http://www.faithfreedom.org/2009/06/08/the-usa-owes-an-apology-to-ira...

New York Times reporter Steven Kinzer in his book All Shah’s Men, reveals how the CIA destabilized and overthrew the democratically elected government of Dr. Mosaddeq. How it was done? Here is the transcript of the first few minutes of Kinzer’s interview.

1. STEVEN KINZER: The story of how the C.I.A. overthrew the government of Iran in 1953 is really an object lesson in how easy it is for a rich and powerful country to throw a poor and weak country into chaos.

2. The C.I.A. sent one of its most adept operatives, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, to Iran with the mission of organizing the overthrow of the government.

3. One reason I was so interested in writing this book is that I have always asked myself, how do you go about overthrowing a government? What do you do? Suppose that you are sent to a country with that mission. What do you do on the first day? How do you start and then what do you do? Well, now I know.

4. Kermit Roosevelt set about trying to create chaos in Iran. He was able to do that very quickly by a series of means.

5. The first thing he did was, he started bribing members of parliament and leaders of small political parties that were a part of Mosaddeq’s political coalition. Pretty soon the public started to see the Mosaddeq’s coalition splitting apart and people denouncing him on the floor of parliament.

6. The next thing Roosevelt did was start bribing newspaper editors, owners and columnists and reporters. Within a couple of weeks, he had 80% of the newspapers in Tehran on his payroll and they were grinding out every kind of lie attacking Mosaddeq.

7. The next thing Roosevelt did was start bribing religious leaders. Soon, at Friday prayers, the Mullahs were denouncing Mosaddeq as an atheist enemy of Islam.

8. Roosevelt also bribed members of police units and low-ranking military officers to be ready with their units on the crucial day.

9. In what I think was really his master stroke, he hired the leaders of a bunch of street gangs in Tehran, and he used them to help create the impression that the rule of law had totally disintegrated in Iran. He actually at one point hired a gang to run through the streets of Tehran, beating up any pedestrian they found, breaking shop windows, firing their guns into mosques, and yelling—“We love Mosaddeq and communism.” This would naturally turn any decent citizen against him.

10. He didn’t stop there. He hired a second mob to attack the first mob, to give people the impression that there was no police presence and order had completely disintegrated. So, within just a few weeks, this one agent operating with a large sum of cash and a network of contacts and various elements of society, had taken what was a fairly stable country and thrown it into complete upheaval.

As you see the parliament was no longer a legitimate parliament. Everyone had become a fifth column. While Roosevelt had remained in the shadow, Mosaddeq knew that the integrity of the parliament and the press had been undermined. How could people who supported him start all of a sudden attacking him? Would an election in such time been legitimate? Was the parliament legitimate? Mosaddeq was a patiort and he did the right thing.

Therefore comparing Dr. Mosaddeq with Hussni Mubarak and Indira Gandhi betrays the lack of knowledge of the subject about which Dr. Klinghoffer opines.

You can read more about it here http://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/5/how_to_overthrow_a_government_pt