History of BP Includes Role in 1953 Iran Coup After Nationalization of Oil

AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap-up, as tens of thousands of gallons of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill, we continue our series on BP. Yesterday we looked at their horrendous safety record on the millions of dollars they’ve spent on lobbying congress to prevent regulation. Today, we’re going to look at the history, sixty years ago, BP was called Anglo Iranian Oil Company. In an interview on DEMOCRACY NOW!, Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times bureau chief, author of "All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror", told the story of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company’s role in the 1953 CIA coup against Iran’s popular progressive Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Let’s go to a clip of what Steven Kinzer says.

STEVEN KINZER: At the beginning of the 20th century as a result of a corrupt deal with the old dying monarchy, one British company, owned mainly by the British government, had taken control of the entire Iranian oil industry.

SNIP...

...What happened was that Prime Minister Mossadegh, who really was an extraordinary figure in his time, although he’s in somewhat forgotten by history, came to power in 1951 on a wave of nationalism aimed at this one great obsession, we’ve got to take back control of our oil and use the profits for the development of one of the most wretchedly impoverished nations on earth at that time. So the Iranian parliament voted unanimously for a bill to nationalize the Anglo Iranian Petroleum Co. and Mossadegh signed it and he devoted himself, during his term of office, to carrying-out that plan. To nationalize was then Britain’s largest and most profitable holding anywhere in the world. Bear in mind that the oil that fueled England all during the 1920s and 30s and 40s all came from Iran. The standard of living that people in England enjoyed all during that period was due exclusive to Iranian oil. Britain has no oil. Britain has no colonies that have oil. every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi, was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world, was fueled a hundred percent by oil from Iran. Suddenly Iran arrives and says, 'Oh, we're taking back the oil now.’ So this naturally set-off a huge crisis. And that’s the crisis that made Mossadegh really a big World figure around the early 1950s. At the end of 1951 Time magazine chose him as 'Man of the Year,' and they chose him over Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight Eisenhower; and they made the right choice because at that moment, Mossadegh really was the most important person in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer. Wrote "All the Shah’s Men." Talked extensively about the Anglo Iranian Oil Company which was renamed British Petroleum. That’s BP. That does it for our show.

SOURCE: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/6/history_of_bp_includes_role_in

When the CIA Overthrew Iran for British Petroleum

By Bill Hare
opednews.com

EXCERPT...

Iran had just elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, that nation's most popular political figure.

The fact that Mossadegh was elected by the will of Iran's citizens did not deter the efforts of an invigorated CIA that used the Cold War as a pretext to move away from the fact finding agency conceived of by President Harry Truman to an aggressive international political body willing to overthrow nations in contravention of popular national will.

Mossadegh immediately angered the international power cartel with which the CIA actively interlinked. British Petroleum had been garnering the lion's share of profits from Iran's wealthy oil deposits.

Mossadegh nationalized Iran's oil as a means of obtaining what he deemed to be a fairer portion of that important asset. The nationalization law was passed unanimously by the Iranian Parliament.

Despite the fact that BP was offered considerable compensation by Mossadegh his days were numbered after the nationalization bill was passed.

Richard Helms, who would later become CIA Director, was prepared to act with a close Iranian friend becoming political beneficiary. A plan was launched to overthrow Iran in a coup and hand over the reins of power to a reliable figure who would accede to the international power elite's interests on behalf of British Petroleum.

CONTINUED...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/When-the-CIA-Overthrew-Ira-by-Bill-Hare-100511-809.html

Christian in Name Only

A Clash of Civilizations?

By MARK GAFFNEY
CounterPunch
May 22, 2003

EXCERPT...

Did the U.S. government respond with reasoned dialogue? Absolutely not. Instead of negotiating a fair settlement of the differences, the Eisenhower administration collaborated with its British ally. The CIA and M16 (the British counterpart of the CIA) were ordered to stage a military coup. Mossadegh was overthrown by force of arms. The young Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, who during the previous two years had been eclipsed by Mossadegh's immense popularity, was installed in power. Mossadegh was thrown into prison. What mattered in Washington was not democracy, nor the best interests of the Iranian people. What mattered was not fairness, or international law, or human dignity. None of the above. Only one thing mattered: preserving the obscene profits of the U.S. and British oil companies.

The U.S. refused to negotiate with Mossadegh, but not because he was a Communist. He was not. Even as the coup was in progress, John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State, told a Senate committee there was no Communist threat in Iran. Mossadegh was unacceptable because he was considered too independent. He insisted, for example, on maintaining Iran's neutrality. During the Cold War Washington viewed this kind of attitude as tantamount to betrayal. Available historical records show that U.S. policymakers did not even consider whether meddling in Iran's internal affairs might be immoral. The U.S. National Security Council never even discussed the question of ethics on the day it made the fateful decision to launch the coup. (William Blum, Killing Hope, 1995, chapter nine)

The Shah was more compliant to U.S. corporate interests. For which reason the U.S. lavished aid and arms upon the Shah's increasingly brutal government. The coup signaled the end of democracy. The CIA and Israel trained the Shah's notorious secret police, the SAVAK, which hunted down Iranian dissidents all over the globe. During the next twenty-five years the Shah was Washington's most loyal ally--at the expense of the people of Iran. Amnesty International reported in 1976 that Iran "had the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts, and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record of human rights than Iran." (William Blum, Killing Hope, 1995, chapter nine)

The rest is history. Today, it is instructive to ask whether Shi'ite fundamentalism would have come to prominence in Iran in 1979 had we the good sense in the 1950s to support political moderation, justice, and democracy, instead of profits for profits' sake. Viewed in this perspective, the "clash of civilizations" appears considerably less inevitable than the talk show hosts, the FOX pundits, and the rabid newspaper columnists--the fear mongers--would have us believe. Indeed, the above history suggests that the actual clash is right here in America. The clash is the gaping chasm between one view of the world versus another: human decency versus rapacious greed.

If we were truly a Christian nation, we in America would have insisted that our government's dealings with Iran adhere to the golden rule: do unto others. But nothing like this happened. We who preach freedom and democracy chose not to be informed about our government's foreign intrigues. We who call ourselves Christians chose not to care about the criminal way our government was treating others. Most importantly, we so-called Christians totally abandoned the most fundamental teaching of Jesus: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A teaching so simple, yet, so profound. We failed in the case of Iran. And similar instances involving other countries are too numerous to count. Some will argue that foreign affairs is no place for Christian values. What nonsense! On this shrinking planet--a planet in deep peril--the most important decisions we make are how we treat other people(s). The unpleasant truth is that we Americans are spiritually bankrupt as a nation: Christian in name only. And there is no doubt that in the coming days we are going to reap the consequences of the whirlwind we have unleashed on this tiny planet.

SOURCE:

http://www.counterpunch.org/gaffney05222003.html

Smells like coup spirit

By Dwayne Eutsey

April 27, 2001-Thanks to the investigative reporting of journalists such
as Greg Palast, more evidence of a coordinated effort to disenfranchise
tens of thousands of registered voters (mostly African American) is
surfacing in Florida. When these reports are considered within the context
of police roadblocks, cases of intimidation, and possible large-scale
voter fraud and ballot tampering, fears of an orchestrated dirty election
become more substantiated.

There is another aspect of the 2000 election in Florida that remains
largely untouched, however: the possibility of a domestic covert
intelligence operation designed to make certain that America didn't go
Democratic "due to the irresponsibility of its own people," to paraphrase
Henry Kissinger's remark concerning overthrowing the democratically
elected government in Chile.

Perhaps the possibility of such an operation in the US is too far-fetched
to take seriously, or perhaps there isn't enough evidence to proceed with
documenting such suspicions. Unfortunately, history proves that the
former assumption is naive (Watergate, Iran-Contra, and documented CIA
activities against US citizens come immediately to mind). Regarding
evidence, it's the nature of the covert beast to leave no fingerprints and
smoking guns behind (unless you're setting up a patsy). However, if you
can't find a corpse laying around, the stench in the air can often reveal,
nonetheless, that a murder victim's body is covered up somewhere nearby.

What follows here is not an expose of how a CIA-backed coup in Florida
helped kill the democratic process in November. It is an effort, however,
to draw attention to the disturbing stink surrounding events in the 2000
election that are similar to known CIA actions that thwarted democracy in
other countries, namely Guatemala in the 1950s and Chile in 1973. To
avoid the appearance of "conspiracy theorizing" on my part, I've limited
the information presented here to what can be verified. I have also
limited the focus of this survey to very broad similarities. Many others
connections exist and warrant further investigation (such as claims that
former CIA/FBI agent Charles Kane, who was involved in possible absentee
ballot tampering in Florida, played a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion and
CIA coups and dirty tricks around the world. He allegedly retired in the
mid-'70s and would have been employed during the Agency's heyday of covert
operations).

Hopefully, this general overview will help prompt others to conduct a more
thorough look into murky activities that, taken as a whole, suggest the
spirit of CIA-Coups-Past may have paid an unwelcome visit last November to
Florida.

Historical Background

By placing these facts within the larger historical context of CIA coup
activity, many of the baffling events transpiring in Florida last year
begin to make some sense. The same players (CIA, powerful corporations,
rightwing militarists), the same motives (preserving economic/political
power), and even the same tactics (armed violence, fortunately, being one
exception) begin to emerge that suggest some unpleasant connections among
them.

For easier comparison, I break down these similarities according to coup
patterns in Guatemala, Chile, and Florida. Unless otherwise noted, the
information here is from David Halberstam's excellent book, The Fifties,
and from the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Report).

Guatemala: Prior to the legitimate election of Jacobo Arbenz to the
presidency in the early '50s, United Fruit Company controls most of the
country's land, economy, and politics. The land reform policies that
Arbenz wants to implement, which would redistribute United
Fruit-controlled land to Guatemalans, threaten United Fruit's economic
interests and political power in the region. United Fruit has close ties
to powerful figures in America, including Allen Dulles (Director of the
CIA) and his brother Foster (Secretary of State). The Dulles brothers and
others portray Arbenz as a communist threat and convince President
Eisenhower that a coup is in America's best interest.

Chile: Despite CIA covert efforts to defeat him, socialist Salvador
Allende is elected as president in 1970. His plan to nationalize Chilean
industries poses a direct threat to the reactionary Nixon Administration
and the multinational corporate interests it represents. Prior to
Allende's election, the CIA spent years and millions of dollars waging a
propaganda war to maintain a US/corporate-friendly government in Chile.
After the election, the Agency is instrumental in implementing Henry
Kissinger's desire to thwart Allende's policies and in supporting a
military coup being planned by General Augusto Pinochet.

Florida: Strategically important in the CIA's covert war against Cuba
(and other troublespots throughout Central and South America), Florida has
been home to CIA mercenary training camps since at least the '50s (such as
one in Opa-Locka).

There is also an interesting Bush connection to Florida (apart from Jeb
Bush holding the state's governorship). According to a report in The
Nation, days after the Kennedy assassination in 1963 a memo from J. Edgar
Hoover stated that a "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency"
had been briefed regarding the reaction of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in
Miami to the murder. Although George H.W. Bush claims the name he shares
with the "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" is coincidental, a source for the
story observed: "I know [Bush] was involved in the Caribbean. I know he
was involved in the suppression of things after the Kennedy assassination.
There was a very definite worry that some Cuban groups were going to move
against Castro and attempt to blame it on the CIA." (see Joseph McBride,
"'George Bush,' CIA Operative," The Nation, July 16/23, 1988, p. 42).

The Players

What follows is a very general review of similar interests and
organizations involved in some manner in Guatemala, Chile, and Florida.

Guatemala:

CIA: Director Allen Dulles is a key player in organizing the coup.

Multinational: United Fruit Company is known as "el pulpo" ("the
octopus&quot because of its pervasive influence over so many facets of the
country.

Rightwing Militarists Takeover: A reactionary military junta is installed
after the coup, fronted by the CIA-selected Carlos Enrique Castillo Armas.
The junta is responsible for the mass murder of dissidents and years of
brutal repression.

Chile:

CIA: For a detailed analysis of widespread US covert activities in Chile,
see the Church Report.

Multinationals: "In addition to providing information and cover to the
CIA, multinational corporations also participated in covert attempts to
influence Chilean politics." Church Report. Among the corporations
actively opposed to Allende's election and his socialist experiment were
ITT, Pepsi-Cola, and the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Rightwing Militarists Takeover: With CIA support and the blessings of the
Nixon Administration, General Augusto Pinochet establishes a brutal and
reactionary military junta after the coup. As in Guatemala, the junta is
repressive and responsible for the mass murder of dissidents (including
Americans Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi, both of whom were tortured and
executed. According to a US State Department memo dated August 25, 1976,
the CIA "may have played an unfortunate part" in both deaths. See
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/19991008/01-04.htm).

Florida:

CIA: At least one "former" CIA operative (Charles Kane) is implicated in
shady activities during the Florida election. The attorney for those
investigating Kane's involvement in tampering with absentee ballots said
Kane's efforts were part of a "sinister underground conspiracy." ("Florida
Official Admits Helping GOP," Associated Press, December 7, 2000).

Multinationals: Oil, insurance, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, etc., all have
concerns about a Gore presidency and its potential for regulatory
activism. These corporations are eager to bring "business special
interests into politics so they can take over the regulatory bodies of
government and regulate themselves. ("America in the Grip of Bush's 'Iron
Triangle,'" The Observer, December 3, 2000).

Rightwing Militarists Takeover: The Bush Administration has established
"itself as the most brazenly rightwing of modern times. As the ecstatic
head of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation enthuses, the new crowd
are 'more Reaganite than the Reagan administration.'" (The Guardian,
April 25, 2001). Among the appointments Bush has made are Cold Warriors
(e.g., Donald Rumsfield), old Iran/Contra characters and intelligence
operatives (e.g., John Negroponte and Otto Reich; see The Nation, May 7,
2001: "Lie to the Media, Get a Job," by Eric Alterman).

Tactics

Media Manipulation/Reality Distortion

Guatemala: CIA "deftly created a fictional war over the airwaves, one in
which the government troops faltered and refused to fight and in which the
liberation troops were relentlessly moving toward Guatemala City."
Halberstam

Chile: "Press placements [by the CIA] were attractive because each
placement might produce a multiplier effect, being picked up and replayed
by media outlets other than the one in which it originally came out."
Church Report

Florida: John Ellis, Bush's first cousin, at the rightwing Fox News
decides to declare the state for Bush after 2 a.m., causing the other
networks to do likewise, creating the lasting (and false) impression that
Bush won the election.

Press Collusion

Guatemala: " . . . one crucial ingredient left for the success of the coup
. . . was the cooperation, voluntary and involuntary, of the American
press. This meant it was necessary for the press corps to tell the public
that the coup was the work of an indigenous Guatemalan force." Halberstam

Practically all American reporters cooperate, with the exception of NYT
reporter Sydney Gruson. After CIA director Allen Dulles puts pressure on
the Times, Gruson is removed from covering Guatemala. "It was an important
moment," writes Halberstam, "a warning to the paper's top executives about
the potential difference between the agenda of the secret government and
that of serious journalism."

Chile: Excerpts from the Church Report . . ."The most common form of a
propaganda project is simply the development of 'assets' in media
organizations who can place articles or be asked to write them."
"According to CIA documents, the Time correspondent in Chile apparently
had accepted Allende's protestations of moderation and constitutionality
at face value. Briefings requested by Time and provided by the CIA in
Washington resulted in a change in the basic thrust of the Time story on
Allende's September 4 victory and in the timing of that story." "According
to the CIA, partial returns showed that 726 articles, broadcasts,
editorials, and similar items directly resulted from Agency activity. The
Agency had no way to measure the scope of the multiplier effect . . . but
concluded that its contribution was both substantial and significant."

Florida: After Election Day, airwaves are saturated with rightwing
commentators, such as Ann Coulter, accusing Gore of being a "nutcase" who
is trying to steal an election that was, at the very least, in dispute; at
the most, it was a victory for Gore. (See "GOP Won by Planting Seeds of
Deception, by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, December 14, 2000).

Lewis Lapham of Harper's noted that the "poisonous language" and
"paranoid" arguments being aired at the time were mostly coming from
rightwingers (although the Democrats were not free from "unctuous
statement, rank hypocrisy, and bitter diatribe.&quot Still, when it came to
rancor and speciousness, he "didn't find the same sort of stupidity on the
Democratic side of the dispute."

A sidenote on the Press and the CIA: There are a number of articles
exposing the connections between the US media and the CIA. The most
famous expose was Carl Bernstein's "The CIA and the Media" in the October
20, 1977 issue of Rolling Stone. In it, Bernstein reveals the cooperation
during the '50s and '60s between major US media outlets and the
intelligence community, including, CBS, New York Times, Time, the Miami
Herald, and hundreds of others. The NY Times recently reported,
ironically enough, that the CIA has included news wire services (the now
Moonie-owned UPI, for example) as part of its "regular propaganda
apparatus;" this apparatus also included "Miami exile contacts with
Florida papers."

Although this report is based on a CIA document from the early '60s, it
was also reported this year (or underreported) that US Army psychological
operations personnel (responsible for spreading propaganda) were placed at
CNN's TV, radio, and satellite bureaus during the Kosovo war. (From a
report by Alexander Cockburn in Counterpunch, cited among AlterNet's Top
Ten Censored Stories of 2000).

Staging "Spontaneous" Revolts/Protests

Guatemala: CIA creates the "rebel army" that is supposed to be an
indigenous uprising. "One of the CIA's main responsibilities was to keep
American journalists out of the area lest they find out how pathetic
Castillo Armas's army really was." Halberstam

Chile: "The CIA was directed to undertake an effort to promote a military
coup in Chile to prevent the accession to power of Salvador Allende."
(This particular coup fell apart). Church Report.

Florida: Republican operatives are bussed into Miami in a GOP-orchestrated
campaign to shut down the recount effort and intimidate (and even
physically assault) Democratic election officials.

Targeting Special Groups for Propaganda

Chile: "The covert propaganda efforts in Chile also included 'black'
propaganda-material falsely purporting to be the product of a particular
individual or group . . . the CIA used 'black' propaganda to sow discord
between the Communists and the Socialists and between the national labor
confederation and the Chilean Communist Party." Church Report

Florida: African Americans received calls the weekend before the election
from a speaker who falsely claimed to be with the NAACP, asking them to
vote for Bush. (Midwest Today, December 2000: "Scary Facts About the
Florida Vote," by Larry Jordan).

Conclusion

Where does mere coincidence end and meaningful patterns begin? Even if
the events in Florida listed here (along with the more detailed reports
being filed by investigative journalists) are removed from the context of
covert actions, it is easy to conclude that something profoundly
disturbing happened in the previous election.

Reviewing the increasing amount of evidence demonstrating just how dirty
the 2000 election was, however, is it so unreasonable to think that those
interests whose hands remain sullied from Florida would have sunk one
notch lower into the murky depths of covert operations? What are the
limits when the objective is to grab power at any cost?

And what will those who seized that power do next time in order to hold on
to it?

SOURCE (may have to cut and paste) : http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg66317.html

The end of my innocence and childhood began in 1957. It is remarkable to me now just how little I knew then about the people around me. It took me years to figure out exactly what the truth was, especially given my brother's knack at inventing facts.

My mother once told me that [font color=darkred]if the Abbotts didn't exist, my brother would have had to invent them.[/font]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119381/quotes?item=qt0236757

Two experts report on how a group of Cold War true believers were invited to second-guess the CIA. Did the "outside experts" of the 1970s contribute to the military buildup of the 1980s?

By Anne Hessing Cahn
April 1993 pp. 22, 24-27 (vol. 49, no. 03) © 1993 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

lection years have much in common. They produce a profusion of punditry, media attention, and politically expedient action, quickly forgotten, and with little lasting impact. But not always; sometimes events are set into motion that have long lifetimes. This was the case in 1976 when, as in 1992, an incumbent Republican president faced a strong challenge from the right wing of his own party. Then (as last year) sops were offered to placate the far right and, while it is too early to know which of the 1992 capers will endure, we now know a great deal about one of the most political events of 1976, and its remarkably long-lasting effects on U.S. policy.

Late last year, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released the 1976 "Team B" reports. Team B was an experiment in competitive threat assessments approved by then-Director of Central Intelligence George Bush. Teams of "outside experts" were to take independent looks at the highly classified data used by the intelligence community to assess Soviet strategic forces in the yearly National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). NIEs are authoritative and are widely circulated within the government. U.S. national security policy on various issues as well as the defense budget are based on their general conclusions. Although NIEs represent the collective judgment of the entire intelligence community, the lead agency is the CIA.

There were three "B" teams. One studied Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities, one examined Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and one investigated Soviet strategic policy and objectives. But it is the third team, chaired by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, that ultimately received considerable publicity and is commonly referred to as Team B.

The Team B experiment was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners. The experiment was leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an "October surprise." But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of "the window of vulnerability" and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan.

How did the Team B notion come about? In 1974, Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, accused the CIA of systematically underestimating Soviet missile deployment, and conservatives began a concerted attack on the CIA's annual assessment of the Soviet threat. This assessment--the NIE--was an obvious target.

In the mid-1970s, the CIA was vulnerable on three counts. First, it was still reeling from the 1975 congressional hearings about covert assassination attempts on foreign leaders and other activities. Second, it was considered "payback time" by hard-liners, who were still smarting from the CIA's realistic assessments during the Vietnam war years--assessments that failed to see light at the end of the tunnel. And finally, between 1973 and 1976, there were four different directors of central intelligence, in contrast to the more stately progression of four directors in the preceding 20 years.

The vehicle chosen from within the administration to challenge the CIA was the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). Formed as the Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Affairs by President Eisenhower in 1956, PFIAB was reconstituted by President Kennedy in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Members are appointed by the president but hold no other government positions (except possibly on other advisory committees or panels). By 1975, PFIAB was a home for such conservatives as William Casey, John Connally, John Foster, Clare Booth Luce, and Edward Teller.

CONTINUED via WAYBACK MACHINE IA:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050312091451/http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr93cahn