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If the Ayatollah Khomeini was an enemy of the United
States ruling elite, why did he adopt the CIA's security service? Historical and Investigative Research - 23 Feb 2006 In June of 1980, the New York Times reported that the new leader of Iran, the
Ayatollah Khomeini, was complaining loudly that many people who had served
under the Shah had not been purged from the government bureaucracies. “He
singled out the Foreign Ministry for criticism, saying that in this
department and in other ministries there were ‘the same emblems and the same
corruption’ as before.”[0] It
is curious that he should not have singled out SAVAK -- especially SAVAK. SAVAK had been the Iranian Shah (King) Mohammed Reza
Pahlavi's feared security service, which routinely tortured and assassinated
dissidents, and spied on everybody. It had been created by the CIA after the
CIA installed the shah in power in a 1953 coup d'état.[1] As a dissident leader prior to
the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had been
denouncing SAVAK. So why so much noise now about other ministries being full
of Shah agents and nothing in particular about SAVAK? Earlier the same month, the Washington Post had
published an interesting article with the title: “Khomeini Is Reported to
Have a SAVAK of His Own.”[1a]
And what was Khomeini’s own SAVAK like? It was none other than SAVAK
itself. Here is what the Washington Post writes (emphases are mine): “Though it
came to power denouncing the shah’s dreaded SAVAK secret service, the
government of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has created a new internal
security and intelligence operation, apparently with a similar
organizational structure and some of the same faces as its predecessor. The new
organization is called SAVAMA. It is run, according to U.S. sources and Iranian
exile sources here and in Paris, by Gen. Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy
chief of SAVAK under the former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and a friend from
boyhood of the deposed monarch. ...‘SAVAK is
alive and kicking’ in the form of SAVAMA, claims Ali Tabatabai, former press
counselor at the Iranian Embassy in Washington under the shah... now
president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda [Maryland, near
Washington D.C.]… ‘There are large numbers of former SAVAK people’ in the new
organization, he says. ‘In fact, with the exception of the bureau chiefs [who
ran the individual sections of SAVAK] the whole organization seems to be
intact.’ In Paris, a
French lawyer who specializes in representing Iranian exiles told Washington
Post correspondent Ronald Koven that ‘SAVAMA is SAVAK without any
change in structure. They just replaced some of the chiefs... ...Tabatabai,
who claims he has good sources on the situation in Tehran, says that SAVAMA’s
organization ‘is almost a carbon copy’ of SAVAK’s, with nine bureaus.
These, he said, cover personnel, collection of foreign intelligence,
collection of domestic intelligence, surveillance of its own agents and
security of its own agents and security of government buildings,
communications, finances, analysis of collected intelligence,
counterintelligence, and recruitment and training.” What Tabatabai is describing above is the security
apparatus of a totalitarian police state: the nine bureaus of SAVAK/SAVAMA
were spying on ordinary Iranians and even on SAVAK/SAVAMA itself. They were
also torturing and murdering ordinary Iranians, as they judged it necessary:
“SAVAK used torture systematically as a tool of internal repression.” The
Ayatollah Khomeini, of course, installed a totalitarian police state, so from
this point of view swallowing SAVAK -- which had a great deal of experience
running the shah’s totalitarian police state -- was convenient. But it
was still a perfectly absurd thing for Khomeini to do if he was really an
enemy of the US ruling elite, because it was this ruling elite’s CIA that had
installed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power and created SAVAK for him, and
therefore only an ally of the US ruling elite would welcome the “very close
ties that SAVAK, under the shah, [had] maintained with the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency.” Of course, US officials were very busy telling
everybody that the Ayatollah Khomeini (whom they would soon start arming to
the teeth, in secret, for the entire duration of the Iran-Iraq war[1b]) was supposedly their enemy,
so they rushed to deny that there was really that much SAVAK in
SAVAMA. As reported in the same article: “In
Washington, however, U.S. government analysts offer a more subdued
assessment. ‘It may be
tempting to look at SAVAMA as SAVAK reborn,’ one source said, ‘but that is
too fanciful for the facts.’ …U.S. sources say that some vestiges of the
previous system could be useful [to new regime]. So, some former SAVAK
functionaries -- described as ‘lower level’ -- who were able to function for
the shah without being tainted now work for Khomeini.” Uh-huh. But as you can see from one of the quotes
above, the one thing that both US and Iranian exile sources were definitely
agreeing on was that “SAVAMA…is run…by Gen. Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy
chief of SAVAK under the former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi...” Not only that: “Fardoust...[was]
a longtime friend, classmate and confidant of the shah. Fardoust, Tabatabai
says, was also head of a special SAVAK bureau that summarized all intelligence
information. Fardoust delivered it personally to the shah daily.” This Fardoust was not exactly “lower level,” was he?
Nor was he merely “tainted”: Fardoust had been running Iran for the shah.
It also turns out that “Fardoust’s deputy at SAVAMA is said to be Gen. Ali
Mohammed Kaveh, formerly the head of the SAVAK bureau dealing with analysis
of collected intelligence.” This Kaveh was not exactly “lower level” either.
Finally, “In three former bureaus dealing with personnel organization and
summation of intelligence, Tabatabai claims, every member who worked for
Fardoust when he was deputy chief of SAVAK still works for him as chief of
SAVAMA.” The US ruling elite did not support Ali Tabatabai’s
Iran Freedom Foundation, which wanted to topple Khomeini,[2] and it was awkward for the US ruling
elite that Ali Tabatabai was explaining out loud how the Ayatollah was
running Iran with the CIA’s SAVAK, just like the shah had before him. It is
possible that Tabatabai's assassination in his Bethesda, Maryland home,
shortly after he made the above statements to the press, was unrelated to the
CIA.[3] However, it does
seem significant that, “Only
Tabatabai was willing to let his name be attached publicly to the foundation.
Only Tabatabai was eager to go before television cameras and radio
microphones to discuss the positions of the foundation. In the end, said one
of the original 10 [founders] who asked that his name not be used, their
fears for the safety of their families and themselves were borne out by what happened
to Tabatabai. ...‘Our object was primarily to expose the true nature of
Khomeini,’ he said. ...Tabatabai
was president of the foundation as well as its spokesman. Because of his
prominent public profile, the Iran Freedom FOUNDATION (IFF) became in turn
the most widely known of nine anti-Khomeini groups in the United States. ...In all
cases, it was Tabatabai who took the public stage. ... He appeared on talk
shows, both radio and television, locally, nationally and in Canada. He
helped organize a major anti-Khomeini demonstration in Los Angeles earlier
this month, designed to bring together the different anti-Khomeini groups.”[4] In other words, Tabatai had a big mouth, and he was
the only person that needed shutting up -- everybody else had already gotten
the message. With Tabatabai out of the picture, problem solved. And indeed, I
was unable to find mention of the SAVAK/SAVAMA identity in newspaper articles
since. On the contrary: the next year, The New York Times 'informed'
the public in a headline that “[SAVAMA] Isn’t Like Savak Under Sha,” stating
in the body of the text that “Savak [was] disbanded after the 1979
revolution.”[5] An article in The
Christian Science Monitor, the same year, did say that “Savama [was] the
name given [to] the reconstituted Savak secret police organization, so long a
weapon of terror and torture in the late Shah’s hands,” but it rushed to
assure its readers that the reason “many Savak members gladly serve in
Savama” was “to save their own skins.”[6] This,
however, does not answer the obvious question: Why would Khomeini trust them? For SAVAK to become SAVAMA it is
not enough that SAVAK members want to survive and thrive; it is also
necessary that Khomeini have no problem making people trained by ‘Great Satan,’
and until very recently working for ‘Great Satan,’ the very basis of his own
power.
Footnotes and Further Reading [0] “QUOTATION OF THE DAY: KHOMEINI
DEMANDS GOVERNMENT PURGE”; New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New
York, N.Y.: Jun 28, 1980. pg. 1.5 [1] "HOW THE UNITED STATES DESTROYED DEMOCRACY IN IRAN
IN 1953: Re-print of 16 April 2000 New York Times article"; with an
introduction by Francisco Gil-White; Historical and Investigative Research, 5
January 2006; [1a]
Khomeini Is Reported to Have a SAVAK of His Own; Khomeini Reported to Have
Own SAVAK-Style Agency, The Washington Post, June 7, 1980, Saturday, Final
Edition, First Section; A1, 1706 words, By Michael Getler, Washington Post
Staff Writer [1b] "Why Bush Sr.'s 1991 Gulf War? To Protect Iranian
Islamism: Like father, like son: this is also the purpose of Bush Jr.'s
war"; Historical and Investigative Research; 20 December 2005; by
Francisco Gil-White
[2] Exiles
plan assault on Iran, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), June 19, 1980,
Thursday, Midwestern Edition, The News Briefly; Pg. 2, 206 words, WITH
ANALYSIS FROM MONITOR CORRESPONDENTS AROUND THE WORLD, EDITED BY DEBRA K.
PIOT, Washington Iranian emigre
sources here say exiled Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar has reached
agreement with former generals of the dethroned Shah for a counterrevolution and
military moves, based in Iraq, against the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's
regime, Monitor correspondent John Cooley reports. After several
visits to Iraq and a meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad,
Mr. Bakhtiar met Tuesday in Paris, where he lives in exile, with Gen. Gholam
Ali Oveissi and Gen. Ahmed Palizban, both of whom have been gathering forces
and arms in Iraq for an Iraqi-supported strike against the Ayatollah, the
emigres said. "We know
there are military units inside Iran which will support any serious move to
restore order. The goal of such a movement would be to establish a military
government for two to three years, followed by a popular referendum on the
country's constitutional future," Ali Akhbar Tabatabai, spokesman for the
Iran Freedom Foundation, which supports Mr. Bakhtiar's cause in the United
States, told the Monitor. The US State
Department has shied away from backing Mr. Bakhtiar or the Iran Freedom
Foundation... [3] “Terrorism
came to Washington once again yesterday. The chaos and violence of world
events crystallized in an instant in a Bethesda home as a gunman pumped
bullets into the stomach of Ali Akbar Tabatabai.”
[4] Victim
Led in Forming Anti-Khomeini Group, The Washington Post, July 23, 1980,
Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A12, 654 words, By Donnel Nunes,
Washington Post Staff Writer [5] AROUND
THE WORLD; Iranian Says Secret Agency Isn't Like Savak Under Shah, The New
York Times, June 1, 1981, Monday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 5,
Column 2; Foreign Desk, 183 words, Reuters, TEHERAN, Iran, May 31 FULL TEXT: “A senior
Iranian official said today that Iran has a new intelligence agency but that
it is not like the Shah's hated Savak secret police since it is run along
Islamic lines. Asked at a
news conference to confirm the existence of a secret agency called Savama, a
Government spokesman, Behzad Nabavi, said, ‘Yes, we have an intelligence
organization.’ Revolutionary
Iran needs an intelligence agency, Mr. Nabavi said, adding: ‘But of course it
does not have the same methods as the C.I.A. or K.G.B. or Savak. It must have
Islamic methods and not stray from religious precepts.’ Savak,
disbanded after the 1979 revolution, was believed responsible for torturing
and killing thousands of suspected political opponents of the Shah. Savak
agents ‘were all robbers, drinkers of alcohol, knife-wielders and
degenerates,’ Mr. Nabavi said. He did not directly confirm the name Savama,
which is believed to stand for the Iranian National Information and Security
Organization, or say how long it had existed.” [6] War
between mullahs, leftists staggers Iran, Christian Science Monitor (Boston,
MA), August 14, 1981, Friday, Midwestern Edition, Pg. 3, 848 words, By
Geoffrey Godsell, Staff correspodent of The Christian Science Monitor |
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