Operation TPAJAX

TRANSCRIPT

In March of nineteen fifty-four, an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency sat down and wrote a manual for overthrowing a government. It had chapters. It had a budget. It had a press strategy, a plan for buying members of parliament, and instructions for staging riots and blaming them on someone else. He titled his instructions with a single idea: make it look legal. Or, in his words, quasi-legal. Then the agency stamped it secret, filed it away, and spent the next half century acting as if none of it had ever happened. This is the story of Operation Tee Pee Ajax — the joint plan by the Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence to remove the prime minister of Iran — told from the one document they never meant you to read.

In nineteen fifty-one, Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized his country's oil industry, taking it out of the hands of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company — a British giant. Britain was furious, and the dispute dragged on. By the end of nineteen fifty-two, Washington had decided Mossadegh had to go. The agency's own history states its reasoning plainly. Quote: "It was the aim of the Tee Pee Ajax project to cause the fall of the Mossadeq government; to reestablish the prestige and power of the Shah." End quote. That is documented: the goal, in their own words, was the fall of a government. The rest of that same passage — the claims that Mossadegh craved personal power, governed by emotion, and cooperated closely with the communists — that is the agency justifying itself, to itself. Claimed, not proven. But the decision was made. And the British, who had lost the oil, arrived in Washington with an idea about how to do it.

The paper trail here is remarkable. The history records that in November and December of nineteen fifty-two, quote, "British Intelligence representatives brought up the proposition of a joint political action to remove Prime Minister Mossadeq." The Americans, the document says, quote, "had not intended to discuss this question at all and was unprepared to do so." The British brought the idea. The Americans brought the money. On the fourth of April, nineteen fifty-three, the director approved a budget of one million dollars, quote, "which could be used by the Tehran station in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadeq." Documented. Then the planners got to work. Near the end of April, an agency officer named Donald Wilber traveled to Nicosia, Cyprus, quote, "in close collaboration" with British intelligence, to quote, "draw up a plan for the overthrow of Mossadeq." His British counterpart was Norman Darbyshire, the head of British intelligence's Iran branch. This was a joint operation from the first page — not an American show with British help, but a partnership, planned together and paid for together. The draft drawn up in London put the estimated price at two hundred eighty-five thousand dollars: one hundred forty-seven thousand five hundred from the American service, one hundred thirty-seven thousand five hundred from the British. Those are estimates and allocations — documented as figures on a page, unverified as a final bill. The true total was never written down, or never survived. The planners set down their assumptions with unusual honesty. Quote: "the operation must, if possible, be made to appear legal or quasi-legal instead of an outright coup; public opinion must be fanned to fever pitch against Mossadeq in the period just preceding the execution of the overthrow operation." End quote. The toolkit was all there. Grey propaganda — the station's own phrase — pushed through its agents and, quote, "the Rashidian brothers" of British intelligence. Fabricated documents, the plan says, quote, "which prove and record in detail a secret agreement between Mossadeq and the Tudeh" — the communist party — an agreement that did not exist. Cash for politicians: the station was, quote, "specifically authorized to spend one million rials a week, at ninety rials to the dollar, in purchasing the cooperation of members of the Iranian Majlis." And crowds for the streets: quote, "The British group and the American station will supply all the demonstrators they can to swell their ranks." Every one of those lines is documented — written in the plan itself. Between the fourteenth of May and the first of September, nine hundred ninety messages about Tee Pee Ajax passed in and out of headquarters. The machine was running.

The first attempt came on the night of the fifteenth of August. Officers loyal to the Shah moved to arrest Mossadegh — and were arrested themselves. By half past two in the morning, the history says, quote, "those Persians who were still willing to carry out the operation were convinced that the cause was lost." The Shah fled the country. And at headquarters, Wilber wrote the most honest sentence in the entire file. Quote: "Headquarters spent a day featured by depression and despair." A message went out calling the operation off, stating the American position, the British position, and headquarters' own: quote, "the operation has been tried and failed." Documented — by their own admission, the coup failed on the sixteenth of August. What happened next is the part historians still argue about. On the evening of the eighteenth, gangs took to the streets of Tehran posing as members of the communist Tudeh party, with orders — the document's word — quote, "to loot and smash shops" and "to make it clear that this was the Tudeh in action." A staged riot, designed to frighten the public into the Shah's arms. Documented. Then came the nineteenth of August. The agency's summary describes a pro-Shah demonstration, starting near the bazaar, that, quote, "appeared to start partially spontaneously." Appeared. In the very same paragraph, Wilber admits, quote, "Station political action assets also contributed to the beginnings of the pro-Shah demonstrations." Crowds surged through the streets shouting, quote, "Shah piruz ast" — the Shah is victorious. By noon, the history says, quote, "separate elements composing the crowds began to receive direct leadership from the military and police," and the army officers, quote, "previously alerted to take part in the military operations provided by Tee Pee Ajax were now taking separate but proper individual action." The telegraph office fell. The police headquarters fell. Mossadegh's house was gutted. Quote: "By the end of the nineteenth of August, the country was in the hands of the new Premier, Zahedi." And within two days, the agency, quote, "covertly made available five million dollars" to the new government — documented as paid, though the document never quite says whether that was the price of the coup, or life support for what came after.

Wilber wrote all of this down in March of nineteen fifty-four. The historian's note bound into the file confirms it, adding that he, quote, "had played an active role in the operation." The history was published inside the agency in October of nineteen sixty-nine. Then, for thirty years, it sat in the dark. Most of the agency's other files on the operation were destroyed in the early nineteen-sixties — the National Security Archive notes that as documented fact. What survived was this history. And in April of two thousand, it leaked. The New York Times published the introduction and the appendices on the sixteenth of April, and the main body on the eighteenth of June — the paper's own editor's note, bound into these very scans, says so. For years the agency treated the leak as unofficial: genuine, but not acknowledged. Then, on the nineteenth of August, two thousand thirteen — sixty years to the day after the coup — the National Security Archive posted newly declassified agency records containing, in the Archive's words, the agency's first formal acknowledgment that it had helped plan and execute the overthrow. The manual the agency wrote, classified, and distanced itself from — finally admitted, in daylight.

So where do the labels fall? Documented: the British proposal, the million-dollar authorization, the joint drafting at Nicosia, the quasi-legal instruction, the false-flag gangs, the fabricated documents, the subsidized press — the history even confesses, quote, "the station was still not sure whether it was achieving results comparable to the sums so spent" — the failure, the call-off, the nineteenth of August street operation, and the five million dollars after. Claimed: Wilber's verdicts. That the plan's assumptions, quote, "stood their test." That the first failure, quote, "may be charged directly to the Persians who at the very end refused to continue to accept the guidance which the station felt was so essential." That the crowds revealed, quote, "the fundamental prestige of the Shah." A participant, grading his own operation. And unverified: the true final cost. The exact mixture, on the nineteenth of August, of paid assets, soldiers, and genuine supporters. The British side of the story — London's own files remain largely closed. And everything that was in the files destroyed in the sixties.

The Central Intelligence Agency wrote a manual for overthrowing a government. It classified the manual. And the manual leaked anyway. What remains is the rarest thing in the history of covert action: the plan, in the planners' own words — including the instruction to make a coup look, quote, "legal or quasi-legal instead of an outright coup." They wrote it down. They stamped it secret. And now you have read it.