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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: This broadcast concludes our review of Fara Mansoor’s heroic, ground-breaking research on what we call “The Deep October Surprise,” and references the historical lessons to be drawn from the inquiry to the contemporary political scene.
In numerous programs, we have discussed what Peter Levenda has termed “weaponized religion.” In particular, we have examined what Peter termed weaponized Islam. With the recent Iranian nuclear deal and the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran, the history of U.S./Iranian relations has attained greater relevance.
In that context, we present the fourth and concluding broadcast in a series of programs revisiting Fara Mansoor’s landmark research on what we have termed the “Deep October Surprise.” Usually, the term “October Surprise” refers to an alleged deal between the Reagan/Bush campaign and the Khomeini regime in Iran to withhold the U.S. hostages taken from the American Embassy until after Jimmy Carter’s humiliation and consequent election defeat were assured.
” . . . . By late August [of 1977], the Shah was totally confused. U.S. Ambassador Sullivan recorded the Shah’s pleadings over the outbreak of violence: ‘He said the pattern was widespread and that it was like an outbreak of a sudden rash in the country…it gave evidence of sophisticated planning and was not the work of spontaneous oppositionists…the Shah presented that it was the work of foreign intrigue…this intrigue went beyond the capabilities of the Soviet KGB and must, therefore, also involve British and American CIA. The Shah went on to ask ‘Why was the CIA suddenly turning against him? What had he done to deserve this sort of action from the United States?’ . . . . ”
Fara’s research goes farther and deeper, suggesting that the CIA learned of the Shah’s cancer in 1974 (from former CIA director Richard Helms), withheld the information from Jimmy Carter, installed Khomeini’s Islamic fundamentalists as an anti-communist bulwark on the Soviet Union’s Southern flank and then micro-managed the hostage crisis to insure the ascension of the Reagan/Bush/Casey forces. What has become known as the Iran-Contra Scandal was an outgrowth of this dynamic.
” . . . . With thousands of documents to support his position, Mansoor says that the “hostage crisis” was a political “management tool” created by the pro-Bush faction of the CIA, and implemented through an a priori Alliance with Khomeini’s Islamic Fundamentalists.” He says the purpose was twofold:
- To keep Iran intact and communist-free by putting Khomeini in full control.
- To destablize the Carter Administration and put George Bush in the White House.
‘The private Alliance was the logical result of the intricate Iranian political reality of the mid-70s, and a complex network of powerful U.S.-Iranian ‘business’ relationships,’ Mansoor states. ‘I first met Khomeini in 1963 during the failed coup attempt against the Shah. Since that time I have been intimately involved with Iranian politics. I knew in 1979 that the whole, phoney ‘Islamic Revolution’ was ‘mission implausible’.’ Mansoor was frank. ‘There is simply no way that those guys with the beards and turbans could have pulled off such a brilliantly planned operation without very sophisticated help.’ . . .
. . . . ‘I have collected enough data to yield a very clear picture. Mr. Bush’s lieutenants removed the Shah, brought Khomeini back to Iran, and guided his rise to power, sticking it to President Carter, the American people (52 in particular), and the Iranian people.’ . . .”
Extending a doctrine formulated by then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in the early 1950’s, “the religions of the East” were viewed by the national security establishment as a bulwark against the U.S.S.R. (We note that the British originally installed the first Shah of Iran in the post World War I period as an anti-Soviet bulwark.) When Jimmy Carter neither extended George H.W. Bush’s CIA tenure nor appointed Theodore Shackley as head of the agency, but fired Shackley and much of the institutionalized covert action team, his political fate was sealed.
” . . . Mansoor’s meticulous research clearly demonstrates how Khomeini’s published vision of an Islamic Government (Vilayat-Faqih) dovetailed with the regional and global strategic objectives of a hard-core subset of the U.S. National Security establishment loyal to George Bush. It shows that the Iranian hostage crisis was neither a crisis nor chaos. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup in Iran, which threw out the democratic government and installed the Shah.
In order to understand the imperative of this Alliance, we must realistically examine the sociopolitical alignment both in Iran and the U.S., and accurately assess their respective interests to find the common ground for this coalescence. The anti-monarchic forces in mid-70s Iran consisted of various nationalist groups including religious reformists, the Islamic Fundamentalists, and the leftists and communists. . . . .
. . . . The Islamic Fundamentalists had no government experience, but they had major grassroots support. Islam, in its Shi’ite format, was deeply embedded in the lives of the vast majority of the Iranian people. The Fundamentalists were absolutely anti-communist.
The philosophical divide within the U.S. National Security establishment, especially the CIA, became quite serious in the aftermath of Watergate. To make matters worse, the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, his campaign promise to clean the “cowboy” elements out of the Central Intelligence Agency and his “human rights” policies alarmed the faction of the CIA loyal to George Bush. Bush was CIA director under Gerald Ford. Finally, the firing of CIA Director George Bush by Carter, and the subsequent “Halloween Massacre” in which Carter fired over 800 CIA covert operatives in 1977, angered the “cowboys” beyond all measure. That was Carter’s October surprise, 800 firings on Halloween 1977.
Bush and his CIA coverts were well aware of the Shah’s terminal cancer, unknown to President Carter. The team had an elaborate vested interest to protect. They were determined to keep Iran intact and communist-free and put George Bush in the White House. . . .”
Tracing the intricate networking of CIA and Iranian personnel in the machinations of this gambit, this broadcast highlights a signature event in April of 1978, months before Khomeini took over and and more than a year before the hostages were taken from the U.S. Embassy.
” . . . . Mansoor produced a confidential document called the “Country Team Minutes” of April 26, 1978, more than a year before the hostage crisis. The meeting was held in Iran. The second paragraph of the routine minutes, states, ‘The Ambassador commented on our distinguished visitors, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Margaret Thatcher, and commented that Teheran seems to be the site for an opposition parties congress.’ Mansoor indicates the entire relationship was probably the most sophisticated criminal act in recent history. ‘That the people who, until recently, were holding power in Washington and those who currently are still in control in Teheran, got there by totally subverting the democratic process of both countries is news. That their methods of subversion relied on kidnapping, extortion and murder is criminal,’ Mansoor states. . . .”
Dramatis Personae of the “Deep October Surprise”:
A. General Hossein Fardoust:
- Fardoust was a key player in this drama. Like Richard Cottam and General Qarani, he had been networking with the CIA/Shah/Helms milieu for decades. He was the head of an elite intelligence organization within the Shah’s regime that superseded the SAVAK (the Shah’s secret police) in importance and influence. It was from his long-time associate Fardoust that Helms learned that the Shah had cancer. ” . . . In 1975, former CIA director, and the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms learned of the Shah’s cancer through the Shah’s closest confidant, General Hossein Fardoust. The Shah, Helms and Fardoust had been close personal friends since their school days together in Switzerland during the 1930s. . . .”
- General Fardoust set up an incident that was central to the staging of the uprising that installed Khomeini in power. ” . . . On January 7, 1978, an insidious article entitled Iran and the Red and Black Colonialism, appeared in the Iranian daily newspaper Ettela’at. It castigated the exiled Khomeini, and produced a massive protest riot in the Holy City of Qum the next day. The clergy had little choice but to rally to Khomeini’s defense. The Qum incident shifted many of the clergy from a position of support for the Shah’s monarchy to an active opposition. That ‘dirty trick’ perpetuated by General Fardoust was the trigger that sparked Islamic movement participating in the anti-Shah democratic Revolution. John D. Stempel, characterized Fardoust’s importance to the Alliance: ‘it is hard to overestimate the value of having a mole in the inner circle of the Shah.’ . . .”
- After Khomeini’s ascension to power, General Qarani (see below) consults with General Fardoust about the personnel to fill Khomeini’s general staff of the armed forces. All the recommendations are followed, except for the filling of the head of SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. Fardoust is then appointed head of SAVAMA, Khomeini’s version of SAVAK! ” . . . . On February 11, 1979, in seemingly a bizarre twist, General Qarani asked the Shah’s “eyes and ears” General Hossien Fardoust for recommendations to fill the new top posts in Iran’s armed forces. Except for the recommendation for the Chief of SAVAK, all the others were accepted. Shortly after, General Fardoust became head of SAVAMA, Khomeini’s successor to SAVAK. . . .”
B. Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi:
- Yazdi is in close contact with 1953 coup participant, Bush operative and probable CIA officer Richard Cottam. ” . . . . In August [1978], the Bush team sent its own point man to meet the exiled Ayatollah in Najaf. Professor Richard Cottam carried excellent credentials. During the 1953 coup, he had been in charge of the CIA’s Iran Desk. He had also been in close contact with Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi in the U.S. since 1975. . . .”
- In September of 1978, Yazdi is visited in the U.S. by Khomeini ally Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Beheshti. ” . . . . In Mid-September, at the height of the revolution, ‘one of the handful of Khomeini’s trusted associates,’ Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Beheshti, secretly visited the United States. He also met with Yazdi in Texas, among others. Beheshti was an advocate of the eye-for-an-eye school of justice. . . .”
- Following an abortive takeover of the U.S. Embassy by Khomeini followers posing as leftists, Yazdi connects U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan with Mashallah Khashani, who becomes chief of security for the compound. ” . . . . On February 14, soon after order was restored at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Khomeini’s aide Yazdi supplied the Embassy with a group of Iranians for compound security. Ambassador Sullivan installed, armed, and trained this Swat squad lead by SAVAK/CIA agent Mashallah Kahsani, with whom Sullivan developed a close working relationship. . . . ”
C. General Valliollah Qarani:
- Like General Hossein Fardoust, Qarani was networking with the CIA milieu since the 1953 coup that installed the Shah. In April of 1978, he advised Khomeini that the CIA was ready to remove the Shah. ” . . . . The same month, Khomeini’s old ally from the failed 1963 coup (that resulted in Khomeini’s arrest and major uprising in June 1963 and his subsequent exile to Iraq) General Valliollah Qarani sent his emissary to meet Khomeini in Najaf. Qarani had been a major CIA asset in Iran since the 1953 coup. Seeing another chance to gain power for himself, he advised Khomeini, according to former Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani-sader: ‘If you settle for the Shah’s departure and don’t use anti-American rhetoric, the Americans are ready to take him out. . . .’ ”
- Qarani was then appointed chief of staff of the army under Khomeini. ” . . . . Khomeini moved quickly to establish his authority. On February 5 he named Mehdi Bazargan, a devoted Muslim and anti-communist, interim Prime Minister. Yazdi and Abbas Amir Entezam became Bazargan’s deputies, Dr. Sanjabi Foreign Minister, and General Qarani was named military Chief of Staff. . . . ”
D. Mashallah Khashani:
- Mashallah Khashani was a SAVAK and CIA agent who was installed by Khomeini aide Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi as chief of security for the compound after an abortive takeover of the Embassy in February of 1979. ” . . . . On February 14, soon after order was restored at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Khomeini’s aide Yazdi supplied the Embassy with a group of Iranians for compound security. Ambassador Sullivan installed, armed, and trained this Swat squad lead by SAVAK/CIA agent Mashallah Kahsani, with whom Sullivan developed a close working relationship. . . . ”
- On November 4th of 1979, “chief of security” Khashani leads the takeover of the U.S. Embassy. This was the beginning of the hostage crisis. ” . . . . On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy was taken again. Leading the charge was none other than Ambassador Sullivan’s trusted Mashallah Kashani, the Embassy’s once and former security chief. . . .”
E. Ayatollah Mohammed Hossein Beheshti:
- By July of 1977, a CIA analysis identifies Beheshti as one of the major players in any scenario following the removal of the Shah. ” . . . . By July 1977, anticipating trouble ahead, the Bush covert team issued a preliminary script for the transition of power in Iran. According to John D. Stempel, a CIA analyst and Deputy Chief Political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Iran: “A ten page analysis of the opposition written by the embassy’s political section in July 1977 correctly identified Bakhtiar, Bazargan, Khomeini and Beheshti as major actors in the drama that began unfolding a year later. . . . ”
- In mid-September of 1978, Beheshti visits Yazdi in the United States. ” . . . . In Mid-September, at the height of the revolution, “one of the handful of Khomeini’s trusted associates,” Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Beheshti, secretly visited the United States. He also met with Yazdi in Texas, among others. Beheshti was an advocate of the eye-for-an-eye school of justice. . . .”
F. Richard Cottam:
- A professor, Cottam was in all likelihood the CIA operative he was during the 1953 coup that ousted Mossadegh and re-installed the Shah. ” . . . In August, the Bush team sent its own point man to meet the exiled Ayatollah in Najaf. Professor Richard Cottam carried excellent credentials. During the 1953 coup, he had been in charge of the CIA’s Iran Desk. He had also been in close contact with Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi in the U.S. since 1975. Curiously, he admitted to Bani-sadr in 1987, that he had not been working for the Carter Administration. Cottam’s visit must have had an impact, because Iran suddenly began to experience a series of mysterious catastrophes. . . .”
- Cottam tried to arrange a meeting between Carter security aide Gary Sick and Khomeini’s representative in the U.S., Ibrahim Yazdi. ” . . . A few days later, Carter’s National Security aide, Gary Sick, received a call from Richard Cottam, requesting a discrete meeting between him and Khomeini’s representative in the U.S., Dr. Yazdi. Sick refused. . . .”
- Cottam requests of Gary Sick that the Carter administration facilitate the transit of Khomeini from Iraq. “. . . . October 3, 1978, Yazdi picked up Khomeini in Iraq and headed for Kuwait. According to Gary Sick, he received an urgent call from Richard Cottam, learning for the first time that Khomeini had been forced out of Iraq. Sick was told that Khomeini and his entourage were stuck in no man’s land while attempting to cross the border. Cottam was requesting White House intervention to resolve the issue. Sick respond, ‘there is nothing we could do.’ ”
- In December of 1978, Cottam visits Khomeini in Paris, noting that Ibrahim Yazdi functioned as the Ayatollah’s apparent chief of staff. ” . . . . December 28, Cottam visited Khomeini in Paris where he noted that U.S. citizen Dr. Yazdi was the ‘leading tactician in Khomeini’s camp’ and apparent ‘chief of staff’. . . .”
- In January of 1979, Cottam goes to Teheran to prepare for Khomeini’s return and installation. ” . . . . Leaving Paris, Cottam slipped into Teheran, arriving the first week in January 1979, to prepare Khomeini’s triumphal return to Iran. . . .”
Some key events and relationships figuring prominently in the material presented in this program (material in these broadcasts is deliberately overlapped with information from the previous program):
20. A few days later, Carter’s National Security aide, Gary Sick, received a call from Richard Cottam, requesting a discrete meeting between him and Khomeini’s representative in the U.S., Dr. Yazdi. Sick refused.
21. Khomeini for the first time, publicly called for the Shah’s overthrow.
22. In Mid-September, at the height of the revolution, “one of the handful of Khomeini’s trusted associates,” Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Beheshti, secretly visited the United States. He also met with Yazdi in Texas, among others. Beheshti was an advocate of the eye-for-an-eye school of justice.
23. In early October 1978, the agent for the Bush covert team arranged to force Khomeini out of Iraq.
24. October 3, 1978, Yazdi picked up Khomeini in Iraq and headed for Kuwait. According to Gary Sick, he received an urgent call from Richard Cottam, learning for the first time that Khomeini had been forced out of Iraq. Sick was told that Khomeini and his entourage were stuck in no man’s land while attempting to cross the border. Cottam was requesting White House intervention to resolve the issue. Sick respond, “there is nothing we could do”.
25. October 6, Khomeini’s entourage, having gotten back through Baghdad, popped up in Paris. According to Bani-sadr, “it was Khomeini who insisted on going to Paris instead of Syria or Algeria”. Whoever helped Khomeini out of the Kuwaiti border impasse had to have been on good terms with both the French and Saddam Hussein.
26. December 12, Yazdi made a trip to the U.S. to promote Khomeini and his Islamic Republic. Yazdi met secretly with Henry Precht in an unofficial capacity. Precht was the Director of the Iran Desk at the State Department and one of the Bush team’s main choke points in the Carter Administration. Later Precht and Yazdi appeared together for televised discussion of Iran. Yazdi assured the American public that Khomeini had not really called for a “torrent of blood,” and that the “election would be absolutely free.” The Islamic Republic “would enjoy full freedom of speech and the press, including the right to attack Islam. [Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie stands in sharp rebuttal to that claim–D.E.]
27. December 28, Cottam visited Khomeini in Paris where he noted that U.S. citizen Dr. Yazdi was the “leading tactician in Khomeini’s camp” and apparent “chief of staff”. Khomeini was not interested in the Mullahs taking over the government. It is also noted that “Khomeini’s movement definitely plans to organize a political party to draw on Khomeini’s charisma. Cottam thinks such a party would win all Majlis seats.”
28. Leaving Paris, Cottam slipped into Teheran, arriving the first week in January 1979, to prepare Khomeini’s triumphal return to Iran.
29. January 4, 1979, Carter’s secret envoy, General Robert Huyser arrived in Iran. His mission was to prevent the “fall of the Shah.” According to Huyser, Alexander Haig, ostensibly a strong Shah supporter-inexplicably, “took violent exception to the whole idea.” Huyser recalled that “General Haig never gave me a full explanation of his strong objections.” Huyser also revealed that Ambassador Sullivan “had also expressed objections.” Two pro-Shah advocates opposed to the prevention of the Shah’s fall.
30. On January 14, President Carter finally “authorized a meeting between Warren Zimmerman and Ibrahim Yazdi. On the same day, Khomeini, in an interview on CBS claimed, “a great part of the army was loyal to him” and that “he will be in effect the strong man of Iran.”
31. On January 16, in an exact repeat of the 1953 CIA coup, Bush’s covert team ushered the “eccentric and weak” Shah out of Iran.
32. On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini staged his own version of a “triumphal return” in the streets of Teheran.
33. Khomeini moved quickly to establish his authority. On February 5 he named Mehdi Bazargan, a devoted Muslim and anti-communist, interim Prime Minister. Yazdi and Abbas Amir Entezam became Bazargan’s deputies, Dr. Sanjabi Foreign Minister, and General Qarani was named military Chief of Staff.
34. On February 11, 1979, in seemingly a bizarre twist, General Qarani asked the Shah’s “eyes and ears” General Hossien Fardoust for recommendations to fill the new top posts in Iran’s armed forces. Except for the recommendation for the Chief of SAVAK, all the others were accepted. Shortly after, General Fardoust became head of SAVAMA, Khomeini’s successor to SAVAK.
35. On February 14, 1979, two weeks after Khomeini’s return to Iran, the U.S. Embassy in Teheran was seized by Khomeini supporters disguised as leftist guerrillas in an attempt to neutralize the left. U.S. hostages were seized, but to the chagrin of Khomeini’s Fundamentalists, the Iranian coalition government restored order immediately. On the same day in Kabul, Afghanistan, the U.S. Ambassador was also kidnapped by fanatic Islamic Fundamentalists disguised as leftist guerrillas and killed in the gunfight.
36. On February 14, soon after order was restored at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Khomeini’s aide Yazdi supplied the Embassy with a group of Iranians for compound security. Ambassador Sullivan installed, armed, and trained this Swat squad lead by SAVAK/CIA agent Mashallah Kahsani, with whom Sullivan developed a close working relationship.
37. By August, pro-Bush CIA official George Cave was visiting Iran to provide intelligence briefings to Khomeini’s aides, especially Yazdi and Entezam. These intelligence exchanges continued until October 31, the anniversary of the day on which Carter fired Bush and the 800 agents. Then with all the Iranian officials who had restored order in the first Embassy seizure eliminated, the stage was set for what happened four days later.
38. On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy was taken again. Leading the charge was none other than Ambassador Sullivan’s trusted Mashallah Kashani, the Embassy’s once and former security chief.
Program Highlights Include:
- The assassination of another moderate rival of Khomeini’s.
- Apparent links between Hossein Fardoust’s selection to head the Iranian navy and Albert Hakim and Richard Secord of Iran-Contra fame.
- The partial disarming of the Marine guards assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Iran, thereby facilitating the takeover in November of 1979.
- A warning by Mr. Emory (on 1/23/1993) that the same counter-terrorism networks that were used by George H.W. Bush were still in place and that they might be used to de-stabilize the Clinton administration.
- The counter-terrorism background of Bush White House holdover Linda Tripp, who was the informant for the Monica Lewinsky affair. That affair, of course, de-stabilized Clinton’s Presidency. Tripp was also the last person to see White House Counsel Vince Foster alive, before he allegedly committed suicide. Linda Tripp served Foster lunch, which turned out to be his “last supper.”
- Mitt Romney supporter James Comey’s initiation of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e‑mail server. Comey is head of the FBI and the formal general counsel for Bridgewater Associates, which helped to capitalize Palantir, the apparent maker of the PRISM software at the focal point of “L’Affaire Snowden.”
1. A 1995 article by Harry Martin, formerly of the Napa Sentinel, gives an overview of Fara’s analysis:
Fara Mansoor is a fugitive. No, he hasn’t broken any laws in the United States. His crime is the truth. What he has to say and the documents he carries are equivalent to a death warrant for him. Mansoor is an Iranian who was part of the “establishment” in Iran long before the 1979 hostage taking. Mansoor’s records actually discount the alleged “October Surprise” theory that the Ronald Reagan-George Bush team paid the Iranians not to release 52 American hostages until after the November 1980 Presidential elections.
Mansoor’s meticulous documents, shared exclusively with this magazine, shows a much more sinister plot, the plot to take the hostages in the first place. “For 15 years the truth about the nature and origins of the Iranian hostage crisis has been buried in a mountain of misinformation,” Mansoor states. “Endless expert analysis has served only to deepen the fog that still surrounds this issue. We have been led to believe that the ‘crisis’ was a spontaneous act that just sprang out of the ‘chaos’ of the ‘Islamic Revolution’. Nothing could be further from the truth!”
“To really understand the hostage crisis and ‘who done it’, one has to look not only with a microscope, but also a wide angle lens to have a panoramic view of this well scripted ‘drama’,” Mansoor states. “That ‘drama’ was the result of large historical patterns, models, and motives. Once its true nature is understood, it will be clear how Iran/Contra happened, why Rafsanjani has been trying to ‘move toward the West,’ and why Reagan called him a ‘moderate’. And why, during the Gulf War, James Baker said, ‘we think Iran has conducted itself in a very, very credible way through this crisis’” Mansoor emphasizes that the “October Surprise” myth has served as dangerous misinformation.
THOUSANDS OF DOCUMENTS IN SUPPORT
With thousands of documents to support his position, Mansoor says that the “hostage crisis” was a political “management tool” created by the pro-Bush faction of the CIA, and implemented through an a priori Alliance with Khomeini’s Islamic Fundamentalists.” He says the purpose was twofold:
- To keep Iran intact and communist-free by putting Khomeini in full control.
- To destablize the Carter Administration and put George Bush in the White House.
“The private Alliance was the logical result of the intricate Iranian political reality of the mid-70s, and a complex network of powerful U.S.-Iranian ‘business’ relationships,” Mansoor states. “I first met Khomeini in 1963 during the failed coup attempt against the Shah. Since that time I have been intimately involved with Iranian politics. I knew in 1979 that the whole, phoney ‘Islamic Revolution’ was ‘mission implausible’.” Mansoor was frank. “There is simply no way that those guys with the beards and turbans could have pulled off such a brilliantly planned operation without very sophisticated help.”
Mansoor has spent 10 years researching the issue.
“I have collected enough data to yield a very clear picture. Mr. Bush’s lieutenants removed the Shah, brought Khomeini back to Iran, and guided his rise to power, sticking it to President Carter, the American people (52 in particular), and the Iranian people.”
He stated with boxes and boxes of evidence to support his contentions.
“My extensive research has revealed the heretofore untold truth about this episode. This is not another ‘October Surprise’ theory purporting how the hostage crisis resulted in some Khomeini-Republic better deal. That theory puts the cart before the horse. Its absurd premise is that a major international deal was initiated and consummated in three weeks. Give me a break! Bill Casey didn’t have to go to Paris to play lets-make-deal. The ‘deal’ had been in operation for at least two years. This game of blind-man’s‑bluff around Casey’s gravestone was more disinformation, damage control.”
REAGAN, BUSH AND THATCHER IN IRAN IN 1978
Mansoor produced a confidential document called the “Country Team Minutes” of April 26, 1978, more than a year before the hostage crisis. The meeting was held in Iran. The second paragraph of the routine minutes, states, “The Ambassador commented on our distinguished visitors, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Margaret Thatcher, and commented that Teheran seems to be the site for an opposition parties congress.” Mansoor indicates the entire relationship was probably the most sophisticated criminal act in recent history. “That the people who, until recently, were holding power in Washington and those who currently are still in control in Teheran, got there by totally subverting the democratic process of both countries is news. That their methods of subversion relied on kidnapping, extortion and murder is criminal,” Mansoor states.
Mansoor became a target after he did a radio show in Portland on November 13, 1992. It was the first time he attempted to go public with his documents and information. The Iranian regime has placed a bounty on Mansoor’s head and he has received many death threats.
Is Mansoor just another conspiracy nut? Ervand Abrahamian of Baruch College of New York stated in a letter to Mansoor,
“As you know I am very weary of conspiracy theories. But, despite my preconceived bias, I must admit I found your manuscript to be thoroughly researched, well documented, and, of course extremely relevant to the present. You have done a first-class job of interviewing participants, collecting data from scattered sources, and putting them together like a highly complicated puzzle.”
Mansoor’s meticulous research clearly demonstrates how Khomeini’s published vision of an Islamic Government (Vilayat-Faqih) dovetailed with the regional and global strategic objectives of a hard-core subset of the U.S. National Security establishment loyal to George Bush. It shows that the Iranian hostage crisis was neither a crisis nor chaos. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated a coup in Iran, which threw out the democratic government and installed the Shah.
In order to understand the imperative of this Alliance, we must realistically examine the sociopolitical alignment both in Iran and the U.S., and accurately assess their respective interests to find the common ground for this coalescence. The anti-monarchic forces in mid-70s Iran consisted of various nationalist groups including religious reformists, the Islamic Fundamentalists, the leftists and communists.
The nationalist forces were varied. Some were from within the government, but they were poorly organized and without grass-roots support. Their position was clearly anti-left and anti-communist, but they were vulnerable to being taken over by the well-organized left.
The Islamic Fundamentalists had no government experience, but they had major grassroots support. Islam, in its Shi’ite format was deeply embedded in the lives of the vast majority of the Iranian people. The Fundamentalists were absolutely anti-communist.
CARTER FIRES 800 CIA COVERT OPERATORS
The philosophical divide within the U.S. National Security establishment, especially the CIA, became quite serious in the aftermath of Watergate. To make matters worse, the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, his campaign promise to clean the “cowboy” elements out of the Central Intelligence Agency and his “human rights” policies alarmed the faction of the CIA loyal to George Bush. Bush was CIA director under Gerald Ford. Finally, the firing of CIA Director George Bush by Carter, and the subsequent “Halloween Massacre” in which Carter fired over 800 CIA covert operatives in 1977, angered the “cowboys” beyond all measure. That was Carter’s October surprise, 800 firings on Halloween 1977.
Bush and his CIA coverts were well aware of the Shah’s terminal cancer, unknown to President Carter. The team had an elaborate vested interest to protect. They were determined to keep Iran intact and communist-free and put George Bush in the White House.
TIMELINE: SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
Hence, the Islamic Fundamentalists were the only viable choice through which the Bush covert team could implement its own private foreign policy. The results: the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the fall of President Carter. Mansoor’s documents show step-by-step events:
1. In 1974, the Shah of Iran was diagnosed with cancer.
2. In 1975, former CIA director, and the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, Richard Helms learned of the Shah’s cancer through the Shah’s closest confidant, General Hossein Fardoust. The Shah, Helms and Fardoust had been close personal friends since their school days together in Switzerland during the 1930s.
3. On November 4, 1976, concurrent with Jimmy Carter’s election as President, CIA Director George Bush issued a secret memo to the U.S. Ambassador in Iran, Richard Helms, asking:
“Have there been any changes in the personality pattern of the Shah; what are their implications . . . . for political behavior? Identification of top military officers that most likely play key roles in any transference of power if the Shah were killed…who will be the leading actors? How will the Shah’s pet projects, including the economic development program, be affected by his departure?”
4. By July 1977, anticipating trouble ahead, the Bush covert team issued a preliminary script for the transition of power in Iran. According to John D. Stempel, a CIA analyst and Deputy Chief Political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Iran: “A ten page analysis of the opposition written by the embassy’s political section in July 1977 correctly identified Bakhtiar, Bazargan, Khomeini and Beheshti as major actors in the drama that begin unfolding a year later.”
5. Contrary to this analysis, in August 1977, the “official wing” of the CIA fed President Carter a 60-page Study on Iran which concluded:
“The Shah will be an active participant in Iranian life well into the 1980s…and there will be no radical changes in Iranian political behavior in the near future.”
6. On October 31, 1977, president Carter made good on his campaign promise to clean the “cowboys” out of the CIA. He fired over 800 covert operatives from the Agency, many of whom were loyal to George Bush. Carter’s presidency split the CIA. It produced in them–many of whom were “well-trained in political warfare–a concerted will for revenge.” By the end of the 1970s many of these special covert operatives had allied themselves with George Bush’s candidacy, and later with Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign.
7. On November 15, the Shah of Iran visited Washington, D.C. Carter toasted his guest, “If ever there was a country which has blossomed forth under enlightened leadership, it would be the ancient empire of Persia.”
8. On November 23, Ayatollah Khomeini’s elder son, Haji Mustafa, died mysteriously in Najaf, Iraq. According to professor Hamid Algar, he was “assassinated by the Shah’s U.S.-instituted security police SAVAK…the tragedy inflamed the public in Iran.” Ayatollah Khomeini placed an advertisement in the French Newspaper Le Monde which read: “thanking people for condolences that had been sent for the murder of his son.” He also “appealed to the army to liberate Iran, and to the intellectuals and all good Muslims to continue their criticism of the Shah”.
9. December 31, 1977, Carter visited the Shah in Iran. He toasted the Shah for maintaining Iran as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” Ironically, that so-called stability evaporated before the champagne lost its fizz.
10. On January 7, 1978, an insidious article entitled Iran and the Red and Black Colonialism, appeared in the Iranian daily newspaper Ettela’at. It castigated the exiled Khomeini, and produced a massive protest riot in the Holy City of Qum the next day. The clergy had little choice but to rally to Khomeini’s defense. The Qum incident shifted many of the clergy from a position of support for the Shah’s monarchy to an active opposition. That “dirty trick” perpetuated by General Fardoust was the trigger that sparked Islamic movement participating in the anti-Shah democratic Revolution. John D. Stempel, characterized Fardoust’s importance to the Alliance: “it is hard to overestimate the value of having a mole in the inner circle of the Shah.”
11. On February 3, a confidential communiqué from the U.S. Embassy clearly reflected the vision of the Alliance:
“Though based on incomplete evidence, our best assessment to date is that the Shia Islamic movement dominated by Ayatollah Khomeini is far better organized, enlightened and able to resist Communism than its detractors would lead us to believe. It is rooted in the Iranian people more than any western ideology, including Communism.”
12. April 1978, Le Monde “identified Khomeini’s Liberation Movement of Iran as the most significant force in the opposition. Shi’ite Islam unites the reformist progressive critics of the Shah on the same ground. In fact, this analysis was contrary to what Mohaammad Tavassoli, leader of the Liberation Movement of Iran, expressed to John D. Stempel on August 21, 1978:
“The nationalist movement in Iran lacks a popular base. The choice is between Islam and Communism…close ties between the Liberation Movement of Iran and the religious movement were necessary. Iran was becoming split between the Marxist and the religious.”
13. On April 26, the confidential minutes of the U. S. Embassy Country team meeting welcomed Bush, Reagan and Thatcher.
14. On May 6, Le Monde became the first western newspaper to interview Khomeini in Najaf, Iraq. Khomeini acknowledged his compatibility with the strategic imperatives of the Bush covert team, “we would not collaborate with the Marxists, even in the overthrow of the Shah.”
15. The same month, Khomeini’s old ally from the failed 1963 coup (that resulted in Khomeini’s arrest and major uprising in June 1963 and his subsequent exile to Iraq) General Valliollah Qarani sent his emissary to meet Khomeini in Najaf. Qarani had been a major CIA asset in Iran since the 1953 coup. Seeing another chance to gain power for himself, he advised Khomeini, according to former Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani-sader:
“If you settle for the Shah’s departure and don’t use anti-American rhetoric, the Americans are ready to take him out.”
16. In August, the Bush team sent its own point man to meet the exiled Ayatollah in Najaf. Professor Richard Cottam carried excellent credentials. During the 1953 coup, he had been in charge of the CIA’s Iran Desk. He had also been in close contact with Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi in the U.S. since 1975. Curiously, he admitted to Bani-sadr in 1987, that he had not been working for the Carter Administration. Cottam’s visit must have had an impact, because Iran suddenly began to experience a series of mysterious catastrophes:
- Fundamentalist supporters burned down a theater killing the innocent occupants, blaming it on the SAVAK and the Shah.
- There were riots in Isfahan that resulted in martial law.
- On August 27, one of Khomeini’s rivals among the Shia Islamic faithful outside of Iran, Ayatollah Mosa Sadr mysteriously disppeared. According to an intelligence source he was killed and buried in Libya.
17. By late August, the Shah was totally confused. U.S. Ambassador Sullivan recorded the Shah’s pleadings over the outbreak of violence:
“He said the pattern was widespread and that it was like an outbreak of a sudden rash in the country…it gave evidence of sophisticated planning and was not the work of spontaneous oppositionists…the Shah presented that it was the work of foreign intrigue…this intrigue went beyond the capabilities of the Soviet KGB and must, therefore, also involve British and American CIA. The Shah went on to ask ‘Why was the CIA suddenly turning against him? What had he done to deserve this sort of action from the United States?”
18. September 8, the Shah’s army gunned down hundreds of demonstrators in Teheran in what became known as the “Jaleh Square Massacre”.
19. On September 9, President Carter phoned the Shah to confirm his support for the Shah, a fact that enraged the Iranian population.
20. A few days later, Carter’s National Security aide, Gary Sick, received a call from Richard Cottam, requesting a discrete meeting between him and Khomeini’s representative in the U.S., Dr. Yazdi. Sick refused.
21. Khomeini for the first time, publicly called for the Shah’s overthrow.
22. In Mid-September, at the height of the revolution, “one of the handful of Khomeini’s trusted associates,” Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Beheshti, secretly visited the United States. He also met with Yazdi in Texas, among others. Beheshti was an advocate of the eye-for-an-eye school of justice.
23. In early October 1978, the agent for the Bush covert team arranged to force Khomeini out of Iraq.
24. October 3, 1978, Yazdi picked up Khomeini in Iraq and headed for Kuwait. According to Gary Sick, he received an urgent call from Richard Cottam, learning for the first time that Khomeini had been forced out of Iraq. Sick was told that Khomeini and his entourage were stuck in no man’s land while attempting to cross the border. Cottam was requesting White House intervention to resolve the issue. Sick respond, “there is nothing we could do”.
25. October 6, Khomeini’s entourage, having gotten back through Baghdad, popped up in Paris. According to Bani-sadr, “it was Khomeini who insisted on going to Paris instead of Syria or Algeria”. Whoever helped Khomeini out of the Kuwaiti border impasse had to have been on good terms with both the French and Saddam Hussein.
26. December 12, Yazdi made a trip to the U.S. to promote Khomeini and his Islamic Republic. Yazdi met secretly with Henry Precht in an unofficial capacity. Precht was the Director of the Iran Desk at the State Department and one of the Bush team’s main choke points in the Carter Administration. Later Precht and Yazdi appeared together for televised discussion of Iran. Yazdi assured the American public that Khomeini had not really called for a “torrent of blood,” and that the “election would be absolutely free.” The Islamic Republic “would enjoy full freedom of speech and the press, including the right to attack Islam. [Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie stands in sharp rebuttal to that claim–D.E.]
27. December 28, Cottam visited Khomeini in Paris where he noted that U.S. citizen Dr. Yazdi was the “leading tactician in Khomeini’s camp” and apparent “chief of staff”. Khomeini was not interested in the Mullahs taking over the government. It is also noted that “Khomeini’s movement definitely plans to organize a political party to draw on Khomeini’s charisma. Cottam thinks such a party would win all Majlis seats.”
28. Leaving Paris, Cottam slipped into Teheran, arriving the first week in January 1979, to prepare Khomeini’s triumphal return to Iran.
29. January 4, 1979, Carter’s secret envoy, General Robert Huyser arrived in Iran. His mission was to prevent the “fall of the Shah.” According to Huyser, Alexander Haig, ostensibly a strong Shah supporter-inexplicably, “took violent exception to the whole idea.” Huyser recalled that “General Haig never gave me a full explanation of his strong objections.” Huyser also revealed that Ambassador Sullivan “had also expressed objections.” Two pro-Shah advocates opposed to the prevention of the Shah’s fall.
30. On January 14, President Carter finally “authorized a meeting between Warren Zimmerman and Ibrahim Yazdi. On the same day, Khomeini, in an interview on CBS claimed, “a great part of the army was loyal to him” and that “he will be in effect the strong man of Iran.”
31. On January 16, in an exact repeat of the 1953 CIA coup, Bush’s covert team ushered the “eccentric and weak” Shah out of Iran.
32. On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini staged his own version of a “triumphal return” in the streets of Teheran.
33. Khomeini moved quickly to establish his authority. On February 5 he named Mehdi Bazargan, a devoted Muslim and anti-communist, interim Prime Minister. Yazdi and Abbas Amir Entezam became Bazargan’s deputies, Dr. Sanjabi Foreign Minister, and General Qarani was named military Chief of Staff.
34. On February 11, 1979, in seemingly a bizarre twist, General Qarani asked the Shah’s “eyes and ears” General Hossien Fardoust for recommendations to fill the new top posts in Iran’s armed forces. Except for the recommendation for the Chief of SAVAK, all the others were accepted. Shortly after, General Fardoust became head of SAVAMA, Khomeini’s successor to SAVAK.
35. On February 14, 1979, two weeks after Khomeini’s return to Iran, the U.S. Embassy in Teheran was seized by Khomeini supporters disguised as leftist guerrillas in an attempt to neutralize the left. U.S. hostages were seized, but to the chagrin of Khomeini’s Fundamentalists, the Iranian coalition government restored order immediately. On the same day in Kabul, Afghanistan, the U.S. Ambassador was also kidnapped by fanatic Islamic Fundamentalists disguised as leftist guerrillas and killed in the gunfight.
36. On February 14, soon after order was restored at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Khomeini’s aide Yazdi supplied the Embassy with a group of Iranians for compound security. Ambassador Sullivan installed, armed, and trained this Swat squad lead by SAVAK/CIA agent Mashallah Kahsani, with whom Sullivan developed a close working relationship.
37. By August, pro-Bush CIA official George Cave was visiting Iran to provide intelligence briefings to Khomeini’s aides, especially Yazdi and Entezam. These intelligence exchanges continued until October 31, the anniversary of the day on which Carter fired Bush and the 800 agents. Then with all the Iranian officials who had restored order in the first Embassy seizure eliminated, the stage was set for what happened four days later.
38. On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy was taken again. Leading the charge was none other than Ambassador Sullivan’s trusted Mashallah Kashani, the Embassy’s once and former security chief.
With the evidence and documentation supplied by Mansoor, the alleged October Surprise would not have been necessary. President Carter was the target, in revenge for the Halloween Massacre, the night 800 CIA operatives and George Bush were fired by Carter. The main thrust, however, was to prevent a communist takover of Iran after the Shah’s anticipated death.
2. In the concluding minutes of the excerpt presented from the 1/23/1993 interview with Fara Mansoor, Mr. Emory warned that the counter-terrorism apparatus used by George H.W. Bush to affect many of the machinations of the Iran-Contra scandal were still in place and could be used to de-stabilize the (Bill) Clinton administration. Bush White House holdover Linda Tripp was the conduit who conveyed the Monica Lewinsky information to Lucianne Goldberg, who publicized it and precipitated the scandal that resulted in Clinton’s impeachment.
Linda Tripp had a background in counter-terrorism, having a Top-Secret security clearance while working for the Delta Force, the country’s elite counter-terrorism commando unit.
Incidentally, Monica Lewinsky was represented by Plato Cacheris, who is now representing Edward Snowden, whose actions have helped to de-stabilize the Obama administration.
“Linda’s Trip” by Jeff Leen and Gene Weingarten; The Washington Post; 3/15/1998.
. . . . There was a long string of assignments, in Germany and elsewhere. Linda got a top-secret security clearance. At one point, according to her resume, she was doing secretarial work for Delta Force, the super-secret counterterrorist unit that does not, officially, exist. . . .
. . . . It was April 1990 when she joined the Bush White House. Ellen Strichartz, a neighbor who worked as a White House correspondence analyst, had sponsored her. Tripp started as a “floater,” filling in answering phones or taking dictation whenever there was a secretarial vacancy.
Tripp had worked mostly for the military, in austere operations that were high in discipline and rigor but low in pomp and stature. This changed. Her 32-month tenure in the Bush White House was a bath in power and privilege and prestige. . . .
3. Republican James Comey–a Mitt Romney supporter in 2012–is taking actions that are causing serious problems for the Obama administration and for the Hillary Clinton candidacy. In particular, the e‑mail scandal appears to have been Comey’s baby.
He has also ruffled feathers with the altogether complicated Apple “ISISphone” controversy. That consummately important case, Byzantine in its complexity and multi-dimensionality (to coin a term) will be dealt with in a future program.
Comey was previously the general counsel for Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund that helped capitalize Palantir, which (their disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding) makes the Prism software that is at the epicenter of “L’Affaire Snowden.” (CORRECTION: In past programs and posts, we incorrectly identified Comey as general counsel for Palantir, not Bridgewater.)
The Bridgewater/Palantir/Comey nexus is interesting, nonetheless. Palantir’s top stockholder is Peter Thiel, a backer of Ted Cruz and the man who provided most of the capital for Ron Paul’s 2012 Presidential campaign. Ron Paul’s Super PAC was in–of all places–Provo Utah, Romney country. Paul is from Texas. The alleged maverick Paul was, in fact, close to Romney.
Recall that “Eddie the Friendly Spook” is a big Ron Paul fan and Bruce Fein, Snowden’s first attorney and the counsel for the Snowden family, was the chief legal counsel for Ron Paul’s campaign.
The possible implications of these relationships are worth contemplating and will be discussed at greater length in future programs.
“Comey’s FBI Makes Waves” by Cory Bennett and Julian Hattem; The Hill; 3/09/2016.
The aggressive posture of the FBI under Director James Comey is becoming a political problem for the White House.
The FBI’s demand that Apple help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers has outraged Silicon Valley, a significant source of political support for President Obama and Democrats.
Comey, meanwhile, has stirred tensions by linking rising violent crime rates to the Black Lives Matter movement’s focus on police violence and by warning about “gaps” in the screening process for Syrian refugees.
Then there’s the biggest issue of all: the FBI’s investigation into the private email server used by Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of State and the leading contender to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
A decision by the FBI to charge Clinton or her top aides for mishandling classified information would be a shock to the political system.
In these cases and more, Comey — a Republican who donated in 2012 to Mitt Romney — has proved he is “not attached to the strings of the White House,” said Ron Hosko, the former head of the FBI’s criminal investigative division and a critic of Obama’s law enforcement strategies.
Publicly, administration officials have not betrayed any worry about the Clinton probe. They have also downplayed any differences of opinion on Apple.
But former officials say the FBI’s moves are clearly ruffling feathers within the administration.
With regards to the Apple standoff, “It’s just not clear [Comey] is speaking for the administration,” said Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism and cybersecurity chief. “We know there have been administration meetings on this for months. The proposal that Comey had made on encryption was rejected by the administration.”
Comey has a reputation for speaking truth to power, dating back to a dramatic confrontation in 2004 when he rushed to a hospital to stop the Bush White House from renewing a warrantless wiretapping program while Attorney General John Ashcroft was gravely ill. Comey was Ashcroft’s deputy at the time.
That showdown won Comey plaudits from both sides of the aisle and made him an attractive pick to lead the FBI. But now that he’s in charge of the agency, the president might be getting more than he bargained for.
“Part of his role is to not necessarily be in lock step with the White House,” said Mitch Silber, a former intelligence official with the New York City Police Department and current senior managing director at FTI Consulting.
“He takes very seriously the fact that he works for the executive branch,” added Leo Taddeo, a former agent in the FBI’s cyber division. “But he also understands the importance of maintaining his independence as a law enforcement agency that needs to give not just the appearance of independence but the reality of it.”
The split over Clinton’s email server is the most politically charged issue facing the FBI, with nothing less than the race for the White House potentially at stake.
Obama has publicly defended Clinton, saying that while she “made a mistake” with her email setup, it was “not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”
But the FBI director has bristled at that statement, saying the president would not have any knowledge of the investigation. Comey, meanwhile, told lawmakers last week that he is “very close, personally,” to the probe.
Obama’s comments reflected a pattern, several former agents said, of the president making improper comments about FBI investigations. In 2012, he made similarly dismissive comments about a pending inquiry into then-CIA Director David Petraeus, who later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for giving classified information to his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.
“It serves no one in the United States for the president to comment on ongoing investigations,” Taddeo said. “I just don’t see a purpose.”
Hosko suggested that a showdown over potential criminal charges for Clinton could lead to a reprise of the famous 2004 hospital scene, when Comey threatened to resign.
“He has that mantle,” Hosko said. “I think now there’s this expectation — I hope it’s a fair one — that he’ll do it again if he has to.”
Comey’s independent streak has also been on display in the Apple fight, when his bureau decided to seek a court order demanding that the tech giant create new software to bypass security tools on an iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two terrorist attackers in San Bernardino, Calif.
Many observers questioned whether the FBI was making an end-run around the White House, which had previously dismissed a series of proposals that would force companies to decrypt data upon government request.
“I think there’s actually some people that don’t think with one mindset on this issue within the administration,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D‑Del.), the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s top Democrat, at a Tuesday hearing. “It’s a tough issue.”
While the White House has repeatedly backed the FBI’s decision, it has not fully endorsed the potential policy ramifications, leaving some to think a gap might develop as similar cases pop up. The White House is poised to soon issue its own policy paper on the subject of data encryption.
“The position taken by the FBI is at odds with the concerns expressed by individuals [in the White House] who were looking into the encryption issue,” said Neema Singh Guliani, a legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
This week, White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco tried to downplay the differences between the two sides. The White House and FBI are both grappling with the same problems, she said in a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“There is a recognition across the administration that the virtues of strong encryption are without a doubt,” Monaco said on Monday. “There is also uniformity about the recognition that strong encryption poses real challenges.”
Uncle Sam and Il Duce
http://www.newsweek.com/opening-holocaust-cartoon-contest-exhibition-tehran-provokes-continued-461286
Germany added yet another voice Wednesday to the growing list of countries and leaders condemning a Holocaust cartoon contest being held in Iran.
“The murder of 6 million men, women and children during the Holocaust, for which we Germans bear guilt and responsibility, must not be abandoned to ridicule,” German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said. The Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier himself, Schaefer said, had previously come out against such a contest during a visit to Tehran in February, the Associated Press reported. It’s “very regrettable” that the contest has nevertheless continued, Schaefer said.
An exhibition of 150 cartoons and caricatures submitted for the contest opened Saturday at the Tehran Art Bureau, according to the Tehran Times, with artists of dozens of nationalities represented in the display. Submissions reportedly came from countries such as France, Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia and Colombia. Three winners in each of the two categories (cartoon and caricature) will be announced upon the show’s conclusion at the end of the month, CNSNews reported, with roughly $50,000 in prize money to be distributed among winners and finalists. The top prize is $12,000.
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“This exhibition constitutes a response to the publications of cartoons by the French Charlie Hebdo magazine, which affronted the Prophet Muhammad, as well as an expression of [our opposition] to the massacres perpetrated against the Palestinian people,” said Masoud Shojaei-Tabatabaei in a report by Iran’s Al-Alam TV, which has been posted to YouTube with English subtitles by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that aims to bridge language gaps and inform discussions of the Middle East.
“We do not mean to approve or deny the Holocaust,” Shojaei-Tabatabaei told the Tehran Times. “However, the main question is why is there no permission to talk about the Holocaust despite their [the West’s] belief in freedom of speech.” He reportedly explained at a press conference Saturday that the first contest, held in 2006, as well as the current one—which some sources are referring to as the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest despite the fact that a version of the competition was also held last year—are meant to highlight a double standard in the West when it comes to depicting the Holocaust versus the Prophet Mohammad. He insisted that Holocaust denial was not the goal, but his attempts to elaborate resulted in a jarring comparison. “Holocaust means ‘mass killing,’” he said. “We are witnessing the biggest killings by the Zionist regime in Gaza and Palestine.”
Iran has a history of Holocaust denial. When the contest was first held in 2006, then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had already become well known for calling the Holocaust a “myth.” The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has also expressed doubt. For example, in a speech he gave for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, in 2014, he called the Holocaust “an event whose reality is uncertain, and if it happened, it’s uncertain how it happened.”
The comments from Germany’s Foreign Ministry spokesman on Wednesday were only the latest in a string of condemnations for the latest contest. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was a frequent target in the submitted caricatures, fumed at a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday, telling ministers that Iran “denies the Holocaust, mocks the Holocaust and is preparing another Holocaust,” and saying that “every country in the world must stand up and fully condemn this.”
That same day, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner expressed Washington’s concern that the contest could “be used as a platform for Holocaust denial and revisionism and egregiously anti-Semitic speech, as it has in the past.”
“We denounce any Holocaust denial and trivialization as inflammatory and abhorrent. It is insulting to the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust,” Toner added. “Such offensive speech should be condemned by the authorities and civil society leaders rather than encouraged.”
In an interview published last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told The New Yorker that the government of Iran was not responsible for the contest and did not control or endorse the nongovernmental organization running it. But both the contest organizer Shojaei-Tabatabaei and exiled Iranian journalist Aida Qajar have refuted the idea that Iran’s government has no involvement.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum echoed those sentiments in a press release dated April 29. “The organizations associated with the contest are sponsored or supported by government entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Islamic Guidance,” the release said, while reports in Iranian press indicated support from the Ministry of Culture. The 2006 contest, the USHMM said, “had the endorsement and support of government officials and agencies.”
“The global community and the people of Iran deserve an unequivocal denouncement of this Holocaust cartoon contest,” Tad Stahnke, director of USHMM’s Initiative on Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism, is quoted as saying. “Given the Iranian government’s past involvement with these events and its history of restricting unsanctioned speech, it will take much more effort on its part to distance itself from this contest,” he added. “We strongly encourage Zarif and other members of the Iranian government to condemn Holocaust denial and to allow Iranian citizens access to accurate information about the Holocaust.”
In the Al-Alam segment posted by MEMRI, reporter Salim Issa says that “the goals of the contest are to enhance the culture of freedom of speech by means of modern art and to open new horizons for cultural and artistic cooperation and exchange between Iranian and foreign artists.”
But Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, has vehemently criticized the event. “This contest goes against the universal values of tolerance and respect, and runs counter to the action led by UNESCO to promote Holocaust education, to fight anti-Semitism and denial,” she said in a statement posted Friday, having previously expressed UNESCO’s concerns in a letter to the Iranian ambassador. “Such an initiative which aims at a mockery of the genocide of the Jewish people, a tragic page of humanity’s history, can only foster hatred and incite to violence, racism and anger.”
Fore some time I had my suspicious about the Iranian revolution. So this information doesn’t surprise me.
Does Mansoor still lives and where’re his documents? Why didn’t he publish a book? I was searching for this kind of book on this matter)
Thank you for sharing this important, interesting info!
@Patrick–
Fara has a blog, which is the best I can do: https://faratimes.com/about/
Best,
Dave
How many more ‘October Surprise’ surprises are there, waiting to be found or shared? That was one of the many questions raised by a pretty surprising report out of the New York Times last week that appears to be about as solid a confirmation as we can expect at this point that the October Surprise plot was indeed carried out by the Reagan campaign. It’s a confirmation that comes from Ben Barnes, a once prominent Texas Democratic who has an even more prominent mentor: John Connally. The same former Texas governor who was shot and injured during the JFK assassination while he was Democrats and went on to switch parites and become Richard Nixon’s Treasury Secretary.
Connally are Barnes aren’t names that have previously been associated with the October surprise plot. But as Barnes tells it, it was Barnes and Connally who literally traveled across the Middle East in 1980, meeting one leader after another with a simple message: Iran can’t release the hostages yet. Or, rather, it was Connally conveying the message. Barnes was just tagging along for some reason. Importantly, Barnes also reveals that, following the Middle East trip, he and Connally both had a three hour meeting with Bill Casey at the Dallas airport where Casey was briefed about the trip.
As Barnes tells it, Connally’s message to the Arab leaders was something along the lines of “‘Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter,’...‘It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.’ ” Intriguingly, Barnes claims that he had no idea this was the intent of the trip until he and Connally met with the first Arab leader and Connally conveyed that message right in front of him. And then did it again with each leader. Why did Conally bring Barnes along for such a mission? That remains a mystery.
It’s worth recall another Connally Democratic Party protege who found himself involved with some rather sleazy political maneuverings: Robert (Bob) Strauss, who Connally placed on the Democratic National Committee in 1968 as part of an effort to block the nomination of anti-war candidate George McGovern. Two years later, Connally joined the Nixon administration. It’s also worth noting that it was Barnes who apparently got George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard as part of Bush’s attempt to dodge the Vietnam war. That’s part of the of context here: Barnes and Connally were Texas Democrats with deep Republican ties. So deep in Connally’s case that he literally became a Republican and Nixon’s Treasury Secretary in 1973. And somehow, the two were put at the center of a clandestine lobbying effort to put Reagan in office. An effort that Barnes apparently didn’t even know he was getting into when Connally dragged him along.
All in all, it’s quite a remarkable story. But not one Barnes has never shared before with anyone else. In fact, four people confirmed to the NY Times that Barnes did indeed disclose all of this to them years ago. It raises the question of just how open a secret is all this stuff in DC circles?
Why is Barnes revealing it now? To give Jimmy Carter some long belated justice as he sits on his deathbed. At least that’s how Barns is putting it. It’s sort of a ‘deathbed by proxy’ confession.
Also note that there is no mention at all of how this all ties into the explosive and damning research by Fara Mansoor showing how the Iranian Revolution was effective fomented and managed by the CIA as part of an effort started after learning of the Shah’s cancer diagnosis to install the ardently anti-communist religious fundamentalists of Iran into power to prevent left-wing forces from filing that vacuum. Not that we should have expected Mansoor’s research to factor into this reporting. But it points towards one of the other major contexts that this new revelation is operating in: the utter inability of the US to meaningfully come to grips with its own history. An inability rooted in the collective silence given to important research like Mansoor’s. The US society simply doesn’t seem to care very much about acquiring an accurate understanding of how it got here. So while it’s going to be interesting to watch the potential impact of this latest revelation play out, it’s likely going to be depressingly interesting as the US’s amnesiac apathy kicks in and everyone forgets that there are major unresolved scandals just sitting here waiting to be understood:
“His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.”
The October Surprise plot was, in part, a bid by John Connally to become Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state or defense. That was the motive for Connally’s previously unrecognized key role in the plot, as laid out by Connally’s mentee, Ben Barnes. And as the article pointcs out, Barnes is no random acquaintance of Connally. He was, at one point, one of the most prominent figures in Texas. He even helped George W. Bush dodge the draft by getting into the Texas Air National Guard. Those apparent ties to the Bush family make this a good time to recall how Farah Mansoor’s research found the Iranian hostage crisis to be a political “management tool” created by a ‘pro-Bush’ faction of the CIA. That was the milieu Barnes was operating in when he had the experiences he’s only now sharing. It’s not quite a deathbed confession from Barnes — it’s Jimmy Carters deathbed that apparently promted this — but Barnes is clearly someone who knows where ‘the bodies are buried’. That part of the context of this new round of October Surprise revelations. This is someone undoubtedly who knows A LOT of secrets reaching a point in life where they are willing to start sharing them:
Nor are Barnes’s claims entirely uncorroborated. For starters, four people confirmed Barnes shared this when them years ago, which raises the interesting question as to just how open a secret this all really was in DC circles. But it appears a Connally itinerary found in the LBJ Library provide some compelling evidence that Barnes isn’t making the 1980 Middle East trip up. The trip happened, including post-trip discussions with Reagan:
Perhaps the most unbelievable part of Barnes’s story is how Connally apparently didn’t inform Barnes as to what the trip was about, and yet both of them met with one Middle East leader after another where Connally issued the same message. It points to a remarkable level of trust Connally must have had in Barnes’s ability to keep a secret. Which is what Barns did, mostly, for 43 years. But the secret isn’t just that they met with all these leaders to deliver the same message. There was the follow up meeting with future CIA-director Bill Casey at the American Airlines lounge at the Dallas Airport. A meeting that Connally again brought Barnes to. And then there’s the fact that Barnes is claiming that Connally and Barnes were sharing the ‘don’t release the hostages’ messages not just with Iranian leaders but leaders across the Middle East, with an apparent hope that those leaders would convey the message to Iran. It’s not entirely clear why Barnes was brought along to all these meetings for a scandalous mission that he apparently wasn’t aware of from the start, or why non-Iranian leaders would be informed about the plot, but that’s the story he’s sharing:
And while suspicions about an October Surprise were around from the start of the Reagan administration, it wasn’t until the 1991 publication of an opinion piece by former Carter National Security aide Gary Sick, that the story started getting the kind of attention it deserved. Recall how Farah Mansoor’s thesis that the CIA orchestrated the collapse of the Shah of the rise of Khomeini and the Islamic fundamentalists was based in part on Sick’s experiences, that included what appeared to be multiple attempts in 1978 by CIA-connected individuals to take steps that would have assisted Khomeini’s revolutionary efforts. It’s a reminder that we can’t really separate the October Surprise intrigue Barnes is fleshing out from Fara Mansoor’s damning thesis about the CIA’s sponsorship of the Iranian revolution. This is all one big wildly scandalous story:
Regarding the bipartisan congressional investigation that followed Gary Sick’s 1991 opinion piece, and the fact that it initially concluded that there was nothing to the October Surprise ‘conspiracy theories’, it’s worth noting that the Democrat who headed that investigation, Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana, was also the vice chair of the widely panned 9/11 Commission.
And note who ultimately discovered a 1991 memo by a lawyer for President George H.W. Bush that confirmed that yes, Bill Casey was indeed in Madrid during July and August of 1980, the period when he is alleged to have met with represenatives of Iran to prevent a release of the hostage: Robert Parry, 20 year later in 2011. Who else knew about that memo during that 20 year period? Just how open a secret was all this?
John Connally wasn’t even ‘on the radar’ of congressional investigators over 30 years ago. But he’s just been put on the radar in a big way. What will historians and investigative journalists do with this now? Is this just a randomly one-off? Probably. But, again, that’s a big part of the context here: it’s not just that we got what appears to be confirmation that the ‘October Surprise’ did indeed happen as many suspected. We’re also getting further confirmation that, for the most part, almost no one actually cares. Sure, there was some hoopla about this report when it first came out. But that was about it. Now it’s back to just passively waiting for more surprises and then not really pursuing those new surprising leads.