Operation Northwoods The Pentagons Scripts for Overthrowing .docx

Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon's Scripts for
Overthrowing Castro
Author(s): Tracy C. Davis
Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 134-
148
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4492663 .
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Operation Northwoods
The Pentagon's Scripts for Overthrowing Castro
Tracy C. Davis
We cannot, as a fee nation, compete with our adversaries in
tactics ofterror, assassination, false promises,
counterfeit mobs and crises. [...] We possess weapons of
tremendous power but they are least effective in combating
the weapons most often used byJfeedom'sfoes: subversion,
infiltration, guerrilla warfare, civil disorder.
-President John E Kennedy, 16November 1961 (1962:725)
A review ofPentagon planning [in 1990...] makes it clear that
for a small circle ofhigh civilian and military
officials, the idea that the United States might deliberately
provoke events in Cuba that could serve as a pretext
for U.S. intervention represented a possible course ofaction,
frequently invoked, rather than an unthinkable
libel that had emergedfrom the paranoidfantasies ofHavana and
Moscow.
-James G. Hershberg (1990:172)
In November 1961, PresidentJohn E Kennedy, determined to
avoid another fiasco like the Bay of

Pigs invasion-which was hatched under the Eisenhower
administration, planned by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), and carried out by Cuban 6migrds
the previous April-authorized Pen-
tagon Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop a plan for dealing with
Fidel Castro, who had been in power
nearly two years. They created "Operation Mongoose," a covert
project aimed at making Cubans
receptive to a counterrevolution, triggering an uprising,
assisting Cubans in overthrowing Castro,
and installing a government friendly to U.S. interests (Kennedy
[1961] 1997; Lansdale [1961] 1997;
White 1999:71-164; Hershberg 1990). The project was under the
direction of Brigadier General
Edward Lansdale and reported to the Special Group
(Augmented), known as SGA, which included
Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
Mongoose is important because it demonstrates the extent to
which the Kennedy administration
continued a bellicose stance toward its new Communist
neighbor, long after the Bay of Pigs, and
because unlike other anti-Cuban schemes that came to public
attention through testimony before
the 1975 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (chaired by
Frank Church), Mongoose involved
not just the State Department, the National Security Council,
the White House staff, and the Attor-
ney General's office, but was masterminded by the Pentagon.
The Joint Chiefs were motivated by

the desire to prevent Castro from spreading Communism
elsewhere in Latin America. For them,
time was of the essence (Nelson 2001:147). Evidence of
Mongoose justifies, though onlypost hoc,
Tracy C. Davis is Barber Professor of the Performing Arts at
Northwestern University, where she is Director of
the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama. Stages of
Emergency: Cold War Nuclear Civil Defense will
be published by Duke University Press in 2006 Her other books
are Actresses as Working Women: Their Social
Identity in Victorian Culture (Routledge, 1991), George Bernard
Shaw and the Socialist Theatre (Greenwood,
1994), and The Economics of the British Stage, 1800-1914
(Cambridge University Press, 2000). She has also
published articles on 19th- and 20th-century theatre
andperformance and coedited Theatricality, with Thomas
Postlewait (Cambridge University Press, 2003). She is General
Editor of the Cambridge University series
Theatre and Performance Theory, and Editor of TDR s
Provocations section.
The Drama Review 50:1, Spring 2006 Copyright ? 2006
134 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
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operation mongoose pre-cursor to northwoods
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the Soviets' increasingly defensive stance toward Cuba, to the
extent that they began to construct
missile launchers to defend the island in the summer of 1962.
Plots against Castro and his regime were rife in this period
(Bundy [1963] 1996; Rabe 2000). As
Senator Church explains in his introduction to published
testimony from the 1975 Senate committee:
The only time when Fidel Castro permitted his island to become
a base for Russian missiles,
the only time during which it might have been said that he had
become a threat to the security
of the American people, was the one time when all assassination
activity, plans, and plots
against his life were stood down. (United States Senate
1976:xix)
Evidence that came to light in 1992 reveals that even during the
Cuban Missile Crisis plots
against Castro were proposed: the CIA sought approval to send
in ten teams of subversives by sub-
marine two days before Khrushchev capitulated to U.S. demands
to dismantle the missile sites. How-

ever, neither Mongoose nor plots of CIA origin were regarded
seriously by the U.S. administration
as a viable tool during the Missile Crisis itself (McCone [1962]
1996; Halpern 1993; Parrott [1962]
1996). Unlike the plots against Castro's life or reputation
involving poisoned cigars, depilatory
shoes, an exploding seashell, a contaminated diving suit,
mobster assassins, and a poisoned hypo-
dermic needle hidden in a ballpoint pen (U.S. Senate 1976:71-
90), which were mooted by the CIA
but rarely got off the drawing board, Operation Mongoose
focused on utilizing a Cuban and
Cuban-exile political base opposed to Castro, infiltrating the
island, and instigating sabotage in
order to spark the overthrow of the regime by internal revolt. To
authorize any of this during the
period of hyper-alertness surrounding the installation of the
missile sites would have been to court
disaster (Parrott [1962] 1996).
On 19 January 1962, Robert Kennedy assigned "top priority" to
solving the Cuban problem.
General Lansdale's six-phase implementation schedule for
Mongoose was approved by the SGA on
20 February 1962 for culmination the following October, though
the project was almost immedi-
ately slowed down, and at the end of August the second phase
was still in the planning stage (United
States Senate 1976:72-73, 85, 88, 91, 141-45; Chang and
Kornbluh [1992] 1998:36-37; Lansdale
1975). The six phases were titled:
A. Discredit and isolate the regime [largely diplomatic and
propagandistic]

B. Harass the economy [sabotage]
C. Intensify intelligence collection
D. Split regime leadership and relations with [Soviet] Bloc
E. Assist Cuban exile groups and Latin American governments
to take actions
E Be prepared to exploit a revolt. (Lansdale 1962; White
1999:144-45)
By early October, still no sabotage had occurred (McCone
[1962] 1992), though considerable intel-
ligence had been gathered from Cuban refugees and diplomatic
headway had been made with mem-
bers of the Organization of American States.
"Operation Northwoods" was a separate proposal arising under
the auspices of Mongoose,
though it had a distinct objective toward Cuba. In March 1962,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under the
signature of Chairman General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, drew up
the proposal for Northwoods and
presented it to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and
Brigadier General William Craig
(Lemnitzer 1962); it probably went no further.1 More radical
than Mongoose, Northwoods sug-
gested ways to trick friendly governments and the public
throughout the Americas into believing
that the Castro regime posed a clear and immediate threat, in
order to precipitate a pretext for inva-
sion by U.S. forces. Northwoods was to be the basis for further
planning, both for other covert

activities as well as overt military action. Unlike most of
Mongoose's schemes, Northwoods is
explicitly theatrical.
1. Mack White depicts President Kennedy putting an end to it in
his cartoon, "Operation Northwoods" (see White 2002).
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Documentation of Operation Northwoods came to light as a
result of the John E Kennedy
Assassination Records Act (1992), which declassified nearly
four million pages now on deposit at
the National Archives in College Park, Maryland (Nelson
2001:152). The Northwoods papers were
published with excisions, including the project's name, in
MarkJ. White's The Kennedys and Cuba:
The Declassified Documentary History (1999:110-15), but until
then the plan remained unknown out-
side an extremely limited circle. The document was more widely
disseminated via the George Wash-
ington University website for the National Security Archive, a
foreign policy research institute, and
digitized copies appear to stem from this source.2 James
Bamford drew attention to the document
in his book, Body of Secrets, a history of the National Security
Agency published in April 2001. Bam-
ford's expose of Northwoods spawned two distinct reactions:
initially, amazement at the brazenness
of the proposal, and a few months later, confirmation (for those
inclined toward conspiracy theories)
that the U.S. government was capable of extraordinary
malfeasance and unbounded audacity in pro-

posing the staging of events that were to be a pretext for war,
up to and including the U.S. attacking
its own citizens but attributing it to another nation.3
The principle behind Northwoods demonstrates, or so some
claim, cause for speculation that
the hijacking of four planes on 11 September 2001 might have
been conducted by U.S. government
operatives. Neither al-Qaeda nor any other terrorist organization
immediately claimed credit for the
hijackings, yet by the evening of 11 September, when President
George W. Bush emerged from hid-
ing to brief the nation, he already claimed to know the culprits.
Within weeks the U.S. went to war
in Afghanistan, allegedly to retaliate against al-Qaeda. Within
months, the U.S. led a coalition in its
second war, this time against Iraq, purportedly over Saddam
Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
and connections to al-Qaeda terrorists.
It is not my purpose to debate with the conspiracy theorists.
Historical research is inconclusive
enough without engaging in that kind of speculation. Instead, I
want to take up what is described in
the limited scholarly commentary upon Northwoods as its
"outrageous" plots (Bamford 2001:84).
What this attribution seems to point to is the striking degree to
which Northwoods' proposals
depend upon basic performative techniques. The pretense,
deceit, duplicity, substitution, sleight-
of-hand, misdirection, counterfeit, and lying that are integral to
acting and spectacle are also inte-

gral to Operation Northwoods. Neither a hallucinogen-laced
cigar nor a wooden horse at the gates
of Troy, it is instead a set of scenarios scripting the pretext for
invading a sovereign nation by staging
precipitating incidents so heinous as to effectively bring allies
on board in a multinational effort to
remove the Cuban president. In this, it is more like a carefully
masterminded, deliberately malicious,
and calculatingly public kidnapping of Helen than the
presentation of the wooden horse: American
troops would arrive later, fired with the indignation that
Americans and their allies had been duped
into feeling. If, as Jeffrey Mason asserts, "American nationality
is especially susceptible to perfor-
mance, for insofar as the nation itself is the product of
invention or design, its nationality is a con-
sequence of imagination and an object of negotiation" (1999:2),
in Operation Northwoods the
Pentagon works the weakness in this norm by mobilizing both
exiled Cubans' indignation at the
appropriation of their nation by Communists and the fears of
U.S. citizens about having a Commu-
nist stronghold at its backdoor. Project Northwoods puts
performance at the service of conservative
generals' preferences for hawkish foreign policy in what would
have been a glaring demonstration
of dramatic license. But only the generals and select politicians
were to know how to recognize a
framed event in order to (correctly) contour their belief and
disbelief. Audiences throughout the
Americas, NATO allies, and the majority of Congress (who

were needed to approve martial legisla-
tion) were not to perceive the frames that contained disbelief
but instead were to react with indig-
nation, valor, and decisive retribution. Historical hindsight
highlights this difference.
2. See The National Security Archive ([1962] 2001) and, for
example, The Emperor's New Clothes ([1962] 2001) and
AntiOffline.com ([ 1962] 2001).
3. See Attack on America.net (2001); Gowland (2001);
AfroCubaWeb.com (1997); Freemasonry Watch.org (n.d.); and
From TheWilderness.com (2003). And, providing yet another
twist, others claim that the Northwoods document is a
fake. See Valentine (2001).
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was not months but 1.5 years afterwards that we invaded
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Bamford characterizes Operation Northwoods as the product of
ultraconservative senior mili-
tary officers' frustration with the liberal, youthful, and-to their
taste-inexperienced Kennedy
administration who had, among other transgressions (including
embarrassing leaks), revoked funds
for the remodeling of an officers' club. Bamford argues that
"although no one in Congress could
have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had
quietly slipped over the edge" by pro-
posing "a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own
country in order to trick the Ameri-
can public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to
launch against Cuba" (2001:82).
According to Bamford, the impetus may even have originated
with President Eisenhower, for he
suggested that an invasion could be arranged in the days leading
up to Kennedy's inauguration if the
Joint Chiefs "could think of manufacturing something that
would be generally acceptable," namely
hostilities against U.S. forces or property (Memo of Meeting
with the President on 3 January 1961,
dated 9 January 1961; in Bamford 2001:83).
Robert Kennedy, who was ultimately in charge of the SGA,
ordered all anti-Castro efforts to
cease on 26 February 1962. By this time, planning for
Lantphibex-1-62-a 40,000-person military
exercise rehearsing techniques for amphibious invasion, which
was slated for 9-24 April 1962-
was well underway (Hershberg 1990:181). On 5 March, General
Craig requested the Joint Chiefs
to draw up pretexts for invading Cuba. On 7 March, the Joint

Chiefs noted the unlikelihood of a
Cuban revolt occurring within the year except by external
provocation. On 8 March, the Navy
apparently proposed actions to be taken in the vicinity of
Guantainamo Bay, the 45-square-mile
U.S. base close to the Windward Passage between Cuba and
Haiti. On 13 March, Lansdale circu-
lated a 22-page document to SGA detailing, department by
department and agency by agency, activ-
ities for Mongoose in the period from March through July 1962.
According to this document, the
Joint Chiefs were to "continue the planning and essential
preliminary actions to assure a decisive
U.S. military capability for intervention" while expanding
support for intelligence gathering (Lans-
dale [1962] 1998). On the same day, Lemnitzer presented his
proposal for Operation Northwoods
to McNamara. Three days later, President Kennedy pronounced
he could "see no prospect of early
success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as
a result of internal uprising or ex-
ternal political, economic, or psychological pressures" (in
Bamford 2001:87). It was one of many, by
then routine, rejections that Lemnitzer received from the
administration, and within months he was
transferred out of Washington. He subsequently denied the
existence of Northwoods-which had
had the support of every member of the Joint Chiefs-or any
other plans for military overthrow of
Castro. The proposal was not seen by commanders of unified or
specific commands, U.S. officers in
NATO, or the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Military Staff
Committee. Lemnitzer ordered all copies
destroyed. Yet "Copy No. 1" survived, and is reproduced
alongside this commentary.

"Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba"
Military planners are narratological creatures. They think in
terms of cause and effect, posing "what
if" scenarios as preludes to gaming solutions (Hausrath 1971).
Contrary to popular caricatures, their
job does not begin when diplomacy fails, but is concurrent with
diplomacy, tracking parallel to the
actions of diplomats by identifying the sources of rising tension
that prompt military readiness, and
imagining the flashpoint when armed personnel would be
mobilized. From that point, the actions
of personnel are envisioned in the logistics of time and space,
and strategists, not planners, are in
charge. Military planners can be crude in the ways of political
science but they are not necessarily
naive in the ways of theatre. This accounts for the
straightforward narratology of the "Justification"
for invading Cuba:
U.S. military intervention will result from a period of
heightened U.S.-Cuban tensions which
place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable
grievances. World opinion, and
the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by
developing the international image
of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an
alarming and unpredictable
threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere. (Lemnitzer
1962:2)
It was crucial, of course, to keep the Soviets out of the picture,
which is why President Kennedy
responded so strongly, on 11 October 1962, to irrefutable
evidence that the Soviets had set up

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138

launch sites for short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in
Cuba. From that point, it would be
impossible to take action against Cuba without incurring the
risk of nuclear bombs precipitously
raining on the U.S., in an arc reaching as far north as
Washington, DC. From that point, it would
be impossible to threaten Cuba without automatically involving
the Soviets both politically and mil-
itarily. The installation of defensive missile launchers in Cuba
was the Soviets' hoped-for checkmate
on any aggressive intentions toward Castro or his regime.
Before any of this happened, before the
Soviets took any overt measures to place offensive weapons in
Cuba, to involve it in the Warsaw
Pact or other alliance, and to establish a nuclear presence on the
island, the Generals wanted to act
decisively. The "Annex to the Appendix to Enclosure A" of
Operation Northwoods is the template
for doing so.
"Appendix to Enclosure A"
This document is addressed to William H. Craig, Chief of
Operations for Mongoose. It elaborates
on the "Justification" by making the relationship between an
Operation Northwoods provocation
and U.S. military intervention explicit, and though "Cuban
rashness and irresponsibility on a large
scale" might be "directed at other countries as well as the
United States," the U.S. would have to
be seen as holding "defensible grievances" against a "threat to
peace in the Western Hemisphere"
(Lemnitzer 1962:5). The assignment of development and

oversight for any operation to the Joint
Chiefs is reinforced: the Generals did not want to play second
fiddle to the CIA, the State Depart-
ment, or any other agency, though their operatives might
become involved in some manner. This
means that they conceived of the military, which is primarily a
reactive force mobilized to respond
to provocation, as also taking on the job of staging the
provocation, establishing its mise-en-scene,
and acting out the scenario, which are decidedly proactive roles.
"Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A"
These "Pretexts to Justify U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba"
are starting points for either a single
or multiple "time-phased plan" of provocations which might
involve other agencies under the com-
mand of the Joint Chiefs. "Harassment plus deceptive actions to
convince the Cubans of imminent
invasion would be emphasized" in a "cover and deception plan"
(Lemnitzer 1962:4, 7). The point
is to bait Castro to react; once the Cubans aggressed, the U.S.
would have a pretext for justifiable in-
vasion, regime change, and establishment of an occupying
police state. Seeming to do this with the
support of Cubans themselves-for example, following a sizable
popular uprising, or immediately
mobilizing counterrevolutionary Cubans-was crucial to the plan
and a major distinction from the
Bay of Pigs invasion (Aguilar 1981 :xii).
Guantinamo would be the most likely site for carrying out the
strategy. Paragraph 2 stipulates

the mildest versions of provocation, with anti-Castro troops
equipped by the U.S. faking assaults
and attacking the U.S. Navy's base at Guantainamo.4 Standard
disinformation tactics might accom-
pany an overt attack from land or sea, the capture of planted
saboteurs, or civil disturbances at the
gate of the base. The CIA had 212 Cuban exiles trained and
waiting at Fort Benning, Georgia, to aid
in such scenarios (Bardach 2002:175). What would be most
visible, however, would be the explosion
of a ship in Guantinamo Bay, beyond the narrows at its entrance
and somewhere along its 12-mile
length. The "victims" would be Americans, and the Joint Chiefs
would stage their funerals. Immedi-
ate retaliation to secure the base would result in the destruction
of supposed Cuban artillery, escalat-
ing to a wider war.
4. This tactic had also been mooted to Eisenhower in a National
Security Council meeting of 3 January 1962 (Higgins
1987:71)
1-6. From L.L. Lemnitzer, Chairman, Joint Chiefs ofStaff
"Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, "
Washington, DC, 13 March, 1962. Source: National Security
Archives, George Washington University,
Washington, DC <http://www.gwu.edu/-
nsarchiv/news/20010430/docl.pdf>.
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THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
WASHINGTON 25, D.C.
C1SSII ~
13 March 1962
MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Subject: Justification for US Military Intervention
in Cuba (TS)
1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the attached
Memorandum for the Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, which
responds to a request of that office for brief but precise
description of pretexts which would provide justification
for US military intervention in Cuba.
2. The .Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that the
proposed memorandum be forwarded as a preliminary
submission
suitable for planning purposes. It is assumed that there
will be similar submissions from other agencies and that
these inputs will be used as a basis for developing a
time-phased plan. Individual projects can then be
considered on a case-by-case basis.

3. Further, it is assumed that a single agency will be
given the primary responsibility for developing military
and para-military aspects of the basic plan. It is
recommended that this responsibility for both overt and
covert military operations be assigned the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
For the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
SYSTEMATICALLY 4EYIEW
Y CS O N --- -*-
-
C.ASSIFICATION C RTlNUED
L. L. LEMNITZER
Chairman
Joint Chiefs of S ff
1 Enclosure
Memo for Chief of Operations, Cuba Project EXCLUDED
FROM GD$
EXCLUDED FROM ArTOMATIC
REGRADING; DOD DIR 5200.10
DOES NOT APPLY
,. Tn -C r~I~)F~rP ~ I;rT Eel U __- H-A 1-n r~YS I ~ I8la
ANNEX TO APPENDIX TO ENCLOSURE A JJJ
PRETEXTS TO JUSTIFY US MILITARY INTERVENTION IN
OUBA

(Note: The courses of action which follow are a preliminary
submission suitable only for planning purposes. They are
arranged neither chronologically nor in ascending order.
Together with similar inputs from other agencies, they are
intended to provide a point of departure for the development
of a single, integrated, time-phased plan. Such a plan would
permit the evaluation of individual projects within the context
of cumulative, correlated actions designed to lead inexorably
to the objective of adequate justification for US military
intervention in Cuba).
1. Since it would seem desirable to use legitimate
provocation as the basis for US military intervention in Cuba
a cover and deception plan, to include requisite preliminary
actions such as has been developed in response to Task 33 c,
could be executed as an initial effort to provoke Cuban
reactions. Harassment plus deceptive actions to convince the
Cubans of imminent invasion would be emphasized. Our
military
posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid

change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response
justifies.
2. A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned
to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine
appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.
a. Incidents to establish a credible attack (not in
chronological order):
(1) Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.
(2) Land friendly Cubans in uniform "over-the-fence"
to stage attack on base.
(3) Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the
base.
(4) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly
Cubans).
Annex to Appendix
7 to Enclosure A
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(5) Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires.
(6) Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).
(7) Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base.
Some damage to installations.
(8) Capture assault teams approaching from the sea
or vicinity of Guantanamo City.
(9) Capture militia group which storms the base.
(10) Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires -- napthalene.
(11) Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals
for mock-victims (may be lieu of (10)).
b. United States would respond by executing offensive
operations to secure water and power supplies, destroying
artillery and mortar emplacements which threaten the base.
c. Commence large scale United States military operations.
3. A "Remember the Maine" incident could be arranged in
several forms:

a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and
blame Cuba.
b. We could blow up a drone (unmanned) vessel anywhere
in the Cuban waters. We could arrange to cause such incident
in the vicinity of Havana or Santiago as a spectacular result
of Cuban attack from the air or sea, or both. The presence
of Cuban planes or ships merely invesaigating the intent of
the vessel could be fairly compelling evidence that the ship
was taken under attack. The nearness to Havana or Santiago
would add credibility especially to those people that might
have heard the blast or have seen the fire. The US could
follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US
fighters to "evaouate" remaining members of the non-existent
crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful
wave of national indignation.
4. We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in
the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,
Annex to Appendix
8 to Enclosure A
INSSHi
ar

]EDI ?C' ""Y -Y--
The terror campaign could be pointed refugeesseeking
haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans
enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts
on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the
extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized.
Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefiully chosen spots, the
arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents
substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in
projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.
5. A "Cuban-based, Castro-supported" filibuster could be
simulated against a neighboring Caribbean nation (in the vein
of the 14th of June invasion of the Dominioan Republic). We
know that Castro is backing subversive efforts clandestinely
against Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Nicaragua
at
present and possible others. These efforts can be magnified and
additional ones contrived for exposure. For example, advantage
can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican Air Force to

intrusions within their national air space. "Cuban" B-26 or
0-46 type aircraft could make sane-burning raids at.night.
Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled
with "Cuban" messages to the Communist underground in the
Dominican Republic and "Cuban" shipments of arms which
would
be found, or intercepted, on the beach.
6. Use of MIG type aircraft by US pilots could provide
additional provocation. Harassment of civil air, attacks on
surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft
by MIG type planes would be useful as complementary actiona.
An F-86 properly painted would convince air passengers that
they
saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the pilot of the transport were
to announce such fact. The primary drawback to this suggestion
appears to be the security risk inherent in obtaining or modify-
ing an aircraft. However, reasonable copies of the MIG could
be produced from US resources in about three months.
Annex to Appendix
9 to Enclosure A

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7. Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft
should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by
the
government of Cuba. Concurrently, genuine defections of Cuban
civil and military air and surface craft should be encouraged.
8. It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate
convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down
a chartered civil airliner enroute from the United States to
Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination
would
be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba.
The passengers could be a group of college students off on a
holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to
support chartering a non-scheduled flight.

a. An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and
numberedas an exact duplicate for a civil registered
aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the
Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be
substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be
loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under
carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered
aircraft would be converted to a drone.
b. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual
aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of
Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying
aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly
into an auxiliary field at Eglin AFB where arrangements will
have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the
aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft
meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When
over Cuba the drone will being transmitting on the inter-
national distress frequency a "MAY DAY" message stating he

is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission
will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will
be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICA0 radio
Annex to Appendix
10 to Enclosure A
TOiEl or. all INN, U &ah ILAABLA 16al
stations in the Western tWMell the US what
has happened to the aircoraft instead of the US trying to
sell" the inoident.
9. It is possible to create an incident which will make it
appear that
Communist
Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAP aircraft
over international waters in an unprovoked attack.
a. Approximately 4 or 5 F-101 aircraft will be dispatched
in trail from Homestead AFB, Florida, to the vicinity of Cuba.
Their mission will be to reverse course and simulate fakir
aircraft for an air defense exercise in southern Florida.
These aircraft would conduct variations of these flights at

frequent intervals. Crews would be briefed to remain at
least 12 miles off the Cuban coast; however, they would be
required to carry live ammunitionm in the event that hosatle
actions were taken by the Cuban MIGs.
b. On one such flight, a pre-briefed pilot would fly
tail-end Charley at considerable interval between aircraft.
While near the Cuban Island this pilot would broadcast that "T
he had been umped by MIGs and was going down. No other - ..ii
calls would be made. The pilot would then fly directly
west at extremely low altitude and land at a secure base, an
Eglin auxiliary. The airoraft would be met by the proper
people, quickly stored and given a new tail number. The
pilot who had performed the mission under an alias, would
resume his proper identity and return to his normal place
of business. The pilot and aircraft would then have
disappeared.
c. At precisely the same time that the aircraft was
presumably shot down a submarine or anall surface craft
would disburse F-101 parts, parachute, etc., at approximately
15 to 20 miles off the Cuban coast and depart. The pilots
returning to Homestead would have a true story as far as

they knew. Search ships and aircraft could be dispatched
and parts of airoraft found.
Annex to Appendix
11 to Enclosure A
MIMI IM
4-
2014 23:15:52 PM
142
The document also refers to the slogan "Remember the Maine"
(Lemnitzer 1962). This refer-
ence recollects an incident preceding the Spanish-American War
of 1898. Entrepreneurs from the
U.S. had invested heavily in Cuba, and the USS Maine was sent
to Havana harbor in January 1898 to
protect the lives and property of U.S. citizens in the aftermath
of the mutiny of Spanish troops and
the start of the Cuban uprising. It represented U.S. imperial
interests in the region, though its image
at home was as an anticolonial democratic liberator. On 15
February, the Maine mysteriously blew
up, killing 260 seamen. The slogan "Remember the Maine, to

hell with Spain!" was championed
in the U.S. press, and it became the call to arms against Spain, a
pretext for the war that followed in
April to liberate Cuba from Spain and attempt to incorporate the
island into the U.S. The cause of
the Maine's destruction was never determined and remains
shrouded in doubt. Even its Captain did
not blame the Spanish (DeTemple 2001).
Lemnitzer calculated that staging an attack on a U.S. Naval ship
by faked Cuban air or naval
vessels within sight of Cuba would resurrect the memory of the
Maine: doing it within sight would
be crucial for catching Cubans' attention. Valiant but futile
efforts to save the "crew" and the faked
reports of casualties would catch the attention of Americans and
exiled Cubans on the mainland.
Alternately, a shipload of Cubans could be blown up en route to
Florida, one incident in a "terror
campaign" designed to mobilize sympathy in Miami and
Washington, DC. As part of a pattern of
targeted "attacks" committed against Cubans abroad and
attributed to Castro's Communists, includ-
ing bombings on the U.S. mainland, it hardly mattered for the
Pentagon's purposes whether or not
real people were killed. The whole thing would be a
masquerade, supported by fake documents and
false publicity, in order to discredit Castro, keeping anti-
Communism as the political crux.

On 14June 1959, exiled Dominicans launched an invasion of the
Dominican Republic. Aided
and inspired by Castro, who had successfully overthrown the
U.S.-supported Batista dictatorship
earlier that year, they sought to oust Rafael Molino Trujillo,
another U.S.-backed despot who had
held power since 1930. These irregular military adventurers
were in the tradition of filibusters, the
mercenary Americans who participated in Latin American
insurrections in the 1850s. The heroes of
14 June were shot down by Trujillo's air force, then tortured and
executed. Following this debacle,
the CIA continued to clandestinely back Dominican
conspirators, including those who successfully
ambushed and shot Trujillo in 1961. The filibuster plot against
Cuba proposed by the Joint Chiefs
participates consciously in this history, seeking to involve a
third nation and, using Soviet ammu-
nition, to stage a "Cuban" attack in its politically volatile
neighboring nation, and to have "Cubans"
arm insurgents and interfere in the political affairs of a
sovereign nation.
The scenarios suggested in the Northwoods document get even
more convoluted. The Joint
Chiefs propose disguising an American plane to look like a
Soviet fighter jet. A memorandum notes
that an "American manufacturer had stated he could produce
and deliver Russian-type MiGs or
Russian-type IL 14's in 90 days" (United States Department of
State [1962] 1997a:776). This jet
would be used to harass or attack civilian aircraft, surface
shipping, and Air Force drones. It was cru-

cial that witnesses-including supposedly impartial civilians and
well-informed professionals-be
able to identify the offending aircraft as being of Soviet origin,
and therefore supplied to the Cubans
by an enemy nation making incursions into the Americas. It
would take a few months to manufac-
ture the look-alike, which was a drawback because the Joint
Chiefs sought an almost imminent
conflict.
These plans were not, of course, mutually exclusive. Other
concurrent disruptions of civil air-
craft and shipping were recommended. These could be faked
hijackings under the auspices of the
Cubans, while "genuine defections" of other vessels were also
encouraged. Perhaps the fakes would
stimulate a wave of authentic defections.
The final two suggestions are the most elaborate among the
Northwoods proposals. In one, a
charter aircraft supposedly laden with American college
students or some such civilian group would
be convincingly shot down by Cuban aircraft over the island of
Cuba, while en route to Jamaica,
Guatemala, Panama, or Venezuela. The civilian aircraft would
actually be a CIA-owned drone, fitted
to exactly duplicate a real plane from a civil fleet based in
Miami. The substitution of aircraft would
have to be carefully coordinated. The unmanned drone, flying
low over Cuba, would signal that it
2014 23:15:52 PM

was under attack by Cuban MiGs. A radio signal would trigger
its detonation. This was an important
aspect of the plan: in order to "authenticate" the supposed
civilian aircraft's destruction, the Joint
Chiefs wanted the mayday and explosion to be picked up by
members of the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO), the regulating body that
subdivides the earth into air navigation re-
gions and controls air traffic. Its members' reports would be
more convincing than the U.S. govern-
ment reporting the incident to the press.
The last plot involves staging an "unprovoked attack" on a U.S.
Air Force aircraft engaged in
routine exercises off the coast of Cuba. A group of four or five
F- 101 supersonic jets would set out
from Homestead Air Force Base (AFB), 25 miles south of
Miami, and fly in various formations just
beyond Cuba's territorial waters. These training missions would
be repeated several times until one
pilot, who was in on the plot and flying under an alias, would
lag behind, flying low and last (the tail-
end Charley position). He would radio that his plane had been
shot by Cuban MiGs, then make a
beeline for Eglin AFB in the Florida panhandle, remaining
under the radar the whole way. Upon
arrival at Eglin, the plane would be stowed and rapidly
transformed with a new identification num-
ber, and the pilot would resume his real identity. The other
pilots from the exercise would have re-

turned to Homestead by this time, telling what they believed to
be a true tale of a stricken comrade.
Meanwhile, a U.S. submarine or other boat would distribute the
pilot's parachute and parts identifi-
able as an F-101 off the Cuban coast in the vicinity of the
stricken plane's position. An air and sea
search-and-rescue mission would find and identify the debris.
Without the authentication of the ICAO, the press releases
might not be as persuasive, but the
plan still had the advantage of the prolonged search,
heartbreaking discovery, and inevitable build-up
of opinion agitating for retribution. Executing the next step
would be in the hands of the U.S. mili-
tary. This was precisely what the Pentagon sought.
Analysis
Just as the type of actions advocated in Mongoose were not
limited to the period preceding the
Cuban Missile Crisis, Operation Northwoods was not entirely
unique in its approach. In 1962 the
Department of Defense Project Officer for Mongoose proposed
comparable schemes utilizing cover
and deception:
-Operation HORN SWOGGLE: Crash or force down Cuban MiG
aircraft [...] by use of
overriding transmitters and either a decoy aircraft or solid
weather conditions, override Cuban
controller and have Cuban refugee pilot issue instructions which
run MiG out of fuel or toward

Florida, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, a carrier, etc. [...]
-Operation FREE RIDE: Create unrest and dissension among the
Cuban people [...] by air-
dropping valid Pan American or KLM one-way airline tickets
good for passage to Mexico City,
Caracas, etc. (none to the U.S.). Tickets could be intermixed
with other leaflets planned to be
dropped. [...]
-Operation DIRTY TRICK: The objective is to provide
irrevocable proof that, should the
MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the
Communists et al. [...]
-Operation BINGO: The objective is to create an incident which
has the appearance of an attack
on U.S. facilities (GMO) [Guantainamo] in Cuba, thus
providing the excuse for use of U.S. mili-
tary might to overthrow the current government of Cuba. [...]
This is to be accomplished by the
use of SNAKES [explosives] outside the confines of the
Guantanamo Base. [...Cubans are to think
the base is under attack and] counterattack. [...] Guantanamo
could disgorge military force in suf-
ficient number to sustain itself until other forces, which had
been previously alerted, could attack
in other areas. (Memorandum from William H. Craig to Edward
G. Lansdale, 2 February 1962;
in WVhite 1999:101-04)
Free Ride is a variant on well-established psychological warfare
techniques, and Dirty Trick is vague

in its details about whether the U.S. would be culpable of
sacrificingJohn Glenn (captain of the first
U.S.-manned orbital flight, 20 February 1962) prior to a
propaganda campaign to lay blame on the
Cubans. Horn Swoggle and Bingo are more in the style of the
slightly later Operation Northwoods,
Ca
z 1- 1a3
143
2014 23:15:52 PM
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adds many new operations
144
because they deploy not just deceit, but also embodied
enactment of deceit that sets in motion an
unfolding plot of multiple actions. Horn Swoggle relies on
electronic impersonation. Bingo is set
into motion by what amounts to misheard firecrackers,
prompting retaliatory fire from U.S. troops,
and then an invasion; the element of surprise would be used to
advantage and Cuban forces would
be overwhelmed.

Mongoose's program of propaganda-consisting of radio and
television broadcasting, balloon
drops of leaflets, distribution of photo-novels and cartoon books
by open mail, and dissemination
of smuggled copies of Time magazine-is integral to the
preparation of the population in Cuba for
regime change. Basic Madison Avenue techniques, such as
"create musical and visual symbols to
express anti-regime sentiments," were a specialty of the U.S.
Information Agency, which managed
the Voice ofAmerica, and the technique of adding "new words
to a favorite song" was a staple of polit-
ical subversion at least since The Beggar's Opera. Thus, the
transmission of anti-Castro sentiment was
to function seamlessly in everyday activities, capable of being
passed person-to-person while aug-
menting less embodied techniques such as painted slogans. The
CIA worked on "a hand symbol as
easy to do as 'V for Victory,"' a tactile, nonverbal sign of anti-
Castro sentiment, which the Cuban
people could retain in their memories, holding it in abeyance
until circumstances allowed (United
States Department of State [1962] 1997b:816). While there are
elements of spectacle in these
schemes, Northwoods, by contrast, also involves overt elements
of the theatrical: not just embodi-
ment but enactment; not just a scheme for action but a plot for
deceitful action; not just coordinated
behavior but purposeful behavior for the creation of faith in an
illusion.

Whether or not the Northwoods proposals might be called
outrageous, audacious, ludicrous,
nefarious, devious, wrong-headed, or even desperate, later
events mitigate against them being called
preposterous. After all, under President Lyndon Johnson, the
blowing up of two Naval vessels near
enemy waters-or rather the claim that an enemy had done so-
was perpetrated in the Tonkin Gulf,
resulting in national outrage and the casus belli for a
Congressional mandate to go to war against
Vietnamese Communists. It was later proved that the CIA had
sponsored extensive sabotage in the
region and that only the attack on the first vessel was authentic
(Andrade and Conboy 1999; M6ise
1996). What makes the Northwoods proposals notable is the
degree to which they are theatrical con-
spiracies, setting out the interrelatedness of plot elements; the
involvement of several groups of
linked covert conspirators, widely dispersed geographically; a
full panoply of disguises for people as
well as property; the substitution, in some cases, of simulacrum
for event; and manipulation of plot
elements in order to stimulate belief among those persons
necessary to (mistakenly) testify to the
authenticity of the fabrication.
Definitions of "the theatrical event" have undergone overhauls
in recent years, in the attempt
to eliminate cultural bias and to account for poststructural
indeterminacy. Some of the most recent

versions to be presented to the International Federation for
Theatre Research have been gathered
together as Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames
(2004). Vicki Ann Cremona, for example,
explains:
The basis of the theatrical event is the encounter between
different participants, where the
boundaries between performer and spectator are in a state of
flux. This fluid situation changes
not only the context, but the quality of production and
communication. [...T]he sharing of the
same space, which reveals a collective intent, can vary from a
simple juxtaposition of presence
that establishes a minimal level of connection, to a harmonizing
common physical action.
[...T]he participant can shift role from actor to spectator and
vice-versa, thereby determining
each time a different level and quality of engagement and a
varying degree of involvement.
(2004:30)
This applies to the plans laid out in Operation Northwoods in
that participants in a plot, such
as the Air Force pilots who lose track of their "tail-end Charley"
colleague, hear his mayday, then
return to base without him, switch from being actors to being
witnesses, and in so doing testify to
their experience and become actors playing the part of an
audience. Just as they share a space, or
proximity, with their supposedly downed colleague, as
witnesses they would later predicate a shared
2014 23:15:52 PM

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Gulf of Tonkin
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emotional state with their entire nation. In this analysis, the
theatrical elements of Northwoods lie
not only in its utilization of pretense, but also in its extension
of the idea of audience/witness to the
expression of belief, faith, and testament that brings about
collective response, emphasizing the
fluidity of actor/audience functions.
Temple Hauptfleisch argues that the theatrical event "can refer
to the entire complex ofprocesses
occurring in and around a play space at a particular time, which
includes performers, text, audience and
the greater context (historical, social, political, cultural and
economic) within which it takes place"
(2004:2 80). In the case of Operation Northwoods, a conception
of the theatrical event that requires
liveness and presence would relegate the proposals to being
mere templates for a set of events, rather

than events per se, rendering Northwoods by these criteria as
theatrical only in potential. Alternately,
Hauptfleisch identifies another strain in research that
emphasizes the framing of events: if some-
thing is framed as dramatic or theatrical, "and shown and/or
looked at and interpreted as if it were a
scripted event," then it is turned into a theatrical event (281). In
other words, Northwoods is theatri-
cal once I say it is so, provided that I am supported by the
contextualizing cultural system. I would
hope to offset such an easy conclusion by providing more
definitive analytical description, precise
terminology, and complex similarity.
From a conventional historical perspective, Northwoods is one
among many curiosities pertain-
ing to the Kennedy administration's handling of Cuba. From a
conventional historical perspective,
it is documentation of discussions, of a proposal, and perhaps of
a point of view held by the Joint
Chiefs. Beyond that, because it was not implemented, and
indeed because it seems to have been
quickly squelched by McNamara and Craig, it is not "history."
But from the perspective of a perfor-
mance historian, it is a set of ideologically linked scenarios that
demonstrate a line of thought rati-
fied by the Joint Chiefs: thought made concrete as a set of
actions that are templates for events that
were-on some level-imaginable and advocated. Northwoods was
not implemented, and in that
sense it is not history, but neither is it fiction. Like a dramatic
script, it exists as actions in potential,
yet, like a dramatic script that is read, it results in imaginative
acts that make its reading historiciz-
able. It exists as potential that was (once) acted upon insofar as
Lemnitzer envisioned the scenarios

and sought approval for them from higher authorities, and this
in itself was a form of performance.
The recognition of elements ubiquitous in dramatic writing and
stage performance in other cul-
tural manifestations-whether a written document or a news
story, a community event or an inter-
national dispute, an ideological conflict or witnesses'
contrasting points of view-is not merely
resemblance; it depends upon the borrowing or appropriation of
elements from theatre and drama,
as well as the ontology of "script" or "performance." Thus, the
Joint Chiefs propose ways to stage the
provocation that could lead to war. In such a case, "stage" is not
only a verb indicating the calculated
orchestration of events, but also stands for a process that
deliberately blurs the demarcations be-
tween simulations and their legitimization. Performance, by
these terms, is not so much the context
of Northwoods as its precondition. Even if the Northwoods
scenarios were never carried out, their
dependence upon the theatrical is not diminished. And it is this
dependence that makes them strik-
ing-even "outrageous"-to readers who discover them more than
four decades later. Even if we are
made suspicious as a result of their resemblance to theatre, we
marvel at the imaginative plot-writing
inherent to them and the embodied enactments that they
prescribe. As Northwoods appropriates
elements of drama and theatre, it utilizes the citationality
inherent in performance in order to perpe-
trate a desired outcome, and it merely obscures-never denies-the
presence of the masquerade.
Northwoods appeals to conspiracy theorists not just because it
shows the kind of conspiratorial

thinking that we might suspect of an ideologically extreme or
unscrupulous government, but also
because it deploys rhetorical citations of untrustworthy
techniques. Duplicity is a time-honored
technique of the theatre, and if any part of a scenario can be
perceived to be far-fetched, suspicion
of duplicity arises. Northwoods' success, in implementation,
would depend upon the maintenance of
all aspects of credibility. Just as the working name "Mongoose"
implies a small, unassuming, yet
vicious predator that operates openly by day, capable of moving
by sea or land, and is not indigenous
to the Americas, "Northwoods" implies the deflection of
attention away from the staged scene of
provocation in the Caribbean. Northwoods connotes something
clean and brisk, as far as possible
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146
146
from the underhanded corruption or tangled undergrowth of the
Cuban "police state." Deflection of
attention-Havana for Washington, Baghdad or Pyongyang for
Kabul-is a standard technique of
public opinion manipulation. And even John E Kennedy, for all
the honor accrued to him for level-
headed service during the Cuban Missile Crisis, headed an
administration that promoted assassina-
tion plots against not only Castro and Trujillo but also Patrice
Lumumba of the Congo, and Ngo
Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu of Vietnam (United States Senate
1976). Days before authorizing
the creation of Mongoose, Kennedy declared in a speech at the
University of Washington:
We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in
tactics of terror, assassination,
false promises, counterfeit mobs and crises. [...] We possess
weapons of tremendous power-
but they are least effective in combating the weapons most often
used by freedom's foes: sub-
version, infiltration, guerrilla warfare, civil disorder. (1962:72
5)
If deceit is perpetrated once, is the perpetrator always a
deceiver? Is the deceiver's institution forever
tainted? Or is deceit simply an exigent necessity of the
presidency, as inherent to the office as per-

formance is to the American nation?
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<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430> (13 October
2005).
Nelson, Anna Kasten
2001 "Operation Northwoods and the Covert War against Cuba,

1961-1963." Cuban Studies 32:145-54.
Parrott, Thomas A.
1996 [1962] Minutes of Meeting of the Special Group
(Augmented) on Operation Mongoose, 26 October
1962. Foreign Relations of the US., 1961-1963, Volume XI
Cuban Missile Crisis and its Aftermath,
229-31. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing
Office.
Rabe, Stephen G.
2000 "After the Missiles of October: John E Kennedy and Cuba,
November 1962 to November 1963."
Presidential Studies Quarterly 30, 4:714-26.
United States Department of State
1997a [1962] Notes on Special Group Meeting. 22 March.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963.
Volume X Cuba 1961-62, 776-77. Washington, DC: United
States Government Printing Office.
1997b [1962] Priority Operations Schedule for Operation
Mongoose, 17 May. Foreign Relations of the United
States, 1961-1963. Volume X Cuba 1961-62, 810-20.
Washington, DC: United States Government
Printing Office.
United States Senate
1976 Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.
An Interim Report of the Select Committee
to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence

Activities. Introduction by Frank
Church. New York: W.W Norton.
Valentine, Carol A.
2001 "Operation Northwoods: The Counterfeit." Public Action,
Inc., October.
<http://www.public-action.com/911/northwds.html> (13
October 2005).
White, Mack
2002 "Operation Northwoods." Mackwhite.com.
<http://www.mackwhite.com/northwoods.html>
(13 October 2005).
White, MarkJ.
1999 The Kennedys and Cuba: The Declassified Documentary
History. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
2014 23:15:52 PM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 134p. 135p. 136p. 137p. 138p. 139p. 140p. 141p.
142p. 143p. 144p. 145p. 146p. 147p. 148Issue Table of
ContentsTDR (1988-), Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 1-
188Front Matter [pp. 1-5]TDR CommentTDR and Me [pp. 6-
12]Entanglements: The Histories of TDR [pp. 13-27]Caravans
Continued: In Memory of Dwight Conquergood [pp. 28-
32]Parallel Evolution: Performance Studies at the University of
Sydney [pp. 33-45]Lingering Heat and Local Global J Stuff [pp.
46-56]Globality's Children: The "Child's" Body As a Strategy of

Flatness in Performance [pp. 57-66]Performance and/as History
[pp. 67-86]Gertrude Stein's Identity: Puppet Modernism in the
U.S. [pp. 87-99]Musical Personae [pp. 100-119]Othello and
Beijing Opera: Appropriation As a Two-Way Street [pp. 120-
133]Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon's Scripts for
Overthrowing Castro [pp. 134-148]Disclaimer [pp. 149-
158]Critical ActsHoly Body: Erotic Ethics in Ron Athey and
Juliana Snapper's Judas Cradle [pp. 159-
169]Performa/(Re)Performa [pp. 170-177]BooksReview:
untitled [pp. 178-179]Review: untitled [pp. 179-183]Review:
untitled [pp. 183-187]Back Matter [pp. 188-188]
Mark J. Gasiorowski
The Causes of Iran’s 1953 Coup: A Critique of Darioush
Bayandor’s Iran
and the CIA
This article presents a detailed criticism of Darioush
Bayandor’s book Iran and the CIA.
Bayandor argues that certain Shi’a clerics, rather than the US
Central Intelligence
Agency, were the main actors responsible for overthrowing
Iranian Prime Minister
Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953. Bayandor presents no
major new evidence to
support this claim. He gives too much weight to certain
statements, draws
unwarranted inferences from others, and discounts or disregards
a wealth of evidence
that conflicts with his account. He overemphasizes the role of
civilian crowds in the
overthrow of Mosaddeq and underemphasizes the role of Iranian

military units
organized by the CIA. And he fails to acknowledge the
importance of US and
especially British efforts to foment opposition to Mosaddeq
before the coup.
Darioush Bayandor’s book Iran and the CIA1 presents a
revisionist account of the
coup d’état of 19 August 1953 that ousted Iran’s prime minister,
Mohammad Mosad-
deq. Most existing accounts, including my own,2 blame the
coup primarily on Britain
and especially the United States, whose Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) carried out
a covert operation to overthrow Mosaddeq. Bayandor argues
that the CIA’s role in
Mosaddeq’s overthrow was quite limited and that the main
perpetrators were Shi’a
clerics, especially Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein
Borujerdi, Ayatollah Moham-
mad Behbehani, and Ayatollah Abolqasem Kashani.
Bayandor presents no major new evidence to support his
account. Rather, his argu-
ment is based on a selective reading of evidence that has been
available to scholars for
years. He gives too much weight to certain statements, draws
unwarranted inferences
from others, and discounts or disregards a wealth of evidence
that conflicts with his
account. And he interviewed only one participant in the coup
(Ardeshir Zahedi), pre-
venting him from examining this complex, inadequately
documented event very
deeply.

Mark J. Gasiorowski is Professor, Department of Political
Science, Louisiana State University, Baton
Rouge, USA.
1Darioush Bayandor, Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mosaddeq
Revisited (New York, 2010). All par-
enthetical page and chapter references here refer to this book.
2See especially Mark J. Gasiorowski, “The 1953 Coup d’État
Against Mosaddeq,” in Mohammad
Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, ed. Mark J. Gasiorowski
and Malcolm Byrne (Syracuse, NY,
2004), 227–60.
Iranian Studies, volume 45, number 5, September 2012
ISSN 0021-0862 print/ISSN 1475-4819 online/12/050669–10
©2012 The International Society for Iranian Studies
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2012.702555
Bayandor’s main argument is that Borujerdi, Behbehani,
Kashani, and their allies
organized crowds that marched into central Tehran on 19
August, triggering events
that led to Mosaddeq’s downfall. These clerics therefore were
the key perpetrators
of the coup, in Bayandor’s view (see chapters 4–7 and
especially pp. 172–75). They
had become increasingly disillusioned with Mosaddeq’s
secularist, republican ten-
dencies, especially after Iran’s monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, threatened
to leave Iran in a February 1953 dispute with Mosaddeq and
after the Shah did actu-

ally leave the country on 16 August, shortly after a CIA-
organized coup attempt failed
on the night of 15–16 August. These clerics then organized anti-
Mosaddeq crowds on
the morning of 19 August, triggering the appearance of anti-
Mosaddeq army units
that seized key locations, subdued pro-Mosaddeq units, and
arrested Mosaddeq’s
main allies. Mosaddeq surrendered the following day.
I applaudBayandor’s industrious effort to analyze the coup and
his insistence on exam-
ining the role of Iranian actors inMosaddeq’s downfall—a
sensitive topic that has received
too little attention. However, I believe there are three key flaws
in his analysis.
First, the historical evidence does not support Bayandor’s claim
that Ayatollahs Beh-
behani, Kashani, and especially Borujerdi—or any other clerics,
for that matter—were
the key organizers of the 19 August crowds. Bayandor’s
evidence for this claim is a state-
ment Borujerdi apparently made sometime after the Shah’s 16
August departure that
“the country needs a king,” as well as statements by Richard
Cottam and Ardeshir
Zahedi that Behbehani and Borujerdi were involved (pp. 153–
54).
It is not clear when Borujerdi made the statement Bayandor
cites. Bayandor initially
implies that it occurred “in the immediate aftermath of” the
Shah’s departure on 16
August, but then quotes a statement from a key source saying it
occurred on the

morning of 19 August (p. 153). However, Bayandor’s quotation
of this statement is
inaccurate and misleading; the source merely speaks of certain
people “having been
informed that a pro-Shah statement … by Borujerdi … might be
forthcoming during
the day” of 19 August (emphasis added).3 Even if Borujerdi
made this statement on
19 August, it could not have been crucial to fomenting these
crowds, which appeared
early that morning. Moreover, the statement “the country needs
a king” is hardly an
incitement for street protests, even allowing for the nuanced
language Iran’s clerics
often use. Indeed, Bayandor admits that this statement “may just
have been intended
as a preliminary warning to Mosaddeq” (p. 153). Bayandor does
not present any evi-
dence showing how this statement catalyzed these crowds.
Richard Cottam was a CIA officer working on Iran in
Washington in August 1953
and later became a well-known academic specialist on Iran.4
What Bayandor cites is a
passage Cottam wrote in 1964 stating that “Behbehani dollars”
had been given to cle-
rical leaders and mob organizers to hire the 19 August crowds.5
Cottam clearly implies
in this passage not only that clerics were involved in hiring
these crowds but also that
3Donald N. Wilber, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq of Iran
(Central Intelligence Agency, 1954), 65–
66. This source is one of at least three official CIA histories of
the coup.

4See Mark Gasiorowski, “Obituary of Richard Cottam,” Iranian
Studies, 30 (1997): 415–17.
5Richard Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh, 1964), 226.
670 Gasiorowski
some unidentified source had paid them to do so—in dollars. In
1982 Cottam stated
that the crowds had been “paid for by American dollars,”
meaning dollars provided by
American officials.6 In fact, New York Times reporter Kennett
Love, who covered
these events in Tehran, reported that so much American
currency entered Tehran’s
foreign exchange markets that the exchange rate for dollar
checks fell from as much
as 128 rials per dollar to less than 80 soon after the coup.7
Consequently, while
Cottam affirmed that clerics were involved in organizing these
crowds, he maintained
that US officials had instigated them.
Ardeshir Zahedi is the son of Fazlollah Zahedi, a retired general
who had been plot-
ting against Mosaddeq since the fall of 1952 and was chosen by
US officials as nominal
leader of the CIA coup plot in early 1953. By all accounts he
was deeply involved in
the coup, working closely with his father and the CIA coup
team. Thus he is hardly a
disinterested observer. Ardeshir wrote in a 2006 memoir that
clerics were involved in
organizing the 19 August crowds, and he told Bayandor that
Borujerdi was involved

(p. 233, n. 30). Ardeshir also once told me that Borujerdi was
involved, though he
added that Behbehani, Kashani, the lay politicians Hossein
Makki and Mozaffar
Baqa’i, and the fascist Somka Party were involved as well.8
However, in two other pub-
lished accounts, Ardeshir did not mention clerical involvement
in these events, por-
traying the 19 August crowds as a spontaneous popular
uprising.9 He also
vehemently denied that the CIA played any role in Mosaddeq’s
downfall and
claimed that his father never even met Kermit Roosevelt, who
headed the CIA
team in Iran.10 For these reasons I do not consider Ardeshir
Zahedi a reliable
source. Bayandor relies heavily on Zahedi’s account, raising
doubts about many
facets of his argument.11
Bayandor also downplays, dismisses, or ignores considerable
evidence that the CIA
team was directly involved in organizing these crowds. One
such piece of evidence is
Cottam’s statement, cited above, that US officials had financed
the 19 August
crowds. Two CIA officers independently told me that they
together had delivered
6Brian Lapping, End of Empire (London, 1985), 221. In an
August 1983 interview, Cottam told me
that CIA officers had financed these crowds.
7Kennett Love, The American Role in the Pahlevi Restoration
on 19 August 1953 (unpublished manu-
script, Princeton University library, 1960), 40–41.

8Letter from Ardeshir Zahedi, 4 April 1984.
9See The New York Times, 26 May 2000, 6; and Ardeshir
Zahedi, “Five Decisive Days, August 14–18,”
1953 (unpublished manuscript). The latter is an English
translation of an article originally published in
the Iranian magazine Ettela’at Mahanah in 1957, which
Ardeshir gave me in 1984.
10The New York Times, 26 May 2000, 6; Letter from Ardeshir
Zahedi, 4 April 1984. There is a wealth
of evidence indicating that both Fazlollah and Ardeshir Zahedi
worked closely with Kermit Roosevelt and
the CIA team during this period, including Wilber, Overthrow
of Premier Mosaddeq, and Roosevelt’s
memoir Countercoup (New York, 1979).
11Zahedi, “Five Decisive Days,” 38ff., describes an elaborate
plan his father allegedly developed in the
days before 19 August to take over Kermanshah province and
use it as a base to carry out sabotage oper-
ations in Tehran and work against Mosaddeq. This plan is not
discussed in any other source dealing with
the coup, and none of the participants in the coup I interviewed
ever mentioned it. Yet Bayandor strongly
emphasizes this plan and uses it in his efforts to discredit the
Roosevelt and Wilber accounts.
The Causes of Iran’s 1953 Coup 671
jason
Highlight
jason

Highlight
jason
Highlight
$10,000 to an intermediary to give to Ayatollah Kashani to
organize crowds on 19
August, though they did not know whether Kashani actually
received this money. In
his memoir, Kermit Roosevelt stated that two Iranians working
under the direction
of the CIA team organized some of these crowds. He later
clarified to me that these
were the CIA station’s two main intelligence operatives, Ali
Jalali and Faruq
Kayvani.12 The CIA history of the coup authored by Donald
Wilber does not say
who organized the crowds, but it states that Jalali and Kayvani
led some of these
crowds and encouraged them to ransack or burn opposition
newspaper offices and
secure the release from prison of key participants in the CIA
coup plot.13 It also explains
that the initial coup plan drawn up by US and British
intelligence officers called for
certain clerics to play a crucial role in the coup, implying that
US or British operatives
had close contact with these clerics and discussed carrying out a
coup with them—
actions that almost certainly encouraged these clerics.14 A
British intelligence officer
who was deeply involved in these events, Christopher Montague
Woodhouse, stated
that these crowds were organized by Jalali andKayvani and
themain British intelligence

operatives in Iran, the Rashidian brothers, who were working
closely with the CIA
team.15 A second CIA history of the coup says the Rashidians
“almost certainly”
were involved in organizing these crowds.16 Kennett Love
states that a CIA officer
“made an important contribution” in organizing these crowds.17
Bayandor questions why Cottam’s later accounts differ from his
1964 account
(p. 177, n. 12), dismisses Roosevelt’s account as
“disingenuous” (p. 120),18 downplays
Wilber’s account of CIA involvement in the events of 19 August
(pp. 128–31), and
ignores the statements by Woodhouse, Love, and the second
CIA history. However,
this evidence, taken together, is far stronger than Bayandor’s
evidence that clerics were
12Roosevelt, Countercoup, 180–81, 186; interview with Kermit
Roosevelt, 5 June 1985. In his memoir,
Roosevelt says these crowds were organized by the “Boscoe
brothers”—his pseudonym for the Rashidian
brothers. In my interview he said he had confused the two sets
of operatives.
13Wilber, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq, 66–70.
14Wilber, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq, appendices A and
B; Gasiorowski, “The 1953 Coup
d’État,” 233–40. These clerics very likely were Behbehani,
Kashani, and Borujerdi; see “The 1953
Coup d’État,” 333.
15C.M. Woodhouse, Something Ventured (London, 1982), 128–
29.

16Scott A. Koch, “Zendebad, Shah!”: The Central Intelligence
Agency and the Fall of Iranian Prime
Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, August 1953 (Washington, DC,
June 1998), 63.
17Love, The American Role, 37–38.
18Bayandor’s dismissal of Roosevelt’s account is central to his
argument. His main criticisms are that
Roosevelt’s account is inconsistent with Ardeshir Zahedi’s
account of his father’s plan to take over Ker-
manshah province, with statements made by US Ambassador
Loy Henderson, and with Wilber’s history
of the coup (pp. 118–23). As discussed above (see n. 11 and
accompanying text), I consider Zahedi’s
account unreliable. Henderson always publicly denied that the
United States had tried to overthrow
Mosaddeq and was not involved in the operational details, so
Roosevelt’s account inevitably differs
from his. While there are inconsistencies between the Roosevelt
and Wilber accounts, they are relatively
minor and hardly surprising, inasmuch as Roosevelt’s account
was written 25 years after Wilber’s. Wilber
was not in Tehran during the coup and did not debrief all
members of the coup team, so his account
omits some details. Consequently, while Roosevelt’s account
undoubtedly is incorrect in minor ways,
Bayandor’s wholesale dismissal of it seems unwarranted.
672 Gasiorowski
the key organizers. Indeed, Bayandor admits that his evidence is
“circumstantial” and
“may, as such, be seen as interpretative or deductive” (p. 172).

We probably never will know very clearly which actors played
what roles in orga-
nizing these crowds. However, the evidence now available
suggests that both the CIA
team and clerics such as Behbehani were involved and that the
CIA team provided
most or all of the money used to hire these crowds.
Consequently, Bayandor’s argu-
ment that the CIA’s role in the coup was minimal and Shi’a
clerics were the key per-
petrators is dubious.
The second flaw in Bayandor’s analysis is that he
overemphasizes the role of the
civilian crowds that appeared on 19 August and
underemphasizes the role of military
units in the overthrow of Mosaddeq. This is crucial to his
argument that Shi’a clerics
were responsible for Mosaddeq’s downfall because, while these
clerics may have helped
organize the civilian crowds, they had little or no ability to
organize military units
against Mosaddeq. Bayandor deemphasizes the role of these
military units mainly
by arguing that they were galvanized into action by the civilian
crowds and by down-
playing the importance of military actions on that fateful day.
He also downplays evi-
dence that these anti-Mosaddeq military units were linked to the
CIA coup team.
Bayandor credits the civilian crowds with galvanizing the
military units into action
by claiming that military units began to act against Mosaddeq
only in the early after-

noon of 19 August, after seeing the civilian crowds that
emerged that morning
(p. 174). This claim is directly contradicted by Kennett Love,
who reports that mili-
tary and police units began to act against Mosaddeq on the
evening of 18 August,
attacking pro-Mosaddeq crowds “in a frenzy” and shouting pro-
Shah and anti-Mosad-
deq slogans. He also argues that these attacks emboldened the
civilian crowds that
appeared the next morning.19 In his history of the coup, Wilber
reports that the civi-
lian crowds assembled in the bazaar area of south Tehran by
9:00 am on 19 August;
anti-Mosaddeq military units had seized control over all major
intersections in Tehran
by 10:15 am; and the armed forces’ commander reported to
Mosaddeq at about 10:30
am that he no longer controlled the army.20 Bayandor ignores
Love’s account and dis-
misses Wilber’s account as a misunderstanding that is not
backed up by other evidence
(pp. 108 and 220, n. 48), but he presents no evidence that
supports his own interpret-
ation.21 While the appearance of civilian crowds on 19 August
undoubtedly helped
encourage military opposition to Mosaddeq, the available
evidence indicates that mili-
tary units had begun to act decisively against Mosaddeq before
these crowds appeared
and therefore were not galvanized into action by them.
Anti-Mosaddeq military units undertook various actions on 19
August that were
crucial to Mosaddeq’s downfall. As mentioned above, they
seized control over all

19The New York Times, 19 and 20 August 1953.
20Wilber, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq, 65–69.
21Bayandor cites a statement by Interior Minister Qolamhossein
Sadiqi as evidence that military units
had not seized all major intersections by the early afternoon of
19 August (p. 220, n. 49). However, in this
statement Sadiqi mentions being stopped by a police officer at
one such intersection and by soldiers
backed by tanks at another.
jason
Highlight
major intersections in Tehran by mid-morning, making it
difficult for pro-Mosaddeq
forces to act. In the early afternoon they seized the Tehran
telegraph office, Press and
Propaganda Ministry, and radio broadcasting facilities, giving
Mosaddeq’s opponents
control over Iran’s main communications media. They seized
the police and army
headquarters, facing heavy small-arms fire and suffering many
casualties. The most
severe fighting took place at Mosaddeq’s home, where pro- and
anti-Mosaddeq
units fought a two-hour tank battle in the late afternoon that left
as many as 200
dead, according to Kennett Love.22 On 19 August and in the
following days, army
and police units maintained a heavy armed presence throughout

Tehran and other
cities, enforcing a curfew and arresting almost all of
Mosaddeq’s key allies and hun-
dreds of his supporters, using arrest lists previously drawn up
by the CIA team.
These arrests continued in the following months and Iran
remained under martial
law until late 1956, preventing pro-Mosaddeq forces from
reemerging.23 Without
these military actions, the civilian crowds that appeared on 19
August could have
done little more than stage noisy demonstrations against
Mosaddeq, especially since
most of the officer corps remained loyal to Mosaddeq. Anti-
Mosaddeq military
units therefore played a decisive role in Mosaddeq’s downfall.
Bayandor downplays evidence that these anti-Mosaddeq military
units were linked
to the CIA coup team by stating that opposition to Mosaddeq
already existed in the
officer corps before the CIA coup plan was developed (in May
1953) and that the CIA
team had no direct communication with the anti-Mosaddeq units
that acted on 19
August (p. 117). These points are partly true. However, before
the CIA team
arrived in Tehran in mid-July, anti-Mosaddeq sentiment in the
officer corps was
not at all organized and was kept in check by Mosaddeq’s
efforts to purge officers
he did not trust—as the CIA team quickly realized. In the weeks
before the coup,
the CIA team worked tirelessly to organize a network of anti-
Mosaddeq officers,
which consisted of retired Generals Zahedi and Guilanshah,

active-duty Generals Bat-
mangelich and Nakhi, at least twelve field-grade officers—
including colonels in the
Tehran police and gendarmerie and the Shah’s elite Imperial
Guard—and forty line
commanders.24 Zahedi had also gained support from the chief
of police.25 The
CIA team did not maintain direct communication with all of
these officers on 19
August and the preceding days, but it was in regular contact
with Zahedi, Batmange-
lich, and Colonel Abbas Farzanegan, who were the key leaders
of the military
network.26 Although it is not possible to identify exactly which
officers and military
units did what on 19 August, it is clear that members of the
military network and
the police chief and his forces were deeply involved. Late in the
afternoon, “known
supporters of” the CIA coup plan were placed in command of
“all units of the
22The New York Times, 20 August 1953.
23Wilber, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq, 75, D6–D7; Mark J.
Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and
the Shah (Ithaca, NY, 1991), 85–92.
24Wilber, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq, 67 and Appendix D.
25Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–54 (FRUS), vol.
X (Washington, DC, 1989), 783.
26This is clear from the Wilber and Roosevelt accounts and was
emphasized in interviews I conducted
in the mid-1980s with several of the CIA participants.
674 Gasiorowski

Tehran garrison” and began to carry out the arrests previously
planned by the CIA
team.27
The third and most serious flaw in Bayandor’s analysis is that
he does not acknowl-
edge the importance of US and British actions that helped
foment opposition to
Mosaddeq before the coup and during its early phases. These
actions undermined
Mosaddeq’s government by encouraging Iranian elites to act
against him, fanning dis-
content among common Iranians, and leading Mosaddeq and his
allies to make tac-
tical mistakes. US and British officials have always maintained
that their main
contributions to the coup were indirect efforts of this sort aimed
at catalyzing and
organizing domestic opposition to Mosaddeq, rather than direct
efforts to orchestrate
and lead this opposition. Bayandor focuses on the latter and
largely ignores the former.
British efforts to catalyze and organize opposition to Mosaddeq
began within days
of his appointment as prime minister and his nationalization of
the British-controlled
oil industry in April and May 1951. British officials maintained
a rigid stance in the
subsequent oil negotiations, implemented unilateral trade and
financial sanctions
against Iran, and organized a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil
exports, crippling

Iran’s economy. They deployed military forces to the Persian
Gulf and made plans
to invade Iran in the summer of 1951, though US officials
persuaded them to
desist. They backed three coup plots against Mosaddeq and
worked tirelessly to under-
mine support for him among Iranian elites, including the Shah
and prominent Shi’a
clerics. The last of these plots was a fall 1952 effort to install
Zahedi as prime minister,
which helped make him Mosaddeq’s leading opponent.28
Bayandor mentions most of
these events but does not acknowledge that they helped
undermine elite and popular
support for Mosaddeq.
Under the Truman administration, the United States supported
Mosaddeq and
gave him economic aid and other assistance. However, US
officials were deeply con-
cerned about Soviet influence in Iran at this time. The CIA
therefore began carrying
out extensive propaganda activities and other covert operations
aimed at creating
alarm among the Iranian public, the Shi’a clergy, and other
elites about the activities
of Iran’s communist Tudeh Party.29 These activities helped
create fear among Iranians
that the Tudeh might seize power and therefore inadvertently
undermined public con-
fidence in Mosaddeq. Moreover, despite official US support for
Mosaddeq, the CIA
carried out several covert operations aimed at encouraging
Kashani, Baqa’i, and
perhaps other elites and the Toilers Party and Pan-Iranist Party
to break with

Mosaddeq.30 Again, Bayandor mentions some of these events
but does not acknowl-
edge their impact on Mosaddeq.
It was not until the Anglo-Iranian oil negotiations collapsed in
March 1953
that top US officials approved deliberate efforts to undermine
Mosaddeq. In early
April they redirected the CIA’s anti-communist covert
operations toward the task
27Wilber, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq, 67–75; FRUS, vol.
X 784–85.
28See Gasiorowski and Byrne, Mohammad Mosaddeq and the
1953 Coup, chs. 4–5.
29Gasiorowski and Byrne, Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953
Coup., ch. 6 and 235–36.
Coup, 243–44.
of weakening Mosaddeq, allocating $1 million specifically for
this purpose. In
addition, US officials approached Fazlollah Zahedi about
organizing a coup and
gave him $135,000 to do so. As mentioned above, they also
approached clerical
leaders through intermediaries with a plan to create
disturbances to undermine
Mosaddeq.31 These activities undoubtedly helped catalyze
opposition to Mosaddeq,
especially among Zahedi and his allies and the clergy.
In July and early August 1953, the CIA sharply increased its

covert operations to
destabilize Mosaddeq’s government, undertaking an “all-out”
propaganda campaign
in Iranian newspapers and other media and hiring thugs to
attack mosques and
Tudeh demonstrations and create other disturbances. Some of
this activity was
designed specifically to turn the clergy against Mosaddeq. As
discussed above, the
CIA coup team began organizing a network of Iranian military
officers to work
against Mosaddeq in this period. It also began bribing members
of parliament to
turn against Mosaddeq, using $11,000 per week that had been
allocated for this
purpose —a large amount of money, since parliament had only
79 members at the
time. Mosaddeq evidently learned of this and denounced
members of parliament as
agents of foreigners. He then staged a fraudulent referendum on
4 August that pro-
duced an overwhelming vote in favor of dissolving parliament.
This was a major tac-
tical mistake that further undermined support for Mosaddeq, as
Bayandor admits
(p. 89). The CIA team sent a series of emissaries to see the Shah
in late July and
early August to persuade him to dismiss Mosaddeq and appoint
Zahedi prime minis-
ter, which was his legal prerogative. The Shah wavered for
weeks, recognizing that
Mosaddeq was still popular, but he finally acquiesced and
signed royal decrees to
this effect on 13 August. US officials also undertook several
diplomatic initiatives

aimed at undermining Mosaddeq.32
Bayandor downplays or dismisses these various US actions,
refusing to acknowledge
their contribution to Mosaddeq’s downfall. He briefly mentions
the CIA’s anti-
Mosaddeq covert operations but dismisses them, stating—
without citing any evi-
dence—that the principal agents who implemented them, Jalali
and Kayvani, “must
have aggrandized the extent and impact of these measures” (p.
85). He does not
acknowledge that the contact US officials and their
intermediaries had with Zahedi
and clerical leaders in the spring of 1953 may have encouraged
them to act against
Mosaddeq. He also never explains why an uprising led by
clerics would install
Zahedi as prime minister—he was hardly the sort of person
clerics would favor. Bayan-
dor insists that the CIA team’s efforts to bribe members of
parliament “yielded strictly
nothing,” though he admits that Mosaddeq’s fear of a censure
vote in parliament was
not unfounded and that Mosaddeq staged the referendum to
dissolve parliament in
response to this bribery campaign (pp. 87–88 and 211, nn. 76
and 77). He describes
the CIA team’s elaborate efforts to turn the Shah against
Mosaddeq (pp. 89–94), and
he argues that the Shah’s departure from Iran on 16 August
played a decisive role in
Coup, 232–40.

Coup, 240–48.
676 Gasiorowski
catalyzing the forces that carried out the coup. However, he
does not acknowledge that
the CIA team’s pressure may have helped lead the Shah to do
this.
Immediately after its first coup attempt failed on 15–16 August,
the CIA team
began to improvise33 a series of measures aimed at catalyzing a
second, successful
coup, ignoring messages from Washington telling them to stop
and evacuate. They
hid Fazlollah Zahedi and other key plotters in the US embassy
compound and
other secure locations, saving them from arrest. They took a
series of steps to publicize
the Shah’s decrees dismissing Mosaddeq and appointing Zahedi
and to rally support in
the armed forces for Zahedi and the Shah. Disseminating the
Shah’s decrees was
crucial to Mosaddeq’s downfall because they showed that the
Shah now opposed
Mosaddeq and he was defying the Shah’s authority. The CIA
team gave their principal
agents, Jalali and Kayvani, $50,000 on 16 August to organize
anti-Mosaddeq activities,
including mobs of agents provocateurs that pretended to be
Tudeh crowds and created
chaos in Tehran on the following days, tearing down statues of
the Shah, attacking
mosques, vandalizing shops, and clashing with Mosaddeq

supporters. On 18
August, Ambassador Henderson warned Mosaddeq that he
would call for all Amer-
icans to leave Iran if the security forces could not restore order.
In Henderson’s pres-
ence, Mosaddeq then directed the security forces to break up the
crowds in Tehran’s
streets, producing the military and police attacks of that evening
described above. The
CIA team then worked through several channels to organize,
finance, and direct anti-
Mosaddeq activities on 19 August, as discussed above.34
Once again Bayandor downplays or dismisses these actions,
refusing to acknowledge
their contribution toMosaddeq’s downfall. He expresses doubt
that Zahedi was hidden
by the CIA team (pp. 111 and 222, n. 59), despite considerable
evidence of this. He
downplays the importance of the Shah’s decrees in rallying
opposition to Mosaddeq,
emphasizing instead a statement made by Zahedi (p. 104). He
also downplays the
CIA team’s role in copying and disseminating the Shah’s
decrees and Zahedi’s state-
ment, citing Ardeshir Zahedi’s dubious account and ignoring
substantial evidence of
the CIA team’s role (pp. 104, 125), including a statement by
Kennett Love, who wit-
nessed and participated in these activities.35 Bayandor
dismisses the anti-Mosaddeq
activities of Jalali and Kayvani during 16–18 August on the
grounds that the Shi’a
clergy already fully opposed Mosaddeq by this time, but later in
the same paragraph
and elsewhere he cites the Shah’s flight from Iran during this

same period (on 16
August) as a key catalyst of clerical action (p. 124). He claims
that Jalali and Kayvani
did not organize mobs pretending to be Tudeh crowds and did
not receive CIA
33Bayandor argues that the CIA had not pre-planned the events
of 19 August and therefore cannot be
credited with orchestrating them (p. 168). However, when I
interviewed the CIA station chief in 1984
and Kermit Roosevelt in 1985, they both told me they had
regarded the coup plan merely as a starting
point and expected to improvise as events unfolded.
34Gasiorowski and Byrne,Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953
Coup, 250–55; Loy Henderson Inter-
view, Columbia University Oral History Research Office, 1972.
35Love,The American Role, 31–32; Gasiorowski and
Byrne,MohammadMosaddeq and the 1953 Coup,
251. Love states that he met Ardeshir Zahedi at a CIA officer’s
home, where the decrees were being copied.
Zahedi does not mention this in Five Decisive Days.
money during 16–18 August, dismissing or ignoring substantial
evidence that they
did,36 while citing the account of Tudeh leader Noureddin
Kianouri—hardly a disin-
terested observer (pp. 128–30, 136–38). Finally, he
acknowledges that Henderson’s
meeting with Mosaddeq may have contributed to the security
forces’ crackdown on

the evening of 18 August but downplays the importance of this
meeting by arguing
that it had not been coordinated with the CIA team’s actions,
despite a statement by
Roosevelt that it had (pp. 133–36).
Of course, it is impossible to say conclusively how important
these British and US
actions were in catalyzing and organizing the various Iranians
who worked to over-
throw Mosaddeq on 19 August. But the breadth of these actions
and the wealth of
evidence describing them contrast sharply with Bayandor’s
much narrower account,
which relies on a few dubious or misinterpreted statements
about the actions of
certain clerics and extraordinary efforts to discredit any account
that highlights the
role of foreign actors.37
My own reading of the historical evidence available today is
that domestic actors—
probably including Ayatollah Behbehani and perhaps other
clerics—certainly were
involved in Mosaddeq’s overthrow, but that foreign actors—
especially the CIA and
its coup team in Tehran—played a more important role.38
Bayandor’s book has
not changed my view on this issue. Unless compelling new
evidence emerges about
who organized the anti-Mosaddeq crowds and military units that
appeared on 19
August and what motivated them, this is likely to remain the
most credible expla-
nation of the causes of Mosaddeq’s downfall.

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