq, which had planned to nationalize Iran's oil industry. CIA subsequently provided organizational and and training assistance for the establishment of an intelligence organization for the Shah. With training focused on domestic security and interrogation, the primary purpose of the intelligence unit, headed by General Teymur Bakhtiar, was to eliminate threats to Shah.
Formed under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957, SAVAK developed into an effective secret agency......
.....SAVAK increasingly to symbolized the Shah's rule from 1963-79, a period of corruption in the royal family, one-party rule, the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners, suppression of dissent, and alienation of the religious masses. The United States reinforced its position as the Shah's protector and supporter, sowing the seeds of the anti-Americanism that later manifested itself in the revolution against the monarchy.........
.....SAVAK paid Rockwell International to implement a large communications monitoring system called IBEX. The Stanford Technology Corp. [STC, owned by Hakim] had a $5.5 million contract to supply the CIA-promoted IBEX project. STC had another $7.5 million contract with Iran's air force for a telephone monitoring system, operated by SAVAK, to enable the Shah to track his top commanders' communications.
Over the years, SAVAK became a law unto itself, having legal authority to arrest and detain suspected persons indefinitely. SAVAK operated its own prisons in Tehran (the Komiteh and Evin facilities) and, many suspected, throughout the country as well. SAVAK's torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting brokon glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Many of these activities were carried out without any institutional checks.
At the peak its influence under the Shah SAVAK had at least 13 full-time case officers running a network of informers and infiltration covering 30,000 Iranian students on United States college campuses. The head of the SAVAK agents in the United States operated under the cover of an attache at the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, with the FBI, CIA, and State Department fully aware of these activities.
In 1978 the deepening opposition to the Shah errupted in widespread demonstrations and rioting. SAVAK and the military responded with widespread repression that killed thousands of people. Recognizing that even this level of violence had failed to crush the rebellion, the Shah abdicated the Peacock Throne and departed Iran on 16 January 1979. Despite decades of pervasive surveillance by SAVAK, working closely with CIA, the extent of public opposition to the Shah, and his sudden departure, came as a considerable suprise to the US intelligence community and national leadership. As late as September 28, 1978 the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported that the shah "is expected to remain actively in power over the next ten years." ......
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